I'm sure many of you have been reading and liking my essays on the legalization of marijuana and hemp. It would seem that CNN also liked what I have to say, because on Wednesday the 25th, I had the pleasure of being a featured webcam comment on CNN's Headline news. Originally they told me I would have about 20-30 seconds, but they ended up leaving my comment at it's full length of just over 40 seconds. I was responding to questions asked about Mexico's cartel wars, namely "Should the US send more troops to the boarder?" Please go view the video here.
I have also entered into CNN's current I-Report contest, on the same topic I spoke on the other day. The winners of the contest will have their clips shown on CNN, I can only hope to get more air time for my side of the issue. I have made a second installment of my argument for legalization to submit to the contest, it can be viewed here. I would appreciate it if you all go view the videos, and share them around. The more people that can see these the better, people should be informed.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
March for Higher Education
I am very new to protesting, my first protest was against proposition 8, right around the time of the election back in November. Monday I went to my first march, and last weekend was my first excursion to Sacramento. I really enjoyed it, both the city of Sacramento itself and all the people I met there, as well as the March. In fact, I am considering going into SF for the Iraq War Anniversary protest this weekend. Not so much because I want to protest the war, I will have a sign I imagine, but my main goal would be to take pictures. I've realized that I really enjoy taking rally/protest pictures. The first pictures along these lines I took were on 4/20 2008, at the big celebration at UCSC. The UC tried to lock down the campus by not allowing any traffic on unless by special permit, and not letting the buses on either. This meant that for the majority of the people going to 4/20, we had to walk from over a mile away. I personally walked nearly 2 miles from my parking spot to the Porter field, where the celebration takes place. That wasn't so much a rally or a protest, as people trying to have fun and facing harsh opposition, but I digress.
Monday was very different than 4/20, today was a formalized march with police enforcement. Having all of those police around was a little unsettling for me, I kept expecting someone to do something stupid then a fight to start and escalate to police brutality. It was a pretty tame protest all things considered. I ran out of the group to throw my coffee cup away as soon as I could, which happened to be in front of a hotel. One of the guys that worked at the Hotel moved over to intercept me, as if he expected me to do something "radical." When I got to the trash can before him, and he saw I was just throwing something away he nodded nervously, then moved away when I got back into line. That was probably the closet thing to "radical" behavior I saw.
I felt a little lost at first, since I went there on my own, instead of with the rest of SJSU. I had been in Sacramento since Saturday, for a friend's birthday party. When I first got to Raley field I was pretty confused, I didn't know why we were protesting at a baseball field. I heard the SJSU group coming, joined up with them, and my friends from political science filled me in on the details, namely the fact that a march implies marching somewhere. It had not previously occurred to me that "March for Higher Education," was in fact a double entendre, it was a march in march. Up until this point I thought the name simply meant it was in March.
The March itself was pretty uneventful, I made a lot of jokes about protesting and collective action, tasteful and not demeaning. After passing countless police and security professionals, we finally got to the steps of the capital. The energy was pretty high for a while, but it died off when the speakers started. Some were better than others, and it's hard for me to pick a best speaker since many were quite good. There was an obvious worst speaker though, and that was the lieutenant governor. All he managed to do was parrot our own slogans back to us, in a 5 minute speak he must have used the phrase "doors of education" at least two dozen times. He actually managed to break John McCain's "Joe the Plumber" record, which is pretty amazing.
On the walk back to my car, I noticed a homeless camp along the banks of the river we crossed while marching. I stopped to take a picture of it, because it was touching for me. I was there to protest budget cuts, that keep kids out of college, when kids can't get into college what options do they have? Menial jobs, crime, or homelessness, at least those are my feelings on it. After I took my pictures a nearby man approached me, and asked if I was a writer. I said yes, since I already expected to blog about my day, and the man began to tell me a bit about himself and his two friends. The three of them were the homeless men living at the camp I just photographed, and they were there watching and supporting the students. He told me to "tell the people how we feel." I'm assuming he meant to tell either the students or the legislators, and I'm sure the we referred to the homeless. I will do my best to keep my word to him, because people need to know, about the plight of the homeless, the plight of the students, and the impotence our of legislators. This blog is only the beginning of my involvement. After the march I really want to be more involved in student protesting, against the budget cuts and prop 8 namely, but I will undoubtedly find more projects to work on.
See pictures I took of the protest here.
Monday was very different than 4/20, today was a formalized march with police enforcement. Having all of those police around was a little unsettling for me, I kept expecting someone to do something stupid then a fight to start and escalate to police brutality. It was a pretty tame protest all things considered. I ran out of the group to throw my coffee cup away as soon as I could, which happened to be in front of a hotel. One of the guys that worked at the Hotel moved over to intercept me, as if he expected me to do something "radical." When I got to the trash can before him, and he saw I was just throwing something away he nodded nervously, then moved away when I got back into line. That was probably the closet thing to "radical" behavior I saw.
I felt a little lost at first, since I went there on my own, instead of with the rest of SJSU. I had been in Sacramento since Saturday, for a friend's birthday party. When I first got to Raley field I was pretty confused, I didn't know why we were protesting at a baseball field. I heard the SJSU group coming, joined up with them, and my friends from political science filled me in on the details, namely the fact that a march implies marching somewhere. It had not previously occurred to me that "March for Higher Education," was in fact a double entendre, it was a march in march. Up until this point I thought the name simply meant it was in March.
The March itself was pretty uneventful, I made a lot of jokes about protesting and collective action, tasteful and not demeaning. After passing countless police and security professionals, we finally got to the steps of the capital. The energy was pretty high for a while, but it died off when the speakers started. Some were better than others, and it's hard for me to pick a best speaker since many were quite good. There was an obvious worst speaker though, and that was the lieutenant governor. All he managed to do was parrot our own slogans back to us, in a 5 minute speak he must have used the phrase "doors of education" at least two dozen times. He actually managed to break John McCain's "Joe the Plumber" record, which is pretty amazing.
On the walk back to my car, I noticed a homeless camp along the banks of the river we crossed while marching. I stopped to take a picture of it, because it was touching for me. I was there to protest budget cuts, that keep kids out of college, when kids can't get into college what options do they have? Menial jobs, crime, or homelessness, at least those are my feelings on it. After I took my pictures a nearby man approached me, and asked if I was a writer. I said yes, since I already expected to blog about my day, and the man began to tell me a bit about himself and his two friends. The three of them were the homeless men living at the camp I just photographed, and they were there watching and supporting the students. He told me to "tell the people how we feel." I'm assuming he meant to tell either the students or the legislators, and I'm sure the we referred to the homeless. I will do my best to keep my word to him, because people need to know, about the plight of the homeless, the plight of the students, and the impotence our of legislators. This blog is only the beginning of my involvement. After the march I really want to be more involved in student protesting, against the budget cuts and prop 8 namely, but I will undoubtedly find more projects to work on.
See pictures I took of the protest here.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Cinequest Film Festival: Review
A friend of mine was working for the Cinequest film festival that's been going on in San Jose for the past week or so. This weekend was unfortunately the last of the festival, the two films I saw were so amazing, I wish I had the time to go see more.
The film I saw was a documentary called Witch Hunt. It will be airing on MSNBC on April 12th, but I do not know at what time. Witch Hunt focused on Bakersfield, Kern County California, in the mid 80's they elected a new district attorney with a tough on crime platform. He was so tough on crime, that he began fabricating child molestation cases. He based convictions on the testimony of 6 year old children, browbeaten into following leading questions to convict their own parents of the most horrible falsehoods. It began with one man John Stoll, in 1984 he was recovering from a messy divorce with a vindictive ex wife. His wife wanted sole custody of their child and was willing to destroy their son's life to get it, so she lied to him about being molested and got him to lie to the police.
This process went on for years, in total about three dozen people were convicted, most were working class or middle class parents, most had no previous criminal records. Eventually, after rotting in jail for a almost a decade, the first of the convictions was overturned, and paved the way for the rest of the innocents to be released. John Stoll, the first to be jailed, unfortunately was also the last one out, serving a total of 20 years out of a 40 year sentence. Other parents had obscenely long sentences, some set a new record for the highest sentence ever in Kern county, at 373 years. All of the parents were innocent from the beginning. Most of the kids have come forward to tell the truth about the situation as well, and despite all this no one has pressed charges against the authorities for any of it.
The second film I saw was Johnny Mad Dog and it was one of the best films I have seen in a long, long time. It was a fiction about child soldiers fighting for freedom in Liberia, but it was very realistic and very gritty, using ex-child soldiers as actors in the movie. This movie is not for the faint of heart, it is most realistic depiction of what life is like for these kids. Or at least I think, no one in America really knows much since we aren't involved in the conflict, even through our UN participation. The only things America sends to Africa, since Somalia, are condoms and money, but I digress.
If you liked Full Metal Jacket, you will love Johnny Mad Dog, as there are many parallels in the plot of both movies. At the end of the movie I felt depressed yet inspired, happy to be alive, and very happy not to live in that kind of a world. I couldn't cut it, I'm too used to life in "civilized" American society. At the same time, I doubt they could survive in America, without being jailed at least. All those child soldiers are taught, from the youngest of ages, is killing, rape, and looting. It's a horrible thing to conscript children as young as ten to do these acts, as was the case for Johnny Mad Dog, the main character of the film.
The film I saw was a documentary called Witch Hunt. It will be airing on MSNBC on April 12th, but I do not know at what time. Witch Hunt focused on Bakersfield, Kern County California, in the mid 80's they elected a new district attorney with a tough on crime platform. He was so tough on crime, that he began fabricating child molestation cases. He based convictions on the testimony of 6 year old children, browbeaten into following leading questions to convict their own parents of the most horrible falsehoods. It began with one man John Stoll, in 1984 he was recovering from a messy divorce with a vindictive ex wife. His wife wanted sole custody of their child and was willing to destroy their son's life to get it, so she lied to him about being molested and got him to lie to the police.
This process went on for years, in total about three dozen people were convicted, most were working class or middle class parents, most had no previous criminal records. Eventually, after rotting in jail for a almost a decade, the first of the convictions was overturned, and paved the way for the rest of the innocents to be released. John Stoll, the first to be jailed, unfortunately was also the last one out, serving a total of 20 years out of a 40 year sentence. Other parents had obscenely long sentences, some set a new record for the highest sentence ever in Kern county, at 373 years. All of the parents were innocent from the beginning. Most of the kids have come forward to tell the truth about the situation as well, and despite all this no one has pressed charges against the authorities for any of it.
The second film I saw was Johnny Mad Dog and it was one of the best films I have seen in a long, long time. It was a fiction about child soldiers fighting for freedom in Liberia, but it was very realistic and very gritty, using ex-child soldiers as actors in the movie. This movie is not for the faint of heart, it is most realistic depiction of what life is like for these kids. Or at least I think, no one in America really knows much since we aren't involved in the conflict, even through our UN participation. The only things America sends to Africa, since Somalia, are condoms and money, but I digress.
If you liked Full Metal Jacket, you will love Johnny Mad Dog, as there are many parallels in the plot of both movies. At the end of the movie I felt depressed yet inspired, happy to be alive, and very happy not to live in that kind of a world. I couldn't cut it, I'm too used to life in "civilized" American society. At the same time, I doubt they could survive in America, without being jailed at least. All those child soldiers are taught, from the youngest of ages, is killing, rape, and looting. It's a horrible thing to conscript children as young as ten to do these acts, as was the case for Johnny Mad Dog, the main character of the film.
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