cannabisnews.com: Shadowing the Conventions 





Shadowing the Conventions 
Posted by FoM on July 21, 2000 at 07:08:48 PT
By David Rabin
Source: MoJo Wire
Political celebs are planning to descend on L.A. and Philly this summer to throw their own counter-conventions in an effort to draw attention to the issues both parties prefer to ignore. Looking forward to watching the Democratic and Republican National Conventions this summer? Didn't think so. Some say it will be like watching a tennis game where both players will be on the same side of the net. 
You will have an alternative, however, as long as you have access to the Internet, or possibly cable television, or can get yourself to Philadelphia July 30 through Aug. 3 or to Los Angeles Aug. 13 through Aug. 17. There, an eclectic collection of activists, with help from various celebrities and maverick politicians, will be running innovative "Shadow Conventions" near the two parties' traditional confabs. http://www.shadowconventions.com/Featured names include Sen. John McCain, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and actor Warren Beatty. Also on the bill: regular folks personally affected by some of the nation's ills, from the growing gap between rich and poor to the excesses of the war on drugs. A major force behind the Shadows is former conservative vamp Arianna Huffington, with a hefty assist from billionaire George Soros' Open Society Institute, which has given $175,000 toward the projected $500,000 project. http://www.soros.org/osi/The Shadows will offer "a way of having a voice," says Jim Wallis, convener of Call to Renewal, a coalition of faith-based organizations and a co-convener of the Shadows (other co-conveners include Common Cause and the National Campaign For Jobs and Income Support, among others). "We're having the town meetings the big conventions ought to be. [Theirs are] more coronations than conventions." http://www.calltorenewal.com/Related Coverage: Candidate Nader http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/JA00/nader.htmlThe Great Debate Shut-Out http://www.motherjones.com/mustreads/042400.htmlTV's Political Profits http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/MJ00/profits.html The Shadow Conventions will focus on three issues: campaign-finance reform, the war on drugs and the growing gap between rich and poor. A day will be given to each of these topics at both Shadow Conventions, with a kick-off rally on the preceding Sunday night, in coordination with "Rock the Vote" in Los Angeles. Panels of experts will hold sway from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. each "issue day," followed later in the afternoon by organizing workshops and discussions. In the evenings, Shadowers will watch the, er, conventional conventions on simulcasts, seasoned with political satire from the likes of Harry Shearer, Al Franken, and "Politically Incorrect" host Bill Maher. Other parodies are planned as well, along with interactive opportunities like the "bozometer," which will enable online viewers to vote on Democratic or Republican Convention speakers. Most of the proceedings will be carried on the Shadow Conventions Web site. C-Span also may pick them up. http://www.shadowconventions.com/In the campaign finance reform arena, Ellen Miller, president of Shadow co-convener Public Campaign, says she'll be "raising the flag high for the most systemic reform -- a full public-financing, clean-money system." Such systems, she points out, have already been enacted in Maine, Arizona, Vermont, and Massachusetts, and two more states -- Missouri and Oregon -- will have proposals for them on their ballots in this election." http://www.publiccampaign.org/Miller sees action in the states building towards public financing on the federal level. Polls, she says, indicate that almost two-thirds of Americans want public financing as long as icandidates agree to spending limits and take no private money. "We have to break through the politicians' hold on this issue, and the only way to do that is to take it to the American public," says Miller. Recent News Wires: Out of the Streets, Into the Senate? http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/medea.htmlLosing Ground http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/black_officials.htmlTobacco Money Flows Both Ways http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/tobaccolawyers.htmlOnline Gag Orders http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/methupdate.html Lindesmith Center Director Ethan Nadelmann will be setting the tone for the drug war discussion. Drug abuse can certainly cause enormous damage, and needs to be reduced, says Nadelmann, but "drug prohibition, like alcohol Prohibition decades ago, generates extraordinary harms as well. It, not drugs per se, is responsible for creating vast underground markets, criminalizing million of otherwise law-abiding citizens, and corrupting both governments and societies at large." Nadelmann sees the Shadow Conventions as one way of putting drug policy reform on the map. He's intent on countering what he sees as the draconian war-on-drugs "spin" the main parties will undoubtedly provide at their conventions. Nadelmann will be aided by numerous individuals whose lives have been damaged by current drug laws. According to Nadelmann's Lindesmith Center, nearly 500,000 non-violent drug offenders arebehind bars in the US, a number that has increased ten-fold in two decades. http://www.lindesmith.org/Call to Renewal's Jim Wallis, along with Chuck Collins, co-director of United for a Fair Economy, will lead the discussion on the widening gap between rich and poor. "There's something wrong when we have a record economy and rising inequality at the same time. This rising tide is lifting all the yachts but not all the boats," says Wallis. "If we don't deal with this question in a time of prosperity, I'm not sure when we will." http://www.stw.org/Wallis says the big party candidates are so busy talking about "soccer moms" they've forgotten about what he calls "Burger King moms." He coined the term after observing a woman at his local BK: "She was racing back and forth between the drive-in window and a table in a corner where there were three kids sitting -- her kids. She was helping them with their homework." The catalyst behind the Shadow Conventions is the controversial syndicated columnist Huffington. In recent years, since her days as an acolyte of Newt Gingrich and wife of Michael Huffington, the former Republican congressman who broke spending records in his failed attempt to win a US Senate seat in 1994, Huffington has taken a sharp left turn. Exhibit A: "When Al Gore talks about 'leaving no children behind' at the Democratic Convention, he'll be doing it in a city [Los Angeles] where one in three children live in poverty," she intones. "We want acts, not rhetoric. " Huffington's displeasure with the two-party system is not driving her into the arms of any third-party candidate. Ralph Nader is expected to address the Shadow Convention in Philadelphia, and Huffington says she likes him. But she's opting for "none of the above" when she enters the ballot booth in November. The Shadow Conventions do have nay-sayers, of course. One is Democratic Congressman Barney Frank. He dislikes what he sees as the Shadow Conventions' "plague on both your [Democratic and Republican] houses." He thinks there are some significant differences between Al Gore and George Bush: "abortion, gay rights, gun regulation, affirmative action, and race," to name just a few. Frank says the Shadow Conventions do a disservice by ignoring these clear differences. He believes the dissenters should work for Gore's election in the short run while pushing to create better choices in the long run. Comedian Al Franken, for one, says he will be pointing out those differences when he reenacts, along with Arianna Huffington, the "Strange Bedfellows" routine the two did for the cable channel Comedy Central during the 1996 conventions. "I'm actually going to take the pro-status quo side ... we did it in '96, when I was the liberal and she was the conservative. Now she's way to my left ... I've stayed exactly where I was." What do you think? David Rabin is a freelance writer based in Washington, DC. Letter To The Editor: mojowire motherjones.comDirect Link To Above Article:http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/shadow.htmlPosted: July 21, 2000 Foundation for National Progress Related Articles & Web Sites:Shadow Conventionshttp://www.shadowconventions.com/Shadow Conventionshttp://www.lindesmith.org/shadowconventions/Overthrow The Governmenthttp://www.overthrowthegov.com/TLC & DPF Invite You To The Shadow Conventionhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6386.shtml Groups To Detail Convention Planshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6367.shtmlBeyond Conventional Behavior http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6348.shtml
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Comment #1 posted by Mitchell on July 21, 2000 at 08:59:29 PT:
Shadow Convention Lift Off
				SHADOW CONVENTION LIFT OFFIn a recent column, Bob Novak wondered why Senator John McCain would want to attend the upcoming Shadow Convention. “Why attend a conclave that may look like the bar scene in Star Wars?” Star Wars references are rare for a Novak column; the hardest working son-of-a-bitch you ever dreamed of, a journalist too busy promoting the kind of conservatives and conservatism that support the drug war to have time for movies time except when dozing fitfully with the latest Whittaker Chambers book on his lap while in-flight, to or from Washington.Well, lemme tell ya somethin’ Bob: A couple of days into chatting it up with the sclerotic, spider veined, prostate’s-been-flaring-up, scotch swillin’ demagogues and their tightly-wound, cheerful third wives at the Repuplican Convention, where even people from Albany and St. Paul seem to have developed a Texas twang, why even you Bob will be ready for the Star Wars Bar and Grill LONG before last call.The Shadow Convention attracts people of differing ideological stripes for whom it has become painfully obvious that all political principle and idealism has been drained from the Democratic and Republican Parties. Where once people complained that “there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties,” it is now apparent that the cosmic micrometer has slammed shut. The two parties have melded into a single devouring mass, like the one in the 1958 classic, The Blob (Even Novak remembers The Blob). And McCain wants to cast himself in the role played by Steve McQueen. The Shadow Convention appeals to those who sense that there is a strategic reserve of idealism in America. It’s gone from the government and the corporations, if it was ever there, but it can still be found in most religious, and cultural institutions, community action groups, and in millions of individuals. Those who support the Shadow Convention, despite their ideological differences, mostly want to inject the principle of principle into governing. Or at least to have the government feel the combined weight of people and groups driven by a sense of idealism.  My worry is that the Shadow Convention will not resemble the bar scene from Star Wars enough. And why was that scene with all those disparate aliens, in this universally popular G rated movie, set in a bar of all things? Could it be that intoxicants (like alcohol and also marijuana) serve to blur the superficial distinctions, which sentient beings make between themselves and those they regard as the other in a way that allows for informal exchanges that might actually be vital to peace and progress?	I am personally grateful to Ethan Nadelmann and the Lindesmith Center for their efforts on behalf of drug decriminalization and in organizing the Shadow Convention. However, I do believe that a reprint of an editorial by Nadelmann that appears on the Shadow Convention website (www.shadowconvention.com) represents a direction and mindset that ill serves the cause it strives to promote. More than in its substance, the tone represent the sort of weak and defensive posturing that has had the government running roughshod over recreational and medical marijuana users for the last three decades. Even with the philanthropist Soros’ megabucks, marijuana will never be decriminalized by amiable bourgeois appeals to reason in The New York Times, or energize the poor and minorities communities who bear the brunt of the Drug War lash. Nadelmann writes: “‘So you want to legalize drugs, right?’ That's the first question I’m typically asked when I start talking about drug policy reform. My short answer is, ‘marijuana, maybe.’”Well, Mr. Nadelmann, my short answer is, You’re damned right I do.  The article continues with: “More specifically, I’m recommending that responsible doctors be allowed and encouraged to prescribe whatever drugs work best…”Responsible Doctors? Has this guy read even ONE Elvis biography?Face it. The let’s-not-frighten-the-horses strategy has delivered horrifyingly lackluster results. Besides, the horses need to be frightened. They should be frightened that their children won’t be able to get student loans because of a pot bust. Or that someone they know and love will waste the productive years of their lives languishing in a federal prison. They should be frightened about international drug gangs that make the Mafia look like the Jets in West Side Story. They should be frightened by the erosion of everyone’s privacy and civil liberties in the name of fighting this drug war. They should be frightened by the smoldering resentment of the United States in Latin America because of it. And they should be reminded that no country that leads the free world in incarcerating its citizen can claim to be the leader of the free world.	A marked increase on the stridency meter might prove a gateway to more concrete results. The medical marijuana movement was a bottom up movement that came about when a few people had the gumption to stand up and say, “I’m smoking marijuana because I think it’s good for me.” Recreational marijuana users likewise need to get off the defensive. Lemme tell ya somethin’, the best defense is a good offense. Right Bob? Of course until recently it was the Evans and Novak column the newspapers carried. Novak always had Evans to handle the bourgeois niceties. So maybe it takes all types. Like that bar scene in Star Wars. Mitchell Greentower   	  
http://www.amabong.com
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