FreePress Second Saturday Salon

You are invited to the:

Second Saturday Salon

February 13 - 6:30pm (until midnight)

The band Miller-Kelton will play "on the stairs" at 8pm. Hear and read about the origins of the Free Press in honor of our 40th anniversary year. Art, refreshments and progressive political networking. Meet new friends.

1021 E. Broad St., side door, parking in rear.
253-2571, truth@freepress.org

This Saturday - the Free Press Second Saturday Salon

Join us in celebrating the Free Press' 40th anniversary year

Find out about the origins of the Free Press back in the late 60s and early 70s.

Socializing with refreshments, art, music, and progressive friends.

Co-sponsored by the Central Ohio Green Education Fund

Saturday, January 9, 2010 from 6:30pm-midnight
1021 East Broad Street - side door, parking in rear

truth@freepress.org
253-2571

1960's Coffeehouse to benefit Food Pantries

Civil rights sit-ins.  Bell-bottoms. Anti-war marches.  Student Power.  Afros.  Mini-skirts.  Hippies.  Riots.  Space flights.   The generation gap.

Those hallmarks of the turbulent 1960’s will be rekindled Friday November 13 at this year’s annual “Spirit of the ‘60’s Coffeehouse”:

       Friday November 13    7:30 p.m.

King Avenue Methodist Church 
299 W. King at Neil in Columbus

The show begins at 7:30 p.m. in the church basement, but get there early for a good seat.

Bill Cohen will lead a candlelit, musical, year-by-year journey through the era, with live folksongs, “news reports” of sixties happenings, displays of anti-war buttons and posters, and far-out sixties fashions.

Bill will also challenge the audience with sixties trivia questions, and he’ll award prizes (with a 1960’s theme).

Proceeds from the suggested $10 donations will go to the Mid-Ohio Food Bank.     Refreshments will be available at no extra charge.  Free parking is also available in the lots just South and West of the church.

The program is suitable for ADULTS and MATURE TEENS.

It’s the 24th year of sixties coffeehouses for Bill.  He’s performed the show more than a hundred times now at colleges, churches, synagogues, conferences, high schools, and middle schools across Ohio and beyond.

For more information, call Bill at (614) 263-3851.  Or go to www.spiritofthe1960s.com

Freepress invites us to see two movies

This release by our friends at Columbus Free Press - charlie

September 21 at 7pm
The Age of Stupid

A frightening jeremiad about the effects of climate change.
We will have a half hour discussion panel before the film starts with Bob Fitakts of the Free Press and Deborah Steele field organizer for Greenpeace on how we can better address climate change here in Central Ohio. This is an opportunity for us to show our leaders people in Ohio care about climate change and what Obama to be a leader. We are asking people who attend this event to wear their Obama T shirts as a sign that "'I voted for you, climate change is important to me." Regular ticket price.
Worthington at the Crosswoods Theater - 270 and High St., 200 Hutchinson Avenue

September 22 at 7:30pm
Free Press free movie - "Children of Armageddon"

A moving and disturbing portrait of the legacy of the nuclear arms race in Japan, the Marshall Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand and the planet. With contributions from world-renowned experts Noam Chomsky, Hans Blix, Arjun Makhijani, Douglas Roche and many others.

Drexel Theater, 2254 E. Main St., Bexley

Sponsored by the Free Press, Central Ohio Green Education Fund and the Film Council of Greater Columbus
truth@freepress.org

Freepress invites us to see two movies

You are invited to see the movie
FOOD, Inc.

Free Press Readers receive $2.00 off General Admission and $1.00 off Student/Senior Admission.
You are invited to see the movie
FOOD, Inc.

Free Press Readers receive $2.00 off General Admission and $1.00 off Student/Senior Admission

Wednesday, July 22 – 7:30pm showing only

Just bring this email with you
Drexel Theater, 2254 E. Broad St., Bexley

FOOD, INC. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil off our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that's been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

A panel discussion will follow the screening and will broadly focus on issues raised in the film, eating locally produced food, growing food, and indentifying and supporting local food resources. Panelists will include Bill Dawson, Growing Green Program Coordinator, Franklin Park Conservatory; Michael Jones, Executive Director Local Matters; Darren Malhame, partner, Northstar Café; Annerose Schaffrin, General Manager, Bexley Natural Market; and Warren Taylor, owner and fresh milk advocate, Snowville Creamery, Pomeroy, Ohio. Carol Goland, Executive Director, Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association will be moderator. The audience is invited to see the film and stay to join in the discussion.

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Free Press Free Film Night
Tuesday, July 28, 2009 – 7:30pm

A Sense of Wonder
Rachel Carson’s love for the natural world and her fight to defend it

When pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, the backlash from her critics thrust her into the center of a political maelstrom. Despite her love of privacy, Carson’s convictions and her foresight regarding the risks posed by chemical pesticides forced her into a very public and controversial role. The film is an intimate and poignant reflection of Carson's life as she emerges as America's most successful advocate for the natural world. Sponsored by the Free Press, Sierra Club, Central Ohio Green Education Fund, and Drexel Theater.

Drexel Theater, 2254 E. Main St., Bexley
253-2571 – truth@freepress.org

California should pay its people in pot

Here's another one from Harvey. I really like it. -charlie

California should pay its people in pot
by “Thomas Paine”
July 9, 2009

California’s state finances have gone to pot, and that’s what it should use to pay its employees.

Right now the state is issuing I.O.U.’s to those who work for it. Sacramento says they are worth the paper they’re printed on, but most Californians know that’s true only if they are used to roll joints.

The state’s key available assets are in its farms and fields….and in its prisons and legal system.

Medical marijuana is legal in California. Estimates put last year’s traffic in prescription-approved pot at around a billion dollars. If the state were properly organized to tax that and non-medical marijuana---whose dollar volume is many times greater---it might actually have enough money to pay its employees.

By legalizing marijuana, California could immediately free tens of thousands of prisoners at a savings of tens of millions of dollars. Those quick savings could be a down payment on the salaries of its employees (and cover the unemployment benefits that will be due prison builders and guards who will be laid off).

But they, in turn, could go to work GROWING marijuana. With its huge agricultural resources, California could immediately become the world hub of the legal marijuana trade. (Mendocino and other counties are already vying for this title).

It could also pay its employees if not in dollars, then in pot. Here’s how:

Once the legislature decides to legalize marijuana, the state could go into the business of growing its own. (The offices of the Department of Agriculture are not that far from the Bureau of Prisons).

Various California cities, including Oakland, are already raising pot to keep prices down for the legal medical trade. So official expertise is readily available. Like the current and previous two Presidents of the United States, the current Governor of California is known to have extensive first-hand knowledge about the many uses of this precious weed.

Thus the state could grow its own leafy payroll. Some marijuana will be immediately available from the confiscated stashes that have traditionally been consumed by arresting officers.

But there will obviously be a gap between the moment of legalization and the moment the first officially grown buds are ready to pick.

So while California waits, it can issue marijuana futures as pay instead of I.O.U.’s. The futures would include a special dispensation to sell the existing stashes many of the state employees may already be holding (of course, no state employee would break the law, so these will all be MEDICAL stashes).

Being the first state to legalize, California pot would skyrocket in value. Once the actual buds arrive from the government, state employees would be free to sell their redeemed futures in other states, which will then face a dilemma.

In these hard times, the tourist dollars from those “Okies in reverse” fanning out with their pot to sell will be hard to turn down. So will the potential tax revenues. So the other 49 states will be forced to choose between seeing those hard-earned pot proceeds headed to the Pacific in the pockets of previously impoverished California state employees---or legalizing it, taxing it, freeing their own prisoners, and growing it at home.

Tom Joad will have returned to roost, driving the ghost of a Volkwagen bus.

A dozen states have already legalized medical marijuana, Many are having state budgetary problems of their own.

But California is the only one now issuing I.O.U.s to state employees. Its topography, resident expertise and gubernatorial brain cell history make it an ideal candidate for what is bound to come, sooner or later. Why not now?

Yippie!

Hemp Raising Patriot Heroes, by Harvey Wasserman

Article submitted by Harvey Wasserman

Honor Our Hemp-Raising Patriot Heroes

By “Thomas Paine”

It is our patriotic duty to honor our Founding Heroes, America’s greatest hemp growers.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison---virtually all Revolutionary Americans who had access to land---embraced hemp’s critical role in our early economy.

Accordingly, they raised it in mass quantities.

We must now honor them by demanding its immediate legalization, to save our economy and our ecology.

For rope, for paper, for clothing, for food, for fuel, this miracle plant has been a critical crop for cash and survival for 6,000 years, since the onset of ancient China.

Today it is a multi-billion-dollar product there and in Germany and Canada, among other major economies.

There is no rational reason for hemp to be illegal. Some law enforcement “experts” say it resembles marijuana, and therefore must be banned.

What are they smoking? Certainly not hemp, which gives its imbibers little more than a splitting headache and a nasty cough.

Today, marijuana is the largest cash crop in many states and regions of the United States. A billion dollars-worth of it was purchased under medical auspices last year in California alone. Properly taxed, its users freed from our overcrowded prisons, pot’s legalization could offer a giant step out of our financial morass.

But as an agricultural staple, marijuana pales alongside hemp. This miracle weed returns on its own year after year, requiring no pesticides, herbicides or special fertilizers. It is hardy, fast-growing and supremely productive.

A single hemp plant can provide the basis for very high-quality rope, sails for ships, cloth for clothing, paper for documents, seeds for food and oil, the cellulosic base for ethanol, and much more. It is the feed of choice for untold numbers of birds and land animals. It can be the basis for innumerable stressed eco-systems where it survives and thrives with virtually no human input.

As a staple spread across the Great Plains and through the rest of America’s battered farmland, it could help restore our shattered crop base and our devastated rural economy.

Presidents Washington and Jefferson---both of them extremely advanced agronomists---cataloged their techniques for growing hemp at great length. They would simply not comprehend the concept---let alone the reality---that hemp might be illegal.

Early drafts of both the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were written on sturdy paper made of hemp.

Now, more than ever, we need the essence of both the documents and the crop.

Save Our Planet! Stimulate Our Economy!!

Honor our Founders!!! Be a Patriot!!!! Legalize Hemp Now!!!!!

“Thomas Paine’s” PASSIONS OF THE POTSMOKING PATRIOTS is at www.harveywasserman.com

Was George Washington a gay pot smoker?

In this age of economic stress, is it time to re-evaluate the devastatingly expensive, unrealistic and unrealizable, unfair, infantile and totally failed War on Drugs? Harvey Wasserman poses a few provocative and timely questions in this article which he writes for the Colmbus Free Press. _charlie

Harvey Wasserman

Did George Washington raise hemp? Did he smoke it? Was he gay?

The easy answers are definitely, probably, and maybe.

The questions arise with pre-publication of the shocking satire PASSIONS OF THE PATRIOTS by “Thomas Paine,” which opens with Le General in the hemp-filled embrace of his beloved Marquis de Lafayette.

As Washington’s February 22 birthday approaches, his personal habits say much about today’s America.

Like virtually every Revolutionary farmer, the Father of Our Country grew prodigious quantities of hemp. It was (is) a profitable cash crop, easy to grow, with scant demands for cultivation, watering or fertilizing. As a hardy perennial, it needs no year-after-year replanting, nor pesticides or herbicides.

Early American farmers used cannabis for cloth, rope, sails, paper and much more. At various times its cultivation has been mandatory. Kansas was virtually carpeted with it during World War Two. In today’s conversion to a Solartopian economy, the cellulose of its stems and leaves, and the oil from its seeds, could be essential for green ethanol and bio-diesel fuels.

Washington and his fellow planter/presidents Tom Jefferson and James Madison would be astonished to hear that hemp is illegal. These early chief executives would certainly have told President Obama that a re-legalized cannabis crop would mean billions of dollars in desperately needed farm revenue throughout the United States.

As for smoking, I know of no significant communication among the Founders extolling their “great weed.”

But in one of his meticulous agricultural journals, dated 1765, Washington regrets being late to separate his male hemp plants from his females. For a master farmer like George, there would be little reason to do this except to make the females ripe for smoking.

The medicinal uses of cannabis were known to the ancient Chinese. Thousands of years later, it’s inconceivable American growers would not indulge in its recreational powers.

As for Washington’s sexual preferences, his marriage to Martha was sometimes suspect. Historians joke that he did not marry her for her money, but rather for her stocks, bonds, land and slaves. In a letter to a friend, he complained that there was “not much fire between the sheets.”

Ben Franklin, the ultimate liberal, loved so many women he joked that the great miracle in his life was that he contracted no related diseases. Tom Jefferson impregnated his slave mistress Sally Hemings as many as seven times. From Andrew Jackson to Bill Clinton, American presidents have been infamous for their sexual dalliances.

George Washington did not lack for female companionship. But his deepest affections may have been for his fellow warriors. His beloved brothers in arms included Lafayette and Alexander Hamilton. Both were married with children, but both excited his strongest comradely devotion.

That the general had no biological children of his own may have been due to a fever early in his life that could have rendered him sterile.

Or maybe not. It’s hard to imagine a gay George Washington in the 1790s. But in the 1990s, things might have been different.

The modern anti-choice assault, including California’s Proposition 8, flies in the face of all Washington and the Founders dreamed of for this nation.

Today’s Puritannical “sunshine patriots” seem hell-bent on running our personal lives. But America has NEVER been about that.

Let them contemplate an image of our first president, fresh from the battlefields and the hemp fields, desperate to marry his fellow winter soldier.

--
Harvey Wasserman’s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is at www.harveywasserman.com, as is PASSIONS OF THE PATRIOTS by “Thomas Paine”. This article was originally published by http://freepress.org.

A $50 Billion Nuke Power Bomb is Dropping Toward Obama’s Stimulus Package

By Harvey Wasserman


The desperate, dangerous nuclear power industry has dropped a $50 billion stealth bomb meant to irradiate the Obama Stimulus Package.

It comes in the form of a mega-loan guarantee package that would build new reactors Wall Street wouldn’t finance even when it had cash. It will take a healthy dose of citizen action to stop it, so start calling your Senators now.

The vaguely worded bailout-in-advance provision was snuck through the Senate Appropriations Committee in the deep night of January 27. It would provide $50 billion in loan guarantees for “eligible technologies” that would technically include renewable sources and electric transmission. But the handout is clearly directed at nukes and “clean coal.”

The Stimulus Package is explicitly meant to create jobs within the next two years. But according to sources at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, no new reactors could be licensed for construction within that time. Nor could any new coal plants. And thus the funds in this rider are to "remain available until committed." That means their "stimulus" might not go into effect for many years.

But the nuclear industry does have the ability to spend large sums of money on “site preparation” and other busy work prior to being licensed. Though the guarantees could technically be used for truly green sources such as wind and solar, the provision’s backers, including Senators Robert Bennett (R-UT) and Thomas Carper (D-DE), have made it clear that this money is meant to go for new reactor construction.

In late 2007, nuclear power's Congressional Godfather, then-Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), stuck a similar $50 billion loan guarantee package into that year’s energy bill. A grassroots uprising, joined by virtually all national environmental organizations, helped defeat the package. Among other things, the fight inspired a music video from Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Keb Mo and Ben Harper (www.nukefree.org).

In late 2008 the industry came back again with a blank check package that went down in flames along with the stock market.

Still unable to get private financing, the industry is back yet again. In the interim, the projected cost of building new reactors has soared to more than $10 billion each, and continues to climb steadily. Many of the previous generation of reactors came in hugely over budget. According to the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, one DOE study places the overall average overruns at 207%. But reactor projects such as Seabrook, in New Hampshire, New York's Shoreham, Pennsylvania's Beaver Valley, California's Diablo Canyon, and many others, far exceeded that.

The Congressional Budget Office now predicts that half the nuclear utilities using such a loan program will go into default. Some $18.5 billion in loan guarantees has already been approved, apparently for such use. But its legality is being hotly disputed, and the money has not been distributed by the Department of Energy.

Washington insiders believe this latest attempt at a pre-arranged bailout has again come from Domenici, who has stayed in Washington to lobby for his radioactive benefactors after apparently retiring from the Senate in January.

This guarantee package was not part of the Stimulus Package that passed the House. Its secretive, late night inclusion on the Senate side is reminiscent of how former Vice President Dick Cheney did business for the fossil/nuclear corporations that funded much of the Bush Administration. The reappearance of this kind of back door dealing has not been well received, especially in the House.

Numerous national groups, including the Nuclear Information & Resource Service (www.nirs.org) are providing sign-ins for sending e-mails to the Senate. They also urge that you call your Senator at 202-224-3121.

Time is fast slipping by for the nuke power industry. As the popularity of renewables and efficiency escalates, the most obvious source of new jobs and prosperity has become truly green technologies. Atomic power has long since been priced out of the market. Only massive federal and ratepayer subsidies could bring it back, to the direct detriment of the revolution in renewables.

Defeating this latest money grab will help drive another nail in the coffin of the 20th century’s most expensive failed technology. It is an essential step toward a truly green-powered future.

Free Press Free Film Night - Tuesday, January 27 at 7:30pm

MEAT THE TRUTH: The massive impact of livestock farming on climate change"

Sponsored by the Drexel East, Central Ohio Greeen Education Fund and the Columbus International Film & Video Festival
Drexel East Theater, 2254 E. Main St., Bexley

For more info:
253-2571

Columbus Free Press Events

On Sunday, JANUARY 25 @ 7PM, come hear our friend
Dave Lippman Singer - Satirist - Social Justice Advocate
and George Shrub the world's only singing CIA agent
Free Press office – 1021 East Broad Street
Donation requested $5-$10

AND DON'T FORGET:
Free Press Free Film Night - Tuesday, January 27 at 7:30pm
"MEAT THE TRUTH: The massive impact of livestock farming on climate change"
Sponsored by the Drexel East, Central Ohio Greeen Education Fund and the Columbus International Film & Video Festival

For more info:
253-2571
truth@freepress.org

10 Sugestions to Obama from Harvey Wasserman

Harvey Wasserman is an environmental activist, political activist, author, contributor to the Columbus Free Press, History instructor at Columbus State University, and many more things, including a good friend I've known since high school. His latest book Solartopia, is available at his website www.solartopia.org and lots of other venues. -charlie


A Ten-Point Solartopian Starter Agenda for the Age of Obama by Harvey Wasserman
Amidst the ecstasy of the Obama Inauguration, there lurks great danger. Merely with his swearing in, our nation has broken an epic racial barrier. We are losing our worst president and getting one who was actually elected.

But the promise of change is not change itself. Inaugurating a brilliant young leader who speaks in complete sentences can only be good. But it is a fatal delusion to think this means we have gotten where we need to go.

Here are ten early tangibles that will be accomplished ONLY if we push:

1) Revise the Corporation: Corporations have hijacked the electoral process, the legal system, the 14th Amendment, the environment. They have human rights but no human responsibilities. They must be re-chartered and made to serve the public, rather than the other way around.

2) Restore the Bill of Rights: The first ten amendments to the US Constitution comprise a great guide for guaranteeing our basic human rights and liberties. The Constitutional lawyer entering the White House understands the issues; he need to be pushed to make sure these rights are enforced, including equal justice for racial/ethnic minorities and women, and reproductive freedom.

3) US out of Iraq and Afghanistan: These wars must end. The healing---moral, spiritual, economic, and in terms of violence---can only begin when the US leaves these useless battlefields and dismantles its global network of intrusive bases.

4) Slash Military Spending: We cannot continue to spend untold billions on detrimental weaponry. A 75% cut would be a good start; 95% would be a reasonable ultimate target.

5) Rid the World of Nuclear Weapons: Atomic bombs are instruments of mass suicide and of no tangible use. Even their production and maintenance is unsustainable.

6) TOTAL conversion to renewables and efficiency: We have the technology to run this Earth COMPLETELY on Solartopian green energy, with no fossil/nuclear fuels whatsoever. This means restoration of mass transit, and NO public funding, from taxpayers or ratepayers, for new atomic reactors or coal burners.

7) End Hemp/Marijuana Prohibition: This ancient plant holds the key to bio-fuels, as well as to sustainable paper production and much more, and must be restored to full production. And prohibition of a medicinal substance used by tens of millions of citizens makes for a police state. Pot must be legal; control of other substances must shift to treatment. The prison-industrial complex is as unsustainable as is the military.

8) National Health Care: Appropriate prevention and treatment is a basic human right. We must find the way to provide it.

9) Universal Hand-Counted Paper Ballots: Electronic voting machines are the nukes of the electoral process. Universal automatic registration, handcounted paper ballots (on recycled hemp paper) and workable campaign finance regulations are essential to the future of democracy.

10) Universal Free Education: In an information age, education through a college degree is essential to a sustainable society. Our public schools from K to the BA must be funded on a level now wasted on the military.

There is of course much more. But the greatness of this moment will be measured in history only by the extent to which we actually win on tangible issues.

This brief wish list should get us going. Send us more! But above all: remember that even with Barack Obama in the White House (and George Bush OUT of it) none of them will come without our hard---hopefully joyful---work.

Harvey Wasserman's HISTORY OF THE U.S., and SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, are at www.solartopia.org, where your suggestions are welcome.

Poetry Forum Now at Rumba Café

Please forward this message far and wide

POETRY FORUM TO RE-OPEN

AT NEW HOME AT THE RUMBA CAFE

The Poetry Forum will resume its Monday night reading series January 26 at a new location, The Rumba Café, 2507 Summit Street, Columbus (just south of Hudson Street), with featured poet Kip Knott, who was scheduled to open our winter season January 5.

Our well-known poetry event lost its 25-year home when campus watering hole Larry’s closed its doors abruptly December 27.

The Rumba Café has become a popular spot for music in the north University area over the past 2 years, and we’re grateful that its management has been gracious enough to offer us the early Monday evening slot (before the acoustic singer-songwriters show up for 10 p.m. gigs, which may provide a nice cap to an evening of poetry).

Thanks to all of you for your support over the years, your words of support when all of us lost a community institution at Woodruff & High, your suggestions for optional venues, and –we hope—your continued presence to maintain the vitality of an open poetry community. We all look forward to seeing you on January 26 and in the ensuing weeks. Keep checking Poetry Calendar Columbus at www.puddinghouse.com for updated schedules for The Poetry Forum and other central Ohio poetry events.

Steve Abbott

Connie Everett

Rose M. Smith

Obama's marijuana prohibition acid test

Obama's marijuana prohibition acid test
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
January 14, 2009

The parallels between the 1933 coming of Franklin Roosevelt and the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama must include the issue of Prohibition: alcohol in 1933, and marijuana today. As FDR did back then, Obama must now help end an utterly failed, socially destructive, reactionary crusade.

Marijuana prohibition is a core cause of many of the nation's economic problems. It now costs the U.S. tens of billions per year to track, arrest, try, defend and imprison marijuana consumers who pose little, if any, harm to society. The social toll soars even higher when we account for social violence, lost work, ruined careers and damaged families. In 2007, 775,137 people were arrested in the U.S. for mere possession of this ancient crop, according to the FBI’s uniform crime report.

Like the Prohibition on alcohol that plagued the nation from 1920 to 1933, marijuana prohibition (which essentially began in 1937) feeds organized crime and a socially useless prison-industrial complex that includes judges, lawyers, police, guards, prison contractors, and more.

A dozen states have now passed public referenda confirming medical uses for marijuana based on voluminous research dating back 5,000 years. Confirmed medicinal uses for marijuana include treatment for glaucoma, hypertension, arthritis, pain relief, nausea relief, reducing muscle spasticity from spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis, and diminishing tremors in multiple sclerosis patients. Medical reports also prove smoked marijuana provides relief from migraine headaches, depression, seizures, and insomnia, according to NORML. In recent years its use has become critical to thousands of cancer and AIDS sufferers who need to it to maintain their appetite while undergoing chemotherapy.

The U.S. ban on marijuana extends to include hemp, one of the most widely used agricultural products in human history. Unlike many other industrial crops, hemp is powerful and prolific in a natural state, requiring no pesticides, herbicides, extraordinary fertilizing or inappropriate irrigation. Its core products include paper, cloth, sails, rope, cosmetics, fuel, supplements and food. Its seeds are a potentially significant source of bio-diesel fuel, and its leaves and stems an obvious choice for cellulosic ethanol, both critically important for a conversion to a Solartopian renewable energy supply.

Hemp was grown in large quantities by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and many more of the nation's founders, most of whom would likely be dumbfounded to hear it is illegal (based on entries in Washington's agricultural diaries, referring to the separation of male and female plants, it's likely he and his cohorts also raised an earlier form of "medicinal" marijuana).

Hemp growing was mandatory in some circumstances in early America, and again during World War II, when virtually the entire state of Kansas was planted in it. The current ban on industrial hemp costs the U.S. billiions of dollars in lost production and revenue from a plant that can produce superior paper, clothing, fuel and other critical materials at a fraction the financial cost and environmental damage imposed by less worthy sources.

On January 16, 1919, fundamentalist crusaders help pass the 18th Amendment, making the sale of alcohol illegal. The ensuing Prohibition was by all accounts a ludicrous failure epitomized by gang violence and lethal "amateur" product that added to the death toll. Its only real winner was organized crime and the prison-industrial complex.

In 1933, FDR helped pass the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition, which ended a costly era of gratuitous social repression and gave the American economy---and psyche---a tangible boost.

Marijuana prohibition was escalated with Richard Nixon's 1970 declaration of the War on Drugs. There was a brief reprieve when Steve Ford, the son of President Gerald Ford appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone barefoot and claiming that the best place to smoke pot was in the White House. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter’s last year in office, 338,664 were arrested for marijuana possession.

Ronald Reagan renewed the War on Drugs and declared his “Zero Tolerance” policy, despite his daughter Patti Davis’ claim the Gipper smoked weed with a major donor. Following Reagan, President George Herbert Walker Bush recorded a low of 260,390 marijuana possession arrests, but the numbers climbed again under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both of whom are reported to have smoked it themselves (though Clinton claims not to have inhaled).

On a percentage basis, at least as many American high school students smoke pot than students in Holland, where it is legal. In the midst of the drug war, U.S. students report virtually unlimited access to a wide range of allegedly controlled substances, including pot. Because so many Americans use it, and it is so readily available, the war on marijuana can only be seen as a virtually universal assault on the basic liberties of our citizenry.

In a 2005 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services survey, more than 97 million Americans admitted to having tried marijuana at least once. President-elect Obama makes it clear in his book Dreams From My Father that he has smoked---and inhaled---marijuana (he is also apparently addicted to a far more dangerous drug, tobacco). His administration should tax marijuana rather than trying to repress it. Like alcohol and tobacco, a minimum age for legal access should be set at 21.

As a whole, the violent, repressive War on Drugs has been forty years of legal, cultural and economic catastrophe. Like FDR, Obama must end our modern-day Prohibition, and with it the health-killing crusade against this ancient, powerful medicinal herb.

--
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books on election protection, available at http://freepress.org, along with Bob's FITRAKIS FILES. Harvey's SOLARTOPIA! is at http://harveywasserman.com. This article was first published by http://freepress.org.
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Poetry Forum Looking for a home after Legendary "Larry's" Closes

Steve Abbott with The Poetry Forum of Columbus, sent this urgent note today. I am also sad about "Larry's" final closing. More than a campus bar, Larry's was an important, iconic site, part of my background, especially during its heyday during the tumultuous late 60s and early 70s. As he explains below, this sudden closing has caused the Forum to lose it's home of the past 25 years. Got any suggestions or ideas where the forurm can hold public readings? Let us know! - charlie

Friends,

The abrupt closing of Larry’s Bar on December 27, without the courtesy of notice to The Poetry Forum despite over 700 readings over 25 years, has forced us to cancel the series of readings scheduled to begin January 5 as we seek a new location. We have several possibilities that we’re looking into, and some may require shifting to another area of the city and/or to a coffeehouse rather than a bar. So it goes. The line turns.

We hope to have a new home and a revised schedule within 3 weeks. I’ll let you know what’s going on, and please forward this or pass word of our hiatus to friends, acquaintances and other possibly interested parties. (There’s a related story in today’s/Saturday’s/January 3 Columbus Dispatch.)

All of us at The Poetry Forum thank you for your past support and wish you the best for the new year.

Steve

In Memoriam: Sue Urbas

The sad notice below came to me from Harry Farkas.

Sue Urbas was a family friend, a community activist, an idealist, provocative, actively anti-war during the Vietnam era, early Free Press contributor, founding member of the community festival now known as Comfest, and many other things too numerous to mention here. Sue also had one of the friendliest smiles as seen in this photograph I took of her at Comfest 04. We will miss her -charlie

As most of you know our dear friend and sister Sue Urbas passed away last Saturday. I have been contacted by John Urbas and want to pass along the following:

A Memorial Gathering for Sue will be held at the Goodale Park Shelter House on Sunday, November 23, from 5 to 7 PM. Candy Watkins is assisting in organizing the memorial and can be contacted at Afoot765@cs.com.

Still tentative, but likely is a gathering later that evening at Dick's Den. Sue's earthly remains are in the process of cremation, though her spirit soars. An obituary will be published in the newspaper prior to the memorial.

Jodi Kushins has indicated a willingness to record stories about Sue either at this gathering or otherwise. She has also volunteered to assist with Sue's memorabilia. There is also a discussion on the Comfest Organizers Yahoo group regarding a permanent memorial to Sue, possibly at 16th and Waldeck. [Some of this duplicates info already on the Comfest Organizers Yahoo group.]

I am available if anyone requires additional information. I can be contacted at hfarkas@wowway.com

Our loss is great, but together we will remember Sue. Please pass this information along to anyone who might not have received it, especially those without email.

Best regards on this sad occasion,

Harry

Stealing America: Vote by Vote now available online

This documentary by Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman, narrated by Peter Coyote, is now premiering online. Will the 2008 Presidential Election stolen? The film presents many samples of evidence of questionable vote totals, illegal purging, machine "glitches" and more.
If, as many believe, they already stole it twice in a row, why couldn't they do it again?
See for yourself? www.stealingamerica.org

Because we fought for them…

Harvey Wasserman is a friend I've known since high school days. He is also a well versed and often published author and social activist who often comes up with one or two wonderful ideas. Here's something he just recently came up with. Read below and enjoy.
-charlie

Harvey Wasserman

Because we fought for them my daughters have cast paper ballots
October 6, 2008

My daughters and I have cast paper ballots in the opening days of the 2008 presidential election. It was their first time voting in a presidential election.

That they have only voted with an African-American atop the Democratic ticket makes this doubly historic for them. The issue of race remains a great unknown in how things will turn out.

But so does the question of whether everyone who wants to vote can, and whether those votes will be accurately counted (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHiCFe2GBjk).

Four years ago this county tried to deny me the right to cast an absentee ballot. After four phone calls and some serious politicking, I finally did get a paper ballot, which I hand delivered to the election board. But was it counted?

My twins are now 21. On Friday, October 3, 2008, we drove to Veterans Memorial in downtown Columbus to cast our ballots under unique circumstances. For a full week, Ohio voters have been able to register and vote at the same time.

It took the focused efforts of thousands of election protection activists---and a legal defense team---to make happen this and other things suitable to a democracy. Such victories will define whether we get fair participation and a reliable vote count in November, and thus who will be the next president.

Since the stolen election of 2000 the Democratic Party and corporate media have studiously ignored the fact that we have been afflicted with an unelected president. A media-based recount in Florida showed Al Gore was the clear winner there eight years ago.

In violation of federal law, 56 of Ohio's 88 counties have destroyed election-related materials, making a comprehensive 2004 recount impossible. No one has been prosecuted. But those of us who watched first-hand how the 2004 election was conducted here know all too well that it was stolen in a "do everything" campaign that the Democratic Party still doesn't comprehend, and does not seem to want to acknowledge.

Nonetheless, we may be entering the 2008 contest in somewhat better shape. Independent reporting on the internet and some talk radio organizing, plus a few major books and articles in places like Rolling Stone and Harpers, have inspired a new grassroots movement for election protection.

We have won important victories, such as removing Ohio's infamous Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the critical point man for Karl Rove's 2004 hijacking. We are pursuing Michael Connell, a shadowy Bush IT operative who has been accused by a Republican insider of working to rig this and other elections.

In Ohio, as many as a third of Ohio voters are casting their ballots early. By law a quarter of those coming to the polls will be able to get paper ballots (we are working to make them available to ALL who want them). As my cohort Bob Fitrakis puts it, the choice will be between paper or the plastic of voting machines.

But the specter of disenfranchisement and electronic theft still hangs over this election as a twin curse to endemic racism. Millions of Americans are being systematically eliminated from voter rolls in as many as 19 states. Most of these are inner city and other vulnerable voters known to be heavily Democratic. Among them are African-American soldiers stationed overseas.

Some 300,000 Ohioans were deleted from the registration rolls prior to the 2004 vote count. Had they all voted, John Kerry might have been in the White House these past four years. Another 170,000 were eliminated after 2004 in Franklin County (Columbus) alone.

Throughout the US, Republican operatives are working overtime to decimate the Democratic turnout. The Bush Administration has already fired nine federal prosecutors for refusing to conduct a bogus witch hunt against legitimate voters.

But other attacks are proceeding, and could make all the difference. You who claim concern about our electoral process might spend at least some of this next month monitoring election boards and guaranteeing that those who believe they are registered do not show up at the polls November 4 only to find they have been disenfranchised for the "crime" of leaning left.

We must also have zero tolerance for electronic voting machines. There may actually be thousands more of these election theft devices deployed throughout the US this year than ever before. As always, the big vendors are hiding their software from the public, claiming it is "proprietary."

But as registration activists, poll workers, judges, official observers and Video-the-Vote workers (see "Be a Poll Worker and Save American Democracy,"http://www.freepress.org/ departments/display/19/2008/3205) you may be in a position to exert critical leverage on access to decisions on software, hardware deployment and vote counting that could save thousands of legitimate ballots thoughout the US.

In our next article, Bob Fitrakis, Sheri Myers and I will write in detail about the history of electronic election theft and its long-time master of disenfranchisement, Karl Rove.

In the meantime, it's crucial to remember that favorable polling numbers will not guarantee a fair election. Carefully manipulated racism, plus mass disenfranchisement, rigging of electronic voting machines and additional Rovian dirty tricks are what brought us eight hellish years of George W. Bush. Without taking drastic grassroots action, they could be used again to tack on four more, from which it is not likely this nation would survive.

The good news is that we have won some victories. My daughters have voted in a safe, secure atmosphere, and there's a reasonable chance their ballots will be counted---along with millions more.

But to guarantee a full voter turnout, and a safe reliable, vote count, YOU must get involved. Visit The Free Press (http://freepress.org) and Poll Workers for Democracy (http://act.credoaction.com/pollworkers/index.html).

This year, there is no excuse. We know what has happened, and we know the consequences of inaction. See you in the army….of election protection workers.

--
Harvey Wasserman is co-author, with Bob Fitrakis, of four books on election protection which are available at www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared. His HARVEY WASSERMAN's HISTORY OF THE US is at www.harveywasserman.com along with SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030.

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Bill Cohen 1960's Coffee House

1960’s Coffeehouse To Benefit Food Pantries

Civil rights sit-ins. Bell-bottoms. Anti-war marches. Student Power. Afros. Mini-skirts. Hippies. Riots. Space flights. The generation gap.

Those hallmarks of the turbulent 1960’s will be rekindled Friday November 14 at this year’s annual “Spirit of the ‘60’s Coffeehouse”:

Friday November 14 7:30 p.m.

King Avenue Methodist Church
299 W. King at Neil in Columbus.

The show begins at 7:30 p.m. in the church basement, but get there early for a good seat.

Bill Cohen will lead a candlelit, musical, year-by-year journey through the era, with live folksongs, “news reports” of sixties happenings, displays of anti-war buttons and posters, and far-out sixties fashions.

Bill will also challenge the audience with sixties trivia questions, and he’ll award prizes (with a 1960’s theme) to those with the right answers.

Proceeds from the suggested $10 donations will go to the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. Refreshments will be available at no extra charge. Free parking is also available in the lots just South and West of the church.

The program is suitable for ADULTS and MATURE TEENS.

It’s the 23rd year of sixties coffeehouses for Bill. He’s performed the show more than a hundred times now at colleges, churches, synagogues, conferences, high schools, and middle schools across Ohio and beyond.

For more information, call Bill at (614) 263-3851.

Free Press Salon meets at new Location

The Free Press Salon has a NEW LOCATION: 1021 East Broad Street (parking in rear)

Come join us this Saturday, September 13 between 6:30pm and midnight
for the Free Press Second Saturday Salon with food, drink, and progressive friends.

truth@freepress.org
253-2571