From: "Kay Lee" kaylee1@...
Subject: J4J ON THE ROAD AGAIN! Ready to send
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 11:02:13 -0400

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."  ~Alice Walker
 

DC JOURNEY FOR JUSTICE CALL TO ARMS

August 13, 2005
9:00 AM to 2:00 PM
Lafayette Park, North end of the Whitehouse
Washington, DC

All info at www.journeyforjustice.org

 

Watch the Latest promo created by photojournalist for DC J4J (provided to us by long time Federal marijuana prisoner George Martorano, serving life in prison on his first charge).  http://www.michaelproductions.com/march

The first two Journeys for Justice (Ohio and Wisconsin) were put together by myself and a number of patients involved in reform, some of whom have since died.  I was trainer for the 3rd J4J through Florida, and was 'along for the ride' on the 4th J4J through Texas organized by Kevin Aplin and Jodi James.  Back in the early days we did it in wheelchairs at 4 1/2 miles per hour (5 to 7 days depending on the state).  November Coalition left! the wheelchairs behind for the 5th J4J but were able to cover 100 cities on their whirlwind journey across the nation.

 

The journeys were a reform effort supported by many groups and individuals representing several important issues.  Our common beliefs were that non-violent drug war prisoners would be a bigger benefit to society if we weren't paying for them to sit in cells; that proper care and rehabilitation of all prisoners lead to increased public safety; that doctors and patients should be allowed to decide what helps without government interference; and that free speech is urgent to the education of the citizens. 

 

The spirit of those journeys is alive and well in the 6th and latest DC Journey For Justice. A great diversity of people and groups have begun to coalesce around this effort.  The media has already begun to talk about it.

 

David Losa of FACTS is coming 3000 miles on his bicycle in the spirit of Howard Woolridge (LEAP: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition ) and his horse Missy, who have traveled the country twice on these issues.

 

Louis Korn from Hawaii writes, "That body count of living protesters to stop the mounting body count of the dead and dying in our prisons is extremely important, not only for its victims but for ourselves, [who are] in growing danger of becoming its victims also.  I am deeply gratified that you have developed a profound understanding of this evil and resolute opposition to it."

 

Dean Becker of Drug Truth Network/Pacifica http://www.drugtruth.net will be doing interviews with organizers, attendees and David Losa en route. There will be a pre-march party on Friday night (August 12).  There will be speakers and networking and the tremendous message to those in power is FIX THIS MESS. Everything you need to know can be found at http://www.journeyforjustice.org

 

It doesn't matter what kind of reform work is closest to your heart, if you feel that these issues are not being properly addressed in a common sense manner and, as such, are an assault on public safety, make every effort to join us in Lafayette Park on the 13th of August. We'll be there waiting for you.  

 

A DRCNet article about the DC Journey for Justice is included below. 

 

With great faith in the power of the truth, and in you.
Kay Lee
kaylee1@...
2683 Rockcliff Road S.E.
Atlanta, GA 30316-4013
404-212-0690
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Making The Walls Transparent
http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/starke
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

DRCNet ARTICLE: Two Million is Too Many --

Grassroots March Against Mass Imprisonment

Aims at Washington, DC

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/394/dcmarch.shtml

They are coming from Alabama and Florida, Georgia and North
Carolina. They are coming from Massachusetts and New York and
Connecticut. They are coming from Texas and Colorado and as far
west as California and Washington state. They are friends and
family members of the more than two million people imprisoned in
the United States. They are black, white, and brown. They are
small-town activists, nationwide networks, and members of the
grassroots sprouting up from the cracks in the prison walls. And
they are all heading for Washington, DC, on August 13 as par! ! t of
a nationwide "Journey for Justice" for America's prisoners and
their loved ones.

Energized by opposition to the mindless grinding of the US
criminal justice machine, which leads the world in putting its
citizens behind bars, march organizers say it will demand an end
to mass incarceration as social policy, the return of the vote
to people who have done their time, an end to the physical abuse
and neglect that is endemic even though hidden by high walls of
official silence. They are also demanding an end to the war on
drugs, under which nearly half a million Americans now rot for
years in prison for "crimes" that had no victim.

The notion that the time is right for a national march to demand
redress for the crimes committed against individuals and
communities -- most often poor and minority -- by the criminal
justice system had its genesis in the homegrown activism of
Montgomery, Alabama, radio personality Roberta Fr! anklin, herself
a former prisoner. Responding to her own experiences as well as
the voices of her listeners, who complained bitterly about the
Alabama criminal justice system and the state's notorious prison
conditions, Franklin formed a local group, Family and Friends of
People Incarcerated (FFPI). When 3,000 people marching under the
FFPI banner took to the streets of Montgomery last year, the
idea of replicating that protest in the nation's capital took
root.

"I'm from Montgomery, the home of the grassroots social justice
movement," said Franklin. "This is where Rosa Parks refused to
go to the back of the bus, and this is where we start saying no
more to all these harsh prison sentences. After that march here
in Montgomery, I thought it was time for a national march. I
mortgaged my house, and other people are making sacrifices, too.
We don't have any grant money, but we do have more people coming
on board all the time, and we'r! ! e raising money however we can.
We've got women doing fish fries," she told DRCNet.

The November Coalition (http://www.november.org), an
organization devoted to freeing the prisoners of the drug war,
is one group that heeded the call. "We're going to be there,"
said Coalition head Nora Callahan, from the group's offices
across the country in Colville, Washington. "I wouldn't miss it
for the world. There are lots of grassroots groups coming
together on this -- more people than the drug reform movement
ever brought together -- and these are people and groups who
have been working on state and local issues, but who are ready
to go to Washington because they understand that if they want
their states to change, they need the federal government to stop
bei! ng so threatening," she told DRCNet.

"There is a deep sense that the problem lies at the top of the
national political structure, and that means Washington,"
Callahan continued. "In the states, where legislators are
accountable and have to hold to their budgets, they are finding
it impossible to continue down this path of mass incarceration,
but in Washington, it is as if budget constraints don't exist.
Who is holding back change? It's the feds. When the Supreme
Court threw out the sentencing guidelines in the Blakely and
Booker cases, that resounded with thousands of people all over
the country. Now Congress is responding with crummy legislation,
and that is mobilizing a lot of people who want to march on
Washington."

Critical Resistance (http://www.criticalresistance.org), a
national group devoted to abolishing the prison-industrial
complex, was also quick to endorse the march. "We have long been
involved in supporting the work led by the people most affected
by our nation's prison policies," said Zein El-Amine of the
group's DC chapter. "In this case, the people leading the march
are actually families and friends of prisoners. I don't remember
any time in recent history when there has been a mobilization
like this in the nation's capital. This is a real grassroots
movement," he told DRCNet.

For Critical Resistance, the war on drugs is a key part of the
broader resort to mass incarceration. "Everyone knows the war on
drugs is a failure," said El-Amine. "We have had mandatory
minimums, we have had three-strike sentences, we have half a
million drug offenders behind bars. But every time the American
people are given the chance to vote, they have chosen drug
treatm!! ent over the dead end of incarceration. We have seen that
in California, Arizona, and other places, including right here
in DC, where a measure to divert drug users into treatment
instead of prison passed with 78% of the vote. But our mayor,
Anthony Williams, has it tied up in court. The war on drugs is a
really important issue to DC, and the people voted one way and
the officials are resisting these progressive measures."

Critical Resistance DC is doing what it can to pump up
attendance, said El-Amine. "We are mainly going to events where
we think people will be open to the march and setting up tables
and passing out flyers. Our resources are very limited, but
we're doing the best we can and will be working with the march's
DC host committee."

"I'll be there, and everyone who can go should be there," said
Loretta Nall of the US Marijuana Party
(http://www.usmjparty.com), herself an Alabama activist who
worked with Franklin on last year's Montgomery march. "We
marched in Montgomery because Alabama's prisons are at 214% of
capacity, the guards are overworked and underpaid, and the
health care is nonexistent, and the state responds by creating a
new prison task force -- although they've already done that two
or three times. We know what the answers are. If you don't
change the drug laws, you'll just keep those prisons full."

Again, it's personal. "I have friends and family members in
prison," Nall told DRCNet. "It's inhumane to lock people in
cages with violent criminals for smoking a joint. It's just
insane. That's one reason I'm going to Washington, DC."

Nall is emblematic of the nascent and tentative relationship
between the drug reform movement, and its marijuana component in
particular, and the broader, largely minority-based local,
grassroots movements to ease the nation's harsh criminal justice
policies. The large national marijuana advocacy groups, such as
the Marijuana Policy Project and the National Organization for
Reform of Marijuana Laws, have been silent on the August march.
But that may be because no one has asked them about it.
Representatives of both groups told DRCNet this week they had
not been approached by march organizers.

For many marijuana activists, said Nall, it is a learning curve.
"When people first become involved with us, it's about
marijuana," she said. "But then they start to focus on what the
drug laws do and most people realize it's much broader than just
pot; it's a whole system that needs to be destroyed and
rebuilt."

Not all drug reform organizations are staying away from the
march. Students for Sensible Policy (http://www.ssdp.org), while
mainly focused on campus-related drug policy issues, has signed
on as a march endorser. "Students are tired of attending
mediocre schools that could be improved with the valuable public
resources that are instead being used to construct more and more
prisons to lock up more and more nonviolent drug offenders,"
said SSDP national affairs director Tom Angell. "The government
should prioritize education over incarceration," he told DRCNet.

The Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform
(http://www.wonpr.org) is another reform group that has picked
up the gauntl! et. "Women are the fastest growi! ng, least violent
segment of the prison population. Women are losing their
children and families and communities are being destroyed by
these harsh drug laws that make people responsible for drug
crimes and conspiracies when they aren't really responsible at
all," said Jean Marlowe, the group's cofounder and executive
director. "We are marching for the 6.5 million children in this
country who have a parent in prison in jail or on parole or
probation. That's why we think this march is important," she
told DRCNet. "When children are abused in the name of war on
drugs, when they are taken from their homes and ripped from
their families to grow up with no sense of security, it's time
for women to step up and say these policies will change."

For WONPR's Marlowe, who did time herself in the federal prison
system, her activism is a promise kept. "When I left the
Alderson prison camp, I promised those gi! rls I would give them
and their child! ren a voice, I promised them that I would let
people know how outrageous these drugs laws are. I wish I could
have brought them all home with me, but all I can give them is
my word, so here I am."

"Not all wisdom resides in Washington, and grassroots leadership
around the country deserves to be encouraged," said Eric
Sterling, head of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation
(http://www.cjpf.org), who will address the march in Washington.
"I am completely sympathetic to the issues that Roberta and
others are organizing around and I'm looking forward to the
march on August 13. I'm encouraging everyone to come and bring
their colleagues," he told DRCNet.

Jennifer Williamson of Rice, Texas, knows the agony o! f having a
family member behind bars, t! oo, and as is the case many others
involved, it is that personal experience with the criminal
justice system that is fueling her activism. Her mentally
disturbed 20-year-old son is in prison in Florida, where both
his mental and his physical problems go untreated, she told
DRCNet. "I went to see him in jail there, and you wouldn't
believe it. He's got a broken bone sticking up out of his
shoulder and they don't fix it. He needs mental health
treatment, but they don't even want to acknowledge he has a
problem. I couldn't do anything but cry when I saw him," she
said.

"They are not doing prisoners right throughout the country,"
Williamson said. "Something has to change. You keep forcing air
into a balloon, and it pops. You keep kicking a dog and he will
eventually bite. I wrote letters to my senators and
representatives, but nobody wrote me back. I wrote to Gov. Bush,
and his office said he! would look into it, but nothing has
hap! pened. I'm going to Washington, DC, even if I have to go
alone," said the small-town Texas mother.

Like others involved in the march, Williamson is doing what she
can to ensure that she is not alone. "When I went to see my son,
I took 150 flyers for the march and plastered them on gas
stations and conveniences stores along I-10 from Texas to
Florida," she said.

In a low-budget, grassroots campaign like the Journey for
Justice, what Williamson did needs to be multiplied a thousand
times. We will know on August 13 whether it succeeded.

-- END --

 

PLANNING COMMITTEE for DC JOURNEY FOR JUSTICE

Roberta Franklin  firstladytms@...

Project Coordinator for the march on Washington

Nora Callahan nora@...

Leonna Abraham-Brandao ramjole@...

Carol Leonard carolleo864@...

Sherry Sweeney taoss@...

 

 

 

-----end of forwarded email----

 

 

 

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Photo galleries. Cannabis events worldwide.
http://gallery.marihemp.com/mmm

MMM (Million Marijuana March).
First Saturday in May, or that weekend, or thereabouts.
Hundreds of different cities worldwide since 1999.
2005 city list, links, world map:
http://members.fortunecity.com/multi19/mmm2005map.htm
Yahoo Group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cannabisaction