Legalizing Weed Leaves the Glass Half-Full

Politics, Uncategorized, , , , ,

I think the states where initiatives and referendums are legal – most of which are out West – will see the greatest advancements against criminal justice abuses in the coming years.

I can’t see Georgia or most other Southern states legalizing recreational marijuana anytime soon. Florida could, since they almost did not long ago.

I’d say that legalizing marijuana and de-felonizing state drug laws is the great cross-racial, cross-religious, cross-class criminal justice struggle of the moment.

But even as more states out West legalize possession and regulate distribution, the racial disparity has persisted in Colorado and Washington with police now targeting predominately young Black/Latino male street dealers for felony distribution instead of possession. I expect a similar report from California in the near future now that weed is legal there.

If racial justice, economic justice and marijuana legalization can intersect anywhere, it’s at this location. Street sales need to be decriminalized, amnesty should be granted to past arrestees, taxes should be temporarily reduced to undercut the underground market, and arrestees should be provided job counseling.

I want to see 0 arrests for anything marijuana-related, 0 people denied jobs for anything​ marijuana-related, 0 people having to sell weed on the street to feed their family.

For a minute after Sessions announced his Drug War ramp-up, I was thinking that this would be a good time for us descendants of slaves to flee America.

Then I saw that this is targeted to federal prosecutors. Meanwhile, the sort of guidance he’s giving at the federal level is the statutory guidance given at the state level to put the majority of drug offenders in state prisons (both for and non-profit).

For the vast majority of drug offenders behind bars, I’m thinking that not much will change except for a more yawning dearth of federal help toward release or exhoneration.

At Furry Weekend Atlanta this year, there was a panel on character psychology in #Zootopia. During Q&A, someone in the audience mentioned that the way that #GideonGrey, the fox who abused #JudyHopps as a kid, gave his apology to Judy as an adult sounded like someone who graduated from a 10-step anger management program and was reciting his apology from a script.

that’s something I think we’ll see from #AlexanderDowning in the future after he’s been shaken enough from the aftermath of his rage on South Padre Beach. He has a rap sheet with domestic violence and violence against seniors.

I’m FB-friends with so many movers and shakers, people with interesting opinions, people who I haven’t met yet but might someday, people who are new to the structure and layout of politics, people who are (or will be, or have long been) present at the tables of power but not letting it get to your heads, friends who don’t even like my other friends (or me?) due to seemingly-minor political differences and beefs, people who’ve employed or worked with me in multiple campaigns or have yet to do so.

And all at a time and situation like this.

I don’t know what will happen in the coming weeks or months. I don’t know if I’m ready to see all of this play out, or the mess that we’ll end up having to clean up. I’ll have to be part of a generation which experienced early adulthood under such a regime as this, and we may not see anything like this for decades afterward.

I still feel young to all of this, like I’m not able to walk in shoes of any of your sizes.

But I’m glad to be connecting with ya’ll, whenever or wherever it matters.

#vent

In the UK’s local elections over last weekend, the only left-wing party to do well was the Green Party of England and Wales.

Why is Labour doing so terrible under Corbyn? Why did the Lib Dems do so poorly under Farron?

Greens under Lucas+Bartley are doing well where other center-left parties are doing poorly. Why?

Madame President in Alt-History Fiction

Uncategorized

hillaryclintonabortionparody

Hillary’s presidency will be the stuff of alt-history fiction for some time to come, including “Agency”, an upcoming novel from William Gibson. But it hinges on how whoever advised her neglected to move her to tour the Rust Belt.

Likewise, Bernie’s alt-history win of the Dem nomination in the primary hinges on a multitude of missed opportunities, bad (well-meaning) hires including Tad Devine and Jeff Weaver, unfortunate statements relating to several demographics, and failing to win over those who had sided with Hillary from the outset.

We can talk about how sparse and 2000-like the Dem primary was, and how a lack of serious Dem hopefuls in open White House retention years is a sure sign that we may lose the Electoral College again. What if more candidates – more sitting Senators, Governors and House Reps – had announced their run for president in 2015?

This past election was one for a severely weakened party to lose in its history-breaking anxiety and limited imagination.

A similar issue faces France on Sunday. An electorally-weakened Socialist Party was wiped out in the presidential election’s first round, as was a hard-left independent candidate with a boisterous reputation and a center-right candidate who wanted to repeal marriage equality. Now, a liberal banker who has never held elected office faces off against a far-right candidate who has promised to shut down Muslim immigration to France, take France out of the EU and repeal marriage equality. The supporters of the hard-left candidate, however, hate the liberal banker’s guts, and many have vowed to boycott the election.

Whatever happens there on Sunday will be the stuff of alt-history fiction for some time to come as well.

When it is not slurred as “unhealthy” or “unmanly”, anal/oral sex between men is mocked and deplored as a byword for complicity, degradation, cowardice or obsessive behavior. It has the same rhetorical punch as any gendered insult involving female anatomy.

We still have not rehabilitated our cognolinguistic​ treatment of the feminine and non-heteronormative. We still have yet to distance ourselves from the elevation of cishet masculine expectations.