Thursday, June 10th, 2004

by the Writer's Guild of Wunderland

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Last Friday, we played a small role in a nationwide event. We were part of a small-but-dedicated group of Medical Marijuana activists who protested at the local offices of our congressman, Steny Hoyer. This protest was one of nearly 135 such protests staged at the home offices of congress-people who voted against Medical Marijuana last year.

The protests were organized by a coalition of three of the most prominent drug-law reform organizations working today: NORML, MPP, and DPA. And they did a great job of organizing things too! We were supplied with a big stack of attention grabbing handouts, customized for our region's representative, which looked like this on the front:

On the back it said "The Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment would protect patients" and went on to give several good reasons why all members of congress should support this legislation, which would prevent the federal government from interfering with state medical marijuana laws. (The whole card is available online as a PDF.)

Even though Steny Hoyer is a democrat and supposedly a liberal, and even though his constituents support the medical use of marijuana by up to 80%, and even though our state has a law allowing it, and even though the whole point of the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment is to protect states like ours with such laws, Steny Hoyer voted against it.

I've voted for Steny Hoyer many times over the years, but I was very disappointed to learn that this is how he's representing me. If my leader is going to vote against Medical Marijuana, then I'm going to vote against him.

After waving our signs and offering flyers to passersby and making speeches to each other, we set our signs aside and went upstairs to Steny's office, but oddly enough, not only was he not there, no one on his staff was there either.

Here's a group photo of our cheerful band of protesters, which I took myself using my camera's timer:

Please contact your local representative and ask them to vote YES on the Hinchey-Rohrbacher (Hinch-ee-Roy-bocker) Amendment. You can send a quick easy email from NORML's website, and check out this PDF document from the DPA website to see if your representative voted for or against this medical marijuana amendment last year. Or you can call them -- it's easy through the U.S. Representative toll-free Capitol Switchboard at 1-800-839-5276. This goes up for vote again this summer.

Thanks for helping us try to make the world a better place!

Let's see, what else is going on this week?

• Origins is very soon and we still have a lot to do to get ready
• Alison passed the Wilderness First Aid class she took this weekend (a certification she needs for her job this summer at camp)
• The first sample EAC decks arrived and they look awesome!
• I've been working on some new Secret Projects but of course since they're secret I can't talk about them (in fact, forget I mentioned it)
• I've been reading The Subtle Knife (but I had to ask Kristin to hide it from me again because I was spending so much time just reading...)

Have a great week! See You at Origins!