Cannabis Chronicles

The following article was originally found at Willamette Week Online. It’s a nice change of pace, the story of a festival that wasn’t impaired or obstructed by an oppressive police presence. That doesn’t mean nothing happened, and that there wasn’t at least some controversy, but hey, nothing’s perfect.

Hidden At Hempstalk
At Hempstalk, stoners politely sneak off to the woods while organizers and police celebrate their absence.
BY RACHEL SCHIFF

DON’T WORRY, be Hemp-y.
IMAGE: Rachel Schiff

The dank, earthy scent of ganja lingered last weekend over Hempstalk at Sellwood Riverfront Park, but at least blazing partakers were nowhere to be seen.

The third annual celebration of all things hemp had been threatened earlier this year when the Portland Parks and Recreation Bureau raised concerns about the potential for pot smoking in the public park. But the city then reached agreement with Hempstalk organizer the Hemp and Cannabis (THC—nudge, nudge) Foundation that pot and alcohol wouldn’t be allowed (see “The City and the Giant Hempstalk,” WW , Aug. 15, 2007).

And so an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 frolicking children, lounging students and educators distributing medical-marijuana literature packed the festival grounds last Saturday and Sunday.

Buds of the festival’s namesake were hidden away, burning in the pipes of stoners alternately coughing and giggling behind logs and bushes deep in the nearby woods. Turns out smokers needn’t have hidden.

“We’re not here to bust people,” said a police officer covering the event who wished to remain unidentified.

The day’s protocol was simply to tell roasters to put it out and smoke elsewhere. However, most tokers were already polite enough to sneak into the woods to avoid confrontation. Between coughs, a red-eyed Brandon Yount, 24, explained why he had hidden in a thicket of trees.

“There’s kids out there,” Yount said. “I don’t want to smoke pot in front of them.”

THC president Paul Stanford was pleased with the law-abiding attendees for abstaining from public burning and selling. Stanford attributes the absence of visible blazing this year to more police. Last year, when the event was at Waterfront Park, organizers paid the city for three police officers. This year, organizers paid for five cops.

“The organizers did a lot of work to make sure the attendees understood that smoking could not be tolerated,” said police Lt. Bob Heimbach. “In the hour I was there, I didn’t see anybody smoking.”

Heimbach claims there were only a handful of instances in which his officers had to remind not-so-sneaky stoners of the rules. No festivalgoers were arrested.

However, smoking was just one way to indulge. Picnic basket-toting vendors weaved stealthily among the crowd, selling tempting “dankety-dank” buttery ganja brownies and cookies for $5 apiece.

Corey Smith, 21, a student at Lewis&Clark College, says he saw only a few people smoking, and many more eating.

“There were lots of basket carriers,” he recalled.

Sharon Place, a tiny 51-year-old woman who wore a flower crown atop her waist-length gray curls, set up a booth selling crystals and hemp kitsch. “People come to these events just to buy [pot] food,” says Place, who owns Loving Spoonful, a hemp food business in Eugene.

Last weekend, her employees sold suspiciously green brownies and cookies in grease-stained paper bags under the table in her booth.

Said Place, her eyes flashing mischievously: “I can’t disclose what else is in the cookies besides hempseed.”

We can’t say that’s absolutely great news coverage, but as stories go about the cannabis community, it’s not too bad. One of the 3LB has worked as a media consultant, so it’s not like were inexperienced in analyzing newspaper coverage. Certainly, we’ve seen coverage of stoner events that is far less sympathetic.

That doesn’t mean, however, that local’s were enamoured with Rachel Schiff’s take on Hempstalk. Here’s an official response from the Associate Director of Oregon NORML . . .

Paragraph 1: People were smoking pot at Hempstalk - you could smell it!

Graf 2: The organizer’s name is THC Foundation… get it?

Graf 3 & 4: There were 15K-20K people there, some of them children… and people were smoking pot!

Graf 5: Cops aren’t there to bust people for smoking pot.

Graf 6 & 7: A 24-year-old in attendance was smoking pot… but not in front of kids.

Graf 8, 9 & 10: There were more cops, so you didn’t see people smoking pot. Cops didn’t see anyone smoking pot. Although there were a few people who had to be told not to smoke pot.

Graf 11, 12 & 13: Some people were eating pot. A 21-year-old saw people eating pot and people selling pot to eat.

Graf 14, 15 & 16: People like to buy pot foods to eat.

………. I looked all throughout the article to find the grafs on:

- Fabulous bands that performed both days,

- Lawyers who called for the end of adult marijuana prohibtion,

- Reverends who called for restoration of sacramental rights to cannabis,

- Environmentalists who called for farming of hemp as a crop for American farmers,

- Civil libertarians who noted the devastating effects on civil liberties due to the drug war,

- Educators who informed young people about their constitutional and civil rights,

- Patient advocates calling for reform of OMMA to provide medicine to more needy patients,

- Activists who warned of dangerous new initiatives from Kevin Mannix that treaten patient rights,

- and leaders of the marijuana law reform movement who educated and motivated attendees regarding the issues surrounding hemp / cannabis / marijuana and their need to get active and participate in their democracy.

But I do understand that during the two-day hemp festival, some people were consuming marijuana. Who’d have thunk it? If only there were space for sixteen more paragraphs, maybe the reporter could’ve at least mentioned the actual purpose and activities at the event.

Russ Belville
Associate Director
Oregon NORML

Ouch!

It doesn’t appear that Russ used spell check before sumbitting his letter. He misspelled prohibition, and turned the word “threaten” into “treaten”. Those aren’t exactly eggregious errors to make in a posting, however they do stand out a little more in a letter thats an open criticism of a journalist for their standards of reporting.

Obviously, it doesn’t appear that Russ cares for Rachel, or her reporting, either. And, it seems he’s not alone, here’s another comment about the original Hempstalk story.

Once again, the Willamette Week misses an excellent opportunity to illustrate serious issues regarding the War on Cannabis. Hempstalk occurred right after an important federal court decision that protected the privacy rights of patients and Hempstalk itself was a victory for civil liberties after the free speech rights of activists were threatened by the city.

Medical cannabis is a life-saving medicine four thousands of Oregonians and we are still wasting millions of dollars arresting, prosecuting, and jailing cannabis consumers. Hemp is an agricultural product that can save the small farmer and help protect our environment. Yet, WW focuses on trivial matters and is silent on issues literally concerning life and death. I expect this out of the mainstream media, not out of Portland’s leading alternative weekly news source.

Anthony Johnson

Political Director
Voter Power
www.voterpower.org

Everything Anthony Johnson and Russ Belville discuss is pretty accurate, Cannabis is life saving medication, as well as offering an agricultural product of great promise. But is it really realistic to expect any media outlet, even an “alternative weekly news source”, to cover the “actual purpose and activities” behind such an event?

After reading about military style road blocks disrupting a fest in Ontario, as well as the arrests that marred a festival in Boston, it’s nice to hear about a festival that’s more idyllic. We’re glad to hear that folks ate some good cookies, and were able to sneak off and grab a toke in the woods. Hearing that kind of news indicates a peaceful and tranquil festival was had by recreational and medical users alike, and that’s a good thing!

Yes, it’s not uncommon for even the alternative media to miss the point of alternative type events, and it’s not the end of the world either. From our perspective, it’s not likely that the paper’s readers would find dry facts disgorged by speakers between bands very inspiring anyway, no matter how much event organizers might wish for that to happen.

Wouldn’t it have been better for the “movement” to submit more friendly “corrections” to this paper? Rather than driving home their message that marijuana is life saving medicine, criticisms of a specific reporter and their coverage of an event become a message themselves, and such criticisms distract from our common cause.

As Marshall McLuhan was known to say, “The Medium is the Message”.

It certainly sounds like Hempstalk was a successful event. Rather than agonizing over details about the coverage, organizers should be congratulating themselves that their even went so well, when many others, even in more “liberal” places like Canada, haven’t been quite as idyllic.