I dream of a Star Trek world. This think tank will focus on creative actions
designed to initiate a global paradigm shift towards a world where racism, poverty
and war will be a thing of the past.

Category: liberty

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Stephen Downing began his twenty-year police career in a squad car and finished as a deputy chief of police. As Commander of the Bureau of Special Investigations at one point, the Administrative Narcotics Division was one of the divisions within his scope of authority. His vast experience in law enforcement has led him to the conclusion that the War on Drugs can never be worth the human and fiscal costs.

Founded on March 16, 2002, LEAP is made up of current and former members of the law enforcement and criminal justice communities who are speaking out about the failures of our existing drug policies. Those policies have failed, and continue to fail, to effectively address the problems of drug abuse, especially the problems of juvenile drug use, the problems of addiction, and the problems of crime caused by the existence of a criminal black market in drugs.

Although those who speak publicly for LEAP are people from the law enforcement and criminal justice communities, a large number of our supporting members do not have such experience. You don’t have to have law enforcement experience to join us.

By continuing to fight the so-called “War on Drugs”, the US government has worsened these problems of society instead of alleviating them. A system of regulation and control of these substances (by the government, replacing the current system of control by the black market) would be a less harmful, less costly, more ethical and more effective public policy.

Please consider joining us and helping us to achieve our goals: 1) to educate the public, the media and policy makers about the failure of current policies, and 2) to restore the public’s respect for police, which respect has been greatly diminished by law enforcement’s involvement in enforcing drug prohibition. (read more)

Mersey Beat

the greenwood

“Rise and rise again

until lambs become lions”

your choice

You have two choices in your life…

you can choose to be happy…

or you can choose to be un-happy…

which will you choose?

war on drugs ?

What’s Wrong With the Drug War?

Everyone has a stake in ending the war on drugs. Whether you’re a parent concerned about protecting children from drug-related harm, a social justice advocate worried about racially disproportionate incarceration rates, an environmentalist seeking to protect the Amazon rainforest or a fiscally conservative taxpayer you have a stake in ending the drug war. U.S. federal, state and local governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to make America “drug-free.” Yet heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other illicit drugs are cheaper, purer and easier to get than ever before. The war on drugs has become a war on families, a war on public health and a war on our constitutional rights.

Many of the problems the drug war purports to resolve are in fact caused by the drug war itself. So-called “drug-related” crime is a direct result of drug prohibition’s distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand. Public health problems like HIV and Hepatitis C are all exacerbated by zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean needles. The drug war is not the promoter of family values that some would have us believe. Children of inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse.

Few public policies have compromised public health and undermined our fundamental civil liberties for so long and to such a degree as the war on drugs. The United States is now the world’s largest jailer, imprisoning nearly half a million people for drug offenses alone. That’s more people than Western Europe, with a bigger population, incarcerates for all offenses. Roughly 1.5 million people are arrested each year for drug law violations – 40% of them just for marijuana possession. People suffering from cancer, AIDS and other debilitating illnesses are regularly denied access to their medicine or even arrested and prosecuted for using medical marijuana. We can do better. (read more)
………………………………………………………………………

War on drugs?

Shouldn’t that be…

war on drug “abuse and addiction”?

You see…

prohibition produced only one thing…

a profitable criminal underground.

Legal or illegal…

we will continue to have…

an available supply and ever present demand.

In the end…

you can’t legislate morality.

May day

May 1st 2009
Los Angeles, CA
An immigration rally began peacefully. The right to freedom of peaceful assembly is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution. When police in riot gear arrived and attempted to deny people that right, some took a stand to protect their rights. Then it turned less peaceful ..giving police the authority to forcefully disperse people.

Macarthur Park, Los Angeles, May 1st 2009

A police helicopter hovers above ..a voice over the loudspeaker gives the order to ‘disperse or be arrested’. Police in riot gear charge ..unarmed citizens flee ..some are trampled and beaten ..a peaceful assembly turns into chaos ..bullets fly. This was the scene at Macarthur Park in Los Angeles May 1st 2009 ..but my mind is also receiving images from 1969 ~ People’s Park, Berkeley ..and they don’t look much different. Furthermore, I’m experiencing the same feelings of revulsion that I felt then ..and I’m not the only one ..those early images were burned into the psyche of nearly all the school-age children of my generation. It occurs to me that the ‘class of 2010 is graduating next month ..after attending all four years of high school ..during wartime. Experiencing a culture at war, at this age ..is something you never forget. It becomes part of you ..like the Vietnam War is part of me. I have a built-in mistrust of government ..ongoing problems with authority ..and an uncertain career in ‘conspiracy theory’. History repeats itself, not only when government leaders ignore it ..but also when their minds become so scripted by it ..they can’t do anything different.

People’s Park, Berkeley ~ 1969

Bad Words

From the dictionary……

“Liberal”

[fr.L liberalis, suitable for a freeman, generous, fr. liber free]

1: of, relating to, or based on the liberal arts

2: GENEROUS, BOUNTIFUL, 3: not narrow in opinion or judgement

4: TOLERANT; also: not orthodox, 5: not conservative

also related to liberty and liberate……..

maybe it’s not such a bad word after all.

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