Pubdate: Wed, 02 Dec 2003 Source: Anderson Valley Advertiser (CA) Column: Cannabinotes Copyright: 2003 Anderson Valley Advertiser Contact: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2667 Author: Fred Gardner Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California) UNANSWERED QUESTIONS Last week we reported on a very costly phone campaign arranged by Americans for Safe Access through an outfit called Left Bank Solutions. Some 600,000 voters in California and Oregon -constituents of four Congressmen who'd voted against de-funding federal raids on medical marijuana providers-got pre-recorded messages from either Marney Craig (a member of the Ed Rosenthal jury who'd felt "hoodwinked" by the Court) or Angel McClary Raich (who attributes her survival to cannabis). Marney's message said, "Your Congressman had a chance to end this federal deception but he voted to let it continue..." Angel's said, "Your Congressman is threatening my life..." Steph Sherer, the Executive Director of ASA, had held a press conference Nov. 20 to announce the phone campaign (which the organizers dubbed "Operation Spank"). She said it had cost "under $100,000" and that the money had come from "members of ASA." Not everybody thinks the phone-call campaign is a wise expense of "under $100,000." Some people don't like unsolicited phone pitches, period. C-Notes is open-minded, believe it or not. In order to better understand the phone-call tactic and weigh its efficacy, we forwarded a few questions to Sherer: *Does a phone number shared by two registered voters get two calls from Left Bank or one? *What percentage of the 600,000 voters will actually hear the message (as opposed to others in the household)? How does Left Bank calculate this? *What percentage of the calls get listened to all the way through? Does Left Bank measure the hang-up rate in order to calculate efficacy? It must vary from client to client. How did the calls from Angel and Marney do in that regard? *What are the costs involved? Who provided the list of constituents' phone numbers -Left Bank or ASA? *Whose idea was "Operation Spank?" How does ASA decide to back a project like this? Is there a vote by the membership?" After not receiving answers for five days, your correspondent was informed Dec. 2 by Hilary McQuie, ASA's "Campaign Coordinator" (they all have two-word titles) that he had only himself to blame for being cut out of the information loop. Apparently the ASA leaders still resent some principled criticisms I'd made in the past. Or maybe they just didn't want to answer the last question -about how the phone-call project got approved by the membership. Steph and Hilary pay a lot of lip-service to democratic process but in the nitty-gritty they make all ASA's decisions. Ignoring my inquiries about the phone campaign shows their anti-democratic instincts. It's a form of blacklisting; when newsmakers won't answer questions from certain journalists, it undermines the journalists' ability to make a living. Steph and Hilary came on the scene about two years ago. They'd met in the anti-globalization movement, veterans of Seattle '99. Neither smoked marijuana or had any affinity for it but they sensed that the medical-use movement had untapped potential and they, being ambitious and unhampered by amotivational syndrome, could channel it. Steph redefined herself as a patient. (A federal marshal had twisted her neck during a demo; she is suing him.) Steph's offer to give "trainings" was welcomed by club proprietors in Berkeley (one of whom is now her boyfriend). Her and Hilary's expertise consisted of facilitating meetings, making giant puppets, and pre-arranging arrests to get media coverage. They called the pre-arranged busts "civil disobedience" or "CD." I guess they never forgave me for telling them they should call them "media stunts." This Fall, on behalf of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group, I applied for a grant to the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C. lobby that gets $3 million a year from Peter Lewis, the owner of Progressive Insurance. I defined our objectives thus: "To produce four quarterly issues of O'Shaughnessy's, a journal/tabloid that will enable doctors who have been monitoring their patients' cannabis use to share data and observations. "To distribute O'Shaughnessy's to CCRMG members' patients and patrons of California cannabis clubs. "To distribute O'Shaughnessy's free to other physicians and healthcare providers. "To involve CCRMG physicians in campus 'teach-ins' and Continuing Medical Education programs to counter generations of systematic miseducation on the therapeutic uses of cannabis." Although I have never scored in the non-profit world, and don't get my hopes up in general, in this case I couldn't help it because O'Shaughnessy's seemed to meet all the criteria stated in the MPP grant application. On Nov. 3 I received the following email "I regret to inform you that the grants program administered by the Marijuana Policy Project did not approve your grant application. I will send you a formal letter via regular mail in about 2-3 weeks, which will include a specific explanation of our decision. Chad Thevenot, Grants Manager." I e-mailed back: " Where can I find a list of the projects you chose to support? I'd like to get an idea of what you consider worthy." Thevenot replied: "We don't have a published list of projects for which we have awarded grants. However, I'm always happy to review a formal letter of inquiry from any grant applicant, to discuss whether MPP thinks it is promising. For more information regarding our letter of inquiry process, please visit http://www.mpp.org/grants on the Web." Three weeks passed and I sent another note to MPP: "I'm still waiting for the 'formal letter' explaining why you turned us down. I would also like to know the reason(s) why you keep secret the projects you chose to support. It might make sense in a few cases, where they're trying not to draw the heat, but in general it doesn't; a democratic movement requires a certain level of transparency." We're still waiting for an answer. In the late 1960s Esquire magazine ran a fascinating chart full of overlapping circles that revealed the power relations and connections within the New York literary establishment (whose hidden leaders didn't like being exposed, naturally, and put down the chart as "tacky"). If one were to depict the power structure of the medical marijuana "movement," Steph Sherer of Americans for Safe Access and Rob Kampia of the Marijuana Policy Project would surely be overlapping in what Esquire called "the red hot center." The movement itself is in the cash-in stage. Careers in politics are being made. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom