Pubdate: Sun, 04 Jun 2006
Source: Columbus Dispatch (OH)
Copyright: 2006 The Columbus Dispatch
Contact:  http://www.dispatch.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/93
Author: Robert Ruth, The Columbus Dispatch
Cited: Ohio Hempfest 2006 http://www.ohiohempfest.com
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Ohio+Hempfest
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Marijuana)

FLOWER CHILDREN OF ALL AGES STILL BLOSSOM AT OSU'S HEMPFEST

Pro-Marijuana Event Still Smokin' On Its 20th Anniversary

For more than 35 years, David "Shake" Shakin has kept the faith.

While many "flower children" of the 1960s and early 1970s have 
dropped out of the peace movement and joined the establishment, 
Shakin remains a true believer.

His hair is white, but he still wears a beard. He calls an artists 
commune outside Athens, Ga., home. And he supports himself by 
traveling the country selling hand-made Indonesian jewelry at music 
and community festivals.

Shakin, 55, brought his jewelry business to Hempfest yesterday on the 
Ohio State University campus. He was among about 50 vendors that set 
up tables and booths at the 20 th annual pro-marijuana event.

When he was a teenage student at Long Island University, Shakin 
participated in Vietnam War protests around the country. Those 
protests drew hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, he recalled. 
Radicals talked of revolution.

Hempfest and other similar gatherings nowadays are mild by 
comparison, Shakin said.

"Back then, you had more of an opportunity to do those things," he 
said. "Not now. It's more a police state now."

Still, there is an anti-establishment aura at Hempfest, Shakin said. 
Incense provided the most pungent scent in the afternoon, but the 
aroma would change in the evening, Shakin predicted.

"The air will get sweeter," he said with a mischievous grin.

Other booths provided more evidence that Hempfest was not the kind of 
event chambers of commerce feature in their promotional literature.

Booths selling bongs and toke pipes proliferated. Other vendors sold 
T-shirts emblazoned with the images of such music icons as Bob Marley 
and Tupac Shakur. Signs promoting the legalization of pot were everywhere.

Socialists and the Green and Libertarian parties set up booths early. 
Asked why Republicans and Democrats weren't represented in the early 
afternoon, Steven Linnabary, treasurer of the Libertarian Party of 
Franklin County, said, "They're making money off the war on drugs. 
Look at who the jailers, cops and prosecutors are. It's all pure patronage."

In 2004, OSU attempted to ban Hempfest from the campus. But U.S. 
District Judge Algenon L. Marbley issued a restraining order 
prohibiting the university from canceling the event.

OSU's hierarchy remains unenthusiastic about Hempfest, said Phil 
Desenze, a 21-year-old OSU student who served as one of the festival 
s co-coordinators.

Because Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, which sponsors Hempfest, 
is considered a student organization, the university gives it $2,500 
a year, Desenze said. But Ohio State then charges the group $2,800 to 
provide security, he said. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake