Pubdate: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 Source: Trentonian, The (NJ) Column: Passing the Joint Copyright: 2014 The Trentonian Contact: http://www.trentonian.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1006 Author: NJ Weedman Page: A5 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/racial.htm (Racial Issues) WHITE ENTREPRENEURS CROWDING OUT BLACK ONES IN LEGAL MARIJUANA Richard Lee, the California owner of Oaksterdam University, rented a conference room at Bally's casino in Atlantic City. It is a business that teaches people how to grow marijuana, and other aspects of the emerging legal marijuana business. Technically for classroom purposes they used basil instead of marijuana. Ed Forchion, NJ Weedman, outside of the Saturday at Bally's Casino in Atlantic City. As a former marijuana prisoner I had to go check this out for myself. So last weekend. I went to Bally's to have a look at who is paying a $1000 to learn how to grow weed, when there are numerous $30 books. I used Mel Franks Growers Guide deluxe 20 years ago to perfect my plants, and more recently used free YouTube videos to perfect hydroponic skills. I wasn't paying $1000 so I could only watch at the door as approximately 80 people, about 60 males, a few Hispanics, three black men, one black women and a couple of Asians came and went. Now let me be clear here: If I decided to use a garage or a storefront in the Wilberforce section of this city teaching the hood how to grow marijuana indoors I'd be arrested. Just imagine "NJWeedmans grow classes begin today at 4:20 p.m." I'd be charged with "conspiracy to manufacture" marijuana before the first plants were harvested. I was jailed for 5 months in 2002 simply for calling for legalization in TV commercials that didn't air. I'm positive if I or any other black man did this we'd be charged under 2C:35-5 as the leader of a narcotics-trafficking network, or 2C:35-4, maintaining or operating a production facility. But Richard Lee doesn't have to worry about that - he's white and is considered a businessman. The original marijuana laws in this country were created to punish blacks and Mexicans. Our faces were used to demonize the herb. We go to prison in record numbers, while whites are becoming rich. White faces are being used to "angelize" it now, via medical marijuana laws. Images of sick white children are being pumped onto TV networks in a drive to legalize. CNN has become the Cannabis News Network using these images. Great, but I say what about us? Michele Alexander's book "The New Jim Crow" explains it best. "White men are poised to run big marijuana business, dreaming of cashing in big after 40 years of locking up impoverished black kids for selling weed. Their families and futures destroyed. Now white men are planning on getting rich doing precisely the same thing". I went to Los Angeles in 2007 to open my own dispensary, the Liberty Bell Temple II, the DEA shut me down and almost all the other minority owned shops. Minorities are being excluded deliberately from this emerging business because we are vitally needed as the chattel of another billion dollar business; the prison industry. This is one reason why Christie doesn't want to legalize, the prison industry needs us. State legislators and authorities are deliberately restricting persons with marijuana convictions from entering this business. I complained about this before, to the dismissal of my fellow white marijuana activists. Decades of disproportionate enforcement of laws and the targeting of minorities has led to huge percentages of this country's minorities walking around with a digital "F" for felon stamped on their records, this is akin to Star of David seminar armbands, a scarlet letter for adultery, or the FUG that the Romans would brand on the forehead of escaped slaves (short for fugitivus). We are ineligible for many current jobs and now adding Oaksterdam University injury to insult, we are being banned from the new marijuana market, from the practices of ownership and investment that are the hallmarks of the American Dream. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom