Marijuana - The Playing Field is not Level
Commentary by Black Kos Editor JoanMar
I don't smoke. I have never lit up a joint in my life. But I know a lot about the good ol' Mary Jane. I can smell it a mile away. My mother smoked like every day; my father, I have been told, smoked; my older brother smokes, my younger sister smokes (or smoked - she claims she no longer does - I have heard that before), I have had boyfriends who smoked, and I had smelled it on my son's breath a couple times.
I was not going to be my mom, so that meant no smoking and no heavy drinking.
Given all of the above, you may wonder why I am so bothered by seeing that documentary by CNN, Cashing in on the 'green rush.' The series celebrate (the best word to describe what I saw) the "trailblazers" who are making use of the opportunity provided to them in the wake of the legalization of marijuana in Colorado.
I am not merely bothered by what I saw, I found it to be downright obscene. To be fair, those people did not invent the problem. They are merely doing what any true entrepreneur would do. I ain't really mad at them as much as I'm mad at yet another piece of evidence of just how our two-tiered justice system works.
See for yourself:
The idea that these people could be so joyously celebrating their new found wealth, even as hundreds of thousands of people have suffered and continue to suffer for trying to do what they are doing, leaves a nasty taste in my mouth
In talking about their "pioneering" business, the young (white) couple featured in the series, spoke about a conversation they had with their grandmother. Apparently they mischaracterized the nature of their business and then were forced to come clean to grandma. The wife explains that conversation this way:
"She thought we were just your stereotypical drug dealers."
Stereotypical drug dealers. Who are those, pray tell?
Maybe someone like Vincent Winslow? Let's take a look at his case:
On September 5, 2008, Fate Vincent Winslow watched a plainclothes stranger approach him. Homeless and hungry, on a dark street rife with crime, the 41-year-old African American was anxious to make contact, motivated by one singular need: food.
More:
Police arrested Winslow, drove him to prison, and locked him up. Six months later, a jury found him guilty of distribution of a schedule I substance (marijuana). Three months after that, a judge sentenced him to life imprisonment with hard labor, without the benefit of parole.
For a transaction that involved a whopping
$25.00, Mr. Winslow got a life sentence, and with hard labor to boot.
He is just one example of thousands...if not millions. Whether selling or using, African Americans are more likely to be targeted, arrested, and convicted.
Whites and blacks use marijuana at roughly the same rates; on average, however, blacks are 3.7 times more likely than whites to be arrested for possession, according to a comprehensive 2013 report by the A.C.L.U.
In Iowa, blacks are 8.3 times more likely to be arrested, and in the worst-offending counties in the country, they are up to 30 times more likely to be arrested. The war on drugs aims its firepower overwhelmingly at African-Americans on the street, while white users smoke safely behind closed
Another ACLU report details the long lasting, life-changing effect of being arrested for keeping company with mary jane:
When people are arrested for possessing even tiny amounts of marijuana, it can have dire collateral consequences that affect their eligibility for public housing and student financial aid, employment opportunities, child custody determinations, and immigration status.
It seems to me that there is something sad and downright immoral about how the ganja god has chosen to distribute his/her blessings. In the same state, in the same country, in the same world, some people experiencing great fortune while others are behind bars for doing the exact same thing. If we can't have a level playing field, at least show a little awareness about what's happening around you.
One law for everyone; those in Buk-in-hamm palace, and those standing in the shadows furtively scratching at the edge of the sumptuous pie.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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As told by a young abolitionist. Slate: The Anatomy of a Slave Ship.
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John Riland read the letter from his father with rising horror. The year was 1801, and it was time for the young man to return to the family plantation in Jamaica after his studies at Christ Church, Oxford. His father gave him precise instructions: He would journey from Oxford to Liverpool, where he would take a berth as a passenger aboard a slave ship. From there he would sail to the Windward Coast of Africa, observe the purchase and loading of a “living cargo” of slaves, and travel with them across the Atlantic to Port Royal, Jamaica. Young Riland had been exposed to anti-slavery ideas and now had serious misgivings about the commerce in human flesh; he had, he noted, no desire to be “imprisoned in a floating lazar-house, with a crowd of diseased and wretched slaves.” He took comfort from a classmate’s comment that recent abolitionist accounts of the Middle Passage and the slave ship had been “villainously exaggerated.”
It so happened that the senior Riland, like the son, had begun to entertain doubts about slavery. His Christian conscience apparently told him that the young man who would inherit the family estate should see firsthand what the slave trade was all about. The dutiful son did as the patriarch commanded. He went to Liverpool and sailed as a privileged passenger with a “Captain Y——” aboard his ship, the Liberty. Riland used the experience to write one of the most detailed accounts of a slave ship ever penned.2
When Riland stepped aboard the vessel he would take to Africa and across the Atlantic, the captain apparently knew that he was no friend of the slave trade. The man in charge of the wooden world was determined, therefore, to present the ship and its practices in the best possible light. He tried, wrote Riland, to “soften the revolting circumstances which he saw would develop themselves on our landing [in Africa]; during also our stay on the coast, and in our subsequent voyage to Jamaica.” He referred to the purchase of more than 200 captives, the close crowding, the inevitable sickness and death. The captain also undertook to educate his young passenger. He sat with him night after night in the captain’s cabin (where Riland slept and ate), conversing with him by the dim light of swaying lamps, explaining patiently how “the children of Ham” benefited by being sent to American plantations such as the one the senior Riland owned.
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Chocolate to be made in Ivory Coast for first time despite country being the world’s biggest grower of cocoa beans. The Guardian: Ivory Coast president tours country's first chocolate factory.
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Despite living in the world’s biggest grower of cocoa beans, Ivory Coast residents have never quite embraced chocolate as part of the national diet.
The African country’s first major chocolate factory hopes to change all that.
With an investment of €6m (£4.28m) and production capacity of 10,000 tonnes per year, the plant will produce chocolate “made in Ivory Coast” on an industrial scale.
President Alassane Ouattara, touring the new facility in the commercial capital, Abidjan, earlier this week, told Agence France-Presse: “We wanted to be able to … make chocolate for Ivorians, for Africans and especially west Africans.”
Cocoa is Ivory Coast’s biggest cash crop, accounting for 22% of gross domestic product, more than half its exports and two-thirds of people’s jobs and incomes, according to the World Bank.
Although it has been the mainstay of the economy since independence from France in 1960, the “brown gold” does not feature strongly in its French-influenced cuisine. Last year a YouTube video went viral showing Ivorian cocoa farmers tasting chocolate for the first time.
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Haiti’s controversial former prime minister has joined a crowded arena of contenders in the race for the country’s next president. Miami Herald: Former Haiti PM Lamothe joins presidential race along with dozens of others.
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Those vying for the seat hail from across the country and vary from opposition politicians to academics to entrepreneurs.
Lamothe’s much-anticipated and to some extent, surprise move, came less than three hours before the midnight deadline and after a day of legal scrambling, U.S. congressional lobbying and personal soul searching.
“En route” Lamothe tweeted at about 8:30 p.m. while en route to the regional electoral offices on Route des Frères in Port-au-Prince. “The work has just begun.”
As the former head of President Michel Martelly’s government as well as minister of planning and foreign affairs. Lamothe is required to have a décharge to run for president under Haiti’s electoral law. The certificate is necessary to show he didn’t misused government funds. However, only parliament can grant a décharge, which is based on the findings of government auditors from the Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes (CSCCA).
Since January, Haiti has been without a functioning parliament, leaving Martelly to rule by decree. Martelly, however, promised the international community he would not use his emergency powers broadly and has until now refused to issue a decree allowing those without a décharge, including Lamothe, to enter the race.
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Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby announces indictments on multiple charges, including one of second-degree murder, in the death of Freddie Gray. The Guardian: All six Baltimore police officers in Freddie Gray case indicted by grand jury.
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A grand jury in Baltimore has indicted all six police officers charged over the death of Freddie Gray, paving the way for a criminal trial in the Maryland courts.
Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby announced on Thursday that some of the charges against the officers, whom she had already charged earlier in the month, had been amended.
“Additional information has been discovered and, as is often the case during an ongoing investigation, charges can and should be revised based on the evidence,” Mosby said.
The most serious charges – of second-degree murder against officer Caesar Goodson, and involuntary manslaughter against four of the officers – were affirmed by the grand jury and remained unchanged.
All six officers also face new charges of reckless endangerment, defined in Maryland law as “engaging in conduct that creates a substantial risk of death or serious physical injury to another”. The charge is punishable by an additional five years in prison.
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