The Path to Freedom
IT STARTS WITH words. Get the message out, and ideas have a funny way of becoming real. Even farfetched ideas like legalizing pot.
The movement to legalize marijuana is a dream shared by many going way back. In 1964, the year I was born, a brave 28-year-old guy named Lowell Eggemeier walked into San Francisco’s main police station and lit up a joint. He demanded to be arrested in order to challenge the constitutionality of cannabis prohibition in California.
It was a felony back then. They jailed Lowell for a year for smoking that joint. It was his lawyer, James R. White, who started LeMar (Legalize Marijuana), our nation’s first organization calling for the legalization of grass.
In 1965, beat poet and LeMar activist Allen Ginsberg protested publicly in front of the Women’s House of Detention in Manhattan. He wore a big sign that read: “Pot Is Fun.” That was pushing the envelope back then.
Fellow poet John Sinclair started a Detroit chapter of LeMar. In 1969, he got 10 years in prison for giving two joints to an undercover cop. A number of celebrities, including Abbie Hoffman and John Lennon, stood behind Sinclair, with the latter writing a protest song about his imprisonment. They
