A BEAUTIFUL DEMONSTRATION AGAINST AN UNJUST LAW

Re: Public pot festival a sad display, April 24

I travelled 3,500 miles from Alabama to attend the "420 celebration"
at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Far from being a sad display it was a
beautiful, peaceful, mass demonstration of civil disobedience against
an unjust law. It was refreshing for me, an American, to reaffirm that
freedom still exists somewhere in North America.

While Alabama used to be the centre of mass protests during the 1960s
civil rights movement, such demonstrations are rare today. People are
afraid to protest because police down here would wade in with Tasers,
mace, dogs and billy clubs.

Is that what Peter Webster would have preferred happen at the art
gallery? If so, then which is more detrimental to the pursuit of a
full, meaningful, long and happy life: The ingestion of benign plant
material or a police force that would violently attack a crowd of
10,000 peaceful demonstrators and cart them off to prison where
violence and disease are rampant?

Loretta Nall

Alexander City, Alabama