OFFICIAL LINKS CONSCIENCE TO HIS CAUSES

Views On Marijuana, Jail Motivate Trustee

Weeks after the jail millage election, Chuck Ream still shows off a
3-foot-3/8 inch hardened steel stake - one of eight he and others pounded
into the frozen ground early on Feb. 22 to display his "No Giant Jail"
signs at select polling places.

He focused those anti-millage efforts around eastern Washtenaw County. He
figured the west side would vote no anyway, so he only needed to get the
folks east of Zeeb Road.

"We won the jail (defeat) at 63 percent of the vote," Ream said in a recent
interview. He takes credit for the defeat.

Others also give him at least some of the credit.

"What's amused me about the recent millage election is that one of the
county commissioners was overheard to blame the outcome on Chuck's signs,
as if signs could vote!" said Jan BenDor, who lives in Superior Township
and is now working with Ream and others to formulate an alternative jail
proposal.

Ream, 58, a Scio Township trustee who last spring retired after teaching
kindergarten in Monroe for 33 years to focus on politics and on writing a
book, has figured prominently in local elections lately.

In addition to the jail defeat, he cites three other recent victories: A
yes from Ann Arbor voters on an amended marijuana policy that allows people
to use the drug medically without penalty; a yes from Scio Township voters
on a land-preservation millage; and his re-election to a fifth term on the
Scio Township board.

Ream is motivated in his politics, by his conscience and "by a desire for
justice. He's on a roll!" said Ann Arbor attorney David Cahill, who joined
forces with Ream on the jail issue.

Ream, a tall, thin jogger and tennis player, is passionate about his ideas
and politics, sometimes seeming almost obsessed, particularly on the issue
of making marijuana legal. No matter what the topic at hand, Ream will
bring up the perils of a policy of cannabis as an illegal drug and tout its
medical benefits. He will not admit, out of fear, he says, whether he
currently uses pot, but said that many years ago it helped him with severe
stomach pain.

He brings with him to an interview political souvenirs and propaganda that
span 35 years. He also brings a hand-written autobiographical sketch of his
life. He reads through it aloud, underlining or circling words, jabbing at
the paper with a pen, emphasizing certain thoughts. At times he taps the
side of his head as he makes a point.

Ream said his purpose now is to write and create words that people will
rally behind. For example, he said, in Scio Township the simple slogan
"Preserve Scio," and in the jail millage, "No Giant Jail" got people's
attention.

"I can articulate what the people already feel in a very simple, clear way,
using words that people can understand," Ream said, though he admits
"Preserve Open Space" in 1996 did not win him a county commissioner seat.

It has been a long journey to this point, both politically and emotionally.
Ream has gone from Human Rights Party in the '70s, to Republican in the
late 1980s, to Democrat in 2004. He has been married and divorced twice and
has three children.

Born in Three Rivers, he began school in Willow Run when his family lived
in Willow Village, a former World War II work housing complex. He recalls
himself as a reading addict, taking as many books as allowed from the
library and the bookmobile once the family moved to Redford Township. There
he watched his parents shape their community through Little League, school
board and in church. His dad worked in product planning for Ford Motor Co.

Teachers labeled Ream as having an "attitude," he said, though he loved
American history and even experienced what he called a "full-body
psychedelic rush of patriotism" as a youngster.

Despite his love of reading, he did not excel in school - until the family
moved temporarily to Australia, where he experienced what he calls an
intellectual awakening. "They taught at a very high level, and I learned to
study 12 to 14 hours a day to get through the 12th grade."

Ream attended Western Michigan University. He earned all A's but said he
was refused admittance to its graduate school because of his strong
anti-Vietnam activities. He helped publish the Western Activist paper and
led "huge spring riots" in 1969. He had wanted to join the Weathermen
radical political group but was too ill with a stomach disorder that he
believes was caused by his reaction to the Vietnam War.

He was so sick as an undergraduate that at times he left school. He began
making plans to die "in some way that supported that Vietnamese struggle."
At the time, he said, he perceived that the "real Americans were the
Vietnamese fighting against the oppressors from outside."

Though doctors prescribed barbituates, tranquilizers and antacid, nothing
helped, he said, until he discovered marijuana.

He wound up in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan for graduate school
after Western Michigan officials said "I had personality traits not
conducive to guidance counseling" - his chosen field.

In Ann Arbor, he admits, he became a small fish in a big puddle. He earned
a master's degree in counseling and an education specialist's degree at

U-M. He also continued his radical politics, joining the Human Rights Party
and helping to start what was known as the Youth Liberation Organization, a
group of Ann Arbor teenagers who wanted the right to determine their own
education and lives.

Ream describes his work with the teens; it included trying to start student
unions in Ann Arbor junior high schools. He shows off campaign-style metal
buttons of the same colors as the Viet Cong. It was, he said, "about as
radical as you can get, getting children to revolt."

In 1971, he wrote his only published academic journal article titled "Youth
Culture: Humanity's Last Chance," in which he writes, "Laws against
marijuana are nothing more than blatant cultural repression."

That same year, he took a job teaching kindergarten - a position that
lasted for 33 years. He said he loved his work.

"Kindergarten is the only place I really belong. Kindergarten is where I'm
completely happy," Ream said, leaning back in his chair. "You're before the
change of teeth when humans are in a wonderful, magical, joyful world. It's
a privilege to be allowed to be in that world."

He tears up. "It's where I really belonged. ... The problems in the larger
world are too horrible for me to really accept. When I'm with the little
children, then I can be happy."

Every Sunday, Ream works in the toddler room at First Unitarian
Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor. He said the church has been pivotal
in his life of late because that is where he has met the Quaker woman he
calls "my true love" when she signed the medical marijuana petition there
last fall.

Ream said he became drawn into local politics again, after years away, in
1986 when he moved to Scio Township from Ann Arbor and immediately faced
what he calls a "huge and inappropriate development planned for 'my back
yard."' He and others joined and stopped the plan, and instead a new
developer put together the Polo Fields.

He said he begged group members to run for trustee in 1988 as Republicans
"so we could win then." The group won four trustees' seats.

Ream has since successfully won four other elections to the Scio board. He
said he switched parties last year because "The Republicans were not
serious enough about land preservation" and because of President Bush, the
Patriot Act and the "destruction of freedoms at home and horrible wars abroad."

BenDor said Ream has been successful "because he is one of those rare
people who is dedicated to good government. He cares that things are done
right. He has tremendous integrity."

Scio Township resident Bob Hefner, who has known Ream since the Youth
Liberation days of the 1970s, said Ream has been an effective trustee in Scio.

"He's worked to try to bring in themes now becoming stronger in Scio.
Things like open space, wetlands protection," which Hefner said will be
better served in part by Ream's switch to the Democratic Party.

Longtime Ann Arbor attorney Jean Ledwith King, a Scio Township resident and
trustee, said "Chuck Ream is in seventh heaven. .... Our new board is
starting to do what Chuck's been trying to do for 16 years" on open space,
wetlands protections, recycling and transportation.

Ream indicates there is more he's interested in. He hints he would consider
running for county sheriff, but only if the city and county absolutely
ignore the will of the voters, he said, on medical marijuana and on the
need for the county to get citizen input into reshaping a jail proposal.

Ream said he would support a long-term three-tenths of mill tax that would
generate more than $100 million - and he even admits his No Giant Jail
strategy may have worked too well.

"There are justifiable needs to be met by a smaller proposal," Ream said,
"but now so many people are upset by what they perceived as high-handedness
that I fear a 0.3 mill proposal would have a hard time passing."

Ironically, Ream describes County Administrator Bob Guenzel, who advocated
strongly for the jail millage, as "an old friend. My ex-wife Margo Nichols
bought her law firm from Guenzel. We've had a good relationship, but these
are policy questions."

And Ream is working hard to see that medical marijuana is permitted in Ann
Arbor and that inmates don't have to be tested for marijuana. Marijuana is
the only drug that can really be tested for, he said, and it doesn't kill
people. "Lots of people have lost people in their family to alcohol," a
legal drug, he said.

That includes Ream, who said he saw his sister die from drinking bourbon.
"If I'd had the social approval to help her with cannabis, she'd be alive
today," Ream said.

Ream taps his fingers on his autobiographical sketch. Surely, there will be
more to add to that document.

"My generation is going back to the struggle, not just doddering off to
retirement homes."