HEMP RALLY MESSAGE GOES UP IN SMOKE

A very mellow and nonviolent good afternoon to all of you freedom loving
brothers and sisters in the Merrimack Valley from here on the Boston
Common. We're behind the big stage at the corner of Beacon and Charles
streets with Steven S. Epstein, Esq., of Georgetown, co-founder, treasurer
and clerk of the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition and editor of the
bimonthly periodical Mass Grass.

It's Saturday afternoon on the biggest day of Mr. Epstein's year - the 11th
annual Freedom Rally to protest marijuana laws in particular and the war on
drugs in general.

He looks pleased. He should. From an event that drew only a few hundred
back in 1989, we are now having a very large time. Large enough to draw at
least a half-dozen TV cameras. Large enough to count radio Rock of Boston
WBCN-FM among our sponsors. Large enough to draw big-name rappers,
rockers, hip-hoppers and folkies to entertain. Large enough to bring
Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne and U.S. Senate candidate
Carla Howell. Large enough to prompt the city to deploy well over 100 cops
- - and those are just the ones in uniform. As one youth tells it in bold
marker on his naked chest: "Undercover cops are wearing pot T-shirts."

And of course, the people. Look across the common, and there are people as
far as you can see. Maybe there are 65,000, maybe 100,000, maybe more.
Nobody really feels like counting them. There are warnings in our Official
Guide that the common is a "drug free zone," and that anyone convicted of
distributing or intent to distribute a controlled substance faces a
mandatory two year prison term. But there must be a lot of people willing
to take that risk. An unmistakable fragrance keeps drifting on the breeze.

Uhhhh ... where was I? Oh yeah. Welcome to our world, where almost
everybody falls into the immediate-future-of-our-country category, aged 14
to 21, wandering perhaps a bit aimlessly, greeting one another with vacant
smiles and special handshakes, lying in the brilliant late summer sun,
halfheartedly pumping fists to obscenity-laced rap, talking on cell phones.

Welcome to a world of baggy pants, tight pants, tank tops, leather, message
T-shirts, pierced noses, tongues, lips, ears, eyebrows, navels and
unmentionables.

Welcome to pink, blue, orange, green and multi-hued hair, to spikes,
dreadlocks and skinheads.

Welcome to retro-hippie capitalists hawking everything from food to
jewelry, macrame, books, CDs, bumper stickers, posters, belts, pants,
shirts and hats, to mugwort joints and "mellow"-tonin.

"Take it, and then smoke about 30 minutes later. You'll get the best high
you've ever had," says a fiftysomething vendor to a youthful audience.

And that, in spite of the very large numbers, may be part of the problem
with a rally that, at its center, is supposed to have a serious purpose -
to end what organizers and a parade of speakers and entertainers call a
$7.5 billion war on Americans who are good, hard-working people who just
happen to enjoy marijuana, instead of alcohol, as their recreational drug
of choice.

The Freedom Rally is, by design, part music festival, part artsy-craftsy
marketplace, part pep rally, but most importantly, political action rally.
And, of course, to get political troops juiced up and motivated to change
the world, it helps if they're not blissed, or blitzed, out.

"I want you to be free," Harry Browne told the crowd, to scattered
applause. On this day, at least, everybody was feeling free indeed. That
meant, of course, free to ignore the message. And it looked like too may
of them did.

But then Mr. Epstein says hundreds did register to vote Saturday.

"Yeah, it's incremental," he says, "but who says the revolution can't be fun?"

Taylor Armerding's column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday in the
Eagle-Tribune. He may be reached at (978) 946-2213 or at
tarmerding@eagletribune.com.