ACTIVIST BEN MASEL NEVER SHIED FROM EXERCISING HIS RIGHTS

Ben Masel loved liberty. No, not talking about liberty, in the way
that self-serving politicians and pontificating pundits do. Liberty
was his passion, his avocation, his life's work. Even as he was
battling the lung cancer that would end his remarkable life, Masel
kept struggling to make real the promise of freedom that has been so
often made and so frequently denied to Americans.

A few weeks ago, on a break between radiation and chemotherapy
treatments, Masel was outside the Willy Street Co-op promoting the
latest of his political projects when a manager informed him that the
activity was not allowed. Masel stood his ground. The police were
called and they informed the veteran of 40 years of speaking truth to
power that he had to cease his campaigning. Actually, Masel informed
the officers, he had every right to exercise his rights in so public
a place. He directed them to review a specific section on a specific
page of a specific set of rules and regulations. The manual was
retrieved and reviewed and, when all was said and done, Masel's
assessment of his rights - and those of all who dare dissent - was accepted.

"Ben knew the laws better than the police did," explained his
longtime friend Amy Gros-Louis, echoing a sentiment shared by judges,
lawyers and the many police officers who came to regard Masel with a
mix of frustration, awe and, eventually, respect.

So it was with Masel, whose death Saturday at age 56 robbed Madison,
Wisconsin and the United States of one of the truest champions of the
Constitution, the rule of law, and the founding faith that the
freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights are not just ideals; they are
practical tools to be used on a daily basis to challenge the
powerful, to offend the elites, to tip the balance toward some rough
equivalent of justice.

These commitments made Masel a supreme annoyance to prickly
policemen, prying prosecutors and pretenders to the presidency.
Before he reached the age of 18, Masel made it onto the list of Nixon
White House enemies, and he would later earn national headlines for
mocking segregationist George Wallace and spitting at conservative
Democrat Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who earned the wrath of Masel and his
Yippie compatriots for his steady service to the military-industrial complex.

In later years, the exuberant agitator would express a measure of
remorse for some of the more extreme acts of his youth. But he never
apologized for exercising every right afforded a citizen.

No one pushed harder against the limits on dissent in what was
supposed to be a free society. That pushing earned him dozens of
court dates. But Bennett Masel, the New Jersey native who came to
Madison as a UW undergrad and remained to become a local icon, was
never merely a provocateur. He was, for all the theatrics, a serious
believer in a left-libertarian analysis of the individual liberty
that lawyers and judges came to understand as a credible extension of
the thinking of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, the
longest-serving justice on the high court and a hero to 1970s
radicals such as Masel.

Douglas was once referred to by Time magazine as "the most
doctrinaire and committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the
court." And it is fair to say that Masel was the most doctrinaire and
committed civil libertarian to appear before the municipal, state and
federal courts that had to pass judgement on whether his arrests for
protesting outside political party conventions, capitols and grocery
stores were legal or not. Ultimately, the judges came to accept the
arguments Masel honed over time - to such an extent that attorney
Jeff Scott Olson, who represented the activist across the better part
of two decades, said his client rarely lost a freedom of speech or
right to assemble case.

Like attorney and activist Edward Ben Elson, another radical
left-libertarian who used Madison as a base but made national waves,
Masel eventually took the art of political provocation to the next
logical level. In the 1970s, Elson made frequent runs for public
office with an eye toward exposing the hypocrisy of mainstream
politicians of both parties - and toward building opposition to what
Elson referred to as "bad laws." When he ran for district attorney in
1970, Elson's slogans were "Only obey good laws" and "Elson as DA
will protect you from your government."

Masel took inspiration from Elson - they both campaigned in the nude
- - but where Elson had many causes, Masel began with a singular focus:
ending the war on drugs. As a Republican primary challenger to Gov.
Tommy Thompson in 1990, Masel said he was running to "get out
information on the industrial and agricultural potential of the hemp
plant." That campaign earned Masel a little more than 5 percent of
the vote and a burgeoning reputation among journalists as "good copy."

The dean of Wisconsin political reporters in the 1990s, The Capital
Times' John Patrick Hunter, wrote that "Bennett Masel is a
hell-raising rabble-rouser who has the uncanny ability to get the
Establishment's goat."

Masel would prove Hunter right, again and again.

By 1994, Masel was perfecting his politicking. After a surprisingly
successful 1992 write-in run for Dane County sheriff - he got more
than 7,000 votes - Masel grabbed the open Democratic Party ballot
line for the post held by popular Republican Sheriff Rick Raemisch.
Promising to serve as a "sheriff with a heart" who would "fight real
crime: end the drug war," the leading advocate on behalf of the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws earned the
endorsement of then-state Rep. Tammy Baldwin. He received more than
39,000 votes - carrying many Madison wards and drawing just enough
supporters of marijuana legalization to the polls to provide
Democratic state Sen. Joe Wineke of Verona a 60-vote margin of
victory over Republican challenger Nancy Mistele.

A dozen years later, when Masel challenged U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl in the
Democratic primary, Wineke was the chairman of the state Democratic
Party and he afforded the "Hemp for Victory" candidate a prime
speaking slot at the state party convention.

Masel's 2006 campaign was smart and serious; he said things
candidates for the Senate should, like: "My first official act after
being sworn in will be an amendment to the War Powers Act, so that
any future wars will be only by explicit, old-fashioned congressional
declaration of war. You can't win 'wars' against abstractions,
because abstractions are incapable of surrender." But he was still
Ben Masel, announcing: "I'm pro-choice on everything."

More than 50,000 Wisconsinites agreed with Ben Masel, giving him
almost 15 percent of the vote against a popular and well-financed
incumbent. Masel kept on campaigning against Kohl, announcing that he
planned to run again in 2012. But for Masel, electoral politics was
not about winning; it was about educating and organizing for the
saner drug laws that even some Republicans now promote, for civil
liberties and for political accountability.

So, even as he struggled with cancer, Ben Masel could be found at the
State Capitol holding aloft a sign that read: "This is a test of the
Emergency Free Speech System." The old Yippie delighted in the humor,
the energy and the consistency of the mass protests of February and
March. They gave him hope that, finally, citizens were starting to
use all of their rights - as he always did.