WHERE THE MOVEMENT BEGAN

How, 40 Years Ago, Sinclair and Company Laid the Groundwork for Today

I'd like to offer my most profound thanks to Amy Cantu and her people
at the Ann Arbor District Library for their heroic efforts in
dredging up the past and making it live again in the digital age at
their new website called freeingjohnsinclair.org, which further
includes every page of the underground newspaper known as the Ann
Arbor and Detroit Sun in digital form.

The AADL also sponsored two days of events in Ann Arbor celebrating
the John Sinclair Freedom Rally of Dec. 10, 1971, including a free
concert at the Ark featuring Commander Cody and my own band with
special surprise guest Wayne Kramer of the MC-5 joining Jeff Grand on guitar.

The second day of the festivities included a library-sponsored panel
discussion centered on the Freedom Rally and the struggle to legalize
marijuana, and a reunion of the White Panther Party and its
successor, the Rainbow People's Party, reuniting a whole lot of
people who first carried the banner for marijuana legalization in
Michigan back in the 1960s and early '70s.

You probably already know that I just celebrated my 40th anniversary
of being released from Jackson Prison on Dec. 13, 1971, after serving
29 months of a 9-1/2- to 10-year sentence for possession of two
joints on Dec. 22, 1966.

Actually I'd been charged with giving the two joints to an undercover
policewoman from the Detroit Police Department who had disguised
herself as a human being to ask me a favor I couldn't refuse. It was
three days before Christmas and she wanted a joint to take home, so I
gave her two.

Giving away, or "dispensing," two joints of marijuana - then
classified by the state as a narcotic - carried the same penalty upon
conviction as selling a few hundred pounds of heroin: a minimum
mandatory 20 years in the penitentiary, with a possible maximum
sentence of life imprisonment.

From my arrest in Detroit on Jan. 24, 1967, to my release from
prison almost five years later, I carried on a fight against the
Michigan marijuana laws that ended in March 1972 when the Michigan
Supreme Court overturned my conviction and ruled that marijuana was
in fact not a narcotic and a sentence of 10 years for possession of
marijuana constituted cruel and unusual punishment - just as I had
argued in my appeal.

My struggle was aided, abetted and fully supported every step of the
way by that indispensable element of a successful legal battle: a
great team of dedicated attorneys, led by Sheldon Otis and Justin C.
Ravitz, that was motivated not by chance of profit but by intense
social conviction. This brilliant team of attorneys and legal workers
took up my case and advanced it exactly as I had intended from the beginning.

I wanted to overthrow the marijuana laws, get them declared
unconstitutional, put an end to the idiotic classification of
marijuana as a narcotic, get rid of the imbecilic and sadistic
sentencing structure, and - in the final analysis - legalize
marijuana. Most of all I wanted to get the police out of the lives of
marijuana smokers and indeed, all recreational drug users.

The last two objectives haven't yet been realized, although the
citizens' initiative to end marijuana prohibition in Michigan now
being readied for 2012 may, if successful, finally bring us to full
legalization, and that would certainly begin to remove the cops from
our lives as smokers.

The legalization of medical marijuana has gone a long way in that
direction, although Attorney General Schuette and his ilk are not at
all prepared to give up their stranglehold on the throats of the
smoking public, but I think it's clear that their days are now numbered.

In my case, I never intended to go to prison to prove that marijuana
was not a narcotic and that 10 years for two joints was cruel and
unusual punishment. I fully expected to post an appeal bond and
proceed with my life as an American while my appeal wound its way
through the courts to the point where the Michigan Supreme Court
would have to consider our arguments and ultimately rule in my favor.

But Judge Robert J. Columbo considered me an unrepentant offender -
not an inaccurate assessment - who deserved to be incarcerated
without bond, and he sent me straight to Jackson Prison to begin my
10-year sentence. Then I was shipped to Marquette in the Upper
Peninsula for a year under maximum security, returned to Jackson and
held in an isolation block until shortly before my release.

During the two-and-a-half years of my imprisonment, my lawyers, my
political associates, scores of bands and thousands of our supporters
rallied on my behalf in a series of countless benefits, protests,
press conferences, and other events designed to "Free John Now,"
culminating in the John Sinclair Freedom Rally at Crisler Arena in
Ann Arbor on Friday, Dec. 10, 1971.

But we also lobbied hard in the state Legislature during that period
for a change in the narcotics laws, and on Dec. 9 the lawmakers voted
to reclassify marijuana as a "controlled substance" and reduce the
penalties to one year for possession and four years for sales or
dispensing the evil weed. My appeal had been argued before the
Michigan Supreme Court in October 1971 and was pending decision, so
the judges decided that I could now be granted an appeal bond -
having already served 2-1/2 times the new maximum sentence for possession.

On Monday, Dec. 13, I walked out of the prison gates to resume my
life in Ann Arbor as chairman of the Rainbow People's Party and
creative director of the Rainbow Multi-Media Corporation, a nonprofit
artists' management and production company. Like I keep saying, that
was 40 years ago this month, and hopefully this will be the last we
hear about these events for at least another 10.

So many of the positive things that people accomplished back then has
been erased from the official record and kept from the awareness of
the people coming up, who are encouraged to believe that there's not
much one can do about the oppressive conditions one finds oneself
living under in the 21st century. Just now, that tide is starting to
turn as well, and the contemporary movement needs all the information
about past struggles that we can make available to them.

So thanks again to the Ann Arbor District Library for bringing it all
back home this month, and as you begin to take up the cudgel for
ending marijuana prohibition in 2012, take a droll stroll through the
electronic pages of the digital edition of the Ann Arbor Sun and
follow the progress of the legalization movement when it began, way
back in the day.

By the time you read this I intend (the gods of travel willing) to be
back in Amsterdam for the holidays and the beginning of the new year.
I'll be back in two weeks with a report from Viper Central on the
current efforts of the Dutch government to catch up with the leaders
of the international War on Drugs. Happy New Year's, everybody!

- -Detroit