POT HEADS GATHER FOR POLITICAL RALLY

The Freedom Rally, held annually on the Boston Common green is
definitely a festival conceived, organized and run by potheads. At 1
p.m. Saturday, an hour into the festival, there were a few scattered
group of confused white teenagers in front of a stage watching a group
of middle-aged, half-enthusiastic musicians perform. The band, Herbal
Nation, played slow tempo funk-soul. During the last chorus of their
final song, their front-woman, T-Buck, repeated the line "We love the
earth" for three minutes straight while the balding drummer jammed on
his miniscule electronic drum set. They received sparse bits of
applause while they left the stage and the singer, happily exclaimed,
"Smoke more pot, we love you."

The festival is meant to rally supporters of marijuana, to get them
involved in voting toward the reform of laws against marijuana, and to
attract media attention in order for the public to take the issues
discussed during the rally seriously. Despite its slow start, which
may have been due to the overcast weather, pot users and supporters
eventually arrived in large numbers. Kristopher T. Krane, the
associate director of National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws [NORML], speculated the number of people who would at
least travel through the festival would reach 30,000 to 40,000.

Around 3 p.m. things started picking up and the booths set up by
various sponsors, such as High Times, Grammas For Ganja and Salvia
Zone began attracting crowds. The businesses and organizations were
able to gain supporters, and express their views on the many issues
focused on during the speeches. It is this down to earth approach that
allows the kingpins of the pro pot community to try to create the
changes they support, which is the overall goal of the festival. Steve
Bloom, the editor of High Times magazine, said that it is the key to
the progression of legalizing medicinal marijuana. He hopes that
festivals like this one in Boston lead to complete legalization of
marijuana use.

"You have to have active groups, active leaders, quick response," he
said. He also said groups such as NORML have to "keep a constant flow
of information about the war against pot so we know what we're up against."

The beginning of the festival saw an abundance of young men and women
in Bob Marley shirts playing with hackey sacks. They ignored the
speakers and peered though bloodshot eye looking for a place to smoke.
But with the variety of subjects touched on and the fast-paced
changing of acts on stage, the initial novelty of a pot festival
bloomed into a haven of knowledge. The burnt old men who were angry
that the promotional plastic mock marijuana leaves on their necklace
didn't get them high were overshadowed by the fact that there was
eventually a perceptive, open crowd absorbing most of the speaker's
thoughts and feelings on marijuana.