HEMPFEST

The 12th annual Seattle Hempfest came and went this past weekend at Myrtle
Edwards Park, with approximately 200,000 people attending the
marijuana-policy-reform-rally-cum-smoke-out. Local media focused on the
immediate politics: Seattle Initiative 75 would officially decree weed as
the cops' lowest priority, and here was an opportunity to interview lots of
people who would like to see that legal relaxation and more. But there's
another story to be told: weed as mainstream and an oddly unifying force.
There was a polyglot of ethnicities in attendance--African Americans,
whites, Asian Americans, Latinos, etc., hanging out with one another in
ways they rarely do in the Northwest, and suburban youth, with their
Abercrombie & Fitch-inspired bodies, swarmed the event.

It also was the best example we've seen anywhere of activist-police
cooperation. Seattle cops largely stayed out, permitting Hempfest
organizers to police the event themselves. There were no arrests, not even
a hint of a fight.

And unlike, say, the Bite of Seattle, which is run by a for-profit company,
Hempfest runs as smoothly as a pacemaker and on a comparatively small
budget, the result of near-fanatical devotion by the 80 core members of
Hempfest, who work on the event year-round, and the thousand others who
work the event itself--none of whom receives a penny for their labor.

Seattle media gave the festival obligatory coverage and treated it as an
annual oddity instead of the diverse and strongly supported gathering that
Hempfest has become. Might be time for some reporters and editors in town
to inhale.