...in Long Beach, CA. (For those of you who don't know what DPA is, that's the Drug Policy Alliance, the preeminent U.S. organization involved in efforts to end the so-called "War on Drugs". DPA's site is at
http://www.drugpolicy.org and the conference details can be found by drilling down. (I tried to do an html link but it wouldn't post, sorry!)
More under the fold:
...perhaps too jet lagged to be entirely coherent, but just got back from the DPA convention in Long Beach, CA, and want to say that it was an excellent program with tons of workshops (perhaps a bit overkill, three full days of morning and afternoon sessions).
What was really notable about the conference was something that the conference organizers obviously wanted to highlight and acknowledge: the success of a few particular orgs recently in getting the message out and becoming significant actors in the policy debate. Each of these organizations -- LEAP, SSDP and MAPINC.ORG -- and some other up and coming orgs like the Denver SAFER folks and the Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative, all share some things in common.
They are all grass-roots political organizing efforts which are largely staffed by volunteers, and try to reach a focused audience of opinion makers on particular issues or audiences. LEAP sends out retired cops and narcs like Pete Christ to spread the message at numerous whitebread Rotary club luncheons that prohibition is a disaster. Coming from a cop, and certainly from a retired-cop, now stump speaker and raconteur like Pete who is the frontman for the organization, the message has a resonance that would take a lot of Noam Chomskys or William F. Buckleys to create with the public, because this is coming from "the other side", from the guys who came in from the cold, so to speak, after retirement.
There were LEAP cops in profusion, including Howard Wooldrich, sans his horse Misty, and they had a "speakers bureau/LEAP Board "Meet and Greet" after the sessions Thursday evening with some subs and soda, at which a number of former officers came forward to quite movingly testify about why they were involved in LEAP, many in the mold of former sinners who had seen the light and were making a public repentance for what they had seen and done, speaking from a great sense of personal knowledge and conviction.
Ditto for the SSDP "kids", some of whom aren't kids anymore ;-) like Tom Angell, who have had some success in getting reform of the Higher Education Act on the national political radar screen and the MAPINC.ORG people, who in addition to their success at creating the preeminent web archive on drug war press and fomenting anti-WOD letters to the editors of those papers -- , also serve a largely unseen role in providing the computer infrastructure for may of these grassroots orgs and anti-WOD websites, including LEAP, SSPD, NORML, Cannabisnews and a number of state drug policy forums in FL, TX and MI in particular, for members to communicate with each other and the world, including listservs, websites, a live talk chat, and a "leaders only" coordination list, ARO. Although some of these orgs have modest (i.e. wealthy but not Soros scale wealthy) benefactors like Robert Field and access to seasoned mentors like Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, in the case of SSDP, but by and large, the orgs are largely fueled by volunteers and relatively low-paid organizers many of whom live in quite simple circumstances.
Of course, while there were some outstanding sessions, just to mention one, Ira Glaser, who retired as head of the ACLU three years ago, explained how the drug laws are intended to be modern Jim Crow laws to "take back" the then recent gains of the civil rights movement in ending segregation, as implemented by Nixon's southern strategy passing the Controlled Substances Act scheduling of marijuana and Reagan's war on crack.
But like most of these conferences, the most fun was during breaks and after hour parties where you could get to hang with many ppl who were involved in these efforts and chat with some very interesting people from across the US, Canada, Bolivia, Holland and Italy who are big movers and shakers in what is becoming a much bigger movement which is spreading its roots far beyond the organizing efforts of the "grasstops" leaders (new word I heard a lot there) like Ethan Nadelmann of DPA, whose resume is quite intimidating, but who is a very friendly man as I found to my relief when he came over as I was chatting to a DPA staff person.
So, I'm jet lagged but glad I went, but it was a very energizing and affirming conference! Hopefully, the next one in two years' time will be even better attended, as these biennial conferences tend to slowly grow even after event. I do think we're on the right side of the wave here.
J