Free Marc Emery

Sunday, February 12: The cruelties just pile up here at D. Ray James. Jodie just visited me and there’s a new rule: NO Holding Hands! Wow! After being able to hold hands during the entire visits at Sea-Tac FDC in Seattle, and during Jodie’s first five visits to DRJ, we could hold hands the entire visit. This new rule is very distressing and disappointing.

But even worse, at 11:45am, with Jodie’s visit just under 3 hours of the 6 available hours, our visit and several others were terminated because the visitation room was over-crowded. There are 1,600 inmates here, with 1,000 more inmates to come, yet there are only tables for 27 inmates and their visitors! Other Federal prisons have visitation on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and Federal holidays, but here it is only Saturday and Sunday and Federal Holidays. [Note from Jodie Emery: As of March 3, visits are now allowed on Thursdays and Fridays. More news to come in future blogs.]

Most visitors of inmates here come several hundred to several thousand miles in order to see their loves one. Jodie has to come over 3,000 miles to get here. Now she can’t even hold my hands! This is also crushing for all the inmates who now have to sit up to 6 hours without any contact in these “contact visits”. The children will think there is something wrong or distant with their parents if they are unable to hold hands. This new rule of deprivation has no explanation because DRJ is one of the few prisons free of cell phones or illegal drugs, yet for the first 4 months, inmates have been holding their loved one’s hands on visitation day. [Note from Jodie: The explanation given later was that a couple was seen getting too close, so the warden instated the new rule to prevent any couples from touching at all. Inmates and family members are still requesting the rule be rescinded.]

Minimums and low security facilities for Americans have outdoor visitation areas, and even the warden’s instructions for visitation in the DRJ Policy & Procedure book indicate there is an outdoor visitation area expected here. Those inmates with just one visitor could double up with another at a shared table to alleviate overcrowding, certainly better than terminating their visit, you’d think.

Jodie also had to wait in the waiting area for 3 hours because her ride back to Jacksonville wasn’t returning to DRJ until 3:30pm, when visits end. Her cell phone, purse, and money couldn’t be brought into the building because DRJ doesn’t have any functioning lockers for visitors to put their property in. They are expected to leave it in the car they came in. This makes it impossible to come by taxi or be dropped off: where are you going to put your purse or cell phone? [Note from Jodie: The next visiting weekend, lockers were installed for visitors.]

Jodie left here very sad and distraught, crying for the 15 minutes prior to being taken away. I know right now, as I write this, she is fuming in the waiting area, no book or anything to read, and nothing to keep her occupied while killing three hours. It was a very sad Saturday on my birthday/Valentine’s Day weekend. No holding hands, just and omnipresent dread and repression during what is supposed to be the highlight of life here at D. Ray James.

Tomorrow is Sunday. Jodie will be visiting again, fortunately. I just hope she doesn’t say anything inflammatory and provocative to the staff for three hours. I’m unsure how to go about trying to rescind this new, inexplicable policy of no contact during a ‘contact’ visit, but I’ve thought of having affected families and spouses of inmates call the regional office of GEO Group, or even the warden here. I’ve put in a cop-out (complain form) to the warden regarding the no-contact policy, as well as one for the way too tiny visitation currently at one time; a federal prison of this size should have space to accommodate 3% to 10% of the total inmate population. That would mean 48 to 160 spaces for inmates and their guests/families.

I was reinstated officially to work in the law library. Dr. Davis’ first remarks to me were, “Did you have a subscription of National Geographic sent here under my name? Because one has started arriving and I just put it right in the garbage. Also, Mr. Emery, you can only work in the law library Monday to Friday, during the morning and afternoon. You cannot work in the law library in the evenings or weekends. And you can NOT do any legal work for inmates in your unit.”

I said I would come to the library in the evenings and work on my own projects. I said nothing about the remark about not helping inmates while in my unit, and you already know what I think of throwing out a magazine of impeccable quality like National Geographic.

Thursday, February 17th, 9:30pm:

Today I was eating the canned green beans at lunch when my left rear molar made a jarring ‘crunch’. I had chomped down on a rock, or stone – bigger than a pebble, anyway. The vibration of noise inside my mouth was a thunderclap and I thought I’d broken a tooth. I was eating carefully because inmates in the ‘chow hall’ had warned me that there was grit in the green beans, and 7 or 8 stones had been discovered, the hard way, while eating the green beans. The stone was the size of one of my molars. It’s not the first time either stones have been in the canned vegetables, although it’s a first for me. Yet another reason to be wary of the food here!

Friday, February 18th:

Despite my complaining, I am always looking for good news to report. I would love to have the problems at D. Ray James rectified. In fact, so would many of the C.O.’s that work here. They say it is more difficult a job when inmates are surly. It is 80+ degrees Fahrenheit (27+ degrees Celsius) in the hot blazing sun today, and air conditioning in “L” building broke down last night. It is going to be 9 months more of consistently hot and humid sun-burning days, and the staff and inmates are affected equally. So an aggravated inmate population does no one any good.

One of those frustrations for the law library staff was the difficulty in having an inmate named Thanongsack Phuangkeo get married to his fiancé Christine at the prison. He started his first request November 23rd, 2010 and after many delays, refusals, and confusions over responsibility for the procedure, Warden Booker put his approval in writing to Nang (as he is called) today! (See attachment A.) So once the Justice of the Peace is arranged, the first wedding at D. Ray James should happen in March sometime in the visitation room, so possibly Jodie and I will be witnesses.

By the way, if anyone is wondering, this marriage cannot save Nang from his ‘deportable alien’ status, but Laos does not have a repatriation agreement with the US, so it’s not immediately clear to me what happens to Nang after his sentence is up. Cuban, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, and some other nationals do not get deported to those countries because of a lack of diplomatic protocols relating to deportation and repatriation.

Perhaps the best news I’ve received so far in jail was a YouGov poll in the February 12th edition of The Economist showing a MAJORITY of Americans in every age group and both Democratic and Republican voters want LEGALIZATION, taxation, and regulation of marijuana. So it is now a matter of WHEN, not IF – sooner rather than later. We have reached the point of obvious inevitability. So 2012 must be the year every US state with an initiative and referendum process gets a legalization/repeal of cannabis prohibition question on their state’s ballot.

Here’s what I said in my interview in High Times, due on newsstands in the coming months, to the question: “What is the most important thing for the cannabis community to concentrate on at this point?”

My answer is: “Legalization initiatives must be implemented in every US state where it can be done for the November 2012 vote. Not just California and Colorado and Washington, but Alaska, South Dakota, Oregon, Washington D.C., and ALL of the other states with an initiative and referendum process (check your US State here: http://www.iandrinstitute.org/statewide_i%26r.htm ). Eight or ten or 12 states with cannabis legalization on the ballot will create the synergy required to begin the last phase of our liberation: the repeal of cannabis prohibition in the House of Representatives, in the Senate and with the President.

“To begin your state initiative process to repeal your state laws on prohibiting personal possession and cultivation, you can join an existing campaign to gather signatures to put the legalization of cannabis on your state ballot, or organize the campaign yourself with others you recruit on Facebook, Twitter, and at rallies and community meetings. Don’t wait for the big donors or MPP or NORML to organize these initiatives. Individuals, right now, in mid-2011, should investigate the initiative process in their state, start a Facebook group, recruit and begin collecting email addresses of signature gathering volunteers. Take the language used by the Washington State activists at Sensible Washington that was used in their failed 2010 try, or their 2011 attempt, and then adapt it to your state.

“Contact me for advice! Just because I’m in prison is no reason not to pick my brain and experience. I have over 50,000 friends on our Facebook pages, the vast majority being Americans. I will direct those from your state to join you. I am available all day, every day, even behind bars to help, guide, inspire, mentor, assist, and advise on your initiative campaign. YOU CAN MAKE MARIJUANA HISTORY STARTING TODAY! You can make marijuana legal in your state by November 2012. Where your state has no initiative process, you CAN donate to, and go to, a state that does have it, and gather signatures with them. Every American must do their duty and their part in this historical final push. We have the numbers, we have the righteous cause, and we are – I speak of my fellow Americans – able to do this. You CAN make history! Never underestimate your power as an individual to change the world! I never did, and I did change the world in many ways that carry on today!

“The other important goal for Americans is to help Congressman Ron Paul get the Republican nomination for President 2012. Ron Paul is the cannabis culture’s greatest friend and ally in Congress and he has consistently spoken out against the drug war and cannabis prohibition. He has voted against the budget for the Drug Czar’s office, the budget for the DEA, every single time. Ron Paul has co-sponsored bills to legalize possession of marijuana, industrial hemp, truth in trials (so med users can testify about it in Federal Court), and many other repeal or reform bills regarding prisons, drug prohibition, policing and the unconstitutionality of federal drug control. He is a brilliant and wise man who, to me, is America’s greatest hero. Former New Mexico Governor, Gary Johnson, is a great man who is also seeking the Republican nomination. My ideal ticket for the 2012 election is Ron Paul for President with Gary Johnson as his Vice-President nominee.”

I submitted 16 typewritten pages of answers to 16 questions High Times editor Malcolm put to me. The most HT can print in their magazine is 4 or 5 pages, so I am hoping they put the entire interview online at HighTimes.com, which will be seen by many in addition to High Times’ substantial print circulation. I’d like to be on the cover of High Times; knowing that a great bud is always required on a cover that sells the magazine, a photo of Jodie and I in a massive cannabis hemp field, taken in the Prince Albert area of Saskatchewan in 2009 on the Farewell Tour, would be ideal, I think. Tell High Times you think so too.

Jodie was able to have a phone conversation with the regional director of GEO Group, a supervisor of this D. Ray James facility, in fact, on Friday, February 18th. This is hopeful in itself, that GEO Group is willing to listen. Jodie had left a message at the GEO regional headquarters, and got a call back the next day. She spoke to him about the recent decision to ban hand-holding during visitation and the overcrowding issue at the visitation area, and the GEO Group Regional Representative listened and took notes, so that is encouraging. He is apparently coming to D. Ray James in the next week ahead, Tuesday, February 22nd – Friday, February 25th. He will be discussing the matter of visitation protocols with the warden.

Jodie encouraged viewers on her popular “The Jodie Emery Show” on www.YouTube.com/PotTVNetwork and www.YouTube.com/JodieEmery to call the D. Ray James Correctional Facility at 912-496-6242 to POLITELY voice your concerns about the new policy of no hand-holding during inmate visits. I too have encouraged inmates here to have their family call GEO Group or the warden at DRJCF to express, POLITELY, the rehabilitative effect of contact visits WITH CONTACT that are obviously acceptable at all other GEO Group Federal facilities. You can see that particular segment of the “The Jodie Emery Show: February 17”, as well as the follow-up show where she discusses her conversation with the GEO Group Regional representative. Jodie always knows the right approach to take. She is so wonderful a spokesperson. I learn a great deal from her patient style of communication. We make a great team together, and I can’t wait to be home!

Marc Scott Emery #40252-086 – Unit Q Pod 2
D. Ray James Correctional Facility
PO Box 2000
Folkston, GA
31537
USA

HELP GET MARC HOME! Write a letter to the US and Canadian government telling them to approve his transfer application, which they both have – addresses and an example letter are posted under "How You Can Help" at www.FreeMarc.ca

Tweet

I remember Irwin Cotler, Canada’s Justice Minister in the twilight of Paul Martin’s Liberal government, commenting that Canadians had developed a culture of tolerance for marijuana use in the nation. This was on the heels of the Senate Committee urging marijuana legalization, my 2003 Summer of Legalization Tour across all ten provinces of Canada, and our 6-3 Supreme Court loss attempting to find Canada’s marijuana prohibition laws unconstitutional. In mid-2004 Cotler coolly and confidently asserted that his government would have “to change these perceptions.”

Cotler wasn’t concerned that polls even 7 years ago were showing a majority of voters supported legalizing marijuana, and that as a democracy, his government should reflect our will (and the corresponding justice in this new paradigm). He asserted that Canadians were wrong in this new view, and that the government would change the minds of the people who elected them to represent that changed new majority view.

Irwin Cotler was confident because modern governments have total faith in propaganda. Such is their instinctive reaction whenever the public starts to think for itself.

Cotler then carefully calculated on television newscasts that it would take two years to switch the Canuck consciousness back to the dark ages of prohibition. So sure was he of success that his prediction was announced publicly in mainstream media. We’re going to brainwash you. There’s nothing you can do about it.

But has this really happened? While politicians at every level of government in Canada behave as if they have changed public opinion, the polls, YouTube, Facebook, television, radio, movies and contemporary books all show that they have not. In fact, polls show the legalization numbers are rising throughout the United States and Canada. They have been rising since I began my lifetime campaign to legalize marijuana in 1990. The numbers have never reversed direction. Every year the momentum to legalize gets greater, with majorities in every western US state, British Columbia, Quebec, and Ontario. All the other provinces and states have the support of no less than 40% of their voters in support of legalizing marijuana; double the numbers from the year I started my crusade in 1990.

What’s going on? Is this all some sort of political joke?

Many times have I met Michael Ignatieff, the current Liberal leader, and heard him speak. Every appearance I have seen him, he is asked, earnestly, about whether a Liberal government will legalize marijuana. Each and every time Ignatieff laughed off the legalization question, as he did again a few weeks ago, by saying we shouldn’t be talking about it so much. Ignatieff wonders why people are always asking about marijuana. There are so many more important things in life, he says. Like “digging ditches,” as he suggested once in Newfoundland.

Indeed, when it comes to “drug use”, Ignatieff declares, “I just don’t get it.” He adds everyone should be out getting a university education, starting a family and building a community. These are fine things for those so inclined, but to say you can’t do them and be a part of the cannabis culture is a lie. To say you can’t smoke marijuana because it will stop somebody else from pursuing these goal is intellectually insulting.

To say that cannabis and the people who consume it are anti-education, anti-family, and anti-community is really hate propaganda. This is exactly what Ignatieff and his ilk are saying. Can you think of any group the Canadian public ought to hate more than a group that threatens to destroy the Canadian family and the Canadian community? That’s how the government usually labels terrorists – or the cannabis culture – interchangeably.

The fact that Ignatieff and a great many politicians (including President Obama in his 2010 public response to the most requested YouTube question, which was about cannabis legalization) do this in a jocular manner is extra creepy. That’s because joking about maintaining marijuana prohibition in spite of the majority will doesn’t sound like hate. It’s a very interesting technique that seems to be exclusive to marijuana prohibition propaganda. At first, Ignatieff and his audience laugh at the question. “I expected this would come up…” begins a merry Ignatieff, warming up the room. Knowing chuckles come from the audience. A bond has been formed. We’re all hip and cool. We’re all in on the marijuana joke.

If you were talking about a crime that actually warranted the repressive laws of prohibition, it wouldn’t be something you’d be laughing about. Politicians don’t joke about arson, rape, murder, robbery, embezzlement. These are truly serious crimes. If a crime is serious enough to have police regularly smash into homes and hold taxpayers at gunpoint, put them in jail, take their kids, take their homes, well, that would not be a laughing matter. Declaring a culture war at the highest levels of government, empowering police and even ‘safety inspectors’ to invade the homes of Canadians over a plant that is federally recognized as medicine, well, that is not a laughing matter. These are the most serious things a government can do to its citizens in a society. These are things that Ignatieff normally would not be laughing about.

Politicians never mention shooting people, pointing guns at the heads of taxpayers and their children, or shooting dogs dead in their homes. They are never asked about it or any of the other horrific abuses of these bad laws. The people asking the questions, both the voters and the media, never mention the specific abuses and repressive laws within the legalization question.

This schizophrenic combination of laughter and repression is very bizarre. Sending a “culture” to jail while laughing about it is not the sign of a reasonable mind. Name another issue responsible for such barbaric laws that is discussed as a joke by politicians and leaders. There is none.

As to the matter of sending a culture to jail while using that culture’s music to get you elected so you can send them to jail, that is altogether Mephistophelean. Prime Minister Harper singing ‘I Get High (with a little help from my friends)’ and ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash,’ two songs created under the inspiration of huge amounts of marijuana, while Mr. Harper seeks to deliver a final solution (Bill S-10) to the ‘permissive drug culture’ that created such music, is, well, satanic. Mr. Harper co-opted the entirely wrong Rolling Stones song; he should have been singing, “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and fame…”

Ignatieff is saying marijuana and the people who use it threaten to destroy the social fabric of Canada. Any other opinions are not tolerated because “I just don’t get it.”

That the existing government leader, Mr. Harper, has declared war against my people and our cannabis culture, with the flaccid acquiescence of Mr. Ignatieff, demonstrates how perfidious their musical hypocrisy and perverted sense of humor really is.

Mr. Harper holds my fate in his “hands.” He delivered me unto the fate of D. Ray James Correctional Facility, and he can approve my transfer back to Canada. Failing any inherent political compassion to return me to Canada, I believe Canadian citizens will pressure the government in Ottawa to act in a civilized manner, though this is a rarely realized action from the government of Ottawa. At the least, I hope the Angus Reid polls showing a clear majority of Canadians want me returned holds sway, if compassion itself is unmoving.

Some Canada’s churches have recently come out against mandatory minimum jail sentences for cannabis offences. US evangelist Pat Robertson has said that marijuana should be legalized on his 700 Club television religious program. Given the nature of the Conservative base, this is an important development. Given the fact that marijuana prohibition is essentially a religion and is falsely sold as such, this is an exceptionally important moment in politics. Even conservative guru, University of Calgary professor Tom Flanagan, wants the Conservative government to embrace an end to prohibition.

Canada is now sending heavily armed police smashing into a private home and holding a person at gunpoint, all because a skunk was found living under his porch – true story. It is now standard operating procedure in Canada for police to legally smash into private homes and terrorize taxpayers at gunpoint, all because of the smell of a skunk. No apologies are offered; no thuggery is too extreme.

‘American War Machine’ by Peter Dale Scott, a new and superb analysis of the insidiousness of the global drug war, documents the real reason all this is going on in Canada, the USA, Mexico, Colombia, everywhere on Earth. It is impossible to paint a more damning picture of prohibition and the gangster governments it has created. If you want to fully understand why marijuana prohibition is a globally enforced policy, read this book.

My preferred book examining the truly evil genocidal nature of the worldwide prohibition has always been Richard Lawrence Miller’s book ‘Drug Warriors & Their Prey.’ It’s still one of the all time greatest books ever written. But when it comes to understanding how drug prohibition has created global politics and wars for the past 60 years and counting, ‘American War Machine’ is the book. Think of it as Prohibition Meets Dr. Strangelove.

Author Scott is not hopeful this corruption will end anytime soon. The current political climate, he explains, is restricted to those who have the “domination” mentality. Prohibition funds their wars. As long as we have prohibition, we will have endless war. These two parasites have formed a corrupt partnership that now feeds off the world community.

How does authority rationalize, both for its goon squads and for itself, this abuse and corruption? How does it ignite that internal sadism without calling it sadism? How do you get people so wired up that they will smash into taxpayers’ homes and perform all the other global depravities that are the exclusive demented domain of prohibition?

Here’s how, as recounted by the Grand Inquisitor in ‘Brothers Karamazov.’ Dostoevski’s story opens with Christ returning to Earth during the Spanish Inquisition. Heretics are being burned alive as an “act of faith”. The Grand Inquisitor sees Christ raise a child from the dead and knows He’s the real thing. The Inquisitor has Christ arrested and visits Him in jail.

It is here the Inquisitor lectures Christ on the craft of public relations. In Dostoevski’s story, Christ is not to be taken only as a religious figure. He is used as a literary device to represent truth in any form. The Inquisitor is used to represent the suppression of truth by any self-rationalizing and corrupt authority – think Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff, or even my Inquisitor, former DEA Administrator Karen Tandy.

As not-so-grand Inquisitor Karen Tandy stated in writing upon my arrest on July 29, 2005, I was jailed for truth. The more I spoke, the more convinced Canadians and Americans became of the truth. Over those years leading up to my arrest, as I toured, spoke, published, broadcast, and ran for elected office, the more the citizens came to see cannabis prohibition as the evil it is. Tandy did not hide this. Like the Grand Inquisitor, she proudly laid it right on the line. I am in jail, as she put it, because I am a propagandist with my “propagandist magazine Cannabis Culture,” giving away “hundreds of thousands of dollars to legalization lobbyists” (i.e. truth tellers) “active in the United States and Canada.”

I am in jail precisely because I expressed an idea, specifically the idea of freedom of thought, the idea of truth. This is precisely what the Grand Inquisitor tells Jesus Christ: “What are we going to do with truth? Humanity is just too shallow, stupid, and scared to ever be able to handle the burden of the truth, which is the burden of free thought, of being able to think for yourself. Freedom,” claims the Inquisitor, “is simply too heavy a responsibility for people. It is easier and more natural for them to obey.”

“And if it is a mystery, we too have a right to preach a mystery, and to teach them that it’s not the free judgment of their hearts, not love, that matters, but a mystery which they must follow blindly, even against their own conscience. So we have done. We have corrected Thy work and have founded it upon a miracle, mystery and authority. And men rejoiced again that they were led like sheep, and that the terrible gift (freedom) that had brought them such suffering was, at last, lifted from their hearts,” explained the Grand Inquisitor to Christ.

Therefore, pontificates the Inquisitor, people like himself take on that responsibility by deceiving the masses for their own good. We give them a reason to live. We tell them how to live. We give them false hopes and phony beliefs. We make up lies so they don’t have to think for themselves. And Inquisitors can use all and any manner of torture and depravity to accomplish this end.

In the book ‘The Grand Inquisitor’s Manual’ by Jonathan Kirsch, his preface explains the atrocities that were committed by authorities over several centuries with impunity:

“Above all, the Inquisition relied on what it regarded as the extraordinary nature of the CRIME of HERESY to justify every excess and atrocity. These heretics were accused of being ‘thieves and murders of souls,’ and the war on heresy justified the deployment of every weapon in the inquisitional arsenal. To accuse someone of heresy and then allow him or her to go unpunished was simply unacceptable, a threat to the power of the Church. After all, the acquittal of even a single accused heretic would surely bleed away some of the dread and terror that was regarded as crucial in deterring others from false belief.

“Far worse, as the Church saw it, was the spectacle of a true believer of a forbidden faith who was perfectly willing to suffer bravely and die heroically for that faith. This was the real reason that the inquisition sought to avoid making martyrs of the accused heretics by torturing them into abject confession… Torture was not only tolerated but actively encouraged because the Church regarded the war on heresy as an existential struggle with Satan and his minions on Earth; the victims of torture nothing more than ‘traitors to God’ in the eyes of the persecutors. To the horror and sorrow of countless generations to come, the Inquisition demonstrated that the demonization of one’s adversaries makes it legally and morally acceptable to torture and kill them.”

“If only you had given them a miracle at the end,” the Inquisitor tells Christ, “you would have won them over. Easy. All you had to do was come off the cross.”

“But you did not do that,” the Inquisitor criticizes a silent Jesus. “You expected too much of these worthless souls. As a result, we have altered your work. And now they believe us. They will do anything we say. The very people you have tried to save will now destroy you on my command.” To prove this, the Inquisitor says he will order the mob to burn Christ at the stake.

Christ never says a word. His only response is to kiss the Inquisitor. Shaken, the Inquisitor opens the jail door and tells Christ to leave and never come back. (“The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.”)

Even the cynical and hardened Inquisitor had some momentary compassion left in him.

I can only hope.

– Marc Emery
February 12th, 2011

Write to Marc in prison!

Rules and guidelines for sending books and mail are at www.FreeMarc.ca

Marc Emery #40252-086 Unit Q Pod 2
PO Box 2000
D. Ray James C.I.
Folkston, GA
31537
USA

Tweet

Tweet