Free Marc Emery

Let's Bring Marc Home!

The Jodie Emery Show – July 7, 2011

submitted by on July 10, 2011

Marc's early release date is July 9th 2014 — three years away! Jodie's just back from visiting Marc in Mississippi and has new photos from prison to share. July 23rd is Jodie and Marc's wedding anniversary and we look at pictures from that day. Cannabis Day in Vancouver on July 1st was a huge success with thousands attending our open market and festival. Jodie gets a new Free Marc skateboard! Go to http://www.EarthCrusher.com to get one!

Marc's release date is set for July 9th, 2014 — read more here: http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/2011/07/08/Marc-Emery-Begins-His-Th…

Write to Marc, he loves hearing from supporters!
MARC EMERY #40252-086
FCI YAZOO CITY MEDIUM E-1
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
P.O. BOX 5888
YAZOO CITY, MS
39194

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Marc’s first update from Yazoo City prison in Mississippi

submitted by on June 7, 2011

Yazoo City Medium-Security PrisonDearest Jodie: As of May 21st, I've been at Yazoo City medium security federal prison for 31 days and I'm fairly settled in, so I'll describe my daily routine and what it’s like here. There are three buildings that house 128 men in a unit, 4 units to a building, so 512 men to a building when filled to capacity.

I am in unit one in E building, or Echo Building. Unit 1 & 2 are on the lower ground level; to get to unit 3 & 4, you have to walk up a staircase on the outside of the building. The buildings from the outside, when I first saw them, looked like federal prison indeed: stark concrete buildings with thin slits of windows where each cell inside looks out.

This place is run by the Bureau of Prisons, the bureau under the aegis of the US Department of Justice. As a medium security prison, almost everyone here has had violence or a gun charge in their offense, previous offense, or previous prison record. There are exceptions, like me. My previous place of incarceration, D Ray James, in Folkston, Georgia, was contracted to the GEO Group, a publicly-traded prison business, by the Justice Department to house deportable aliens (foreigners, non-US citizens) exclusively. GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) run many state prisons, federal detention centers (pre-trial or holdover facilities) as well as all 20 or so federal prisons for deportable aliens. GEO Group and CCA run prisons for sentenced "low" security foreign inmates, whereas the Bureau of Prisons operates all medium, high and maximum security facilities, including ones where a deportable alien, eg., a Mexican or Canadian, might end up. I was going to say all Americans are housed in Bureau of Prison facilities once sentenced in federal court, and that is 98% true, but I have a correspondent in Bakersfield whose US citizen son is at Taft Correctional camp in Taft, California, where Tommy Chong served his 9-months for Chong bong shipping, and that prison is run by a private company (as is the adjacent Taft Low for deportable aliens).

There are 64 cells on two levels, and I share my 7' x 12' cell with a cellie, as your cellmate is called. My cellie now is Wally, a 21-year old from Pensacola, Florida. First I shared a cell with a guy called Bird, but Wally's cellie was released, and Wally is a fan and invited me to share his cell rather than him getting some random new cellie for the duration of his 15-month sentence. Wally was convicted of receiving cannabis through the mail for the purpose of reselling it. This is a warning that weed mailed across state lines is a federal offense and punished harshly! Because there was a gun in the same house Wally lived in (even though it was not even his gun), Wally was designated to a medium security federal prison, full of "lifers" and people serving 10, 15, 20, 25 years!

Wally is scheduled for release next March. I liked my previous cellie Bird, but Bird is being released in 36 days and so I moved in with Wally so we'd both have a cellie we could tolerate and get along with. Additionally, Wally's fiancé drives in from Pensacola to visit, and picks you up, my beloved Mrs. Emery, on the way at Jackson airport. It’s unfortunate that you don't drive in this case because it’s 50 miles to Yazoo City from Jackson airport, but also because there are no taxis in Yazoo City for you to get to the prison and back to your hotel. So it sure is good she picks you up on Friday and returns you to the airport on Sundays (or in the case of your 3-day visit on the Memorial Day weekend, on the Monday evening after you visit me), and comes to the prison with you when you two visit Wally and me. It’s great that she has a nice comfortable car and is a very safe driver, that makes me feel very good.

I prepared a schedule for you to visit me every two weeks with a few exceptions, a three-week gap in June, August, and October. You have the busiest summer imaginable, with speaking engagements or appearances at the Treating Yourself Expo in Toronto (June 3,4, and 5), Tacoma Hempfest (June 25), Cannabis Day at the Art Gallery in Vancouver (July 1), Seattle Hempfest (August 20 & 21), Portland Hempfest (September 10). For your visits to me on Memorial Day (May 30), July 4 (Independence Day) and Labor Day (Sept. 5), as per B.O.P. policy, we'll be able to have photographs taken of our visit in the visitation room.

Each cell here has a locker for each cellie, a small desk, a toilet and sink. It’s a small cell for two people, but it’s adequate. It’s certainly more private that the 64-man dorm I lived in at D Ray James, and the locker is better, and I can use the toilet with more privacy that at DRJ. I do have to say, however, that you can adapt to many things, and I had previously adapted to the dorm and the lack of privacy at DRJ. My cell here has a tiny window to look out into the yard, good for at least determining what kind of weather is outside.

The cell door unlocks at 6am each morning. During the week, I get up at 6:15am and dress in my clothes from the night before. If you have any legal mail to pick up, you have to cross the compound and go pick it up at 6:30. On Thursday morning, it’s my day of the week to take my dirty laundry, the bed linens, shirts, t-shirts, trousers to exchange for clean clothes at the laundry exchange; that’s around 6:30 am. Those inmates who work the laundry are very fast and they process 400 inmates a day from Monday to Thursday, you don't wait in line long. Hopefully, when you get your laundry, you still have time to get your morning meal, which is usually oatmeal (I called it porridge growing up with British parents), two pints of milk and a fruit, usually a grapefruit or orange (and a better quality orange than the scrawny ones at DRJ), but occasionally a good apple or banana. Morning meal is from 6:40am to 7:15, and you get called out based on the sanitation inspection that goes on for each unit, so that if your unit is the cleanest during inspection, you get released first for all meals for one week (until the verdict of the next inspection comes in), and if your unit scored the lowest, you get released last for your meals for one week. Being last or near the end means that you can miss a meal if you go to laundry exchange.

In this prison, inmates are only released for "a 10-minute move" at 7am, 8am, 9am, and the recall (all inmates report back to their unit for "count") at 10am. This movement is so inmates can go to the barbershop, the commissary (the inmate store), their job (every inmate is assigned a job which varies vastly in time required, pay, workload), the yard, medical, library, etc. Then lunch starts at 11:20 and goes to noon, with 10-minute movements at noon, 1pm, 2pm and recall at 3pm. We are locked into our cells (called "Lock Down") from 3:45 to 4:45pm when a daily routine called "Stand-up Count" is done of each inmate in their cells at 4pm, and you'd better be standing up when the C.O.s (correctional officers) come by! Evening meal is 5:20pm to 6pm, with 10-minute moves at 6pm, 7pm and recall to units at 8pm.

Each morning, there is a "Call-Out Sheet" in each unit. It is imperative each inmate look at the call-out sheet. If you have been assigned to any appointment (dental, medical, education, meeting with counselors, legal mail pick up, etc.) or have had your job assignment changed, the time and location of where you are expected to be is on the sheet. If you miss an appointment, you can be cited for an infraction. So every inmate checks the daily call-out sheet the night before or that morning.

Each inmate within 3 weeks of arrival gets assigned a job. When you are not reporting to your job, you are free to go to the yard, the barbershop, the commissary, etc. during the 10-minute move.

The most demanding job is to work in kitchen services. Kitchen services makes all the food for the inmates, 3 times daily, 7 days a week, for 1,500+ people. It requires a work force of 170 inmates working either a morning shift from 4:30am to 7:30am, 10am to noon, or an afternoon shift from noon to 2pm, 3:30 to 7pm over a 5-day period.

Jobs here at the prison can pay as little as $5 or $10 a month, light jobs that require only a few hours a day, like my clerking job for the Recreation area. I keep track of the inmates (currently 75) assigned to the afternoon and evening shifts in the Recreation Building and Yard. I note new additions and transfers, and keep track of their attendance for the purposes of their pay sheets. This includes the inmates who teach music, look after the instrument room, the practice studio, the leathercraft studio, the art studio, clean the washroom, maintain the pool tables & equipment, sweep the area, mow the massive lawn area in the rec yard (with push handmowers I haven't seen since I was a kid in the 1960's doing lawns at $1 each), maintain and store the basketballs, volleyballs, soccer balls, act as umpires or referees during baseball, soccer, football games outside, and basketball games in the gymnasium, cleaning of the gymnasium, picking up of litter and maintaining the trash containers.

More demanding jobs like in kitchen services will pay $40-$60 per month, or in "Facilities" where actual skilled work is required, like plumbing, sheetrock installation, construction, venting, ductwork, $80-$120 per month. There are medical orderlies (workers), commissary orderlies, barbers, laundry orderlies (this requires about 40 people), morning rec yard orderlies, afternoon rec yard orderlies, unit orderlies who clean and polish floors, clean and disinfect phone and computer terminals, clean the showers, take out the trash, maintain the compound area between the three housing buildings and the Chow Hall and other buildings that make up our entire world if you are an inmate.

The highest paying job is to work for Unicor, Federal Prison Industries, Inc. Many inmates want to work at the Unicor plant here and there is a waiting list. Unicor is the Bureau of Prison's industrial manufacturing that goes on in most B.O.P. prisons. It pays workers, depending on seniority and rate of production by each inmate, $66 per month at one month experience, to $100 per month after 4 months, then $133 per month after 7 months, and $166 per month after 10 months, up to $200 a month. After 85 months at Unicor, an inmate could earn $240 a month plus overtime of $2.80 an hour. For the machine operators who make the clothes, there is a minimum quota, and then any additional output is extra pay. Unicor is like a serious factory job, from 7:45 am to 11am, with 40 minutes for lunch and a bathroom break, and then resumes from 11:45 am to 3:30pm.

Unicor employs 350 people here. It is a huge concern! Here they make uniforms and vests for all branches of the US armed forces. A lot of uniforms! Most jobs are in sewing together these uniforms, but like any factory, there are inmate accountants, clerks, computer data inputters, but machine operators mostly. Attendance and performance here are required to keep these desirable jobs, as many inmates have no outside source of income and rely on their Unicor job to give them $75 – $200 a month to spend at the commissary or order a book or magazine subscription by mail. There is overtime pay at time and a half when the demand is there, so there is the possibility of more money to be earned beyond the 5-day a week 7:45am to 3:30pm basic hours. Unicor factories that make clothes are located in 24 federal prisons; factories that make electronics and plastics are located in 15 federal prisons; recycling plants are at 8 federal prisons; industrial products are made at 7 federal prisons; office furniture is made at 8 federal prisons; automotive and naval transportation industrials at 8 federal prisons; and services (like phone, telemarketing) at 16 federal prisons.

Yazoo City Prison Complex SignAfter I return from the chow hall for morning meal, I take a shower. There are 10 showers stalls, concealed properly by doors for privacy, with a good range of temperature from cool to hot, that require you to turn a dial. At D Ray James, there was no privacy, the temperature came out at one level, warm, and you had to press a button every 10 seconds to maintain water flow. This is much better. They sell the coal tar shampoo I need to keep my scalp from getting itchy and flaky, and a good razor and shave cream at the commissary, so the shower is very refreshing.

Then I change into clean clothes for the day. Socks, underwear and any personally owned items, like commissary-bought clothing (you can buy t-shirts, shorts, track pants, sweatshirt, thermal underclothes) and towels, are put in a mesh bag that has your name on it and you place it in a bin in your unit on Wednesday and Sunday, and it comes back the next day washed. Everything in that mesh bag is washed at once in giant – and I mean really big – washing machines with about 25 other mesh bags, and then dried in an equally giant drier machine by the inmates. So our laundry is done in two parts: personal items, socks, underwear this way (washed and dried in your mesh bag); and shirts, trousers, bed linens are exchanged for identical sized cleaned, pressed and folded items.

When you go to your job, or the Chow Hall at lunchtime meal (Monday to Friday), or any medical, dental, commissary, education, visitation or formal detail/call-out, you must be attired in full outfit, khaki trousers, boots, t-shirt, khaki shirt, belt. For morning meal, evening meal, weekends, yard activities, and while in your cell or in your unit, you can wear any kind of the prison-issued clothing and running shoes sold in the commissary. You are permitted to take off your shirt in the yard area during workouts and exercise.

It is blazing hot and humid here at times, almost always sunny, and we are issued hats on arrival and can buy baseball caps in the commissary (at a reasonable $4) and I always wear mine from noon to 3pm, along with clip-on sunglasses, outside in the yard. The boots issued to me here gave my left heel huge painful blisters, so I bought a softer set of boots called Wolverines from commissary for $67, that while still steel-toed, are extremely comfortable and are a great improvement over the hot and heavy boots I was issued. In the yard, inmates wear running shoes, except the lawnmower orderlies who keep the large field of grass cut wear their workboots.

After a shower and dressing in the morning, I go to check my email. We don't have internet in prison, nor MP3 players, CD players, or Kindle readers, although I think the B.O.P. should sell those devices in the commissary. But we do have radios we can buy, and headphones, and that is how inmates listen to the TV sets in the unit. There are nine TVs in this unit; you listen to them through your radio on a separate internal radio track. Two TVs are geared for the African-American inmates who comprise at least 60% of the inmates (BET, AMC are popular), two are set on the sports channels (ESPN 1 & 2), one is CNN, three are Hispanic (they comprise 25% of the inmates), and one is for the white inmates (NASCAR, Country Music Television, History Channel). But any inmate can watch any television.

Voluntary segregation exists in the Chow Hall where whites tend to sit together, African-Americans sit together, and Hispanics sit together. There is a dining table for anyone – they identify themselves as Christians – where Hispanic, white, black, and homosexuals can seat themselves without prejudice. I sit among the whites because that’s how I was shown when I arrived, and most (but not all) of my friends are white, so I usually sit with a friend or friends in the dining hall.

Virtually all cells are racially compatible, meaning two Hispanics will be housed together in one cell, African-Americans in one cell, whites in one cell, etc. but my friend Chris, who is apparently African-American (I just assumed he was well tanned, honestly!) has had an Hispanic cellmate quite satisfactorily. The radio also picks up radio stations quite clearly if you turn the light off in your cell (the electromagnetism involved in lighting creates distortion) or go outside. I have my radio set to an oldies station (pop hits from 1960 to 1980), a classic rock station (rock songs from 1964 to 1985), Jack FM (which play "anything they want" so they say, but it’s possibly the best station), an R&B station (I keep waiting for them to play Rihanna's song S&M which I just love, Rihanna is "da bomb"!) and a modern pop station. 90% of the time I'm on the oldies station, Jack FM or the classic rock station when I listen to the radio walking the track in the yard, or at night before sleep.

So at 7:30am, I go to my email on the Corrlinks prison "email" system. I have 30 contacts I can correspond via email with. Of course I am most excitedly hoping for a long "overnighter" message from you, my beloved Jodie, explaining how your day before went, bringing me up to date on your life and what’s going on in the world. I am always crushed, if after a long day at work, you get home and fall asleep before writing me a long note, as sometimes happens. I long for you all day, even though I stay busy, but I think about you all day throughout the day, and live for your messages. We only get 300 minutes a month of phone time, and that’s only 10 minutes a day to call you, usually at 9pm at night my time. So I need and crave your email messages in a way that it is hard for someone on the outside to understand.

Email costs me $3 an hour, and in my first 30 days here, I spent $300 on 100 hours of email correspondence! This fee, which sounds exorbitant, is apparently to pay for the B.O.P. staff to read all incoming and outgoing email, as in prison there is no right to privacy – although I have never had any email censored nor have I ever been reprimanded for any email (this is also true of every letter in the mail I have received and every one I have sent, well over 1,300 letters I've sent to correspondents in 12 months in US federal prisons).

I'm on the Corrlinks email for three hours a day, sometimes more. If I have a contact who doesn't email me regularly or often, or only emails me superficial hellos, I will delete that contact to make room for a regular letter mail correspondent who writes by postal mail, and begin an email correspondence with them. In the case of email with me, my contacts have to use it or lose it! If I could have an unlimited number of email contacts, it would be different, but since I can only have 30, they have to be active email friendships because keeping constantly updated and connected means everything when you’re in prison.

This is an account of my monthly spending: $300 on email, $120 on the phone calls to you each month, $320 on my commissary, which is all my food, boots, running shoes, toiletries, t-shirts, towels, shorts, each month (I usually spend the $320 limit before my 30 day period is up), plus about $80-$100 a month on stamps to send letters and books I've read to my correspondents. So that’s $820-$850 each month! This is why I encourage you to ask my supporters and friends to make donations to my commissary account, because that $10,000 a year is beyond your ability to provide. I receive no income except for the $10 or so a month I get from my clerking job. Thankfully, over my decades of activism and financing hundreds of people's projects, campaigns and even personal emergencies, there are many who feel they want to thank me for all I've given to others. That support is crucial and welcome in the most pressing time of need I've ever experienced in my life.

Today I am going to the commissary to spend the remaining $42 left on my $320 monthly limit. My phone minutes and my commissary limits are reset on the 7th of each month, and it's only May 23 today, so my limit won't be reset for 14 days! I'm well stocked on most things, but I need some more trail mix, tortillas for the salmon wraps I make, a few t-shirts, and some postage stamps. I don't buy any junk food, no sweets, candies, chocolate bars, or fattening foods; mostly I eat a lot of albacore tuna and pink salmon packs, chili garlic sauces, garlic, refried beans, higher quality meats, powdered milk, mayonnaise, jalapeno peppers, nuts (OK, these are fattening, but it’s my only fattening food choice), etc. This month I purchased the Wolverine boots, so that $67 took a bite out of my monthly limit. Postage stamps and medicines like ibuprofen, antibiotic ointment, etc. don't count against an inmate's monthly spending limit so those can always be obtained if I need them and have the money in my account.

Yazoo City Medium-Security Prison ExteriorInmates are let into the commissary during the 10 minute moves, Monday to Thursday, 7, 8, and 9am, and in the lunch hour (11:20 to noon) and at 1 and 2pm. A C.O. collects your filled-out commissary purchase sheet (listing the items you want) and takes it through a door into the big store area where several inmates whip about with each sheet gathering up each order. You have to wait in the commissary waiting room for your name to be called, and when you go to a counter through a door, the goods are tallied, you put them in your all-purpose mesh bag (used for both laundry and commissary purchases), and then return to the waiting room where you will be let out at the top of the hour (8, 9, 10am, lunch time, or 1, 2, and 3pm). I always carry a book with me when I go to commissary, medical, or appointments where I'll be waiting until the next ten-minute move.

In my emails, I write my experiences, work on my autobiography, receive current news stories, and stay in close touch with you, my close friends and numerous activists. This is distinctly different that my previous prison, D Ray James, which, not being part of the Bureau of Prisons, did not have Corrlinks email. All immigrant prisons in the US run by GEO Group and CCA do not have email for inmates.

After I do one hour of email, usually from 7:30 to 8:30am, I tidy my cell so it’s spotless and the desk is clear, our shoes are lined up according to regulations, beds are made properly, and all surfaces clear. Everything should be inside a locker. You can be punished substantially for not having a totally tidy and neat cell. Also, our entire unit is graded, and as I have said, our position for release to the chow hall for one week is arranged based on that grade.

At 9am I go to the yard for one hour of walking the track. Today I walked 6 laps with my radio and headphones on listening to music. One lap is 1/2 a mile, so I walked 3 miles in one hour. It was 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius) and humid, but not uncomfortable. It will get much hotter and more humid soon however. Yesterday was a Sunday and I practiced guitar for 3 hours, 90 minutes on acoustic 6-string, and 90 minutes of a bass guitar. I have been practicing for 16 days now, at least one hour each day. Much more about that later, as I practice between 6pm and 8pm every day except when you visit me. It’s too hot and sunny to walk the track from noon to 3pm when I am also in the Recreation Area.

This area that Yazoo City is located in is known as the Mississippi Delta. It’s not near the Mississippi River delta – that of course, is down by New Orleans. The Mississippi Delta is a flat floodplain bordered by the Mississippi River on the west, Vicksburg on the south, Memphis on the north, and the Yazoo, Black, and Tallahachie Rivers on the east. This area, if you look at it on a map, is historically very prone to flooding when the mighty Mississippi, the third largest river system in the world (after the Amazon, the world’s largest, and the Nile – and I believe the Mississippi and its tributaries is larger in fact, than the Nile, by far), receives large amounts of rain in the northern states or has a cool spring and the snow melt is delayed. In 1927, a massive flood of this Delta caused the US federal government over the 1930's and 40's to embark on a system of levees and flood containment engineering projects. However, sometimes, like the past month, huge rainfalls combined with cool weather (and thus, delayed snow melt) in the northern states of Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and Indiana feed the Ohio River, Missouri River, and various tributaries of the Mississippi to cause it to swell and overflow its banks. That’s why, in the past four weeks, huge areas around the Mississippi river at Memphis, Vicksburg, and much of Arkansas, Missouri, the Delta here, and a huge swatch of Louisiana have been or will be flooded.

For a while it was speculated that if Yazoo City flooded from the Yazoo and Black rivers backing up (not being able to drain into the swollen Mississippi River), that all of us here at the federal prison would be evacuated. The Yazoo River, in fact, is at its highest point ("cresting") today, but the levees have held and not broken or been breached. But even if it floods over the compound, the plan is to take our mattress from the ground floor (where I am) and put it on the floor of the upper building (the three inmate housing buildings have two levels). So we've been a bit nervous about that for a few weeks now, because flooding would close the yard and probably make life very inconvenient for us here.

[Update by Jodie: the flooding has receded and the prison is safe from any emergency action being required.]

This area is famous for a black musical form called the Delta Blues, made famous by Robert Johnson, but continued on by Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, Buddy Guy and many other blues musicians who came out of cotton-picking sharecropping families here in the Mississippi Delta. This area has always been white plantation owners and black laborers, and is historically the only state where blacks have always outnumbered whites. Many violent and vicious civil rights incidents happened here from 1955 to 1966.

One of the most famous and notorious torture prisons was here, The Parchman Farm, otherwise known as Louisiana State Penitentiary, famous in the book and movie "Cool Hand Luke". Cool Hand Luke is about a white Mississippian who, protesting City Hall's abuse of power, saws off the money-collecting heads of parking meters, and gets thrown in Mississippi State pen, the Parchman Farm, and ultimately dies there. It’s famous for the line by prison gang work team over-seer (played by George Kennedy) "What we have here is a failure to communicate", ominously mocking the era's liberal values and phraseology while predicting cruelty and torture to follow. Before I arrived in Mississippi I read the book "Worse Than Slavery" on the history of the Parchman Farm (M.S.P.). When civil rights "Freedom Riders" and "Voter registration" activists were arrested in mass round-ups in 1961 to 1966, hundreds were incarcerated at Parchman farm and underwent disturbing cruelties.

This place is, fortunately, not like that. Yazoo City medium is well run in so far as rules are clear and consistent. I have seen no violence here, and I have not seen any disrespect by correctional officers or inmates. I hope it remains that way. The fact is, however, inmates here are sentenced to absurd lengths of incarceration. There are many inmates with 20 and 25-year sentences for cocaine or methamphetamine sales. These sentences will cost the US taxpayer over $1,000,000 each over the life of each 25-year sentence. Most here at Yazoo have been sentenced for drug offenses, and most received 15, 17, 20 years, and some longer, including life sentences. Staggering long sentences! The man who is teaching me bass guitar has been in jail 30 years over drugs, with 9 more to go! I don't know how they manage to find the optimism to keep on going, and I’m grateful for the relatively short sentence I received in comparison.

Inside the unit I am housed in with 125 other inmates (unit E-1), I do three hours a day of email, write letters, read mail, and read my books and magazines. Currently I am reading "Under Their Thumb" by Max German, a well-written memoir by a fan of the Rolling Stones about his time with the band from 1980 to 1985. I just finished an excellent novel by a favorite writer, Lauren Helfer, called "A Fierce Radiance", a story (published 2010) about the mass production development of penicillin from 1941 to 1943 and how it impacted WW2 and a staggering number of previously fatal illnesses that bedeviled humankind. Helfer wrote one previous book, "City of Light", 10 years ago, a novel about the impact mass electrification had on Buffalo, New York (and ultimately all North America) from harnessing the Niagara Falls for hydro-electric power generation. Both books involve murder, huge financial stakes, class struggles, many deaths in the pursuit of progress, and heroic characters – ordinary people driven to extraordinary achievements and accomplishments. I actually thought Helfer has taken Ayn Rand's sense of life from Rand's books and told a better story using genuine characters and historically important epochs to tell them. Yet there is no ideological message that Helfer wishes us to buy into; she's a great storyteller hoping to illuminate us as to the greatness in our past and the triumph of human beings over much adversity and challenge. In both cases, men AND women lead a crusade to harness nature for the good of all humankind. Helfer's lead characters in both books are admirable and convincing women.

Previous to reading "A Fierce Radiance", I read the 11th book in the #1 Ladies Detective series. I have read them all, and they are delightful light reading. Since I have been at Yazoo City, I've read "Lovesick Blues", an excellent biography of Hank Williams, the southern musician that established country music as a mass music; two wonderful books called "Junior Ray" and "Yazoo Blues" written by John Pritchard, using a character, a retired police officer from the Delta here, narrated in a Delta dialect, to hilariously recount the culture and parts of history of this area. Its candor, dialect, and outrageous sensibility had me laughing aloud at times, and both are extremely delightful.

Only one magazine of my 30 subscriptions has had my change of address effected so I am getting it here, that’s the excellent Bloomberg Business Week magazine, a terrific read that keeps me on top of the business world. All others have yet to be rerouted, after 35 days. I miss all my magazines, especially MacLeans, the Canadian current affairs magazine. That’s one of the challenges of being moved to a new facility; magazine subscriptions take up to a couple months to get rerouted. Thankfully, you're working on changing the address for dozens of my magazines. I look forward to getting those in the coming weeks and months.

More updates to come. Thank you for being so supportive!

SEND MARC MAIL & MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTIONS:

Marc Emery #40252-086
Yazoo City Medium E-1
PO Box 5888
Yazoo City, MS
39194

Guidelines for how to send books and magazines are posted at www.FreeMarc.ca under the “Write To Marc” tab at the top of the website.

Marc is already subscribed to the following magazines. He would especially like any travel and news magazines that are not listed.

National Geographic
MacLeans
Mother Jones
Reason
The Economist
New York Times
Maxim
Discover
Bloomberg Business week
The Atlantic
Harpers
Rolling Stone
Vanity Fair
Guitar Edge
Mojo
The Walrus
Surfer
American Curves
Beautiful British Columbia
7×7 Magazine
The Hockey News
SLAM Magazine (basketball)
Prison Legal News
Men's Journal
The Progressive
Wired
Popular Science
Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords

The Jodie Emery Show – April 21, 2011

submitted by on April 25, 2011

Marc is now in Yazoo City, Mississippi — please send him letters! www.FreeMarc.ca — and we all missed him at the annual Vancouver 4/20 event on April 20th… but we had a massive FREE MARC banner on stage to remember him. Vancouver had a tremendously successful protest festival, bigger and better than ever before, and the media got out the FREE MARC EMERY and VOTE on MAY 2nd messages. Jodie also shares her voter registration card and explains how to get out and VOTE on May 2nd!

MARC EMERY #40252-086
FCI YAZOO CITY MEDIUM E-1
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
P.O. BOX 5888
YAZOO CITY, MS 39194

http://www.cannabisculture.com
http://www.freemarc.ca
http://www.whyprohibition.ca
http://www.catch22campaign.ca
http://www.swing33.ca

GET OUT THE VOTE:
http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/2011/04/05/Save-Canadas-Cannabis-Culture-Vote-Out-Conservatives-May-2

http://www.Facebook.com/PrinceOfPot
http://www.Facebook.com/JodieEmery
http://www.Facebook.com/MarcEmery
http://www.Twitter.com/JodieEmery
http://www.Twitter.com/MarcScottEmery

The Jodie Emery Show – April 14, 2011

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420 is happening on Wednesday next week! Are you celebrating our culture and taking a stand for our freedom? BIG NEWS in Canada with a major court decision! And Jodie has prison photos from her last visit with Marc in Georgia, as he's in Oklahoma waiting to be moved to Mississippi. Go to http://www.WhyProhibition.ca and sign up to find out who you should vote for in the upcoming federal election on MAY 2nd, MONDAY so we can stop the Conservatives from sending us all to prison and destroying Canada!

http://www.cannabisculture.com
http://www.freemarc.ca
http://www.whyprohibition.ca
http://www.catch22campaign.ca
http://www.swing33.ca

The Jodie Emery Show – April 7, 2011

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Jodie tells us about a move for Marc to a new prison, so he's no longer in Georgia. The federal election is looming in Canada, so vote on May 2nd! Go to http://whyprohibition.ca to find out how you can help defeat Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. Jodie shares new pics from Marc's birthday, festival updates and more!

http://www.torontofreedomfestival.com
http://www.cannabisculture.com
http://www.freemarc.ca
http://www.whyprohibition.ca
http://www.catch22campaign.ca
http://www.swing33.ca

 

GET OUT THE VOTE:
http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/2011/04/05/Save-Canadas-Cannabis-Culture-Vote-Out-Conservatives-May-2

Prison Blog #33 (Newsletter #9)

submitted by on April 24, 2011

March 9-15: This past Wednesday was extremely odd because I didn’t get a single ordinary sized letter. Odder yet when I didn’t get any letters on Thursday. Or Friday. Normally I get 8 to 10 letters a day. So today, Monday, March 7, I discovered that SIS (Security), led by Mr. Lindsay, is taking my mail from the mailroom after it has all been inspected and cleared of contraband, and then taking my letters to their office and reading each one.

I wouldn’t mind that so much but they are holding letters up to 5 days so they can read them, then I finally get them. None of my incoming letters are a security risk, threat or concern, so it can only be for titillation purposes, although I have never, alas, received a single letter I would consider licentious.

So letters I would have received last Wednesday, I’m receiving 5 days later. My outgoing mail, which in a low security facility is sealed by the inmate and is generally not opened by the facility, is taking a longer time to reach their destinations, so I can only assume security is going the same with my outgoing mail and reading it also, and delaying its posting. I find it remarkable that GEO Group never has enough money to provide fresh vegetables or fruit in our diet, or extra soccer or volleyballs or guitars, but can pay the security men here to read hours of my mail, and to no particular end that I can determine other than to upset me.

I was put on the CIM list two weeks ago, Controlled Inmate Monitoring. I did not realize that meant all my mail was now going to be detained, delayed and read. Since I have posed no threat to this facility, and in all valid assessments am a model prisoner, I find this ‘special’ treatment aggravating. I was able to pose this situation to the Acting Warden Mr. Zenk today. While he casually acknowledged I’m on CIM and my mail is being monitored, he said he would talk to security and see if the turnaround time could be lessened. I will be asking Security what they expect to find in my incoming or outgoing mail that justifies their time, effort and blatant interference in my correspondence.

Newsletter #7 was discussed with me line by line by Security when I issued it 10 days ago, which I did not mind. I was happy to have their input. I gave #8 to Security as soon as the final version was off the photocopier. I have obviously nothing to hide and consider my newsletter a window on the world of DRJ from the perspective of an inmate. In many ways, I do this facility a favor, at no cost to them, of telegraphing the problems of inmates before the problems become critical mass/crises. Many of the staff, families of inmates, and certainly SIS read this newsletter. The B.O.P. liaisons here read it. They have used my comments in their interactions with the GEO Group/D. Ray James staff.

Reading my mail and holding it up several days I regard as a betrayal of trust. I’m living up to my obligations to report fairly, truthfully and behave in a polite manner. What happens to me, matters to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people to in North America and the world. I don’t exploit that in any way. I don’t tell people to bombard DRJ or GEO Group in protest at the inadequacies here I have regarded of egregious. But there is a quid pro quo at work whether DRJ acknowledges it or not. If I am going to be targeted for harassment, which is what I consider this mail screening and delay to be, then I am being disrespected. Mail in the United States takes only 2 or 3 days at most to get here normally, so when I see letters today that are postmarked Feb. 28th and March 1st, I know my mail is being detained unreasonably for no purpose related to the security of this facility.

Along with DRJ’s perfidious blockade of my incoming mail and the snooping of my outbound mail for obscure purposes, I have discovered a systemic error in the Keefe Commissary computer that is ripping me off as well as every inmate here. As an inmate, I have a limit on spending on commissary of $320 a month. I buy a lot of my food I eat from commissary as the food served by DRJ is monotonous, lacking in Vitamin A, B, C, calcium, potassium, essential fatty acids, Omega 3 and 6, and is really just a regurgitation of carbs, fats, sugars and protein day after boring, tasteless day. I spend my limit usually the third week of the month, so for the last 7 to 10 days I have next to no food items to eat. I couldn’t figure out why this was so. Postage stamps and health items are supposed to be exempt from the $320 monthly limit. But I’ve checked my commissary records and that of numerous other inmates and found that I and all other inmates are having stamps deducted from our $320 monthly limit!

For me this has been devastating, as I buy $21 to $26 in stamps each week (the weekly limit is $26.20). The net result of this admitted error is that I am cheated out of being able to buy $100 worth of food a month, because my postage stamps are being subtracted from the $320 spending limit. This is cruel punishment that is inexcusable. In the DRJ Inmate Handbook it clearly states that the $100+ limit on postage stamps is above the $320 monthly limit. So over 4 months I’ve been cheated of $400 on my spending limits. This has affected hundreds and hundreds of inmates as running shoes were also erroneously debited from the $320 spending limit, messing with inmate spending budgets, along with postage stamps. This is unforgivable but I have the statements from Keefe to show they are deducting expenditures on postage stamps from the $320 monthly limit, so we shall see how long it takes this crooked outfit to rectify their previous errors (if they ever will) and stop ripping us off week after week.

So much mail sent to me here has never gotten to me, and numerous letters sent by me here are interfered with and do not arrive. Along with hijacking photographs and letters I send out, they cheat me of photographs that are taken that they don’t give me. My hand is on my wife’s buttock, so they say in denying me the last photo; before that it was a similar complaint. But they don’t show you the photo nor do they refund your $1, so you have to believe their warped interpretation of things, which, considering my experience here, they are completely unbelievable. Hopefully one day you will be able to see my photographs I’ve paid for and had taken of me at DRJ but I have my doubts. [Note from Jodie: The only photographs that had failed to arrive in the mail from Marc when he wrote this finally showed up in my mail on April 1. The photos were taken February 12 and 13.]

I’ve taken to listening in on Randy and Jon’s guitar sessions. Randy is from New Westminster, BC, vocalist of the Mojo Stars, and Jon is from South Africa. I sit in on their 90 minute sessions where they play about 20 songs, from Eagle’s Hotel California to Helplessly Hoping by Crosby, Stills & Nash, Helpless by Neil Young, Under the Boardwalk (Drifters), Brown Eyed Girl (Van Morrison), House of the Rising Sun, the parody of life here ‘Folkston Prison Blues’ (the Johnny Cash song Folson Prison Blues reworked) and a few beautifully done original tunes as well. I’ve taken to sitting in and throwing requests at them, and filling in a few blanks in their recollection of lyrics. I did a rock and roll trivia board game in 1987 with 6,000 questions and answers, and from 1989 to 1991 had a Billboard Top 40 retrospective show on radio playing songs from 1955 to 1973 with history of the artists and the song.

While there are now up to 6 guitars for inmates to play available there is no sheet music, songbook or access to lyrics. So I asked Jodie to send me some songbooks I could lend the musicians, and she obliged by sending me sheet music of The Eagles, Sting, Tom Petty, and Neil Young. I mailed her a letter asking her to look up the lyrics of about 30 songs, including American Pie and Vincent by Don MacLean, The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot – as ubiquitous a Canadian song as you’ll ever hear, though it is about an American freighter ship plying Lake Superior (“the big lake they call Gitchee Gumee”), numerous Dylan songs, Joni Mitchell, and Cat Stevens.

If any one of my readers has any extra guitar songbooks lying about their homes or studios that you could part with, it would be greatly appreciated here. [Note from Jodie: mail cannot be sent to D. Ray James from this point on, as Marc is being transferred.] There are some songbooks that have an assortment of classic songs in them, with titles like 200 Classic Songs of the 60’s and 70’s, and that sort of thing, that would be of tremendous use here. Beatles, Bob Dylan, Talking Heads, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Neil Young (Harvest, After the Gold Rush, etc.), Arlo Guthrie, Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, Sr., Merle Haggard, any blues, western, pop and rock classics in guitar playing notation and lyrics (songbooks) would be appreciated.

Adam at the BCMP Vapour Lounge will be recording ‘Folkston Prison Blues’ next week, live, before an audience, and then it will be put on YouTube shortly afterward and linked to these newsletters. [Note from Jodie: The video and lyrics can be seen in Marc’s blog #8, posted here.] Our next parody song, “It’s D. Ray James As We Know It (and we’re doing time)” – REM song ‘It’s the End of the World As We Know It’ being the source song, is being worked on now for Adam to record after we perform it here. I’ll be part of the vocal chorus in our performance of ‘It’s D. Ray James As We Know It.’

I was pleased to hear that Tommy Chong was in Vancouver at the Rio Theatre doing a fundraiser for my best friend Dana Larsen who is seeking the leadership of the New Democratic Party of British Columbia, the party currently the opposition to the governing Liberal Party. The fundraiser was Monday, March 7, and the next night Tommy jammed with the house band at the BC Marijuana Party Vapour Lounge, helping raise another $1,500 toward Dana’s leadership race. The entry fee to run for the leadership was $15,000 into the party coffers, and Dana was accredited as a bona fide contender. The voting for NDP members to choose the leader of the BC provincial party is April 17. Follow Dana’s leadership campaign at www.VoteDana.ca. Naturally, repealing the prohibition of cannabis is central to Dana’s platform.

Thursday, March 10:

The D. Ray James business office spoke to me today to acknowledge that they have been improperly including postage stamps and health products in the $320 inmate monthly spending limit. The result of this for me is that I order $90-$100 in postage stamps monthly, these are supposed to be exempt from the $320 monthly spending limit; that has, in fact, been debited from my spending limit each month so far. So I’ve only been able to order $220 worth of food, which only lasts me 20 days of each month. I should be able to order $320 worth of food AND $100 in health care (ibuprofen, antibiotic ointment, etc.) and postage stamps per month. So for four months I’ve been cheated out of my full spending limit.

From the point of view of Keefe Commissary, they too have ripped themselves off of tens of thousands of dollars because inmates have been unable to spend their full limits. With 2,000 inmates, it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars of purchasing power negated all due to a computer inputting error! You’d think one of the Keefe or D. Ray James paid staff would have caught on before I had to alert them into making the correction. There will be no credit or compensation for our/my lost purchasing power, but at least I can take credit for correcting an egregious flaw here. The Business Office assures me that this has now been rectified for all future inmate purchases.

My spider bite on my left buttock is still getting a daily medical department look, and both I and they are pleased it is healing rapidly now, the draining having stopped three days ago after about ten days of blood and pus weeping out of the wound.

Monday, March 14 marks 365 days – one year – in prison so far on my sentence, including all of the time that I spent in North Fraser Pretrial Centre up in Canada before being extradited. My treaty transfer application has been in DC for two months, the decision is due to be made in the next 4 to 6 weeks.

Peter Maverick has appointed himself as a one-man books-for-prisoners resource. Peter has sent over 50 books in Spanish including a 25-volume history of each state in Mexico. I have discovered that my Mexican colleagues relate to the state they are from in a strong way, so these books about each state are read voraciously. The books are ordered through Amazon, and Peter has spent well over $750 on these books and postage to send them to me over the last 3 weeks, over 125 books. My personal collection of books, including my law & prison books, number less than 20; the vast bulk of books I have received are loaned to other inmates, and are read studiously and passed on when they are done reading it.

I just finished Michael Pollan’s beautifully written book ‘The Botany of Desire’ and I endorse this 250 page book to anyone who wants to be enthralled by every page while learning so many marvelous details and history about the apple, the tulip, the potato, and marijuana, and the co-evolution of these plants with humankind. Simply terrific book. I understand he has a contemporary bestseller on the NY Times Lists. I’d love that book.

In a triumph of anti-intellectualism here at D. Ray James Correctional Institution, I am on the bring-5-books, receive-5-books regime with the mail room here once again. Thus I must advise anyone sending me books to now only send books I have specifically requested. Recently, I have received perhaps 150 books in the last month which I have by and large lent out to other inmates, which they are devouring in a satisfying manner, satisfying to anyone interested in knowledge, literacy and disseminating knowledge. That, alas, excludes the decision makers here at D. Ray James. This decision would have come from Warden Zenk himself, with input from Security. I am reminded of that Who song ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”.

Books sent to me for the benefit of the Spanish-Language inmates have been extremely useful and well-received but will now have to stop. If I can’t store them and send them out once every two weeks, I’ll have to have the 5 I return destroyed each time because I can’t buy enough postage stamps to ship the 5-returnees to my friend Catharine Leach, or my supplier-in-chief Peter Maverick. But I’ll try to return to Peter the books I’m going to inevitably receive that I can no longer take possession of.

Sigh. Mail room nonsense has returned once more. Of course, in any sane place, I could donate them directly to the inmate library, where virtually no relevant books have been purchased and added to the reading library in 5 months since this concentration camp for foreigners opened – 5 months ago! That is why the books I’ve lent around are so welcome: the library is deliberately kept as useless as possible by management here.

I got my pay for February. I’m here every morning, afternoon, and evening shift, 7 hours a day. I missed a day and a half for lockdown, and a few hours in medical getting my infection dealt with, and I don’t get ‘paid’ for Presidents’ Day (February 21). Total pay for the month: $5.10. Yes, you read correctly, five dollars and ten cents. That was 12 cents an hour, and my official reinstatement wasn’t until February 10, but I’ve been here three shifts a day, every day, since December. My pay grade has been raised to 29 cents an hour. Ah, there’s no labor like slave labor. The GEO Group Inc. motto is “GEO Group: World-class employee, performance, behavior.”

IMPORTANT NOTE: On Friday, April 1st, Marc was informed that he will be shipped out to a new prison on Monday, April 4th. Federal inmates can be shipped anywhere in the USA, and are never told where they are going.

Marc will not be able to write newsletters while being transferred, or until he is settled into his new prison and able to get commissary funds for buying stamps to send out mail. There is still a Newsletter #10 to be posted, and two more significant articles by Marc.

Please stay tuned to his progress here and at www.Facebook.com/PrinceOfPot and www.Facebook.com/JodieEmery where updates are posted right away.

Political Prisoner Marc Emery Denied Transfer Home by US Government

submitted by on April 19, 2011

CANNABIS CULTURE – The United States Department of Justice has refused imprisoned political activist Marc Emery's transfer back to Canada, meaning he will likely spend the majority of his five-year sentence in a US federal prison.

In a phone call placed this afternoon from a prisoner transfer center in Oklahoma, Marc informed his wife and fellow activist Jodie Emery that he received a letter from the Canadian consulate with news the US government would not approve his treaty transfer back to Canada due to "the seriousness of the offence" and "law enforcement concerns". View the rejection notice PDF file here.

If the US and Canadian governments had approved the transfer, Marc would have been moved to a Canadian prison, closer to his friends and family, and would have been eligible for parole almost immediately upon his return. Twenty-three current and previously-elected representatives from every level of government in Canada had signed a letter to the Department of Justice asking for Marc to be transferred to Canada. View that official letter below:


Click to enlarge

"I'm really stunned and greatly saddened," Jodie told Cannabis Culture. "It looks like the DEA and the US government want their pound of flesh, and they want Marc to suffer down there as a non-violent, peaceful political party leader imprisoned for his activism. This is devastating."

Known as the Prince of Pot in Canada, cannabis activist Marc Emery was extradited to the US by the Conservative government on May 10, 2010 after a five year court battle. In 2005, his marijuana seed shop, Marc Emery Direct Seeds, was raided and shut down in a joint effort by Canadian and US authorities.

Marc, who was founder of the BC Marijuana Party and Cannabis Culture Magazine, was arrested for shipping pot seeds in the mail to the US, though the DEA admitted in its own press release that the activist's arrest was a political act, stating:

Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group — is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement.

His marijuana trade and propagandist marijuana magazine have generated nearly $5 million a year in profits that bolstered his trafficking efforts, but those have gone up in smoke today.

Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General's most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets — one of only 46 in the world and the only one from Canada.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on.

"This refusal is a terrible affront to the sovereignty of Canada," said Emery's Canadian counsel, Kirk Tousaw. "Marc is a target of political persecution that appears to have transcended his conviction and now infects the treaty transfer process. He qualifies under every relevant factor and should have been allowed to serve out his jail term in Canada, close to his wife Jodie and in the country in which all of his activity took place. We call upon Prime Minister Harper and the leaders of the Liberal Party and NDP to stand up for this Canadian hero and demand his immediate repatriation."

According to Tousaw, Marc has the right to re-apply for another transfer in two years time. In the meantime, his wife and supporters vowed to exhaust every option to secure his swift return to Canada.

"Marc has never harmed anyone and has devoted his life to fighting oppression," Jodie said. "He's been punished for speaking out for the rights of tens of millions of cannabis consumers here and in the US and it's truly frightening. Canadians who feel Marc has been treated unfairly with an unjust five-year US prison sentence for seeds should punish the Conservatives in the federal election on May 2nd for extraditing Marc in the first place."

The circumstances surrounding Marc's learning of the refusal are also peculiar.

"It is impermissible under the professional conduct rules in the District of Columbia for lawyers to communicate directly with a represented person, or cause others to communicate with a represented person, without going through their lawyer," Tousaw said.

"Here, neither I nor [Emery's US lawyer] Ms. Royce were told of the US refusal. Instead, the US apparently told the Canadian Consulate first and it was the Consulate that informed Marc. This is very unusual and should not have happened. It makes me wonder whether the US and Canada are engaged in ongoing dialogue about Marc and lends support to the belief that politics are still influencing the process."

Go to FreeMarc.ca to find out more about Marc Emery and how to help bring him home.

Get out and VOTE on MAY 2! Click here for more election information from Cannabis Culture and find out how to strategically vote out the Stephen Harper and the Conservatives.

The Jodie Emery Show – February 24, 2011

submitted by on February 27, 2011

Jodie talks about a prison lockdown, the warden getting fired, Marc getting a bad spider bite (or worse?), and more. She shares a wall hanging made by inmates, and a beautiful piece of art from a supporter. Read Marc's prison blog at http://www.cannabisculture.com for his review of improvements made at the prison after he filed complaints. And plan ahead for the Toronto Freedom Festival and Global Marijuana March on Saturday, May 7th! HELP FREE MARC EMERY!


http://www.FreeMarc.ca
http://www.CannabisCulture.com
http://www.TorontoFreedomFestival.com

 

Blog #28 – Injustice & Cruelty as a Laughing Matter

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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

The Jodie Emery Show: three latest videos

submitted by on February 18, 2011
These three most recent videos have news and information about Marc delivered by his wife Jodie. Subscribe to the Pot TV channel on YouTube for Jodie Emery's weekly video updates. Hear about visits, Marc's reports, and more!
 
Feb. 3: Jodie gives an update about visiting Marc in prison, and posting his newsletters at http://www.cannabisculture.com. She also shares a code to get 15% off your orders at the Cannabis Culture online store — http://www.cannabisculture.com/store (only until February 14th!) — and reports that former Governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, has agreed to write to the Department of Justice on Marc's behalf. Get your representatives to do the same! Write to your politicians to request Marc's quick return to Canada at http://www.freemarc.ca  Also, don't forget the CannaMed Fair happening this weekend in Vancouver… see you there! http://www.cannamedfair.ca
 
Feb. 10: Join Jodie as she reflects on the recent CannaMed Fair, tells us how the Liberal Party of Canada is going to vote No on Bill S-10 (great news!), and, as always, updates everyone about how Marc is doing while serving his sentence in Georgia. Marc has been depressed lately, so please write a letter: http://freemarc.ca/group/freemarcca/send-mail-and-money-marc-emery-us-federal-prison 
 
Feb. 17: Jodie shares her frustrating prison visits on Marc's birthday weekend, and encourages you 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. Come to the Victoria annual Hempology 101 conference on Sunday, February 20th at the University of Victoria! Also, Hemp Hoodlamb coats are 50% off! Go to http://www.cannabisculture.com/store or come down to Cannabis Culture Headquarters at 307 West Hastings St. in downtown Vancouver. HELP GET MARC HOME and send him mail! http://www.FreeMarc.ca

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