A rather moving segment featuring Neil Franklin, Executive Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, at a panel discussion at Riverside Church in New York. He is visibly disturbed by what the drug war has done to the people, and by his part in it before understanding its destruction. A very heartfelt mea culpa.
- DrugWarRant.com, the longest running single-issue blog devoted to drug policy
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Check out the other videos linked to this conference. Michelle Alexander and her book The New Jim Crow, along with LEAP are at the forefront of increasing awareness of the civil rights outrage perpetrated by current drug policies
Before Leap was The Joseph McNamara Collection
This Memorial Day lets remember the Vets
sitting in Cages for relieving their PTSD.
Ganja 4 PTSD & Depression
Veterans For Medical Cannabis Access
“Big Pharma killing more soldiers than enemy “
They survived live fire, explosive devices, terror attacks and grueling desert conditions. But upon returning home to seek treatment for the mental anguish that too often accompanies war, U.S. soldiers are now being killed by the pharmaceutical industry in record numbers.
Sam Stone came home, To his wife and family After serving in the conflict overseas. And the time that he served, Had shattered all his nerves, And left a little shrapnel in his knee. But the morphine eased the pain, And the grass grew round his brain, And gave him all the confidence he lacked, With a Purple Heart and a monkey on his back. continued…
This Memorial Day remembering our honorable vets still living and those long gone and yes those in caged up for their PTSD may they see the light of justice shine on them someday.
Bless those Leap Officers.Wonder how other officers respond to them overall.
That looked very painful at first. Glad he’s on our side.
Director Neil Franklin shouldn’t be so hard on himself.
All corrupt regimes and entities manipulate innocent, well-meaning people in order to gain power. Unassuming types who believe they’re performing a favor for society, those who feel they’re simply doing their duty to God and country, can get hooked into doing things that might appear harmless or well-intended at first, but which ultimately support a very corrupt enterprise. It happens everywhere, not just with prohibition.
Political vultures and power players like Richard Nixon played a role in keeping drug persecution going. They picked over and selected the rotting remains of racist legal codes, disinformation and policing procedures dating from the ascendance of the Klan. Nixon’s prohibition strategy secured the oppression of minorities as a means to achieve slave-state loyalty to the Republican Party. It was part and parcel of a counter strategy to Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights act, which racist Southerners loathed.
Similar victimologies elsewhere add emphasis to the dilemma. Viggo Mortensen’s film Good, is a classic depiction of what can happen to people who trust their government too much; in this case an obscure German university professor whose ideas and writings are co-opted and then corrupted to support Nazi eliminationist agendas. Another extraordinary film along similar lines is the unforgettable Florian H. von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, which is about an East German Stasi officer and his surveillance of a loyal, Eastern bloc playwright.
Governments should always be viewed as dangerous animals, unless otherwise exonerated. Prohibition is a paradigm case in point.
We need some CURRENT law enforcement officers to stand up for what’s right, not just protect their own self-interests. Everyone knows where LEAP stands.