Today was a long day. We woke up at 8 a.m. after about four hours of sleep, dragged ourselves downstairs and forced ourselves to eat breakfast. We hiked over to the University of Maryland Stamp Student Union for a day of speeches by people that have long been waging a war on unfair drug policy.
We got to see a great debate between Kevin Sabet, founder of Students Taking Action Not Drugs, and Kris Krane, executive director of SSDP. Needless to say Kevin wasn't eye-to-eye with us on everything, but Kris presented his arguments very well and with a lot of respect. We played the top game, as some say, and it just goes to show that this thing we're fighting is unjust. Valid arguments based on sound and reason cannot be argued against, and if so only from a purely perspective standpoint.
We listened to experts speak on the topic of religion and its role in the fight against the drug war, SSDP going global and its effect in the UK and Canada, in which Mr. Tree presented compelling evidence for the argument that the United States' presence and eradication of the major cocaine cartels in South America is only making the problem worse. The way he explained it is that if you were to smash a cockroach, or in this case two, it would splinter into one hundred little cockroaches. An uncountable number of smaller distributors have picked up the clients of the major drug cartels taken down by the U.S. Drug War.
We also heard about the mayor of a smaller town outside of College Park in which just several months ago the mayor of the town was a firsthand victim of the Drug War. His house wasturned upside down by a SWAT team, he was forced to stay kneeling with his hands bound behind him in his underwear, and the entering SWAT was "startled" by the presence of his two dogs so they shot them. Innocent animals with no malicious thought, only instinct, got between the state and their desire to present a crack-down-on-drugs image and take the easy way out in enforcing drug law. Unfortunately, this is the world in which we live.
Lunch was free and delicious and vegetarian. I bought an SSDP shirt and picked up lots of great literature on medicinal marijuana and drug reform and some cool stickers. We spent some time in the hot tub and chilled real low key tonight.
Like I said yesterday, it's great to see the incredible potential of what everyone here can do. None of us have any excuses that could get in the way of pushing our chapter to its maximum potential.
End the Drug War!
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