Dear Mr. Legislative Analyst, Dan Riffle of the Marijuana Policy Project:
In response to your response to my email exposing the Marijuana Policy Project for holding a sexist fundraiser at the Playboy Mansion, you wrote,
"Thanks very much for sharing your concerns. Every year that we hold our fundraiser at the Playboy mansion we receive several emails similar to yours, and we take them very seriously. This year, as in past years, we discussed the matter as a staff and the prevailing view was that we should move forward with the event. Our decision to hold the fundraiser should not be viewed as an endorsement of any particular position, but simply an acknowledgement that the Playboy Mansion offers many of our donors an exciting venue to attend, and an opportunity to get our message - that marijuana prohibition is a failure that destroys lives and denies needed medicine to patients - out to a broader audience. It is also an acknowledgement that the Playboy Foundation has been a stalwart supporter of marijuana policy reform for many decades, even providing the seed money to found NORML."
Well, Mr. Legislative Analyst, thanks for making me aware that laws and ethics are clearly differentiated from one another within your Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). Sexism? Who cares about the other half of the human race, when we don't want to ruin the lives of patients.
Do as the Ancient Roman rulers would do at a mansion---lay back while some “hos” rub your rod. Slap Me Five, Fraternity Style!
Maybe we can hold an 'exciting venue' at the former clansman, David Duke's mansion where us whities can get off on watching black people ‘model’ their teeth and muscles on an auction-block. How about an 'exciting venue' for us colonialists at a Hacienda, funded by Chiquita Banana where we can get some Latinos to rub our feet? How about some Native Americans, Palestinians, or the aborigines of the Amazon---up for grabs. Whatever it takes! The ends justifies the means for the MPP.
Just because the majority of MPP staff voted to hold a sexist fundraiser, the unanimous vote is not a valid justification for doing so. Just like the majority of KKK members, vote to continue racist activities does not mean that their unanimous votes are a valid justification for doing so. Anyway, most of your MPP staff are probably agreeing because they either don’t want to lose their jobs (food and shelter), or don’t want to lose their positions for opportunistic reasons.
Your approach is mechanistic, (i.e., short-sighted because it negates or disconnects from other important elements, highly susceptible to chauvinism, and clearly unscientific) VS a dialectic-materialist approach, (i.e., foresight because it values the interconnectedness of all things, intrinsically equalitarian, and scientifically sound).
The MPP’s selling out the legalization-of-marijuana movement to the likes of the values of the patriarchal, Capitalistic, hierarchal super structure, is hindering your / our movement, big time. The MPP’s opportunistic attitudes and practices are chauvinistic, pathetic, divisive, counter-productive, socially irresponsible, and socially retarded.
As a human rights activist, I am committed only to revolutionary principles (which includes some reforms for tactical purposes on an ethical basis only) to guide me in creating authentic change. I bet that if you followed a revolutionary or dialectical materialist approach, cannabis would already be legalized or at least have more respect from the larger community.
You can flex your muscle at the mansion, but if you don’t have the balls to institute egalitarian principles and practices, then you’re useless.
Seriously,
Andrea Lavigne
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