IT ’S NOW OR NEVER

The Summer of Resistance has begun. The whole world is watching and we urgently need your help.

We are reaching out to our members, families, and friends to let everyone know that the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center has entered the ultimate battle for its existence. After seven months and two Grand Juries, the Bush Administration filed a motion on May 31st to take our building from us under federal forfeiture laws; a building our members purchased with help from the City of West Hollywood and Wells Fargo Bank. According to the feds we are a “drug house ”, no better than a crack shack. Our federal public defender tells us that the odds of imminent criminal indictments against director Scott Imler and others have dramatically increased.Not only is this an insult to our 1,960 seriously ill members and dozens upon dozens who’ve died over the last five years, but it belittles the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions,of people around the world who legitimately use mar juana as a medicine. In response, a group of LACRC supporters that includes some members but also folks who aren’t sick and don ’t use marijuana,organized a public vigil in the center ’s parking lot at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Gardner in West Hollywood. We’ve issued two demands:1)A fair and just settlement of LACRC legal issues and claims 2) Meaningful goodfaith dialogue to resolve the state/ federal impasse. We will continue our vigil until they are met. We want George Bush, John Ashcroft and DEA chief Asa Hutchinson to know that we are serious.

We urge you to read this newsletter carefully, learn how you can help and to participate any way that you can.California voters passed Prop 215 in November of 1996 and it ’s an outrage that the federal government not only disregards the health of the seriously and terminally ill,but is telling the citizens of California as well as eight other states and the District of Columbia, that their votes don’t count and, ultimately, that democracy is meaningless. If we don’t stand up for our rights immediately, it ’ll be too late for the LACRC and its members and perhaps for every sick person in this country who relies on this medicine for their health, for their very life.Please join us in this historic fight that is as American as the battles to end slavery — for minority,women ’s and gay rights —to end war. History is being made as you read this and we need your support in order to ensure that justice prevails.