Harvest Fest Celebrates 37 Years

Source: The Scene
Pubdate: October 2997
Website: http://scenenewspaper.com/
Contact: jlundstrom@new.rr.com
Author: Jim Lundstrom
Note: This Month's issue is about marijuana. The cover illustration is a small pot plant and the text, "IS MY MEDICINE LEGAL YET?"

HARVEST FEST CELEBRATES 37 YEARS

Marijuana activists, advocates and adventurers will converge on Madison Oct. 5-7 for the 37th Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival.

Political activist Ben Masel has been involved with the annual festival from the beginning. He was a fresh-faced freshman from New Jersey when he arrived in Madison to attend UW in 1971.

“I just got to town as a freshman for that first one,” he said. “It was more closely in context with the anti-war movement then.”

The Vietnam War ended and we’ve moved on to conduct wars in other parts of the world, but our internal war with marijuana goes on.

“I kind of imagined we’d be celebrating winning by now,” Masel said.

However, Masel and the Harvest Fest community have witnessed change over the years in the legal status of marijuana in both Madison and Dane County.

In fact, Madison has one of the oldest marijuana decriminalization laws in the books in this country in Ordinance 23:20, which allows casual possession of marijuana (up to 112 grams, or nearly a quarter-pound) on private property and affords further protection for medical marijuana patients, who, with a recommendation from a practitioner, may possess marijuana on public property.

The 30th anniversary of Ordinance 23-20 was celebrated in Madison last April, just a month after Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard announced his office would no longer prosecute marijuana possession cases of 25 grams or less (an ounce is 28 grams).

“Marijuana possession is one of the least significant cases we get in our office,” Blanchard told reporters when announcing the change on March 1. “I don’t think we have a marijuana problem in Dane County. I think we have a heroin problem. I think we have a crack problem... I think we have a much larger alcohol problem than we have a marijuana problem.”

Quite a few communities through the state are following suit by reducing possession of small amounts of marijuana to a ticketing offense rather than a misdemeanor that has to go through the court system.

Masel thinks Harvest Fest may have played at least a small part in changing law enforcement attitudes in Madison.

“Certainly it’s made a difference in Madison in disincentivizing aggressive enforcement,” he said. “I don’t think it directly has an impact on laws, although we have had legislators speak at it, Tammy Baldwin back when she was in the assembly (now representing Wisconsin in the U.S. House of Representatives). It’s good for networking for further activity throughout the state.”

Medical marijuana activist Gary Storck has been involved with the organization of recent hemp fests, and said he is proud to be involved with something that has gone on this long.

“Back in the ’70s they were dropping joints from helicopters and people dressed as clowns handed out joints from big bags. That it still continues today just blows my mind,” he said.

Today the event has involved into celebrating both the recreational and medicinal uses of marijuana.

“In the last few years we’ve really given it a medical cannabis flavor,” Storck said. “A lot of patients are there.”

In fact, Masel said, this year’s festival is dedicated to Dr. Tod Mikuriya, the Berkeley psychiatrist known for his advocacy of medical marijuana and for being an architect of Proposition 215, the 1996 California initiative that legalized growing and using marijuana for medical purposes. Mikuriya died on May 20 at the age of 73.

Prop 215 has been the model for the 11 other states that have passed medical marijuana acts, and was also the model for the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act, introduced by Wisconsin Assemblymen Frank Boyle and Mark Pocan last month, so it is fitting that its author, Dennis Peron, is also expected at the festival. “He’s not quite confirmed, but it sounds like he’s coming,” Masel said in mid-September.

The weekend event kicks off Friday, Oct. 5, at the Cardinal Bar with a fund-raiser for Is My Medicine Legal Yet? and Madison NORML.

“This will be the fifth annual benefit,” said organizer Storck. “We’ll have some great blues music, refreshments, a donation to get in on a sliding scale. It’s a great way to kick off the weekend.”

The fest begins at noon at the Library Mall with music and speakers that will include the surviving members of the Medical Marijuana Commando Squad (Storck, Jacki Rickert and Jim Miller from New Jersey, husband of the late medical marijuana patient Cheryl Miller), Masel and Peter Steinberg, a Madison attorney representing a man arrested by campus cops at last year’s fest for passing an alleged joint to another man.

Events continue Sunday with music, speakers and a parade up State Street to the Capitol, where there will be more pot talk from the Capitol steps and music by Little Marsh Overflow.

“It’s really a unique experience,” Storck said. “There’s nothing like it. I really recommend people come, march in the parade. It’s something that will definitely put a huge smile on your face.”

Updated Wednesday, October 10, 2007