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April 25, 2002
Aaron Hawley
Cop a Buzz Day in Vermont:
Education v. Incarceration
David
Vest
Code
Red: Politics and Wordplay at the Vatican
Bernard Weiner
Time Out! A Pause for Longer-Range
Thinking
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Standing
with the Peace Movement
April 24, 2002
David Vest
State of Politics in France:
Code Bleu
Jean Fallow
A20
in Seattle:
Cops Get Rough, Again
Kevin Alexander Gray
Help Save the Life of an Innocent Man:
Ask for Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Tanya
Reinhart
Jenin,
the Propaganda Battle
Todd May
Drowning Children, Palestinians and American
Responsibility
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
Resources:
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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Al Gore:
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April 25, 2002
Blowing
Smoke at the Univ. of Vermont
"Education versus Incarceration"
by Aaron Hawley
Just like the global "Drug War", a victory
on the battlefield takes little for the self-proclaimed warriors.
University of Vermont (UVM) administrators and Student Government
members have already begun patting each other's backs after
"averting" Saturday's 4:20 event-the annual cop a buzz
day. The pro-pot gathering attracted close to three thousand
people in front of the UVM Bailey-Howe library last year.
This year's new UVM administration (a
place of high turnover rates) entered campus with a "get
tough" attitude on the swelling 4:20 event. The Student
Government was offered access to the administration budget.
They couldn't refuse to cooperate in organizing alternative
events for the weekend. The event's price tag is placed around
$55,000, which likely does not include the cost of a notable
appearance by local law enforcement agencies. Reports estimate
1,500 people attended the drug-free event. Assuming little marginal
income was made from selling $10 tickets to non-students, that
averages out to around $40 per person. Interestingly, about
the same amount it costs for a "bag".
The unanimously White (not surprising
Whites are far less prosecuted for drug use than Blacks or Hispanics)
event isn't characterized by students overtly calling for "legalization",
nor an end to the "War on Drugs" (which some have
called the "War on Us"). The hour-long event is attended
for the smoker-solidarity, and predominantly for the overt party
atmosphere, a public display that occurs at one of the nation's
top party schools. And an atmosphere that plays out in private
behind University of Vermont dormitory doors, and in Burlington
apartments on every other day of the year. Students cry that
it is a noble tradition and promotes school spirit. I imagine
there are likely other causes thousands of students could rally
for. Acts of hate or sexual violence on campus come to mind.
I wasn't on campus or even in Burlington
on April 20th. But from what I heard and read, most didn't let
the University stand in their way from smoking on their "holiday".
Some attempted to initiate a 4:20 on other parts of campus.
Even people who stopped by to catch the free concert, headlined
by Vida Blue, which features members from Phish, the Allman
Brothers and the Funky Meters (perhaps not the culture our
campus' drug-warriors should promote), still smoked that day.
These students were sure to do it the way University administration
wanted them to: behind closed doors.
Students were forewarned ahead of time
that police would crack down, so they faced the trend in the
form of a question, "Education or Incarceration?".
Fortunately for them, they were privileged college students
and were given a choice of whether to get arrested or stay in
school-not an alternative offered to most of the urban victims
of the war on drugs.
"Education vs. incarceration"
is an equation for increased funding by state and federal governments
to prisons, and decreased funding to educational programs. Sentencing
laws inspired by the "War on Drugs", like mandatory
minimums and California's 'Three-Strikes', result in more prisons
and higher incarceration rates for drug and other non-violent
offenders.
UVM's version of the "War on Drugs"
benefited various rock and hip-hop acts. In the real "War
on Drugs", the beneficiaries of irrational decision-making
and policy are arms manufacturers, military contractors, pharmaceutical
companies, private prison and prison-related businesses, and
multinationals needing an excuse to protect their investments
in natural resources (need I say "Oil"?).
The casualties in the real "War
on Drugs" are indeed us: the drug users and their families
that don't have access to drug treatment in a "get tough
on crime" and "just say no" society; those who
"pay" for it in taxes and loss of public services;
and those in other countries suffering the true casualties.
The people of Colombia, for example, are caught in the middle
of a civil war involving a militarized government fighting a
"War on Drugs" with heavy U.S. sponsorship.
So why do administrators on campus submit
to this war? The decisionmakers at UVM can't believe that potheads
create a violent scenario. They can't be concerned for student
health or safety, because student's smoked anyway. Their true
motivation was giving in to political pressure. Fifty-grand
is a drop in the bucket for the administration's larger "public
relations campaign" and appeasement of arbitrary threats
from Montpelier to cut funding to the state's public university.
If University administrators believe
that it is justifiable to throw money to avoid pot-smoking events,
and threaten students with harm and/or arrest from the police,
and fail to create a 'harm-reducing' environment then perhaps
they should know that they are not actually servicing students.
Acts of hate or sexual violence on campus also come to mind.
This sort of attitude has failed us, the D.A.R.E. generation,
before. When is the money going towards law enforcement, criminal
justice, unethical corporations and now rock bands going to
go towards education?
Administrators have done a lot to clean
the public image of the University, but have they really just
fallen in line with the rest of the unreasonable drug policy
characterized by the "War on Drugs"?
Aaron Hawley
attends the University of Vermont. He can be reached at: Aaron.Hawley@uvm.edu
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