As most of you in DC will recall, the City Council voted to decriminalize marijuana some months back. Predictably — and unlike any other city in the United States — this law passed by a local government is being interfered with by the Congress of the United States, in the form of an amendment to an appropriations bill prohibiting Federal and city money to administer the new law, introduced by a no-name clown from Maryland named Andy Harris.

The prevailing opinion among legalization and home rule advocates in DC is that if Rep. Harris wants to help govern the city of Washington, DC, he should become an official resident and run for City Council.

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Prop 71 celebrates successful petition campaign, 07.01.14 from Mike Flugennock on Vimeo.

DC Marijuana Legalization Initiative Petitioners “Git ‘er done”!

The staff and volunteers for Initiative 71 celebrate the end of a successful petition campaign to put the legalization of marijuana on the November ballot in Washington DC. Petitioners gathered over 55,000 signatures, more than twice the required amount.

Now, on to November!

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The petition drive for Washington, DC’s cannabis leglization ballot question hits Capitol Hill on one of the first rare perfect spring days in DC.

Find out about the “Super Sunday Signature Gathering Blitz” at the DC Cannabis Campaign.

UPDATE: CORRECTION: Tommy Wells is, in fact, the DC City Councilman from Ward 6, not “at-large”.

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What if they gave an election and nobody came?

I caught this article on Al Jazeera the other day, reporting that owing to poor turnout, the Egyptian election commission has been forced to extend voting for a third day. In fact, Egyptians are avoiding the polls in such large numbers that the election commission is threatening fines for not voting — which kind of pushes not voting into the realm of non-violent civil disobedience, when you think about it.

I couldn’t help thinking that dissident/third parties in the US — especially on the Left — could learn something from this. For many years now, Americans have staged a sort of de facto boycott of elections, but it hasn’t been organized and sent no unified message about oligarchy and corruption. Perhaps instead of pissing away time and energy trying to get “elected”, outfits like the Green Party could instead send a message about the state of US electoral politics by calling for a boycott — a “No Vote” campaign, mobilizing non-voters to take to the streets to express their intent and their reason for not voting, smashing the old stereotype of the “apathetic” non-voter.

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