1999
Million Marijuana March in San Francisco!
"We're Here, We're High, Get used to it!"
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SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Thousands of people gathered at San Francisco's United Nations Plaza for the local edition of the Million Marijuana March on the afternoon of Saturday May 1, 1999.
The event began at noon. I arrived around 1 PM in time to hear author David Ford speak (below top left). David also hawked his book from one of the booths at the plaza. Other speakers included Chris Conrad and Mikki Norris, below top right, and cannabis club attorneys Robert Raich (below left), and Bill Panzer (below right).
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Journalist/patient/drug war POW Pete Brady gave a defiant speech (below left) that had the crowd cheering. Brady spoke out strongly against the war on cannabis and recounted his own legal problems. A report with photos taken by him and filed for Cannabis Culture magazine can be found here.
Dale Gieringer of CA NORML also spoke and called for "bringing cannabis out of the closet and into the coffeeshops". (middle photo below)
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There were many other speakers and performers and I didn’t catch them all. Some I did hear: Jeff Jones (above right) director of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club, which had a booth, representatives of CHAMP, an SF cannabis club, also staffing a booth, and Lynette Shaw from the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, who played a song. I missed Richard Evans' speech, another club operator from SF.
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The day was sunny, but the chilly and brisk wind conditions returned, making it a bit on the cold side, and making it awfully hard to light up. But it did not deter many there from medicating.
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Tom Ammiano, president of the SF Board of Supervisors and potential mayoral candidate (below, along with M.C. Wood Nymph, to his right) spoke of strides made at City Hall toward making cannabis a low priority law enforcement matter, and helping to make sure patients could exercise their rights to medicinal marijuana under Prop 215.
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Lance Brown, Libertarian presidential candidate also spoke, as did an on-the-mend Baba Ram Dass, and a number of musical acts played over the course of the day.
Around 4:20, the parade headed up the sidewalk on Market Street. I would say there were several thousand, many with banners, placards, some banging drums and other instruments. It was a diverse crowd in all respects, running the gamut from grizzled oldsters to babies. Chanting "We're Here, We're High, Get used to it!" and "We've got Pot Pride, We're here to turn the tide!" and other catchy slogans we marched to the site of Dennis Peron's old club and back to UN Plaza. At the club site, the crowd chanted "Out of the closets and into the coffeeshops". Dennis' club would be an ideal location for a coffee shop.
After returning to the plaza, many lingered as a band played a song about Dan Lungren, ex CA attorney general entitled "Big Bad Dan", with suitably derogatory lyrics. Tired from a long day on my feet, I headed out to file this report.
Some MMM Links of Interest:
Million Marijuana March Home Page
Million Marijuana March 1999 News!
Other Reports on The San Francisco MMM
Pictures taken by Dr. Ganj of Million Marijuana March 99! in San Francisco!
The 420 List's MMM
Pictures Million Marijuana March - San Francisco
Cyber MMM Marchers
since May 16, 1999