Topic: report: liberty bell raid pub testimony fri la city council
chers---
on friday, five of us --- including rev. patric duff --- offered public comments to the LA city council about the liberty bell temple raid. it’s highlighting the city atty’s inaction on drafting acceptable ordinance, which is the biggest hardship our community is laboring under at the moment. i am calling for more public comment tuesday and wednesday and --- if they’re still meeting --- friday, and plan on being there all three days for whoever wants to meet up with me & offer support and/or testimony. second-floor coffee shop in city hall, 9:30ish. the city council will not be meeting again after friday until january. keep an eye peeled here for details about friday.
here is the text of my prepared statement:
kearns to la city council on LAPD-backed DEA med cannabis raid at liberty bell temple, odetta (long play) (1082)
http://aids-write.org/?p=1298
[friday, december 5, 2008] my name is richard kearns. i am a 57-year-old gay man alive with AIDS for more than 20 years. i am a long-term survivor. i am an AIDS activist. i am a medical cannabis patient and advocate. i am poet-secretary of the patient advocacy network.
i am here today because tuesday, the DEA, backed up by the LAPD, raided a church, the liberty bell temple in Silverlake. agents, supported by lapd officers, also broke into reverend duff’s residence, not covered by the 30-page search warrant that editorializes about the california attorney general’s medical cannabis guidelines. agents issued no receipt for the cash and medicine they took. i expect you will be hearing more details in a bit.
i am here to offer you a broad perspective on this discussion, and request that you add reconvening the working group and the city attorney’s ordinance report to next week’s agenda.
let start with a more familiar form of alternative medicine, traditional chinese medicine --- what we call acupuncture
it is informed by both taoist & buddhist religiious traditions. taoist tradition pretty much become the “hard sciene acupuncture crew.” electromagnetic wave tracking. the buddhists view acupuncture as meditation and prayer and worship for both the patient and the provider.
more mainstream --- think of all the hospitals founded and kept alive as a matter of faith through good works.
and what article of faith is at the core of the DEA’s disrespect? “they’re just doing it to get high..it’s only an excuse” they rely upon stigma to support outdated, unpopular, unjust and lethal drug law.
i am unable to escape my sadness over Odetta’s death this week. in august 1963, at the march on washington, she sang:
“O freedom,
O freedom,
O freedom over me,
And before I’d be a slave,
I’d be buried in my grave,
And go home to my Lord
and be free.”
she said
“You’re walking down life’s road,
society’s foot is on your throat,
every which way you turn
you can’t get from under that foot.
And you reach a fork in the road
and you can either lie down and die,
or insist upon your life.”
i insist upon my life. i insist upon my life. i insist upon just law. just law is good medicine.
i call on the city council to rise up with me. where is the ordinance draft? the city attorney’s inaction is the biggest hardship our community faces today. we need your help to move this process along before the city council shuts down for the holiday break. please add reconvening the work group to the agenda next week.
namasté
---rk
