From: Mike Rosing <mrosing@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Date: 28 Sep 92 19:47 PDT
Subject: Harvest Festival report from IMI.
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1484000054:000:5404
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!mrosing    Sep 28 19:47:00 1992


Howdy dude,

	Imagine a 3 year old kid saying that in her lowest voice.
Heather came with Dave the Bong and Sam(antha) along with Max and
your's truly (Dr. mike) on the wild merry bus ride to Harvest fest.
It was more than a blast.  I am seriously mello this morning.  It
feels like a weeks vacation.

	We had THE break down on the way up.  Normal for beat up
busses. But 2 engineers and a mechanic figured it out in less than 15
minutes so it was no big deal.  Once in Mad town we set up camp at
Lake Mendota Camp Grounds.  Dave Lapp followed us in his pick up with
about 100 pieces of wood.  Friday nite it looked like we would hardly
make a dent in it, but by sunday morning it was gone.

	The day of the rally was miserable.  It rained before the
start and kept raining off and on the entire day.  Put the crowd in a
bad mood.  Put the cops in a bad mood.  The bands couldn't play.  The
drums started beating and the rainbow people danced.  The sun came
out!  There were speaches at the mall and then the march up to the
capitol.  I got to hold the IMI banner and smoke jays with Ben Masel
going up the street.  Quite a scene.

	At the capitol it started raining again.  The drums came
back out and 20 minutes later the rain stopped.  The speaches started.
There were very few cops in the crowd because most of them were
watching the crowds at the football game.  Then 3 cops at a time would
walk thru the crowd (all of whom were smoking pot) and pick out
somebody to arrest.  It first happened near me and everybody started
yelling "bullshit!,bullshit!"  I made a comment that "why shout,
nobody's doing anything".  Well, the next time they walked thru, the
crowd *did* do something.  They got in the cops way. 3 cops against
3000 people turned real ugly real fast.  The mounted cops could not
get thru the crowd to save the 3 in the middle and then 2 incidents
took place, three cops got spit on a lot and the mounted ones were
pushed back up the capitol.  (Note: this is all second hand, many IMI
members were in the middle of all this but your's truly was *not* any
where near the action)

	The 3 cops escaped the crowd by taking an elevator in a
parking garage and then everything mellowed out again.  The bands
played, more speakers got to rant (Ben offered me a chance too but I
figured with the riot his schedule was fucked).  It started raining
and we all decided to walk back to the bus.  On the way we took a
break on a porch which had a mail box marked "FRIENDS".  One young
women showed up and invited us in to wait out the worst part of the
rain and we took her up on it.  Heather was really tired so Sam
suggested we hike in the light rain about 10 minutes later.

	Max and Janice went up to Dennis Peron's room at this point
(we met Janice on the way to the bus and told her where it was
happening).  Max should get something on the net in the next few days
about it.  (When his new modem arrives that is.)  So IMI was well
represented even at the highest levels of the movement.  Dave Lapp
told me that we got mentioned in the Madison news papers too: "It's a
good thing everybody was stoned man, or this would have been a real
riot". So we represented the bottom of the movement really well too.
Oh well.

	Saturday nite I went back to camp and sat on the bus staying
dry. All my equipment was dry but there was more room in the bus and
the Bong offered to cook up some supper.  I took him up on it since
all I had was hot dogs and spaghetti sounded soooooo much better.
Dave got the fire so hot in the fire pit that even drenching rain
couldn't put it out.  After supper we stood outside in the mist and
got dried out by the fire.  Around 11 pm Max crused back into camp
with wonderful stories about high level politics and the stars came
out.  Around midnite I crashed while everyone else talked.

	Sunday morning was *gorgous*.  Dave Lapp put logs on the
coals and the fire started right up again.  There were about 4 IMI
camp sites and most were pretty muddy but everyone was in a pretty
good mood. :-}  The ranger came by every now and then but we never
paid much attention because we were using solar power to dry all our
stuff.  Then she came by and yelled "check out time is 1pm!"  I said
"ok!  what time is it now?"  Her reply was "1:10" so I said "we're
outa here!" and that calmed everything down.  We finished packing up
the bus and moved over to the park.  Played for 15 minutes on the
merry go round with Heather and let her swing a bunch before we hit
the road.  A very uneventful trip back.

	All in all I'd say this was the lowest turn out ever but it
was the true hard core of the legalization movement.  Ben has tried
for years to get the cops in trouble and he finally succeeded.  I'm so
cynical I think it was planned, but who knows.  I needed the camping
just to relax from all my fuckups at work.  It was a great time and
it's pretty clear we are a big part of the legaliztion picture.  Now
all we have to do is steer the enegry in an optimal path so that laws
are actually changed.  Another 3 to 4 years and we'll be in a position
to do that.  What we have to do now is show these guys how to be
serious about changing the laws.

Patience, persistence, truth,         reality:       mgr@anhep2.hep.anl.gov
Dr. mike                                 UUCP:    uunet!pyramid!cdp!mrosing
IMI, P.O. BOX 2242, Darien IL 60559    bitnet:              mrosing@igc.org