Friends,
On July 10th, I’ll turn 34. 34 has been my lucky number ever since, as a ten-year-old, I decided then-Kansas Jayhawk and eventual Boston Celtic Paul Pierce was my favorite basketball player (he wore number 34, Rock Chalk and go Green!). This being my lucky year, I want to do something special.
In 2005, as a college Freshman, I was arrested with a couple friends for paraphernalia, possession and a few other charges relating to marijuana use and sale. Being an affluent white guy, this disruption to my life was minimal. In fact, my record was ultimately expunged. It’s as if it never happened.
The same can’t be said for millions of Black and Brown Americans. To paraphrase the documentary 13th, our criminal justice system is kinder to those who are white and guilty than Black and innocent. This was certainly true for me. My arrest never kept me from getting a job, a loan, housing, or anything else.
For my birthday, I’m setting a goal of raising $10,000 to help the Drug Policy Alliance do their vital work. To be clear, we will hit that goal. Whatever isn’t raised, I pledge to donate myself. But I’d love for this to be a collaborative campaign, as a gift to me.
Donate what you can. $5, $50, $500, whatever you feel like giving. It all helps us reach our goal of ending the War on Drugs and, with it, the control of white nationalists, hypocrites, and those they’ve duped with fear and racism, to enslave Black and Brown communities.
Join me today. Together our impact can be amplified. Together we can make a difference. Together we can win.
All the info you need to make a donation can be found here: https://engage.drugpolicy.org/secure/ways-give-honor-jays-birthday. If you want to give in another fashion, please mention my name in your donation to have it count towards our goal.
More Info:
To break this vicious cycle of persecution, degradation, and life-destroying, unjustified prosecution, we must end the disastrous and racism-based War on Drugs and change the policies it created.
Drugs are not the danger to our society we’ve allowed ourselves to be convinced they are. For over a century we’ve used an unfounded fear of those who use drugs to oppress Americans our white system has labeled undesirables and, in doing so, fed for-profit prisons and a discriminatory bail system. Our leaders have then used these arrests and incarcerations to convince us our country is safer.
Let me be clear: this is a lie; it has been a lie, and it will always be a lie. In fact, many of those committing these actions acknowledged it’s a lie. But don’t just take my word for it. As the saying goes, I came with receipts.
· “The Opium Exclusion Act (of 1909) applied only to the opium processed for smoking that was favored by Chinese immigrants, not the medicinal opium that white Americans commonly kept in their household medicine cabinets.” — Dale Gieringer, drugs and use Author and Activist.
· “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.” — John Ehrlichman, President Richard Nixon’s top advisor.
· “Black Americans are nearly six times more likely to be incarcerated for drug related offenses than their white counterparts, despite equal substance usage rates (and the fact that Black and Brown Americans only make up roughly 12.6 percent of the population). Almost 80 percent of people serving time for a federal drug offenses are Black or Latino. In state prisons, people of color make up 60 percent of those serving time for drug charges.” — Center for American Progress study, 2018.
These laws remain to this day and this playbook is the foundation of the American anti-drug movement action plan. We’ve been lied to, and millions of people, most of them Black or Brown, are in jail because of it.
One organization in particular has been on the forefront of ending these catastrophic policies since the War on Drugs was founded in the 80s: the DPA. The Drug Policy Alliance seeks to end the War on Drugs, reform terrible drug laws, increase access to Harm Reduction-based treatment for those who use drugs, and assist those who’ve had their lives ruined by our country’s racist war on Black and Brown Americans among other initiatives. I’ve long supported them financially and love their work.
For more info on the DPA and, specifically, their effectiveness, please see that section of their website: https://www.drugpolicy.org/about-us#victories
If you’re seeing this on social media, please like, comment, share etc. If you received this in an email, please pass it on. It’s going to take all of us.
And for everyone who made it to the end of this call for action, thank you. I appreciate it and I know the DPA does too.
One more time, the link to give is: https://engage.drugpolicy.org/secure/ways-give-honor-jays-birthday
Please reach out. I want to hear from you.
Spread love, and Choose Your Struggle.
Jay Shifman
