Feature Archives

Donna Deiss Yovino writes, "At Santa Cruz parking lot A on West Cliff Drive, on Friday May 9, 2008, Sgt. C LeMoss twisted and broke the right humurus arm bone of a 60 year old disabled woman for entering her RV and attempting to close the door."

On April 29th, California's Assembly Committee on Public Safety passed A.B. 2743. The bill, authored by Assembly Member Lori Saldaña (D-San Diego) and spearheaded by the Marijuana Policy Project, or MPP, would direct state and local law enforcement officers to not assist in federal raids on medical marijuana patients and providers. The bill will now continue on to the appropriations committee.

A state medical marijuana employment rights bill is under consideration by California's state Assembly. AB 2279 would protect the rights of hundreds of thousands of medical marijuana patients in California from employment discrimination. The bill would reverse a January California Supreme Court decision in Ross v. RagingWire, which said that an employer may fire someone solely because they use medical marijuana outside the workplace. Assemblyman Mark Leno said, "AB 2279 is merely an affirmation of the intent of the voters and the legislature that medical marijuana patents need not be unemployed to benefit from their medicine."

Thousands of students from around the Monterey and San Francisco Bay Areas participated in a "Four Twenty" celebration in Porter Meadow at UC Santa Cruz on April 20th, 2008. Four Twenty (420) is a time of day when people, often a group of friends, smoke cannabis together or eat foods cooked with it. For that reason, April 20th has evolved into a counterculture holiday where people gather to celebrate and consume cannabis.

Addy writes, "Since the administration is closing campus on 4/20, the UCSC students are extending an invitation to everyone to come up on Friday, April 18th to take over the quad. We'll have our 4/20 celebration early, to let them know that it is our campus, that we pay THEM. This new 4/20 policy is draconian and unnecessary as there have been no issues in the past."

On March 19th, Dr. Marion "Mollie" Fry and Dale Schafer walked out of a US Court in Sacramento free on bail pending appeal after being sentenced to a five-year mandatory minimum for conspiracy to cultivate and dispense medical cannabis. US District Judge Frank Damrell deplored the sentence as a "tragedy" that should "never have happened." Judge Damrell released the defendants on bail. Doctor Fry has stopped writing medical cannabis recommendations as a condition for release.

The international network demanding accountability for the murder of US journalist Brad Will released secret documents detailing proposed military support for Mexican security forces implicated in murder, torture and continuing arbitrary detentions.