The Hemp Report

Crossposted at Booman Tribune and Daily Kos.

This morning I got up to go to work like every weekday morning. I work an early AM shift, but I still check my email before I leave. This morning there was an email with this stunning subject line in my Vote Hemp and HIA Board in boxes "Fwd: White Plume home burned down today."


Alex White Plume on his back steps
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation - Manderson, SD
AP Photo/Chet Brokaw

The email was from Tom Cook and he writes:

8:30 pm Chadron. Debra White Plume just called, & asked me to contact you with word their home burned up this morning, around 9am.

Still in her housecoat when discovering the blaze, she only had time to snatch her grandson, pipe, purse, and cellphone & get out the door. Everything burned. Total loss. All papers even computers. 'It all happened in a half hour,' she said.

Alex had left earlier for Gordon, & came back around noon to bemoan the debris. By nightfall the Fire Marshall had concluded it was an electrical fire.

My first though was to put up a diary here and on The Hemp Report and try and get donations to help out Alex and his family. But it had to wait so I would not be late to work. Now that I'm home I read that Alex and his family may have a place to stay temporarily at Tom Cook's place in Nebraska. They still are in need of clothes and food. I am going to use my PayPal account at The Hemp Report to accept donations and send the proceeds to Tom Cook for Alex. Please click below to make a donation. The email address for PayPal donations is hempreport@mac.com:

I hope to be able to get enough donations to get them some Safeway and Target gift cards. If anyone has a late model Apple Macintosh that they would like to donate to the cause you can email me at hempreport@mac.com or through The Hemp Report.

If you would like to know more about Alex, please check out the Standing Silent Nation page at PBS.

I hope that this is well received by the community and if you can, please make a donation.

Thanks,

Tom

     This is the last issue of The Weekly News Update for 2007. Instead of doing a tired, old, year-end hemp news round-up, we are bringing you fresh news and a preview of our updated newsletter for 2008.

     In the two years that the The Weekly News Update has been published by Vote Hemp, the list of subscribers has grown significantly. Starting with our next issue in January, the newsletter will be called simply the Hemp News Update and will be sent every other Tuesday. This new email newsletter will be a joint venture with the Hemp Industries Association (HIA) and will include new HIA-related features.

     We hope that you enjoy the way we present and shape hemp news in the upcoming year. Hemp has been legal to grow in Canada for a decade now, but that did not happen just because farmers and activists hoped that it would — they worked hard for it!

[More...]

     Well, the past week was definitely a "two steps forward, one step back" or, depending on how cynical you are, a "one step forward, two steps back" kind of week. The decision by the U.S. District Court in Bismarck, North Dakota in favor of the DEA's motion to dismiss the ND farmers' lawsuit (Monson v. DEA) was disappointing, but it really wasn't all that surprising.

     There is an old Japanese proverb that says "a frog in a well cannot comprehend the ocean." It seems that those with the power to revive industrial hemp farming in the United States see the crop as does a frog in a well. We need to find effective ways to educate them and help them to see the ocean by changing their world-view.

     You can help people better understand this issue by doing small things, like commenting on news stories that contain errors, as I did recently concerning the story "Yesterday's News: Effort Aimed at Helping World War II Eventually Turned into 'Dread Menace'." Ten minutes a day adds up to sixty hours a year. Ten minutes does not seem like much, but the impact can be huge. Similarly, your individual efforts may not seem so significant, but multiply those by thousands of people, and things will change. If you need some ideas, please check out the ten Quick Links in this newsletter (online), including Vote Hemp's new StumbleUpon page.

     Going to Congress may seem like the easy answer, but the likelihood of it acting without some sort of miracle seems remote, especially during election time. North Dakota Ag Commissioner Roger Johnson noted this in the latest ND Department of Agriculture press release, as did The Minot Daily News in their editorial "Congress Should Solve Hemp Issue — But Will It?" Long-time hemp supporter and Hawaii state legislator Cynthia Thielen expanded on this thought in her commentary "Irrational Fear Sustains Taboo on Handy Hemp" in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

     Where does this leave us? The legal team for the North Dakota farmers, Dave Monson and Wayne Hauge, is looking at all options and is considering appealing the Court's decision.

[More...]