As a little boy, Dick goes to a DARE program, like millions of other kids. He thinks it's the most inspiring thing he has ever seen. He thinks the cops are heroes. Of course a lot of little kids may think so at the time, but they outgrow it. Dick never outgrows it. All through high school, he wants to wear a badge.
As soon as he graduates, he goes to the Police Academy. Then he enrolls in college. (Or high school, as in this story.)
He moves into the dorm and gets to know everybody. He pretends to smoke pot, but of course he doesn't inhale. It is hard for him to be in the same room with that foul smoke, but he pretends to like it. "That's good shit, man. Where'd you get it?" His friends never suspect that they are being set up.
One night he arranges a buy. He is wired. The cops are waiting outside. When the money changes hands, all of a sudden the dorm is full of cops. They arrest the young man who sold Dick the pot, and start to take him away.
Meanwhile some 915ers hear what's happening. They show up and block the cops' path. One of them steps forward and says "Stop right there. This is a no-narc zone. Let him go and get out of here."
What happens next?
The same questions that I raised in the no-rap scenario also apply here. The point is to understand the whole constellation of forces. Dick the junior narc has the police backing him up, and the whole force of the government backing the cops up. The 915ers have nobody backing them up.
Why?
Pot hasn't always been illegal. It has been used for many centuries in many parts of the world, from India to China to Europe to the Middle East. In Exodus, chapter 30, Moses describes the holy anointing oil used to anoint priests (and later prophets and kings). The active ingredient is a plant whose name is usually translated "fragrant cane." The original Hebrew name is Kaneh Bosm, which is equivalent to cannabis in Greek. In India, yogis have always used cannabis; they say "Shiva smokes charas." In England, cannabis seeds have been found in an ancient sauna near Stonehenge.
A thousand years ago, if Dick had gone into a temple in India and tried to tell the priests that they couldn't smoke charas, they would probably have killed him. The government, and the whole society, was on their side.
But somehow things have gotten twisted around so that the holy oil is illegal (even in India). How did this happen? And how can we set forces in motion that will restore cannabis to its rightful place in our lives?
At a meeting at Ojai in 1989, Terence McKenna said we should say "I'm stoned and I'm proud." Almost no one is willing to stand up in public and say that. People on the other side believe in what they are doing. They have the courage of their convictions. They have the energy that comes from believing in the rightness of their cause. We don't have that moral energy.
There are a few pot smokers who do believe in the rightness of their cause. They believe that hemp is a sacred plant, the most benign herb on the planet, and they earnestly and tearfully believe this as they go to prison, where they get raped. For some reason their belief has no moral force, and it generates no physical force.
Why?
What happens in American jails and prisons
Coming at this from another angle, it is possible to establish a no-narc zone. All you have to do is know everybody in the area. In the scenario above, if the other students had made a point to know who Dick was before selling him pot, or even sharing a joint with him, then he wouldn't have been able to set them up.
If we know more about them than they know about us, then we contain them, and they have no power over us.
We are going to make a point to know who everybody is. That is the only way to establish a private space -- at least the only way that is open to us at this stage. We are a long way from being able to defend a private space with force. It may be decades before we can do that. But we can have a private space now, if we know everybody.
When you have a 915 meeting, make sure your bullshit detector is plugged in and turned on. Watch for insincerity. Watch out for anybody who tries too hard to talk the talk. If your intuition tells you that somebody isn't who he says he is, don't blow it off. Don't ignore that feeling. Listen to your intuition. The stakes are very high.
The 915 movement - We are all
supposed to support the American agenda, i.e. the attempt
to create a drug-free society and an integrated society.
There must be a few who think, as I do, that the American
agenda is monstrous. It's the exact opposite of what we
should be doing.
But there is nothing we can do
about it, because there is no loyalty among drug
users.
My experience of pot: marijuana
as an intelligence enhancer
Prospects for the
legalization of marijuana
Cannabis in the Old and New
Testaments