I remind you all that this battle is
NOT over.
Bill C-26 started this fight. It died with Parliament on the Order Table in 2008.
It rose from the dead and C-15 was born -- and passed -- by the House of Commons in 2009.
It was amended by a Senate which the Liberals controlled. That control ends next month. With a pro-roguing of Parliament, the Standing Senate Committee that amended C-15 will be reformed and next time will be under the control of the Conservatives.
The balance of power in the full Senate as of January 2010 is held by independents. By November 2010, control of the full Senate will be in the hands of the Conservatives.
We have seen C-26 proceed, die and come back to life in C-15. Now that C-15 is dead - we will see the same thing happen again, make no mistake.
This battle is not over. 2010 will see this Bill in the House of Commons again.
______________________________ ____
I have seen all sorts of posts on
Cannabis Culture, WhyProhibition.ca and here asking people to "write their MPs" and "call the Tories to jam the phones" and complain.
That strategy is well intended, but it is utterly incompetent and misguided. THAT is the sort of strategy that let Bill C-26 progress and C-15 come within a hair of passing.
And if we pursue that strategy again, the next incarnation of the Bill will pass. How many times must this happen before people realize that the politics of protest do not work?
We must adopt a politics of persuasion.
I have said it here before - and I will say it again - the political strategy adopted by the so-called leadership of the marijuana movement in Canada is too far-rooted in the political culture of the far left. They are so deeply imbedded in the politics of protest that they do not readily understand that such politics are without any credibility in mainstream Canada. As a result, the media ignores them.
Once the media ignores you -- the battle is over.
If you go "write your MP" as your 2 cents worth of opposing this Bill next time - if THAT is our plan - we will get
E X A C T L Y what we got last time: a Bill that passes the House of Commons.
How many times must we keep doing the same thing, over and over again, before we realize that this strategy does not work? Do you have to get kicked in the balls a THIRD time before you wake up? Or is twice to the nuts enough?
Seriously: WAKE THE FUCK UP AND THINK ABOUT THIS and what it is that you are saying. This is a serious political struggle. Naive idealism and amateur politics will not defeat the next incarnation of this Bill.
You want to defeat the next incarnation of this Bill? I tell you that there is only ONE path to defeat it:
just one.
We MUST persuade the Liberal Party of Canada to not support the Bill. That is the only way that this dies and stays dead.
The Liberal Party of Canada is not a party of social conservatives. We are not their enemy. We are, to the contrary, their base. They do not support this bill out of any conviction or intellectual support for what it contains. Their support has
only been premised upon a well founded fear of looking too soft-on-crime.
A gun was held to the head of the Liberal Party of Canada to support C-15. An election had just been held. The public polling numbers in support of C-15 were VERY high.
Those numbers were high because the leadership in the so-called Marijuana Movement did not do its job properly. Oh, it tried to inform the public, but it played a fool's game. It focussed so much on telling all of the truth, it could not get its message out in a way that played to the public.
So let me spell it out for you, ok?
Canadians DO NOT LIKE DRUG DEALERS. They do not pity them. They do not care for them. They are happy to put them in jail. I'm sorry about that, but it's true. The large majority of the country would be HAPPY to put a grower's ass in jail. They would see it as a
GOOD THING.
So deal with that reality and then wake up and BE SMART. That's the lay of the battlefield. If we fight that same battle on that same field, we will lose it again - just as we have lost it twice before.
To win, we must pick a new battlefield.
If we cannot put a new label on the new incarnation of this Bill, it will be fought in the same battlefield and we lose.
The winning Battlefield for the Conservatives is to once again make this Bill all being "tough" on organized crime. The third time will be a charm, and the next Bill will succeed. There will be no Liberal controlled Senate to save it next time.
In order to defeat the next Bill, the following must happen:
WE WIN IF: the NDP, the Bloc and the Liberals defeat it in the House. The NDP and the Bloc will never support this Bill. The Liberals might.
Therefore, WE LOSE IF: the Liberals support it in the House.
This Bill is not about Justice Minister Nicholson, or Stephen Harper. We know what they are and who they are. They are the Enemy. They are social conservatives who would be HAPPY to put everyone reading this post in to jail for several years, and would call it a VICTORY if they could do so.
The next Bill is about the person who can stop that from happening. The next Bill is about Michael Ignatieff. We NEED him.
In order to persuade Ignatieff, and the Liberal Party to be onside, two things must happen:
1 - Michael Ignatieff must decide to oppose this Bill; and,
2 - The people of Canada must be prevailed upon to oppose this Bill.
If we cannot persuade the public, we will not be able to persuade Ignatieff. He may be opposed to the Bill on principle, but if 68% of Canadians support the Bill, then he will support it too.
So how do we persuade the Canadian people that this is not a Bill that Canada needs?
It needs REBRANDING. It needs a FACE. It needs to persuade Canadians on both a visceral AND an intellectual level that the Bill is wrong. We have intellectual arguments coming out of our ASS in opposition to the Bill - but the vast majority of people don't know about the details and see only a headline. They need to see something sympathetic in one sentence. They won't READ further than that.
The Conservatives sell the Bill as being against "organized crime" and drug dealers. That's their one sentence - and it works. If the new Bill is permitted to be branded as being about organized crime and drug dealers - it will get the support of Canadians just like the last two did.
So we must BRAND it sympathetically. We must change the battlefield.
The Bill must not be about "drug dealers" and "organized crime". It must be about somebody that Canadians DO NOT WANT SENT TO PRISON. The new Bill needs to be about somebody sympathetic.
The next Bill needs to be about university students. Living in a Dorm, or an apartment, or at their parents' home. In all of those cases, those are the people who will go to jail under C-26 and C-15 for growing in rented premises. They do not sell dope, but they share it with their friends. That is enough to make them go to prison for nine months for one plant.
And that's what we need to sell this on. A sympathetic face. Without it, we lose.
The rental provisions of C-15 are the most pernicious aspect of the Bill that there is. It the one aspect of the Bill that has NEVER, not even ONCE received any attention in the national media.
That is not an accident. If Canadians were actually told about it, they'd be upset. That's WHY the Conservatives don't tell them and their spin doctors stay away from that aspect of the Bill.
The Conservatives keep selling this as grow ops and organized crime. They stay on message - and they win.
We have to sell it as being against students and renters. We give this Bill a face. It is the face of a university student living in a dorm, getting dragged off to jail for a few plants in their closet. Not about drug dealers. Not about massive grow ops. Not about organized crime. We need this to be about students in a dorm room.
THAT is a fight we can win. THAT is a one sentence summation that people don't have to think about whether or not they oppose it.
If we make the next Bill about THAT, we can win. THAT is a sympathetic face. THAT is not somebody that Canadians want to send to jail. We do that? The Liberals will oppose this Bill - and this thing will go NOWHERE.
When the next Bill surfaces, ignore writing your MP. They don't listen to you. They vote as their whips tell them to vote. Write Ignatieff, and
cc: the local newspaper and the closest LIBERAL MP if you must. Make your complaint be about university students caught up in the crossfire of a mandatory scheme of sentencing from the far right.
Make the Bill be about students. Make that case to Ignatieff - how could he betray the young people he taught for so long as a University Professor? Why is he so weak as to not stand up for his own students against Harper?
Make this about Iggy's character and strength. Is he strong enough to support young students caught in the crossfire - or is he so weak he will sell out his own?
That e-mail to him will not do much. But that e-mail to him AND the local newspaper will if they run it. and if they run it - and read them again and again, the editor of that paper will see a spin that is easy to summarize and sell to readers as a "story". Paint this as a test of character where to be "hard on crime" is to be WEAK IN CHARACTER, and we might get somewhere with this. We can persuade Iggy to delay it, amend it, and ultimately, to defeat it.
So, next time, you must do two things: write Iggy and write the newspapers.
Stay on message and make the university student caught-in-the-middle the public face of this Bill in the media. Persuade Iggy with all the intellectual arguments you may like. But without that sympathetic face to persuade Canadians otherwise, he will be afraid to appear soft on crime again.
This is a battle for hearts and minds. In order to win it, we must pick the battlefield and stay on message.
I swear, if I see another "write your MP" or "jam the Tory phone lines" post dressed up and presented as meaningful "opposition" to the next incarnation of this Bill, I'll scream.
__________________
Proof that Legalization is Certain within 12 years
Difference between MMJ cards in Canada vs. the USA
Originally Posted by
B. Friendly 
outside of complaining like regular canadians lets show the government we not going to take it. A series of rallies across the country should be held one after another with a season ender in OTTAWA late 2010. Lets start in vancouver where we know there is demonstration support and work our way across the country!!!!! Who's in??? and when should the Vancouver rally kick off???
Well attended rallies are good political protest tactics. They attract media and provide a platform for sending a message home to both the faithful and those who have not heard the message yet. An
extremely well attended rally is a very good means of expanding the
potential for increased political opposition.
But please recognize that these are the politics of protest - not the politics of persuasion. They inherently tend to preach to the converted - not those who have not yet heard the clarion call.
More importantly, they contain within them dangers that all who engage in such tactics must face up to. And to be blunt - there is not enough facing up to those shortcomings in the "marijuana movement" in Canada. It's not even close and it's a real problem.
A poorly attended rally is, in fact, a political disaster. It encourages the opponent to believe (rightly, in most cases) that there is no
real broad-based concerted opposition to the subject matter of the protest. Far worse, a poorly attended rally makes the media discount the group and dismiss it out of hand - not simply for the moment
but in the future, too. It becomes a case of a
The Boy Who Cried Wolf. The risk is simple: it causes one's position to lose significant media credibility if the march is poorly attended. We have a pattern of coming up short in that category, time and time again.
Have you noticed how the media increasingly ignores such protests from the marijuana movement in Canada? That's because we've cried "Wolf" FAR too often. We yell, scream, announce a protest rally - and only a few dozen people show up. If it wasn't so damn
discouraging, it would be pathetic.
This is the danger to protest politics. Regrettably, the "protest march card" has been played so often - and so poorly - that there is nothing to be gained by it anymore at this time. Indeed, there is far more to lose by playing it poorly.
We've simply had far too many poorly attended protests. As a consequence - the media ignores the rallies and the government is ENCOURAGED by them. Worse, those individuals who actually
were motivated enough to bother to turn out have their morale crushed for their troubles. They tend not to want to bother to do it again when not enough people bother to show up. Success breeds success; but failure breeds failure.
We've had FAR too many of those in Canada over Bill C-26, C-15 and Mark Emery. The media now ignores them outright - and as well they should. Three hundred people blocking traffic might be news, but 10-12 of them on a street corner carrying a Canadian marijuana flag just isn't.
Accordingly, currently such rallies attract no media, encourage the government and discourage our own activists. That's a lose-lose-lose result, in my books.
The politics of protest require extensive ground work and a real base of committed people at an organizational level before they can be leveraged successfully. They need more ground work and personal phone calls to the group's membership. Given the very real problems we have in co-ordinating activists in this country, and the unwillingness of people to provide personal contact details to the leadership (such as it is),
our protest politics have come to the point where they are hurting us more than they are helping.
I'm not saying it can't work. I'm saying that in order for it to work, it must be handled properly and with a real investment of time to develop personal relationships among the grass-roots so when the protest is called - people show up in real numbers. It's a LOT of work and a helluva commitment to do all of that so that the rallies help and do not harm. The good news is, the Internet is extremely efficient at breaking the ice to assist in co-ordinating this. But it isn't enough on its own. It REQUIRES phone calls, meetings and face-to-face contact, too in order to be successful. That's the part where we have fallen short.
I suggest more prudence and less gung-hoism with the willingness to organize a rally or "protest". There is a time for these tactics, but they require more investment in the front-end than we seem capable of mustering at this time.
The Global worldwide Marijuana rally is attended exceptionally well every year in Toronto on May 1; indeed, the largest crowds in the world for the event almost invariably are in Toronto - and not by just a little. I would suggest that the real work be done on that day - collecting names, addresses and phone numbers. And an investment of effort into following up those contacts to build a real base of committed activists be made. But the contact has to be personal. There is no substitute for personal relationships here. You can't make this work on an anonymous basis, sorry.
Put in enough effort - you can ultimately translate that effort to meaningful media coverage and expansion of the political agenda in a helpful way. __________________
Proof that Legalization is Certain within 12 years
Difference between MMJ cards in Canada vs. the USA
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