A kind of internal culture war in the cannabis community is manifesting in the jockeying around the upcoming 420 event in Colorado\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n
Every year since 2006, there has been a cannabis-celebratory event in Denver\u2019s Civic Center Park on April 20. This year, the newly dubbed\u00a0Mile High 420 Festival<\/a>\u00a0will feature performances by such top-drawer talent as\u00a0Lil Wayne<\/a>,\u00a0Lil\u2019 John<\/a>, the Original Wailers<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Inner Circle<\/a>.<\/p>\n But as local news site\u00a0Westword reports<\/a>,\u00a0the permit for the shindig has changed hands this year, moving from longtime organizer Miguel Lopez to\u00a0Euflora<\/a>, a Denver-based dispensary chain. Euflora\u2019s marketing director, Bobby Reginelli, said this year\u2019s event \u201cwill be much more about the cannabis culture than politics,\u201d in Westword\u2019s paraphrase. And the name has changed \u2014 as it used to be called the Denver 420 Rally.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s more diverse this year,\u201d Reginelli told Westword. \u201cWe knew 30,000 people were going to attend this event regardless, so we wanted to reach out to the yoga community, bluegrass fans, people who like craft goods and anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n But this clearly means a de-emphasis of activism. Although they say they won\u2019t stop those onstage from bringing up politics, Reginelli and his co-organizers affirmed that the new festival will focus on \u201centertainment and commerce.\u201d<\/p>\n Organizers also say cannabis consumption will not be allowed, because public use is illegal in Colorado. They also note that city-owned Civic Center Park is barred from receiving permits for private cannabis consumption spaces. But as Westword points out, organizers of the old 420 Rally had always embraced consumption at the event, defying the police who routinely ticketed attendees for public use.<\/p>\n Westword also highlights that \u201cas a licensed pot business, Euflora might have more to lose.\u201d This raises questions about the implications entrepreneurs moving into what had been the activist sphere.<\/p>\n And this change in leadership comes about as a result of a city government policy decision. After last year\u2019s rally,\u00a0Denver\u2019s Parks and Recreation department banned the original organizers from receiving a permit for the event for the next three years, and fined them over $11,000 for clean-up costs, as the city\u2019s\u00a0NBC affiliate, 9 News, reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n An\u00a0earlier report from Westword<\/a>\u00a0details the \u201cgiant clusterf*ck\u201d as Lopez and Euflora wrestled for the right to hold the event. With Euflora emerging victorious, the report concluded, \u201cnow it looks like the \u2018rally\u2019 aspect might be history.\u201d<\/p>\n Lopez and his attorney Rob Corry appealed the initial ban, but their efforts were\u00a0rejected in November<\/a>. Lopez is currently suing the city government over the affair.<\/p>\n Lopez claims that he is the chosen heir of the 420 event\u2019s founder Ken Gorman, whose 2007 murder remains unsolved. A\u00a0New York Times profile<\/a> after he was shot in a break-in at his home that February noted that he provided cannabis to patients under Colorado\u2019s medical marijuana law \u2014 but also advocated challenging prohibition by simply defying it.<\/p>\n A\u00a0Westword retrospective<\/a>\u00a0on the storied activist quoted Larisa Bolivar, a consultant and historian for the (old) Denver 420 Rally, who recalled her mentor tearfully. \u201cKen came at this from a social-justice direction,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The fact that the 2017 rally left enough of a mess in the park<\/a> for authorities to justify withholding a permit from the organizers is pretty good evidence that things needed to change at the 420 event. At the 2012 420 Rally, there was actually a\u00a0brief eruption of gunfire<\/a>, with one attendee shot in the leg.<\/p>\n And there is a sense that, with the battle to free the herb having now scored such big victories in the Centennial State, maybe the event\u2019s traditional activist theme is outdated. Some people think the event itself should be scrapped. Westword\u00a0highlighted a comment<\/a>\u00a0from one reader: \u201cCannabis is legal in Colorado. We\u2019ve won. We don\u2019t need the 420 rally anymore. We certainly don\u2019t need the annual sh*t show of controversy.\u201d<\/p>\n But a \u201csocial-justice direction\u201d may still be mandated. In 2015, three years after Colorado legalization,\u00a0the\u00a0Drug Policy Alliance<\/a>\u00a0released a report finding\u00a0that cannabis arrests had indeed declined in the state \u2014 but that racial inequalities in arrests continued<\/a>. Blacks were still more than twice as likely to be charged with public consumption. Blacks were also much more likely to be charged with illegal cultivation, or possession in excess of the legal limit of one ounce. DPA\u2019s Art Way told the\u00a0Associated Press<\/a>: \u201cLegalization is no panacea for the longtime issues that law enforcement had with the black and brown community.\u201d<\/p>\n It will be instructive to see if such realities are addressed from the stage at the Mile High 420 Festival.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you think 420 is an activist holiday? Or just a day for entertainment and consumption?<\/p>\n The post Controversy Over Denver\u2019s Upcoming 420 Event: A \u2018Rally\u2019 No More<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A kind of internal culture war in the cannabis community is manifesting in the jockeying around the upcoming 420 event in Colorado\u2019s capital. Every year since 2006, there has been a cannabis-celebratory event in Denver\u2019s Civic Center Park on April 20. This year, the newly dubbed\u00a0Mile High 420 Festival\u00a0will featureContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3867,50,21,3868,3869,69,3516],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25123,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25122\/revisions\/25123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Controversy Over Denver\u2019s Upcoming 420 Event: A \u2018Rally\u2019 No More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"