marijuana Continued f rom page 1 forth a...

marijuana

Continued from page 1

forth and say they are going to continue to flaunt the law. These reactionaries are coming forth and saying, "We don't care what the Supreme Court says, we're going to keep busting their doors down!" Judge Thomas G. Kavanagh carne forth with the most astute opinion in the whole thing and said what we had been saying all along, that it's a question of privacy. It's unconstitutional to invade people's privacy. If people want to get high and smoke weed they can go and do that, and the police should have nothing at all to do with it.

Q: Are you worried about the Ann Arbor police busting in now?

John: No, because we live in a situation here where the police don't have the power, actually, to go around breaking into people's homes who are politically active because the people who are politically active in this community are fairly well organized, and exert some power on the City Council which controls the police. We're involved now in an attempt to exert more power by electing people like Nancy Wechsler, Genie Plamondon, Jerry DeGriek, David Black and Nancy Romer Burg hart to the Ann Arbor City Council. We feel that we'll be even more secure from police attack at a time with this. In a couple years we may have a Chief of Police who is responsive to the law and responsive to the needs of the people.

Q: Are you prepared to take another prison jaunt?

John: Well l'm always prepared, l'm a revolutionary, man, and you're prepared to go to the penitentiary, you're prepared to go into exile, you're prepared to do whatever is necessary to bring about the changes that people need.

Q: Looking back on it now, 2 years in jail, have you accomplished anything?

John: Certainly, it accomplished everything we hoped it would accomplish. It brought about a state of affairs in which the hundreds of people who are locked up are now going to be getting out. It's a principle of where, if you want to stop people from going to jail, you might have to go to jail to bring that about. I had to go to the penitentiary in order to get other people out of the penitentiary, that's the way t worked, it had its desired effect. I never wanted to do all that time, I never thought they would deny my appeal bond. I knew that the snake Robert J. Colombo would do what he did, I knew that he would do that because he's a fool, he played right along into the script, that's what he was supposed to do. Judge Robert Colombo came forth and said l'm a danger to society for possessing two joints. That's precisely what he said, because this crime is endangering society, he may commit the same crime f he's free on bond ya know. Well, he's goddamn right! I committed the same crime on the way to the courtroom every day! It was always so ludicrus, everybody knew it was phony. And we knew Colombo would be exposed. I expected to go to jail for a couple of weeks and then be sprung on appeal bond. What happened of course was that we exposed the really repressive nature of even the liberals in this state when they feel that there's a threat to their political hegemony. They continued to deny bond, we stayed in court, the Supreme Court of the state of Michigan. With the exception of Thomas G. Kavanagh, the only principled judge on the bench until Justice Swainson joined him, the Supreme Court denied bond, denied bond, you know, in a constitutional challenge which had been proved right. The federal court denied bond, the federal court of appeals denied bond, then they went thru and they all denied it again. The Supreme Court denied it 6 months ago on September 23rd. These are people who again are posing as liberals, the majority on the Supreme Court are members of the Democratic party, and it's going to be hard for people who are democrats or republicans to come forth and convince people who smoke weed and who are involved in anything else that they have something to offer. All they know is that the republicans and democrats been keeping them locked up, they been keeping the police at their doors and stuff like that, see.

Q: Would you consider running for a high political office, John? 

John: I've got a high political office now. I'm on the Ann Arbor Tribal Council. And everyone went away, righteously blasted on some incredible Jamaican weed . . .