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African Americans Protest Conference, Call Legalization "Elitist"
June 22, 2001 - African American citizens picketed The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation Conference in New Mexico. A bystander visiting Albuquerque at the time reports that African-American citizens mounted a protest objecting to The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation "drug reform" conference outside the conference hotel. Legalization would kill our communities, protestors warned.

In an editorial titled "Close Encounters," in DRCNet Week Online (Issue # 188), David Borden discounts protestors' concerns.

"The conferences always provide an eclectic, wide range of ideas and opinions on all different facets of drug policy," Borden writes.

"The first evening and day of this year's conference were no exception. As it turns out, though, some of the most interesting ideas, or rather, clashes of ideas, took place just outside.

"In front of the conference hotel, a small group of zealots protested. People who live in low-income neighborhoods, they charged, don't want legalization. Those who do, and we conference goers first and foremost, are therefore elitists who don't care about the inner cities or the people who inhabit them.

"They are mistaken. My several years in this issue have taught me that inner?city residents, not surprisingly, hold a range of viewpoints on this issue, just as would any other group of people queried. More support exists in such communities for ending the drug war, even for outright legalization, than our opponents would like the rest of America to believe. The protesters -- who were really protesting against open debate -- did an injustice to the very people they claimed to represent by stereotyping them as all thinking a certain way.

"It is no stereotype, though, to say that reasonable people everywhere agree that important social issues need to be openly discussed and all viewpoints heard, particularly on an issue such as drug policy where much is at stake and the current system is clearly failing."

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