Jorge Cervantes, He’s No Ed Rosenthal

I’ve read High Times Magazine off and on for years. That’s where I first encountered our local celebrity grower, Jorge Cervantes. In addition to his features in High Times, Jorge Cervantes has written several very popular books about marijuana cultivation including: Marijuana Horticulture, The Cannabis Encyclopedia, and Marijuana, Guerrilla Growing. He has also produced numerous videos about growing cannabis for growers who can’t read.

I never liked Jorge’s pieces in High Times, and I never bought any of his books. His voice never sang to me, but it was more than that. I have to admit that I didn’t like looks of the guy. I assumed it was my own cultural prejudice, so I cut the guy some slack. After all, I love cannabis, and I like growing it. I figured we would have some common ground, but I never found it.

Growing cannabis from seed was a spiritual experience for me. Cannabis is a righteous herb that deserves her place in the sun. Any power that would enslave, oppress, oppose or eradicate a righteous herb like cannabis has no place on this green Earth. Cannabis changed the way I see the world. Selling cannabis on the black market felt like pimping my sister. I didn’t want anything to do with it. I grow weed because I like weed, and weed likes me. Money has nothing to do with it.

 

I couldn’t write about growing weed without a lot of that kind of talk. It’s an attitude of respect, and I think that’s what cannabis consciousness is all about. Jorge clearly understood cannabis. He knew what she needed, and gave it all to her, but he never seemed to be able to grow enough. Jorge Cervantes always grew way more weed than any one or two people, or even an extended Rastfarian family could smoke in a year. He specialized in “guerrilla grows” and showed you how to infest every possible out-of-the-way place with an unsightly, dangerous-looking but vibrantly productive cannabis garden. Jorge didn’t seem to care about anything except producing pounds, and the attitude he conveyed in his articles really turned me off.

 

I thought High Times made a bad move when they started running his articles, especially when they showed his disguised face. Jorge looked like a caricature of a Mexican drug dealer with his trademark Che Guevara beret over cascades of jet-black dreadlocks. Dark Ray-bans and a sinister black goatee completed the image. Jorge Cervantes disguised himself as a racial stereotype that fueled the War on Drugs. That’s why I thought High Times made a mistake when they put Jorge’s picture on the cover and got behind him in a big way.

Still, I thought, “What have I got against a Mexican guy who grows weed?” I didn’t like his “get rich quick scheme” attitude, but I can understand where he might not have had the same opportunities available to me, a white working-class kid from Akron, Oh. I really didn’t like the stereotype image, but I know what it’s like to perpetuate a stereotype. I don’t put a lot of effort into it; being a hippie just comes naturally to me. Even so, I didn’t like his writing style or the layout of his books, even if I could get past the racist stereotype on the cover.

I much preferred to get my cannabis growing advice from Ed Rosenthal, who also authored many popular books on the subject, as well as a regular column in High Times. Ed spoke to me. Ed Rosenthal showed you how to grow cannabis in almost any unused space in your home. He showed you how to grow your own, in your own home, so you could end your dependence on the black market. Ed always advocated for legalization, in his writing, and for real. I met Ed Rosenthal at a couple of legalization rallies, and watched him whip-up a crowd to work for legalization. Ed Rosenthal is an inspiring guy. I never saw Jorge Cervantes at a legalization rally.

I remember when Ed Rosenthal stood trial, in Federal court, for running Oakland’s only licensed medical marijuana dispensary. Ed Rosenthal put his

real name, real face and real life on the line for legalization.

Ed Rosenthal is a hero to me.

Jorge Cervantes, not so much.

Especially now that he feels safe enough to reveal his true identity. Now that the rest of us have done the work necessary to change the law, look who popped out from behind that old racist drug war stereotype. It’s the lily-white George Van Patten, son of the equally white Dr. Cecil R and Ester Van Patten. I imagine they must be very disappointed in their son. I know I certainly am.

Here’s a guy who hid behind a racist stereotype of a Mexican drug dealer, for decades, while he got rich off the War on Drugs that he help perpetuate through his stereotype image. The weed was real. The greed was real, and the sneakiness was real. Only the Mexican was phony.

How many Hispanic men have been unfairly targeted by law enforcement because they look like Jorge Cervantes? How many years did he set back the cause of legalization with that hokey get-up? How can anyone be proud of that?

It’s a problem that a lot of people have around here. They have land, and a home, and plenty of money and stuff, and they know how to grow weed, but they don’t have a lot to be proud of, and, in some cases, kind of a lot to be ashamed of.

Humboldt is Habitat

I love cannabis, and I love Humboldt County. Cannabis is a beautiful plant with many beneficial uses, and Humboldt County is a very special place. Humboldt County’s steep, rugged terrain, frequent earthquakes and remote location have protected it from development. As urban sprawl and agriculture displaced California’s native wildlife, many of California’s endemic species retreated to the forested mountains of Humboldt County. Some of these species are now found nowhere else on Earth.

Everyone knows about the redwoods, and that Luna, the famous redwood giant that Julia Butterfly Hill lived in for two years, still stands in Humboldt County, along with some of the last remaining old-growth redwood forest in the world. Roosevelt elk, mountain lions and black bear all make their home in Humboldt County’s wild back-country. Endangered species like the spotted owl, coho salmon, pacific fisher and Humboldt martin all face uncertain futures as the very last populations of these once abundant creatures struggle to survive and reproduce here in the last wild refuge left to them. Rare amphibians like the tailed frog and the giant Pacific salamander testify to the great biodiversity that Humboldt County’s ancient forests have incubated and nurtured through the eons.

Today, Humboldt County’s black market cannabis industry threatens them all. A massive expansion underway in Humboldt County’s underground marijuana industry is having a devastating effect on native wildlife. New roads and clear-cuts for marijuana plantations degrade and fragment vital forest habitat. Fertilizer runoff and road sediment choke salmon streams, Noise and light pollution disrupt wildlife behavior. Rat poison and pesticides kill native wildlife, including essential forest pollinators, and leave a legacy of poison that kills and sickens animals throughout the food web for generations. The movement towards legalization and the deescalation of the War on Drugs has unleashed a monster in Humboldt County.

Humboldt County’s cannabis industry is a product of the War on Drugs, and to this day, the vast majority of the marijuana grown in Humboldt County gets sold on the black market. Humboldt County’s black market growers heed no regulation, pay no taxes, and show no respect for wildlife. The black market cannabis industry has always been a “cut and run” business, and our forests are already littered with the detritus of long abandoned guerrilla grow sites from those bygone days. Today the scale of the grows and the number of grows have increased by orders of magnitude. Humboldt County’s forest habitat cannot withstand this scale of abuse.

Most of Humboldt County’s local environmental groups have chosen to work for better regulation and compliance. However, their efforts are overwhelmed, both politically, and on the ground, by an industry that never asks permission and always wants more. Humboldt County government is dominated by real estate developers who seem as eager to cash in on the green-rush as the growers themselves. The great seal of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors depicts a redwood log, not a tree, but a log, sawn at both ends, lying on its side. That pretty much sums up the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors attitude towards the environment.

So far, regulation has done nothing to reign-in the out-of-control devastation going on in Humboldt County. That’s why a new group of concerned Humboldt County residents have decided to take their message to cannabis consumers and policymakers directly. This new organization, Habitat Forever, strongly supports the complete legalization of cannabis, but seeks to draw attention to the terrible environmental impacts of Humboldt County’s black market industry. To this end, they’ve produced a five-minute micro-documentary titled Humboldt is Habitat that examines the environmental impacts of Humboldt County’s black market marijuana industry.

Cannabis consumers might be surprised to discover that Humboldt County’s famous marijuana is not grown in Humboldt County soil at all. Instead, all of the soil used to grow marijuana in Humboldt County is trucked-in fresh each year, often hundreds of miles from its source, up steep, winding dirt roads, causing sediment and erosion that choke salmon streams. Cannabis consumers deserve to know the truth about the products they pay for, and now that cannabis has become legal, consumers should be able to choose whether they want to support Humboldt County’s fisher-poisoning, salmon-killing black market growers, or not.

Habitat Forever reminds cannabis consumers that it is still best to grow your own, and that it is more important than ever to know where and how your cannabis was grown. Now that prohibition is ending, Habitat Forever believes that it is vitally important to move the cannabis industry out of Humboldt County’s critical natural habitat, and to make space for the legal cannabis industry in more appropriate locations, like agricultural farmland, urban brown-fields, close to population centers, abandoned mill-sites etc. Humboldt County’s natural beauty and the world’s biological heritage is far too precious to abandon to Humboldt County’s drug war holdovers still squeezing the last few bucks out of the this heinous crime against humanity known as the War on Drugs.

You can see Habitat Forever’s new video, Humboldt is Habitat at youtube and you can visit their website at www.habitatforever.wordpress.com

Making Pun of Pot

I’m sick of news stories about marijuana where the whole story seems written around puns about getting high. Aren’t you? I thought legalization would put an end to that shit, but no. Just the other day I heard this on the radio:

“The recently passed initiative to legalize the recreational use of marijuana seems likely to spark up a controversy with law enforcement as the buzz created by Proposition 64 leaves county and state officials dazed and confused.”

Why do they do that? Why can’t they report a story about marijuana without somehow inserting their derogatory stereotype of stoner slang? What if they covered other news stories that way?

The cops took a shot in the dark, and another unarmed African-American man died at the hands of police last night. Officers raced to the scene of a suspicious character complaint, where 27 year old Leroy Jackson was gunned down on sight. The complexion of this case mirrors a string of recent police shootings which Chief Clinton Swinehart insists were “unfortunate but necessary.”

Or how about:

The Dow went poo today, losing over 200 points in an across the board sell-off.

Or maybe:

The president stood erect at the lectern and delivered the hard truth to the American people.

Do we need that? Do we need a subtext of juvenile wordplay to distract us from the news? If they don’t do it on other stories, then why do it in stories about marijuana? Do writers and editors really think that stories about marijuana are so insignificant that it is OK to subvert them just to show-off how clever they can be with words?

Just wait. When the Trump administration starts executing journalists, us pot smokers will have our revenge. “Well, we can write him off!” or “Hey, it looks like they strung-up another stringer,” we’ll say to each other with a chuckle, between tokes, huddled in our darkened basements, while we wait for the radiation to clear.

Close to a million people get arrested for marijuana every year in the US. Almost a million people are still in prison for for it right now. Even in California, it’s still legal to discriminate against pot smokers, and to drug test employees for cannabis. Workman’s Comp claims still require a drug test, at the time of the injury, and testing positive for marijuana will disqualify you, even though the test does not, in any way, indicate impairment.

The War on Drugs is serious shit. It’s no joke. It kills people and it destroys people’s live. How do they not see that? How do they not see the violence? How do they not see the racism? How do they not see the oppression, but never miss an opportunity to roll in some half-baked puns about stoners getting high. I think it’s about time those reporters opened their eyes and took a proper gander at what they’ve become, because it isn’t pretty.

Dump Trump and Make a Stand

In the wake of the recent presidential election, I hear people talking about building a movement to end the electoral college. They say it dates back to the slave days and gives small rural states too much power. If you are looking for the next stupid, waste-of-time money and effort to throw your life at, here it is. You can join those folks at “Move to Amend,” working for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s “Citizen’s United” decision, on that treadmill of futility.

Just face facts. The US Government works the way it was intended to work, for the people it was intended to work for. You are not among those people. You are just another amber shaft of grain in their vast plantation. Your life, measured in rent checks, mortgage payments, health insurance premiums, student loan remittances, and credit card payments, is their harvest. You are just livestock to them, and the planet is your overgrazed pasture. Your job is to devour the world and turn it into their money. That’s why we have a government, and that’s why we have the government we have.

When you think about it that way, Trump is the perfect president. He’s exactly what we deserve. Trump reflects our national character, because Trump is the kind of guy our culture rewards. Because we reward people like Trump, Trump is exactly the kind of guy our culture produces: greedy, small-minded, egotistical monsters with no respect for the truth, the law, or anyone but himself. Trump is what we’ve become, because Trump is what we produce.

It’s deeper than politics and bigger than the Constitution. It’s about things we believe so deeply that we don’t even realize we believe them, but everything we do reflects it. We inhabit a culture that destroys the environment and enslaves humanity to produce Trumps. That’s what we do here. We rape the land for it’s resources, wipe out its biodiversity, foul the air, pollute the water and enslave the people, to produce Trumps, and Bushes, and Clintons. Even if Clinton had won the election, we’d still be producing Trumps.

Making Trumps consumes our lives. Millions of people die, and millions more suffer in poverty and slavery to produce a single Trump. Who needs more Trumps? We already have more Trump than we ever wanted and Trump doesn’t do anything for anyone but Trump. In 500 years, our American culture has brought global ecosystems to the brink of collapse, while it enslaved and impoverished people all over the world, for the sole purpose of producing Trumps.

This culture leaves a trail of dead bodies, environmental devastation and poverty in it’s wake, while it produces Trumps, Clintons and Bushes. You won’t change that by ending the Electoral College. You won’t change that by overturning “Citizens United.” The whole system is corrupt and bankrupt to its core. The whole culture, our whole way of looking at things and of thinking about things, and of doing things has collapsed into Trump. So take a good look at him.

Does Trump make you proud? Is Trump worth sacrificing the planet for? Is Trump worth enslaving your children for? Do you want Trump to be your legacy? Or, do you want to Dump Trump. If you want to save the planet, and if you want to save humanity from Trump and monsters like Trump, then Dump Trump, and dump the system that produces Trumps. Stand with the people standing against that corrupt system right now.

Stand with the culture that has endured, and continues to function for its members, without needing major reform. Stand with the culture that doesn’t produce Trumps, Clintons or Bushes. Stand with the people standing against the machine. Indigenous cultures have endured here for eons without destroying the environment, and without the oppression, and violence that we’ve come to accept as normal in a culture dominated by Trumps, Clintons and Bushes.

Stand with the people who treat the Earth as sacred. Stand with the people who treat the fish as brethren, and the forest as family. Stand with the people who protect the water. Stand-up for indigenous people and indigenous sovereignty, and stand with the people of Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Postscript: Obviously I wrote this piece before the Army Corps of Engineers announced their decision to deny the permit necessary to complete the Dakota Access Pipeline. The decision is an enormous relief for the the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, but there will be more pipelines and other projects that threaten water supplies and indigenous sovereignty. Despite this historic victory, the social, political and cultural landscape remains the same, except for one thing. This time, the good guys won one for a change.