Lets say youre a homeowner. You have a decent place and a stable life. Then one day, a developer buys some land near your home and plans to build multi-family affordable housing units. Youre not happy about this. You know this will bring more traffic to the neighborhood. Parking will suck. There may be an increase in petty crime and vandalism. Its not that you want poor people to be homeless. In fact, you even let a couple who was down and out stay on your couch. But you cant house them all and you are certain that this particular development on this particular property is the wrong way to house the homeless poor. But you dont have a lot of money and this developer does. She manages to convince most everyone in power that the development is a good idea. She even tells you and other homeowners that while poor people will have these tiny little apartments with off-street parking, youll still get to keep your big houses with their garages. Soon enough, the property is built and many poor people now have homes. Youre happy for the poor people, but some of the suck you predicted starts to come true. Driving around your neighborhood becomes a nightmare. Worse, now that these inspectors and surveyors came out and looked around, they discovered your house is violating just about every code that the apartment complex has to follow. So the county decides that most of the homes are going to have to update themselves to the new code. Worse still, your home is so out of compliance it is just going to have to be torn down, which would make the county some more money in the long run when they can add more multi-family housing on your land. But the developer doesnt want to see that happen either. She goes before the county and explains how tearing down your home is not necessary. Yes, your home needs some upgrades to meet new standards, but tearing it down goes too far. The point was to help homeless poor people, not to wreck the lives of homeowners. She begins to marshal some of her political connections to fight to make sure your home doesnt get torn down. How would you react to the developer in this situation? Sure, youre pissed off. If she never would have built that apartment complex, none of this would have ever happened. Of course, a whole bunch of homeless poor people would have had to remain on the streets for a few more years while youre sleeping in your nice warm bed, but surely in a couple of years someone (not you, of course) would build a better complex in a different neighborhood and none of it would have affected you. But would you reject her help? Would you be so pissed at her that even when shes trying to help you keep your home, youd rather throw away her connections and money and fight to keep your home all by yourself, and probably lose? Would you wail and moan about broken promises the developer made that she didnt really break (she promised apartments up to code, your house was not her responsibility), but also shouldnt have made (of course the inspectors checking out the apartments would probably notice the sub-par houses)? Would you not only resent her attempts to help you but also work to sabotage her attempts to help you? She made plans for an apartment complex that adhered to code; she couldnt have made your house adhere to code, thats really on you; after all, you had been skating by without following much of any code for over a dozen years and using clever loopholes to avoid paying property tax and suffering inspections and regulations - you had plenty of years to maybe get your house up to some kind of code, but you rejected it time and again because skating by uninspected was a whole lot easier. Well, if youre a Patient Not Criminal in Washington State, the development is recreational marijuana, your house is medical home growing, and the developer is Alison Holcomb... yes, yes you would reject her help. And youd resent her being on your side, so youd insult her and denigrate her and spend time making mean Photoshop picture memes to share with your echo chamber. And youd follow the same ineffective neighborhood captains who are good at generating drama but lousy at making political progress, the same ones who let homelessness fester, offering to just legalize open camping by anyone anywhere as a solution, the same ones who fought attempts to bring your house up to code, and will no doubt lead you in anti-developer protests as you watch your house be razed. Washington Patients Not Criminals, this isnt Facebook anymore, this is real world big-boy-and-girl politics. It can make some strange bedfellows. When you have a politically-connected financially-backed ally on your issue, you work with her. 2012 is over, you cant unring the bell. I-502 exists, WSLCB is using the opportunity to decimate medical marijuana, and now you have to fight back. But you also have to pick your battles and you may have to compromise. If I were fighting this battle, Id accede on a patient registry. Cmon now, every other state but California has one and misuse of them is rare. Then, within the registry, Id fight for higher posession limits and cultivation rights only with the most serious conditions / doctors opinion - default is no home grow and 3 ounces, but your doc could allow for some plants and greater limits if you have, say, cancer or AIDS. Fighting to keep all home grow and all possession for all patients feels to me like a recipe for losing all home grow and most possession for all patients. Yes, you can make the argument that Cancer Patient Not Criminal needs a big garden and lots of weed to process into his oil that he takes so often, but you cant make the argument for the twenty-something who got his backache rec from a naturopath at hempfest so he can gas mask bong himself to the Kottonmouth Kings. Ah, but I dont have to. I get to just watch as the Patients Not Criminals will stubbornly refuse to compromise their idealism, pretend that every single one of them is in life-or-death need of pounds of cannabis, and when they lose most or all their perceived rights, they will turn and blame the ending of criminal prohibitions for healthy people rather than holding their own leaders accountable for failing to make a strong enough case, raise enough money, gather enough support, and effectively defend their issue. --Radical Russ, pissing people off in print since 1996
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 19:07:52 +0000
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