by Dennis Myers
Hawk spot
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders campaigned for Hillary Clinton on the UNR campus last week.
Associated Builders and Contractors television commercial supporting Joe Heck for U.S. Senate: “Heck voted for local control of Ne-vaw-da lands.”
PHOTO/KRISTIN MITRA
times lauds states Last week a New York Times editorial praised Nevada and other states that are using their clout to challenge federal marijuana prohibition policies: “The drive to end prohibition comes after decades in which marijuana laws led to millions of people being arrested and tens of thousands sent to prison, a vast majority of whom never committed any violent crimes. These policies have had a particularly devastating effect on minority communities. Federal and state governments have spent untold billions of dollars on enforcement, money that could have been much better spent on mental health and substance abuse treatment. … States are driving the change in marijuana policy because they see the damage created by draconian drug laws on communities, families and state budgets. It’s time the federal government acknowledged these costs and got out of the way of states adopting more rational laws.” Nevada anti-marijuana leader Pat Hickey responded, “The New York Times writer surely knows that marijuana legalization has not reduced racial disparities in drug arrests in Colorado, especially among Latino and African-American youth. It’s true that public monies would be better spent on mental health and substance abuse treatments, as opposed to more incarcerations. The problem with this poorly written initiative (Question 2), is that it does not earmark one penny of anticipated tax revenue to the establishment of a public health network needed to restrict youth access. Rationality would dictate that serious public policy decisions—such as recreational and commercial drug policy, criminal justice reform, and needed funding for education—would be better done in the open forum of the Nevada Legislature, with every interested party, and the public, engaged in the committee room.”
pot tale of tHe week All during this campaign, prohibitionists have held Colorado’s legal, regulated market up as a bad example, often with false statistics and information that doesn’t check out with Colorado officials. Many of them claim that Colorado’s governor and Denver’s mayor oppose the marijuana market in their state. For instance, in a June 22 Reno Gazette-Journal essay and a July 12 letter to the editor of the Elko Free Press, Genoa prohibitionist Jim Hartman said, “Democrats like Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock” opposed regulated marijuana when it was on the ballot in Colorado. That much was true but was incomplete. What he neglected to mention was that the views of both officials have evolved. In May, Hickenlooper said if he could wave a magic wand and make regulated marijuana go away, “I don’t know if I would wave it. It’s beginning to look like it might work.” And Mayor Hancock, while reserving final judgment on whether the original ballot measure was a good idea, last year told Inc. Magazine, “I am very proud of the industry that came to the table and went to work. The industry has investors and businessmen and women who are very legit. They’re putting their hard-earned money, many retirements and investments on the line for this industry.”
—Dennis Myers
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10.27.16
Delicate dance Sanders backers not guaranteed to Clinton since the democratic National Convention nominated Hillary Clinton for president, the Nevada supporters of Bernie Sanders have nursed their wounds, and many have stayed involved in activism. Some of those involved in the Bernie Sanders organization are now working for Clinton’s campaign. Some of them have helped Black Lives Matter. Some even picketed President Obama’s Aug. 31 appearance at Lake Tahoe over his posture on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). They protested corporate welfare for Sheldon Adelson and the Oakland Raiders at the Nevada Legislature. They participated in the anti-Columbus Day protest in Reno. “We have a lot of Sanders supporters here, from Carson City all the way down to Sacramento, and San Francisco has got a busload coming,” said Michelle Hartt at that protest. “It is a continuation, partly, of Bernie.” Their issues often overlap with conservative issues, which is not
unusual, as when liberals and conservatives battled the Oakland Raiders stadium subsidy. In the case of the TPP, both left and right worry about trade agreements overriding U.S. courts. “It’ll give 12 countries power over America in making decisions, where corporations around the world can sue us,” Hartt said. There are few states where the tension between Sanders supporters and the party regulars is as pronounced as Nevada, where Democratic officials muddied the reputation of the Sanders campaign by claiming chair-throwing and death threats were made by Sanders delegates at the Nevada Democratic Convention in May (“The riot that never was,” RN&R, May 26). But the regulars are likely to have to deal with the Sanders people for a long time to come. Hundreds of Sanders supporters across the country have run for office this year. At least 11 people who either worked for Sanders or endorsed him in Nevada ran for office.
Two U.S. House candidates—Lucy Flores and Rick Shepherd—lost their primaries. Six Democrats survived the primary and three Sanders-supporting independents running for various offices will also be on the general election ballot. Shepherd says he’s not overly concerned about getting along with the party organization. The party, he said, is there to serve the people, not the other way around. “I don’t consider myself to be aligned with a particular party as much as I consider myself aligned with people and working to address problems,” he said. “If the party that I’m aligned with works with me on that behalf, then that’s great. If they don’t, that’s their fault and their failing.” For Carol Cizauskas, a Sanders organizer who was a Nevada delegate to the Democratic National Convention, John Kennedy had it right when he said, “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.” A “Bernie or Buster,” she was turned off by the promotion of militarism by Clinton’s organization at the Philadelphia convention, and when she arrived back in Reno she learned the local chapter of Progressive Democrats of America had circulated a flyer saying she had registered Green, which was untrue. She had been doing some work for PDA locally but felt that the Reno group was not a reflection of PDA national, which she had worked with in Sanders’ campaign. “PDA nationally was one of the main groups that convinced Bernie to run,” she said. “The Reno group is more conservative than PDA national, which is truly progressive where PDA Reno seems just another arm of the Washoe Democrats, not progressive at all.” She helped organize several events, including a Black Lives Matter protest in Tahoe City, picketing of the Washoe Democratic headquarters, and a protest at a Hillary Clinton visit. She is now resting up from what she calls PTSD caused by “verbal violence perpetrated on us by the Nevada Democratic organization and the national Hillary organization at the [national] convention.” She finally did switch to the Green Party but said she and her husband may leave the state and hope to switch back to the Democrats in a state where it is less hostile to reformers.
