For at least a few moments Saturday afternoon, Keith Saunders couldn't stop to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of the Boston Freedom Rally.
Unlike the thousands of others who had gathered at Boston Common for a day of live music and hemp-assisted relaxation at the city's annual, massive rally in support of legalizing marijuana, Saunders had serious business to attend to.
Just outside the tent belonging to the rally's organizers, the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition, Saunders was organizing the festival's long list of speakers, made up of medical marijuana patients, prominent activists and at least one notable name in governor's race candidate Jill Stein.
Breaking stoner stereotype after stoner stereotype, Saunders deftly dealt with a minor crisis about locating the speakers and coordinating their stage times.
"We basically run the entire permit process of this event for the city of Boston," Saunders said, describing MassCann and its national affiliate, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), as veterans of organizing hundreds of volunteers and navigating city law requirements.
"We're not more organized than any other group, we've just been doing this for 21 years," he continued.
Saunders, a former president of MassCann who received a Ph.D. from Northeastern University, reflected the diversity of the Freedom Rally, attended by groups of people from across the United States.
One of those groups was the Hare Krishna Temple of Boston, associated with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. The temple partnered with MassCann to hold its festival celebrating a traditional Indian holiday Ratha Yatra.
"We've been doing festivals all around. The festival we did today was an ancient festival about pulling the cart of the "Juggernaut.' In India they do this festival where they pull three huge carts down the main road. Here we did on a smaller scale," Vish Sheth, one of the festival's attendees and a Florida resident, said.
This smaller festival, complete with musicians playing Indian drums and chimes and examples of Indian food and clothing, was located on the side of the Common bordering Tremont Street, separated from the larger Freedom Rally.
Sheth said the Krishnas were grateful to partner with the Freedom Rally.
"I think that the Boston Freedom Rally was looking for some alternative, open-minded events, and the Krishnas are the most alternative and open-minded you can get."
Michael "Mike Cann" Crawford, president of MassCann, said during his years of involvement in the legalization movement, he has seen acceptance of marijuana by the public grow substantially.
He echoed Saunders' statements that the movement's war for tolerance has already been won.
"The Cold War ended before the Berlin Wall fell. That's where we're at right now," Crawford said.
Stein, the Green-Rainbow Party candidate for Massachusetts governor, provided yet another view point: the political ramifications of completely legalizing marijuana use in the state.
"We're putting money into the hands of criminals, where we should be putting money into the hands of our communities to strengthen schools, provide health care, create jobs and create affordable housing," Stein, a physician and Harvard Medical School graduate, said.
"So it feels unconscionable to me not to stand up when we have such a devastating problem, violence associated with the illegal drug trade is killing people on our streets."</p>
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
