The Cole Memo

This is the first episode in a series of episodes that we will be doing on Hash Wednesday.

In this episode, I speak with Danielle Scumacher. During the episode, she shares her firsthand experience participating in an Illinois cannabis tradition known as Hash Wednesday. From what I’ve been able to tell, Hash Wednesday started sometime in the 70s.

What is Hash Wednesday? According to the NewsGazette: “With the click of a lighter, Hash Wednesday was born on the University of Illinois Quad in 1977. It was modeled after other “hash bashes,” particularly the one in Ann Arbor, Mich., which supported reform of marijuana laws, according to co-founder Mitch Altman.”

Soon I will share the complete photo album featured in this episode. In the meantime, enjoy this captivating episode!

• Watch the full episode on Patreon here
• Watch the episode on Youtube here
• Stream the episode on Soundcloud here
• Stream the episode on Spotify here
• Stream the episode on Apple Podcast here

Read the auto-generated transcript here

this is the Cole memo I am your host Cole Preston in this episode I’ll be
sitting down with Danielle schacher to talk about an Illinois cannabis tradition that some say dates all the
way back to the 80s it was called hash winsday every episode of the coal memo
is released in audio video and transcript format to find the transcript
audio or video version of any episode please refer to the description of the episode that you’re listening to too
within that description you can find a link that will take you to our website which will display the transcript for
this episode and the platforms where you can find this episode in audio or video
formats if you’re unable to locate the episode description on whichever platform you’re listening from Simply
note the episode number and visit the co memo.com from there you can find the
corresponding episode and then you will be able to access access the audio video
and or transcript version of the podcast you might also find any links that we
reference during the episode so that you might be able to do your own research if
you’re not listening to this episode of the coal memo on patreon then you’re listening to this episode later than our
patrons to become a patron go to the co memo.com
patreon once again that’s the co memo.com
p a t r e o n it’s a great way to support our show one of the best ways to
support our show is absolutely free subscribe to or follow our show leave us
a positive review from wherever you’re listening to us from favorite this episode give it a thumbs up leave a
comment or post a review your engagement and support is appreciated today is
October 24th 2023 and this conversation
was captured on October 23rd 2023 and will be part of a series that I
plan to do on hash Wednesday so this is episode one of that series if you will
uh they’re not going to be released in any chronological order because as you’ll find this participant was from
like the 2000s but I am in touch with people from some of the earlier protests
in the 80s for example examples so stay tuned for all that and more enjoy this
episode of the Cole [Music]
memo hello Danielle how’s it going today hey Cole um so glad to be on your show
and um excited to talk about hash Wednesday some of the history um noise
so yeah I’m having a great day hell yeah well before we get into all that I wanted to give you the space why don’t
you go ahead and introduce yourself to my audience this is the first time you’ll have been on my
show yeah um so I’m Danielle Schumacher I grew up in the Chicago
suburbs and uh have been involved in cannabis advocacy of some sort since the
early 2000s um when I was a student at uh University of Illinois Urbana champagne
uh is when I got involved um pretty much full-time uh and been doing it ever
since um I’ve been going to cannabis conferences all that time and I just I
wanted to mention I just got back from um Phoenix Arizona um for the drug policy Alliance
conference uh reform 2023 was uh really inspiring and amazing so so I feel
really really lucky to be part of all of this and to be um talking with you today
yeah thank you for your time and um you know I
guess let’s start with when did you come to we’ll call it UI and when we say that
folks I want to say that we’re referring to the University of Illinois in Urbana champagne so when did you come to
UI I was student there from 2000 to
2004 and um a lot of my classmates from my high school went to arbana Champagne
as well it was kind of like the backup school for people who um couldn’t get
into an Ivy League or couldn’t afford it or something like that was like the backup school for some reason at that
point but it’s actually um a really really good school for my major was
anthropology and um I’m really glad I didn’t couldn’t go to the University of
Chicago because if I had gone to a more difficult school um I don’t think I
would have had well I know I wouldn’t have had the time for all the student activities and things we got involved in
on campus um as students and then I lived there until 2005 um in Urbana
until 2005 um and was also involved in some Community work there as well so got
off campus a little bit more than the average student I think yeah and you kind of answered the why
did you come to uiu which is my second question you said anthropology is that
right yeah my bachelors is in anthropology very cool and uh the the
question that’s going to lay out everything um when and how did you first
hear about hash Wednesday and maybe as a part of that you’ll be able to explain what is Hash
Wednesday um I really don’t know when I first heard about
it I think it I probably knew that it happened um I
believe it happened uh when I was a freshman um
maybe I I was talking to a few people you know when you had reached out and then um it just seems like something
that was always there in some form or another um since the 80s for sure but
possibly since the 70s um and uh was one of the I was looking
back and one of the flyers for hash Wednesday that I saw said seventh annual um and that was in 2004 is um but I I
think that we um yeah that flyer was inaccurate because I I know for sure
hash Wednesday had happened um decades ago decades before I was a student there
yeah yeah I’m I’ll pull up a maybe a newspaper clipping of the oldest one I can find at least uh well we can start
with this one and then we’ll we’ll get back on track but just for a moment for history’s sake here’s a a newspaper
clipping from April 19th 1989 and it features actually an individual we will
be interviewing in this series Joshua Salone um and he’s actually pictured a
lot in these newspaper clippings which is really cool he uh he didn’t even realize some of these photos still
existed so it was cool to hear him say like wow that is me you know yeah so but
yeah to your point to your point and I’ve always heard that it’s a little bit unclear and actually I think it was even
in one of the newspaper clippings you sent me it’s always been a little bit unclear when exactly this
started um but yeah like you say I can find some things to point to as far as
back as the 80s at least um of it having started but if you could for our audience uh so you had said maybe you
don’t exactly remember when you had heard uh about it but if you could for the audience when you heard about it
what did you understand it to be what was hash Wednesday uh so when I heard about it um
I was also learning about other um public Gatherings and cannabis festivals
of different sorts around the Midwest um they’re all called something
different there’s one in Madison one in Detroit um it was called like the hash
bash in Detroit right or something like that hash bash in Michigan um I was I
know there they might still do the one in uh Madison actually um that had been
there even longer than hash Wednesday I believe um just around the Midwest but definitely not Indiana of course um I
don’t know of any I didn’t know of any cannabis festivals in Indiana at that time but um yeah it’s a gathering and it
was specifically on campus hash Wednesday was on the campus which is in
Champagne Illinois Central Illinois feels pretty rural but it’s a big
college town um yeah people would gather there and mostly the the goal was just
as many people as possible to smoke weed on the campus um and around the time of
420 but you know its own thing and I I mean when I first heard about it I remember getting a big kick out of the
like religious implication s you know of the name hash Wednesday um
so just a lot of festivities I’m sure it varied a lot over time I haven’t kept up
since since I was involved in organizing it but um yeah just sometimes um more a smaller
group lowkey there was definitely a phase of it being pretty small um but I
was always I always heard that it had gone on continuously at least in some small at least a small gathering of
people from the community it’s a tradition for them and so it’s a a really unique event on campus there
because it’s um truly um Stu students and Community
showing up um and and share that tradition um although that’s varied over the years because when I was thinking
back you know some of the years I attended I don’t I don’t think there was a large presence of community members
but um the the Cannabis Community was merged anyway you know that was one of
the parts of campus life that was really intertwined with um locals
obviously yeah yeah that’s kind of funny to hear I actually do know a local and I was telling the individual uh so he
participated in many hash Wednesdays and uh I was telling you know them that I
was interviewing a range of people and they were like you name you mind nameing off some names and I was like well Danielle sharer you know uh Joshua
Salone a few Daniel oh I’ve shared a few bulls with Danielle so he’s a local he was I don’t
believe he was in college at the time so just to your point of community cannabis
community members showing up I believe maybe that person’s an example of that
uh just last question on that just to dwell on it a little bit I just I know I keep going off topic or not no no you’re
you’re not you’re totally you’re killing it worry about it uh I wanted to just
frame it in a different way uh just because maybe it’s me you know looking through everything with rosec colored
glasses but I get this like youthful feeling in my stomach like when I would have heard about hash Wednesday because
I it doesn’t go on anymore nowadays to what I understand and if it does it’s really lowkey um but I I put myself like
when I was in college and like thinking about if I would have heard an event like this and I just can feel this like
feeling in my stomach was that what it was like for you or like what I don’t know I’m just trying to get a sense I
mean at the time it was Pure Freedom I we felt completely Untouchable like we
could do anything almost like not anything we want on campus but as long
as all we did was smoke a little bit of weed and if we weren’t too never was too big or got too out of
control or anything like that we never mixed it tried to mix it with alcohol or anything you know was simple you know
Civil Disobedience really because that was not allowed on campus so there was that rush for sure of like wow we we can
do this and we can um at try to add more to it and get the word out about it and
um we felt really uh confident like thinking back it’s like wow who did we think we were but um we were students so
we could get away with it you know I was very aware I was in student government and I was very aware I felt the sense of
like like aware that we had the privilege as students we were protected
um as far as um doing that kind of event um that uh we were in a good position to um
you know just get the FI simple things like file the form with the campus to
have permission to use the space so right um we followed all the rules of as long as we followed all the rules that
uh to have a um legit event you know and a safe event um so it was a very yeah I
remember a feeling of like just safety like that it was very um it was a very
relaxed event and very festive very fun um not as diverse as we would have liked
it was a very white crowd um primarily probably vast majority um it was a not a
very diverse campus at that time um but but uh still you know like a really
cross-section of people and a really good vibe and um yeah talking to you
about it was making me really and looking through the pictures and stuff was making me um think of all the people
and wanting to reach out to everyone yeah so I’m displaying some images folks thank you again Danielle
for providing them I’m just going through uh just kind of showing you know some glances of the at the crowd and
then I’ve got a funny newspaper clipping you sent just to your point of feeling Invincible uh that’ll maybe be a good
point to to bounce back to but let’s just go through some of these pictures do you want to share any thoughts uh I
want to be sure to give you the space this is just a really good opportunity to capture history so I don’t mean to go
too quickly through these if you have any thoughts to share um well all of the
people in these photos were participating in a public event and and I I think they would be okay with their
photos being shown publicly that was part of that’s what was coming to mind to me just how much
has change this was the first digital camera I owned it was a like early Kodak Easy Share
uhuh um so I was thinking about wow the camera that I took these with and the process of like look at this guy’s cell
phone sorry to cut you off but yeah just the time the time I love it oh that’s a
noia he was the I want to he was the president of the campus greens or maybe the campus Libertarians we were we had
like a coalition of groups that participated uh when we were uh students
there um oh we were grilling I was about to say I saw a grill back
there remember that but I’m sure I ate whatever was grilled there yeah hell yeah oh yeah I think you know was
probably oh we had like some art and um
it was always fun to watch the people who were sitting up there there having their lunch that was the Student Union
oh okay so these people were like having lunch it’s funny some of their reactions in the background and then uh lots of
different kinds of speakers over the years um that’s shelene tile holding uh
oh yeah wooden Leaf wooden pot leaf yep it’s awesome little cannabis
leaf oh there you are I take it with your necklace your weed necklace yeah
that’s awesome super cool everybody looks everybody looks
happy yeah yeah um what were we gonna say well I guess we just skipped class A
lot to be able to do these kinds of things on campus during the school day because this would be like all day on a
Wednesday uhhuh there you are speaking Yeah we um
we would get student funds too like we were able to fund this through the student organ organization
fund very cool very cool and were there like other uh it looked like I saw like
ssdp normal for example so were there other advocacy groups that helped to join and kind of organize for this yeah
we worked with campus ACLU yep we had the um joint costume and we had a
website I mean that was like early days of websites and we had pretty good I’m impressed with our Graphics um yeah you
got a website you get the graphics that’s pretty cool we had a consistent logo that was pretty
cool um I was we gotta figure out who this is her name is Karen um Karen if
you see this I love you and she was part of my she was one of my early mentors
there was a really Illinois Normal board at that time and she was a long I
learned a lot about the festival situation from Karen like that you know what was going on in Michigan Wis
wiconsin Ohio this is something that stood out to me you know shirt yeah his shirt and you
know we’ll touch on this in another episode maybe uh you know back in the 80s and such when when urine testing
really started to become a thing but I thought that was really interesting to see this our shirt yeah we had um I I
was thinking about that too um of course I don’t still have that shirt but
um just all the different issues that were new to us at the time that the drug
war was ramping up and yeah we did most of these speakers were serious but then
as you saw I mean we had a joint playing a guitar so we I know we like tried to
mix it up but we were really serious activists on campus I would say nice
yeah just for a reminder for folks people were basically saying that hey the solution to the War on Drugs is
we’ll just urine test everybody students include Ed um you know and uh it is
interesting to read like The U ofi for example had at least for student
athletes uh drug testing and I’ve got an old article about uh an athlete who was
prevented from competing in certain events because they because certain schools had spelled out that people that
test positive for marijuana can’t play uh can’t participate but in other events
it just said performance enhancing drugs and so they made the argument that cannabis was not a performance-enhancing
drug and so he was able to participate in some events we’ll share that in a different episode anyways uh just wanted
to give some background on why Ur in testing may have been a shirt in a conversation point because people forget
you know oh well to put this in perspective at the time that we were organizing the events that are in this
these photos um the person behind a lot of that urine testing was Peter
benzinger and it was like one of the first times where it was being exposed that um these like federal drug warriors
were actually turning around and making a ton of money off of urine testing John Ashcraft was in office at
the time I got involved on campus um when we started at the chapter of ssdp a
normal um it was I was just so in shocked about some of the stuff that Ashcraft was
doing damn so yeah for another episode going down the was like bringing up a
lot of how and how a lot has happened in Illinois that’s kind of lost to history except for newspaper Clips oh my gosh
the there was no media coverage at the time so this event I felt um as much as
I could be aware as like ear you know I was like 19 or 20 years old and from the
Chicago suburbs I didn’t what did I really know about what was going on in the world especially about cannabis
policy but I did I did see that there was when there was media coverage at that
time it was negative um and I um took it upon myself to be a spokesperson of
privilege like hey I’m a college student who has this platform and um just to
speak about whatever it was at the time so a coverage of hash Wednesday you know
maybe playing into the stereotypes a little bit but overall it was some of the only positive media coverage at that
time related to cannabis yeah here’s an example of that you know here you are
saying drugs are not evil I am not evil yes I smoke weed but who
cares I want to get that framed I didn’t notice that but I did thank you for saying that because I was my eye went
straight to the other quote the bolded one this one yeah I was going to actually this is how I was going to wrap
it back to you saying you felt Invincible it’s very interesting to hear to see this quote from uh what was it I
guess the University Police Department um yeah he says you’re
basically disrespecting the rules and the regulations of the University if it’s against the law it’s against the
law until it’s legal it’s illegal that was the kind of quotes that
were used at that time yes wow
wow yeah yeah interesting stuff I I know
that and shelene might remember more specific about the political context of
this moment for us was we were on very good terms with a lot of different levels of power holders whether it was
Campus Community we knew our um local elected officials um we were always
doing things in Coalition with Community groups and broader than cannabis groups
um so yeah to Looking Back Now I I feel good about the media work that we did
sometimes I do Wonder did I even accomplish anything I’ve just been so lucky to have the um path that I’ve had
a lot of it has been a like professional career path that all kind of came out of the organizing in Urbana champagne um
through um the existing structures of that time for the drug policy movement
yeah yeah like like I say Well done and I you know I wanted to show a few more
pictures of newspaper clippings that you sent and then then I’ll maybe throw some more questions your way but I think it
is funny to to think about yeah that that that youth that feeling that
you get in your youth where yeah you’re like Invincible but you actually did have a it sounds like a really solid
approach by looping in the stakeholders that you might be worried about like you
know your local representatives and and letting the university know when and where you’re hosting this event not just
showing up and uh you know risking getting in trouble that way it sounds like you really did try to
approach it as in the rules as you could if for lack of better words yeah
definitely and then knowing that we were taking a risk with um people consuming
possessing and consuming on campus so I know that there’s many people who um
didn’t feel comfortable participating in the the smoke out on campus during the
day but we would have events um in the evening and off campus um where it was a safer space
legally yeah yes absolutely um uh just to your point I was gonna
show this newspaper clipping and we’ll show others you said you know it’s going to be interesting to see what people
attending the event will do she said if people choose to smoke that is their choice the event is simply put on to
inform and educate you know so yeah I like that I like that yeah
this is another one that one of the pictures that we’ll show later I wasn’t sure what was going on I thought these
kids were just openly rolling joints it turns out you guys were rolling herbs
like a oregano and basil and this quote is really hilarious this person says I
prefer basil but all they had was oregano y he rolled he rolled 23
cigarettes in five minutes that’s professional I need to hit up yeah we had there were people that just came out
of the woodwork and were rolling all kinds of intricate things everybody interpreted the assignment a little
differently and um knew that they could possibly end up in the newspaper like
this yeah that’s so interesting uh another newspaper clipping um looks like
from 2005 just some coverage of hash Wednesday I thought was interesting to
see um again thank you so much for for
capturing this for history because like you say stuff like this could and you
you know it could die you know with with whatever scan you took so by doing this we’re preserving this in another format
so you know that people can see this so it’s really cool that you held on to these things hey this person’s name is
Cole I’m already a fan oh here we go yeah I mean I don’t I don’t know if
these things are still online I didn’t look I just figured it I know that I looked for some and they weren’t still
there so I’m not surprised local newspapers or student
newspapers yeah yeah it can be like you say you can find some of this stuff I’m sure but but yeah a lot of this stuff
can be tough to find so it’s super cool that that we’re doing this um yeah that
was another newspaper it looks like there’s some more uh pictures here I was going to going to share some of the
Flyers that you uh yeah has produced we had some pretty good graphic design for
2004 um that’s what I’m saying I think there used to be like an
actual stencil process as part of some of this but [Music] um’ be interesting to see if uiu normal
is uh still on like you know archived somewhere on the web to see what the old website looks like right yeah there’s a
lot of we could do a lot of digging from now that we’re talking about this I hadn’t thought about it in a long time
and then oh there Karen Thomas that was her name ideal reform oh that’s a my
brain’s like because yeah we used to do a lot of teachings that was the thing to do teachings back in the
day that’s very cool looks like this is a press release
maybe yeah we definitely did some press releases in fax around town faom that’s
something you don’t hear anymore did you go to Kinkos and fax them somewhere or something like that yeah yeah for sure
we or we had like our you know our Hub wherever our like activists organizing Hub was would have a fax machine and
copy machine for sure that’s funny uh uh this is cool uh you know
some old activities with leap we’ve had people I believe from leap on the show in the past so it’s cool to see that
they’ve been in the game that long or in the advocacy in advocacy that long yeah yeah that was the early days
of leap for sure I’ve met a lot of uh people through leap over the years we’ve
been working with them a long time that was uh one of the organization shelene
worked with uh after we graduated yeah speaking of shellene uh shellene is
Queen Elizabeth I think man yeah this sure she’s real happy that we’re sharing
this right now no I actually did talk to her about this because um yeah you never
know like old photos oh you’re getting you know people see your see your show so
yeah yeah um my memory was that shelene won first prize in the costume cont it
was a um celebrity Stoner costume contest one year um you got runner up
she got second place um first place was the dude and I still can’t tell you what
movie that’s from but I it’s not like my thing so I was like who’s the dude obviously shelene should win she was
Queen Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth that is funny yeah it’s stumping me right now I can’t
remember what movie that is either um but there here’s shellene again as Queen Elizabeth just in case that I showed it
to uh short but um do you do you remember who this individual is oh for
sure I was going to say I definitely want to mention Brian Brickner um he was a longtime Illinois Normal board member
um possibly in the 90s starting in the 90s I mean
um uh yeah Diana and Brian Brickner were the um we used to have our we used to do
a lot of activities up in um Wicker Park and around Chicago and and the capital
Springfield I mean um the illino normal board was instrumental in a lot of um
lobbying activities at that time that uh we were tied into awesome just a few other photos
that were in this particular album this looks like it’s from 2005 papier-mâché joint yeah look at
that massive massive joint oh there was like an offshoot Club of our group
called legalize it and then I believe Legalize It would do did a lot of this
that you’re seeing Oh interesting interesting very cool yeah I think
that’s the last one out of that album uh actually I didn’t show this one I thought this was cool free brownies for
all I’m guessing they were just regular brownies yeah so I would love to I think
we could find out this might have been our first one of our first events where we was kind of a joke or not yeah it was
like a gimmick um it was just regular brownies but we decided to that was just
one of our ongoing gimmicks you know yeah you know it’s to tell you something
funny that will be featured in a later episode um one of the stories that
somebody told me was that they would uh make regular brownies and roll joints of
tobacco and pass it out amongst the crowd in order to dilute the Supply in
other words when people were I guess you know officials were going around it was
hard to tell which brownies were normal which were pot infused which joints were
tobacco and which were cannabis you know rolled and so just kind of funny older
history um yeah and how they would do stuff like that so I wanted to show of
just a few more photos in case you had any thoughts to share and then I’ve got you know some more of those questions
that i’ had sent you here another look of the Rolling competition I thought so
I had seen this without context and I thought these kids were just like doing it loud and proud rolling up right in
front of the Student Union because you can kind of see in these photos it you know green leafy
substance and I just thought like wow this is uh that’s they were really doing it but they apparently it was a Rolling
competition and that was kind of the point right because it we knew it was going to be a photo op and it was also
like a public demonstration so it’s like a lot of people would stop and you could
see various levels of shock or Amusement on their face um the banner behind them
says your government is lying oh nice I love it I love it yeah you can really see the
uh the herbs and spices in this photo all their rolling trays he’s got he’s
using his Bongo as a rolling tray I love that and and that reminded me how intense it would be to go into head
shops at that time how you had to really know the right language and right Ro
what you’re saying yeah you could I got kicked out of a few head shops just by like honestly shopping you know looking
for something um and in you know in describing it to the person in the store of like what I was looking for they’re
oh you can’t say that in my store get out yeah we don’t do that here or whatever so um yeah just to make just to
make it a little bit more clear for folks that are listening like for example Danielle if you walked in and
said oh I want that bong they would go hey it’s a water pipe is that what you’re talking about you probably
wouldn’t get kicked out for that but I think once I said I was describing the type of pipe and um I called it a Hash
Pipe oh yeah so that got me they were like hash is a legal little girl and
then on campus when we were putting our first few events together we were going around to the head shops in town you
know very naively I was going into stores and telling asking for the owner and telling them what I’m doing and um
you know mostly they were supportive but one of them was super annoyed and I I totally get it looking back I’m like wow
I was so um you know just the caucacity of some of the stuff time you know I’ve
never heard that uh saying that’s funny I’m guessing that means you really just
leaning into your P privilege of being white is that am I wrong yeah I mean I had some I some of it I knew that was
going on and some of it I still just it was just how I was and you know I was
also I was really really angry you know I had live even at that age I had
already lived through a lot of things firsthand like seen a lot of things firsthand family and friends and you
know the difference between legal drugs and illegal drugs and what the [ _ ] is going on here so we were all really angry you know um yeah but this so this this event was one of it was our most I would say our most fun event other than the benefit concerts um it was like a day of celebration in a way although now I think gosh we really still don’t even have that much to celebrate as far as um gains and but but culture has shifted quite a bit although okay here one for many years I don’t know how many years but one of the components of hash Wednesday was the um this display of photos of people who were incarcerated for um drug possession and sales um so that was like a touring show at that time that would be at some form of that would be at the all the festivals cannabis festivals so oh fire dance that’s Matt Atwood one of the early founding members of ssdp nice very interesting and this is what what is this you know it’s funny I’m from Champagne but I didn’t go to school at the University of Illinois so is this the quad or what’s what is this that’s the main quad okay and then um so you if you’re from Champagne but you had you heard of hash Wednesday uh not until it was legalized and I met the individual that was referencing earlier who’s kind of more I was actually looking for this here’s more of those displays you were referencing earlier but I had first heard of hash Wednesday from that Oldtimer that I was uh referencing earlier that uh had participated all the way back in the80s but then said they also knew you from when you organized it uh which I thought was kind of funny so that’s how I learned about hash Wednesday um that’s beautiful and you know it’s just really quick uh I was scanning the newspapers some of the newspapers that I showed earlier and somebody at the library approached me and they were just like hey everything going okay and I was just like yeah they’re just like sorry to ask but like I just noticed you’re scanning a lot over here what what are you scanning and I’m like oh just you know stuff for like hash Wednesday history and stuff like that they’re like hash Wednesday and they knew the individual that knows you and they had participated in some hash Wednesdays and so this was in Champagne just to to show you kind of a house small world story but um sorry I feel like you were about to maybe say something about what I’m displaying right now well this was really important and um I wish that I was prepared to speak more specifically about this this was um one version of this uh there was a name for um it was a touring um demonstration uh and there was a few books affiliated with this I I believe these images came from Mickey Norris and Chris Conrad’s book um so that made me think of how important Chris Conrad and Mickey Norris’s work um has been and um some of their books that uh you know at that time we didn’t it what you couldn’t just get online and find images and print stuff out I mean you could for sure you could but it wasn’t there wasn’t a lot available and I I’m pretty sure at this time I was still on a dialup sometimes yeah we have to fact check that but it’s like for some reason these images are reminding me of dialup when you’re trying to put something like this together and and yeah like you said earlier King goes and um just uh this is pretty amazing that we had this displayed as part of the event for at least I want to say two three years and maybe it had been there uh historically um and that was really important that was uh this uh the book uh I think oh shattered lives is what it’s called shattered lives was a photo mostly photos and it was some of the first images of people who uh were incarcerated for low-level drug crimes um and it was really humanizing what was going on at that time yeah yeah and just for folks that like don’t really realize what goes into this you know I feel like you know especially even myself I don’t have like I can appreciate this and I’m about to do my best to explain it but I don’t since I didn’t live during this time I don’t really have a full appre appreciation for the effort that was put into this but just for example you can see these like documents have been laminated so that they can withstand the wind you know and I mean like so they didn’t just print it off but you had to laminate it yourself and it wasn’t as easy as just buying like a $50 printer off of Amazon like right like I don’t know printing was like you know you said you knew somebody with a printer earlier but yeah right yeah I just remember it being um a lot that went into right and it’s still you know it’s still a lot of work but yeah this was like a living display that we were I remember feeling in awe of the people that were doing this around the country and had been doing it you know this early 2000s they’d been doing it I want to say for like maybe almost 10 years at that point just just just getting the information out because this kind of information wasn’t easily available online there wasn’t people didn’t know know that this kind of thing was happening people had no idea that these kinds of situations were happening right I love these photos they chose to even though I can’t read it you can see these people had a family it’s all about yep showing the families and the different kinds of people who end up serving like life sentences for drug conspir for the mandatory minimums you know right right oh it’s just so much worse and just so much more out of control but that’s for another show for sure yeah looks like media coverage media was present yeah campus is so pretty yeah there’s you and chelene with your with your fake joint I presume be cool if it was a real joint you and somebody else oh who was that again oh that’s Frank um Frank nardulli and um there’s a whole group of um folks are friends to this day who um were super involved and uh made it happen yeah I think there’s a silly photo of you two coming up there we go oh jeez oh my God these are before selfies you guys I I should have deleted those out of the folder I shared with you I figured maybe you did some curation um not at all I dumped it all in there for oh nice nice there you go um this is funny he’s climbing the tree with the sign yeah people the event would always kind of like wind down into just hanging out on the quad this is some of our good friends that’s super cool Rob cool picture of him and the tree oh is that the last one I think that might have been the last one in the album I’ll be producing all these folks you know so that you can BR browse through them at your own Leisure um but wanted to share some of these on the on the line with Danielle so to say uh to to share some memories um just to get a little bit back on track um and I wanted to give you the space too if if you do if we didn’t show any particular images that that you do have memories about because I did Skip some I believe um but just generally uh and you kind of touched on this what was the atmosphere and like Vibe of hash Wednesday like while you were there I mean you kind of mentioned liberating all that stuff but do you have anything else to add with regard to the atmosphere of vibe I do remember that a lot of people even the people pictured who were volunteers helping run the event were very fearful um a lot of people had either had some in CRI involvement in criminal justice case of some like a court case of some kind have some kind of record so there was always that element that um we were doing this as part of a much bigger picture that we had to be really quiet about at that time we still had to be really quiet about um I mean still people it’s still stigmatized right but yeah there was I remember managing a lot of stigma and you know for participants who were having to be very um discreet uh people who wanted to be supportive but felt that they couldn’t um just a lot of factors um and the overall Vibe I mean typically was light-hearted and felt safe um it never it never felt like I imagine that today if if there was this kind of thing happening or Ian not to say today but like at that time we didn’t have to worry about so much about um police having so being so quick to pull weapons or use Force um especially in Urbana champagne it was um you know there there’s a lot of times where we had to talk to the police I had to go and talk to the police as the representative of the group but it was never hostile not that I know of but I think I’ve always had like a bit of a sense of humor about it like a dry sense of humor or and mixed with like confid enough confidence um that I remember having to talk to the police but I I don’t remember being like really scared just like okay this could go bad so we did have to be extremely cautious but that was normal at the time um it wasn’t the surveillance culture that we have now there was none of that so I think at the same time that it was very very illegal and very very unusual for people to be gathering and smoking in public like this um it it didn’t feel like so much of a surveillance culture um and we never actually had any legal problems that I’m aware of um I’m really curious about you know the earlier years the earlier events um hash Wednesday um yeah if there was more um police activity um it was definitely always there I mean the police were always around um and were always imposing different rules and things on us but um we were some of the leadership of our student group was there for three or four years in a row so it got easier as we went because the event got bigger but it got easier because um we built a relationship on campus um and it actually one thing um that looking back on all this it reminded me that you know at that time we also had a research project going with the um city of herbana the chief of police of the city of herban so hash Wednesday was in Champagne um because campus was mostly in Champagne um but Urbano was um you know the neighbor city that was more Progressive and um we helped the same group that put on hash Wednesday on campus helped um decriminalize cannabis in Urbana oh wow it didn’t even realize that that had happened in Urbana I would I would have to dig into some history on that that’s interesting yeah so that’s a I hadn’t had a chance to look into it because I think it may have passed and then changed again and then cuz I saw some more recent news like 2012 um around that time that there was something that happened in Urbana but um yeah even that kind of History could be lost with because we didn’t document how that happened but I did have I did find a few files of where we um our our campus group um compiled data for the um city of orbana and then that data is what the chief of police used um to um present to the city council why they needed to decriminalize very cool very cool um to your point there was some law enforcement interactions in the past uh this is in 1989 just wanted to show this image really quick this is there was a bit of a Crackdown and according to some of the students that I spoke to this was a pretty traumatic event of I meant to say honestly um but obviously as well uh so very interesting stuff sounds like maybe that something like that didn’t really happen that you were aware of uh during your time at hash Wednesday so not that I remember I I think I would remember if there right but I could be wrong you know there could have been things that happened that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time like maybe um somebody got a citation or something but I don’t remember any even any citations um yeah well another point you made earlier is like it’s a real different time that you were in like like you having that camera was kind of a rare thing correct me if I’m wrong I mean people had those noas but they weren’t really something you’re taking out and posting on Instagram like people do nowadays you know yeah you had a little chip that stored the photos and then you had to like you know back them up to a yeah um I don’t know how rare that was maybe I’ve always I’ve always been interested in you know even when I was like Polaroid I was always taking pictures as a kid so sure I I think that those might be the only some of the only photos that are out there of um those years of hash Wednesday because also people didn’t feel comfortable taking photos so I know I was very strategic that’s why I know most of I know almost every person who you can if you can see their face in those photos other than the people in the background you know who were basically choosing to be on stage right behind our event um yeah it was a small world but yeah less less documentation less um archiving of what was really going on yeah and what uh what kind of impact do you think hash Wednesday had on the University and the community at large if any I think taken collectively with all of the other um activities you know all the educational events and um community events that happened throughout the year I think it was definitely an important part of the local culture um like there was a lot of just awareness in general of hash Wednesday even if it was just as a joke um just that level of awareness that that kind of thing was happening I think felt really important at the time it felt really compelling like we were actually it was part of what was making a difference because I think culture change is more important than policy change although you need both um but whatever the local culture is is what people’s quality of life and everything is linked to um so yeah it it did feel important to get into the media too like we talked about that um I’ll look though I have some more newspaper articles like clippings but events like cash Wednesday were some of the only positive media coverage and that feels important um and it did we were always drawing the links to you know that we had the privilege as students on campus like the freedom to do that kind of thing and that um it was a totally different story off campus and um champagne was a is a decent sized city and then even though Urbana was um Progressive [Music] um it was it was uh complicated because it’s a big college Town um yeah so it felt important like to keep Traditions going that and especially something that ties the community to the campus like cash Wednesday did yeah and um so were there any other memorable or significant moments uh or you know incidents or anything that stand out from your experiences at hash Wednesday that you were kind of like thinking like w i i want to share that on air I’m sure some of those stories came up if there are any um yeah the costume contest was pretty epic things like that that we were able to do all of that um looking back on it was um that’s just what came up for me that uh and how much has changed since then but um yeah no I guess not I guess not for that one cool um so this one is it’s kind of obvious for people that know what you do and maybe you’re tuning in already knowing what you do um but if you could share any insights into how hash Wednesday may have influenced your uh personal life um during your time and after your time at uiu yeah I know you asked me to introduce myself and I realize now didn’t really do that um so we on campus um all of that work led to a full-time career in cannabis um in the industry in California for many years so uh and everything I’ve done since then really um I did I do remember feeling like wow like because we’re at this place at this time I’m I’ve founded um some campus groups I was leading those groups and had access to this the campus funding and this thing hash Wednesday that had been going on we were um trusted to do that or were able to do that and it was part of a lot of other activities that led to me being um recruited out to California um to work for Berkeley Patients Group um that was in 2005 uh uh when the Cannabis Market in California looked completely different than it does now um so I was uh working in dispensaries cultivation centers um I helped start oaksterdam University I was the first uh Chancellor at oaksterdam cool funny story about that it all happened really fast I was working in the Oaker Dam Garden in the nursery learning I was helping take care of the Clones and mother plants um and what we were doing was legal in Oakland but definitely not legal really but in Oakland you know I um I was immersed in Bay Area cannabis culture for almost 15 years um and um that’s been just a wonderful part of my life and and um yeah teaching classes at Oaker dam in the early days um 2007 and um worked for uh at a cannabis doctor’s office for many years in Berkeley so that was um Cutting Edge uh Dr Frank Lucio and nurse practitioner Maria manini were um one of the first primary care offices to uh recommend cannabis and then they went and that was in um 1995 uh when I was working for them in the 2000s they were the first uh one of the very first and still one of the only doctors that uh was is giving specific recommendations for cannabis for kids um a lot of our patients had autism Andor seizures um cancer um so I’ve worked on the medical side um very closely um managing that practice in B and then uh just a range of um other I guess gigs that were you know also some of this really has felt like activism at the same time um but I worked with Chris Conrad and Mickey Norris I’ve I’ve worked on a lot of uh with lawyers um criminal defense lawyers in California um and then um now currently I mean for the past almost 10 years um have been more self-employed working with shellene tidal a lot we um have been organizing together since campus I guess I didn’t specifically say that she was my co-founder for our campus groups um and she’s done a lot of different kinds of work in in the Cannabis policy World um and currently we’re working together again through Parabola Center her um uh shellen founded a parabola Center for Law and policy it’s a nonprofit Think Tank uh we’re very focused on anti-monopoly work and um trying to prepare for federal legalization and we talk all the time about we never would have predicted icted that this is where we’d be at this point in our life that um uh Federal legalization is right around the corner and we didn’t even think we’d see any legalization in our lifetime so it’s happening really fast um it all started on the Urbana champagne campus and now it’s over 20 years later um and I am really it’s just full circle to be able to work with shellene and um a really unique um nonprofit Mission um and the I’m not so much of a business person uh but I did have uh a cannabis staffing agency one of the first cannabis staffing companies THC Staffing group and we had a mentoring program I mean I I think there’s still a lot yet to come um you know right now Shen and I are really focused on uh Parabola Center um but it’s still like just part of this giant puzzle of unraveling the war on drugs and it’s a life it’s lifetimes of work ahead of us um so I’m really glad to be working on the more um serious and important side of of the work right now yeah so cannabis is a oh sorry what were you gonna say go ahead I was gonna say so cannabis is a gateway drug oh yeah most definitely sorry it’s stupid joke but what I was trying do you get what I was trying to say by that no for sure it’s like the gateway to the rest of my life yeah yeah yeah it’s kind of interesting it was like so um I’m just curious to kind of close uh you know I feel like we’ve touched all the basis that I wanted to touch on but you’ve alluded to this throughout and I know this is a big topic to close on so feel free to like take your time on it and I know that we could also just do a whole entire episode on just this topic but I am curious because you’ve alluded to it a few times and it’s a question I plan to ask all of the hash Wednesday participants how do they feel about the current state of legalization obviously there’s plenty of room for improvement right um but one of the questions I wanted to kind of focus on that I think is pretty pretty uniform across States right now is the idea that it’s not like it’s interesting to me speaking to some of the old participants there was this like uh it sounds like at least in the 80s or whatever there was this fracture in the community where it was like decriminalize or legalize and it’s not exactly what I thought it was in that decriminalize was actually like a shorter baby step proposal then then legalize was thought of as like this like it’s like the end goal you know but now we have legalization in Illinois and Colorado and so many other states but what I see and I’ve talked to like different defense attorne it’s like it seems like the main enforcement mechanism for legal cannabis is law enforcement and to just just to give you an example like if I have more than 30 grams but I don’t have a medical card in Illinois you can get charged with like a pretty serious crime depending on how much exactly you do possess and those possession limits are even lower for non-residents this seems to be pretty standard like when I go to Colorado I learned that that’s how they kind of enforce their system um they still have possession limits that’s kind of what I wanted to focus on for this you know of course there’s so many other topics we could go on but I’m just thinking of like back in the day in hash win’s day was you know somebody smoking on a joint that’s like yeah I want weed to be legal but you should only be able to have an ounce you know I’m just curious is somebody who participated in the back in that back in the day something is simple is a concept of possession limits what do you think about things like that in our current state of legalization because I could make this conversation so much bigger than you know there’s so much to talk about but yeah back then it was still an abstract concept that we thought would take a long time and I still feel that way because I think that what we were really what really drives us is true legalization which is abolition work also there’s a lot of overlap of abolition work and legalization work and right now what we have is not legalization it’s tax and Regulation and we have some decriminalization that actually is more like abolition like doing away with having any reason to detain arrest prosecute people um what’s been happening is yeah we’re actually having more categories of crimes like more ways of detaining somebody and and more cases potential for cases against people um in a way because uh yeah now a lot of What kinds of activity had been going on and just being kind of kept quiet is now like you know you’re now you’re operating you you’re you’re doing business without a license basically like now that there’s the business aspect of it it’s just a whole different game that I did not anticipate because again I’m not a business person I was a teenager who just thought that people should be able to smoke weed and grow weed at home like small hom grow um these Basics that we still don’t have in many places Illinois I am always telling people we really don’t have hom grow in Illinois because you can only legally grow five plants if you’re registered as a patient and that’s a whole thing like the medicalization that’s happened is not necessarily the best form of legalization it’s um it’s medicalization that’s that’s something that’s part of legalization but um it’s just now that it’s been happening it’s really complicated it’s way more complicated than a lot of us thought in the beginning of course because we were kid basically kids um we just you know thought we were just fighting for like the the basics homow Freedom just freedom of thought you know um and and public consumption I mean we still don’t have that in a lot of places um so something like cash Wednesday is still remarkable when you get people together and publicly consume in a place that technically they could like get into legal trouble for doing that still that’s like a lot of our public spaces so we’re still fighting for a lot of this same things and um meanwhile the War on Drugs has just raged on and um so we’re still even figuring out a lot of the criminal justice reforms that we need all of the different ways we have to unravel the War on Drugs um we’re barely just getting started on that work because the War on Drugs continues it’s not even stopped yet um but but you know we’re we’re making some progress overall as a society you know through culture change and awareness I think yeah yeah like you say it like continues the drug war and it almost just manifests itself in a different way and I think something that you said that really made a light bulb go off from me that somebody has said that reminds me of something that somebody has said on this show in the past uh it’s something to the effect of it might have even been shellene now that I think about it uh cannabis and cannabis policy is the biggest uh it’s the biggest like distinction between federal and state policy since slavery and so like you say um I might have said that I might have butchered that quote but you know um like you say though it is a lot like abolition work and similar to the end of slavery and trying to address racism that work still goes on to this day like we’ve not addressed that you know what I mean so to your point Canabis is like that you know maybe yeah I mean to specify like I think modern day the abolition work that I got involved in in college was um specifically prison abolition but that is prison is where we still have legal slavery that’s like fully out in the legal um we have all for other forms of slavery still in this country but um and around the world too like same with all the it’s all tied in with drug trade and International drug markets I mean yeah and and also this a whole another conversation but just as far as what I’m work I’ve been working on for the last year um and longer um now that so much is happening in the US and and shellene H is involved in some of that work um other countries are looking to the US to exactly with the same questions as you Cole like wait like what’s really even going on here is this you know what’s what are we really talking about between DM tax and regulate full legalization and now we’re talking about other drugs um and it’s related to everyone we trade import export with so um that’s all happening too meanwhile the a lot of other countries are looking to the US to see what what’s working what’s not working um so that we can figure this out on a larger scale that’s when I think some of the real repair can start like we can you know on a International scale for people to be able to benefit from um legalization not business cannabis business doesn’t benefit anybody in other countries that we’ve harmed who we’ve harmed because of the drug you know um that just continues to make like a small percentage of people richer here that’s not helpful actually it could be it could be helpful and you know in some parts of the country and the Cannabis Market when you look at the social Equity programs and um you know kind of on a smaller scale although Massachusetts it’s I wouldn’t even say small scale I’d say you know really on a state level there are some real lessons being learned about how the Cannabis Market could do better to be more Equitable to actually serve more of a purpose than just big business um so yeah I could rant on for days with you I’m sure and I just you know everything’s related so I know I like talking circles hey it’s totally okay this doesn’t have to be the last time we get on I uh I’m glad we’ve been able to get together to talk about hash Wednesday so um well just a last question um looking back do you think there’s any Legacy or lasting impact that this tradition has had had um seems like it you know even just from your experience of when you’ve been researching it and kind of around town on the beat yeah and it’s like memorable for people and it it’s a um conversation starter there’s so many aspects to it um yeah it’s it’s reminding me too uh I don’t want to forget to tell you there’s a local character who was named Chef raah um who was part of the hash Wednesday history and he had a local there was a really great um local radio station that I’m sure is still there and Chef ra had a show and um you know there was a lot of awareness about who he was and that what he represented he was um affiliated with high times as well he had a column in high times um so I think that that is an important part of the history of how something like cash Wednesday continued on and off and on for so many years um yeah people like him who you know were part of the community the like lived in Champagne Urbana um for many years yeah and I’m sorry I said that was my final question but you just reminded me that I do have one more question uh a lot of the people that I’ve talked to said there’s a lot of synchronicity around champagne um for example Keith Str Keith stro or stro uh Illinois nor you know normal came out of uh was started in Champagne I think the guy that started High Times was from Champagne of course hash Wednesday champagne in 1942 uh you you can look this up and you can find this on the internet but THC was actually discovered in Champagne um yeah and they I believe synthesized C CBN yeah the yep at the U ofi um this is a this seems like a reach but hear me out you know sh Hefner went to the ufi and he was a pretty big proponent of cannabis legalization so he was a major funer of um for Keith stro founding normal oh interesting didn’t even know that yeah but yeah just wanted to see if you could comment on the do you feel the same synchronicity do you have any other name drop of big people I’ve heard like Jack herrer came through the University of Illinois champagne like for protests and stuff yeah well it got me bonus points with Ed Rosenthal when I first U met him um and I ended up um bringing him to campus and you know he was very willing to come to what he called I believe he was one of the people that called it shampoo banana um and people used to always kind of test me like the elders would be like oh shampoo banana and then you have to know like oh yeah champagne or bana some people call it shampoo banana okay I was like what yeah I think I mean I think it’s yeah I guess there’s that synchronicity of um it’s a it’s a hub it’s always been a hub a cultural Hub and kind of a um bit of a I mean I don’t even want to say safe space but safer space than um most other parts of Illinois I mean other than Chicago I’m sure there’s some other like and that’s changed now but I think that that’s you know why champagne orbana was it was specifically Urbana you know orbana um just was a very like hippie kind of town and smaller than champagne and um so that’s part of the the history as well just the the difference between the two um yeah yeah well uh yeah another people I’ll I’ll let you know too if I think of anybody else and I’m curious what you find when you’re speaking to people oh as far as who came through town I mean yeah after Ed Rosenthal we we had some other we had several other um visitors usually from California would come through um different leaders and through leap um but big names I don’t know and I know there’s still a lot of um important research going on on campus that’s been a continuous then so yeah for that reminder because there’s um a lot of hemp research and um sort of degree now right in the yeah we just uh Dr DK Lee who kind of started that all at the UI at the University of Illinois the hemp program and some of that hemp research came on our show uh the chinois podcast back in the day and actually just recently ran into him and was talking about how the programs going and it sounds like it’s going really well they have an Avenue for like you know kind of a fiber Industrial route but then they also have a route for like cannaboid production like people that want to get into the Cannabis industry and I thought that’s so cool you can go to the University of Illinois and learn how to grow weed just to put it bluntly yeah you know so uh super cool stuff to hear that that’s how it continues on and yeah I’ll just close with saying that I don’t believe in much of anything and I know that sounds depressing but what I mean by that is like I’m not like a like a religious person or anything I don’t like believe and like you know spiritual stuff or or anything like that but like it’s hard for me not to like want to make something out of this like the fact that I grew up so close to champagne or bana and just happen to have hit the tra trajectory that I’m on with drug policy and this just like coincidence in Champagne orbana it’s like a really notable place like I just wonder if there was like something in the air like or if I just was influenced by somebody in a weird way you know I don’t know it’s weird I do feel like I’ve always been seeking like those the really good weed that you could get in Champagne well or bana specifically I would say um that was grown locally or somewhere far and um maybe it’s Nostalgia but you know like the mushroom chocolate psilocybin chocolate um just I think the possibly the like larger subculture of like the drug culture there and just the the meeting of the minds you know and um just personal note Allerton Park if you don’t already know which I’m sure it’s just a beautiful um part of the the Midwest I guess and a good school and all that but yeah it’s a Crossroads too right it’s like the center it’s right in the center of the state so a lot of people do come through there or um you know go would go stay there there for and big names would come through big musicians are always coming through there or used to anyway yeah yeah it’s uh it’s a crazy place like I say I feel fortunate to have grown up uh near here and I’m just checking uh yeah allerton’s and monacello that’s what you’re referring to um uh yeah I’ve got actually a short clip that I made that I actually shot at do you want to watch it to close the show it’s kind of funny a little bit of commentary on uh uh it’s satirical so be ready it gets a little outrageous but it’s a little bit of commentary on the current state of cannabis and and Illinois but other states as well so it shot at Allerton so I’m a cannabis industry billionaire and you know what things are going pretty godamn well for me I’ve established a firm regulatory foothold within several nent cannabis markets across these United States I’ve worked to ensure that nobody even has a chance to compete with me you might be asking yourself how did I do this the answer is simple cash money [ _ ] no seriously me
and my VC Bros Chad Brad and Thad poured at least 600k into lobbying in one state
alone I say at least because of course we weren’t forthright with all of our political
giving this is a venture capitalist kn see that [ _ ] knee [ _ ] do it the
other way too transparency simply isn’t the goal the goal is complete domination
yeah me and my buddies Kirk Aiden and McKinley are starting a rock band we’re calling it regulatory capture I’m
quickly becoming the king of cannabis the next industry that I plan to colonize is the Psychedelic industry I’m
relatively bullish about quarter 2 but quarter 3 let me tell you it’s looking beautiful yeah we should celebrate you
want some what is that uh weed I don’t smoke but I’ll
try tune in that’s just me being silly um and
Allerton um oh my gosh see you get you get the joke though it’s just being
outrageous about cannabis industry billionaires and of also like so triggery
and yeah well anyways Focus today I’ve tried to stay focused on like the
positive aspect and just owning like that I had a role in this to and talk
about it from the heart but um yeah I didn’t mention uh you know Carol Ammond
and Aaron Ammons and the the just specifically more about the community
that we were working within so I feel like I didn’t give enough credit to all the like larger the little larg picture
in Champagne Orana for sure definitely just speaking from my perspective which was a student who’s not from there yeah
and there always been a long tradition of radical politics there like so much
more you and I can talk about at some point or I can and I’ll send you what I think of like just yeah it’s definitely
been a hub of radical thought so I think that that’s really important yeah thank you for bringing up representative amons
as you know I’m a huge fan but again this is we’re doing the true definition of a Midwestern goodbye on this
one yeah back the background is not working and it’s like golden hour so
that’s a good reminder we are um approaching the end yeah well Danielle I want to thank you for your time today
and again I think we should do this again you know just about any anything and everything uh I I was glad though to
be able to sit down with you and have a focus on hash Wednesday and to Archive some of this history thing thank you for
helping me capture it yes thank you it’s been so good to talk and I look forward
to to more cool well folks we’ll see you in the next one take care