by: John Sinclair
It’s time for the 37th annual Hash Bash on the Diag in Ann Arbor, but there have arisen some serious complications vis a vis the university’s refusal to grant a permit to the Hash Bash organizers and instead booking the date with another campus organization in an all-out effort to bar the Hash Bash from the hallowed UM campus at last.
Needless to say, the university administration has always hated the Hash Bash and everything it stands for, but students and local citizens have gathered on the Diag on the Saturday closest to April Fool’s Day since 1971 to smoke some cannabis together and share a few laughs. The 1972 gathering was titled the Hash Bash by Rainbow Peoples Party poster artist Walden Simper when she came up with the name to adorn the flyer she was drawing up for the event, and so it became: HASH BASH—DIAG—APRIL 1.
I had been released on bond from prison on December 13, 1971 and celebrated the victory of my appeal in the Michigan Supreme Court on March 9, 1972 when we overturned the state’s narcotics laws and forced the reclassification of marijuana as a “controlled substance” carrying a misdemeanor charge for possession (90-day maximum sentence) under state law, which would go into effect on April 1, 1972. For almost three weeks there were no marijuana laws in effect at all in the state of Michigan, and we took full advantage of the situation to organize a series of events around Ann Arbor at which the sacrament was offered and freely smoked in public places.
Our ragtag organization, the Rainbow Peoples Party, joined the fledgling left-wing Human Rights Party en masse and helped to get out the vote to elect two HRP members to the 7-member Ann Arbor City Council in the city elections held the week following April Fool’s Day. So we were certainly feeling our oats and wanted to let the authorities know that it made no difference to us that the marijuana laws would go back into effect on April 1st—we would continue to celebrate this essential component of our lives and our culture without fear of the police, and we’d demonstrate our position by meeting on the Diag and smoking up a bunch of joints.
Not too long after the HRP members were seated on the City Council they engineered the passage of a new ordinance removing marijuana possession and use from the local criminal codes and instituting a $5 ticket as full punishment for cannabis offenders. This took the pressure off for quite some time and—except for an adjustment to $25—the ordinance remains in effect today, 36 years later.
But the annual specter of the Hash Bash has haunted the University of Michigan administrators and driven them to seek more modern solutions, like declaring the UM campus a state entity not subject to local ordinances, invoking the state marijuana laws on campus, enforcing them with UM police under state authority, and now yanking the permit for the Diag gathering out from under the Hash Bash organizers and awarding it to another group for a whole different sort of activity.
This is the kind of dirty, underhanded, treacherous tricks the university has always been famous for, going back to our day in the ‘60s when we had to sue UM to be allowed to rent the Union Ballroom and other campus venues to put on our dances, concerts and benefits. But this time there’s a hero stepping out of the wings to save the day—or should I say heroine?—by the name of Alma Davila-Toro, co-founder of the UM student group called F.O.K.U.S. (Fighting Obstacles Knowing Ultimate Success) that had been awarded the permit for the Diag on the first Saturday in April when the usual slot for their annual spring party proved unavailable.
Alma explains: F.O.K.U.S. is “a student organization on the campus of the University of Michigan whose mission is to unite the student body using the arts as a common medium. Every year for the past four years we’ve hosted the end of the year block party on the Diag called ‘Vanguards.’ The block party consists of free food, live entertainment, games, and just pure fun for students before finals and graduation hits.
“This year, we were forced to push our event back to the first weekend in April because of another event going on the following weekend. It wasn’t until last week or so that we found out student organizers of Hash Bash were now trying to reserve the Diag. We had this location reserved back in November.”
She told me these things in a letter she e-mailed me just three or four days before the event and explained, “The reason why I am contacting you is because I would like to speak directly to you and maybe try to work something out…. Because of our artist/band schedule and limited time with sound on the Diag, I want to propose to my group to give you at least 20 minutes to speak and of course share your art with the campus via poetry…. So as soon as I get your thoughts about the situation, I can bring this to my group and we can most likely work something out (out of respect for you, the tradition of “Hash Bash,” and of course for the love of ART).
“F.O.K.U.S. is a really fresh/dope/cool student organization on campus. We put on events like poetry slams, reggae concerts, film screenings, student art galleries, concerts, variety shows, community service, etc. We think outside the box and always try to make our events worthwhile. The purpose of all of these events is to allow students to express themselves, to keep the arts alive, and to bring people together on this segregated campus. For more information about us, check out our website: www.onefokus.org.”
This seemed to me an uncommon stroke of genius and a perfect solution to the dilemma, undercutting the nefarious scheme of the university to bar the Hash Bash from campus and reaching out in solidarity to include us in their event so we could still have our say on the appointed day. I gleefully accepted the F.O.K.U.S. invitation and requested that Adam Brook be allowed to introduce me to the crowd on the Diag.
It tickled me most that the traditional unity between cannabis and the arts was what saved the day, since anyone who knows me knows that one of my personal crusades has always been to establish the unity between getting high and the creative process and to try to bring great roots music, poetry and performance art to the stoner community to help expand its consciousness, so to speak.
So Saturday dawned bright and clear, promising to become the first true day of spring in Michigan and bringing the prospect of a big turnout on the Diag starting at High Noon. Usually the first Saturday in April is a dismal affair, ruined by cold rain or snow that severely limits the Hash Bash crowd to a few hundred foolhardy participants. Today will be different, and the event will also benefit from combining our marijuana legalization attendants with the F.O.K.U.S. block party crowd.
The one remaining deterrent to a fully successful Hash Bash is the ominous presence of the University of Michigan police force hovering around the site in search of human prey. Thus the people who come to the Hash Bash now pretty much refrain from smoking openly due to the impending possibility of a misdemeanor bust, and this kind of cuts the heart out of the celebration which was—after all—meant to be an occasion for people to get together and get high together in public.
But the Hash Bash organizers have found a way to restore the beauty and harmony of the traditional gatherings on the Diag by leading the crowd off the campus and two blocks over to Monroe Street where city law is in effect and the people can meet in the street out in front of Domenick’s Pizza to make some music and enjoy the Monroe Street Fair for the rest of the afternoon. The block is sensibly closed off at each end, a portable stage is erected, a variety of booths are set up with relevant goods and services available, food and drink are plentiful at Domenick’s, the Ann Arbor police keep a respectable distance from the actual scene of the crime, and a good time is had by all….
