Billings MTCIA Event: Group Shares Food, Drink, as We All Wait

And now, there’s three days.

What tension. We’ve been pulled pretty taut these last six months, yes?

Yesterday, Ed Docter, Pat Pardis, and Kate Cholewa from the MTCIA board rolled into Billings for a fundraiser and Battle of the Bands. Thanks to James Haney, Mort Ried, Kathleen Shannon, and Jude Mendonza for local organizing and coordination. Thanks again to Misty Carey for generating printed materials.

It was great to get together but there was also a pervasive sense of gravity and concern. There’s so much at stake.

Much has already been lost.

But we’re far from crushed.

The patients are citizens. The cannabis workforce and businesses are Americans. Some of the strong have been knocked down and many of the weak have fled. Who’s left standing? Serious people. Serious people who don’t want to be criminals, because they’re not criminals. They’re citizens and business people, no less good, no less responsible, no less serious than other citizens and business people.

This is why the MTICA vs. the State of Montana is also about the right to dignity.

The denial of people’s dignity is always carried out with lies.

And their lies are old and shabby, but armed.

Some say we’re making history. Some say we’re creating a future, one of greater health, greater well-being, economic hope, and a rope thrown to the middle class.

We are Montanans and we are not blind. We see what’s happening in the country and in this world and we know that the cannabis lie is one we can no longer afford.