cannabisnews.com: Pomona Denies Festival Permit 





Pomona Denies Festival Permit 
Posted by FoM on April 18, 2001 at 08:17:56 PT
By Tipton Blish
Source: Los Angeles Times
A music and cultural festival planned for downtown's Arts Colony in part to publicize the use of hemp is facing challenges from a local business association and the city, which denied the festival a permit.   La Fiesta de las Cucarachas' organizers have promised a multistage concert on Pomona's streets coupled with an outdoor marketplace with food and crafts May 5. Mark Hornaday is fighting charges that his festival will offend Latinos in Pomona and that celebrating hemp, or cannabis, will sully downtown Pomona's reputation. 
 "This is contributing to more of the confusion and the consternation and getting in the way of the positivism" he said from behind the counter of Hemp Shak, his incense-infused store where he sells hemp clothing and food as well as stickers celebrating pot smoking.   The festival's association with hemp and hemp's association with marijuana drew a stern letter from the Pomona Central Business District to Mayor Eddie Cortez.   The business association doesn't want a festival that is so closely related to an illegal drug to be partying on the streets of a city already wrestling with its image, said president David Armstrong. The association's executive board voted unanimously to urge the city to block the festival, which is being organized out of Hornaday's West 2nd Street store.   Hornaday was steaming mad Tuesday afternoon after he learned that his permit for the street festival had been denied by the city. Pomona denied the permit on technical reasons. Hornaday had listed the Orange County Hemp Council as an applicant. The hemp council's officials said they don't want to be the prime sponsor of the event. Additionally, Hornaday has yet to get insurance for his festival and the city said he hasn't organized enough security for the fiesta.   But Hornaday was especially irked that he was being labeled anti-Latino for scheduling a "cockroach" festival on the Cinco de Mayo holiday, as Armstrong pointed out.   "I'm not trying to offend anybody," Hornaday said. "This Cinco de Mayo argument is overblown. There are people who are all kinds of shapes and colors and sizes who have been helping me with this."   Hornaday said he was determined to go on with the festival. Clearly hurt, he said his event has already been advertised in fliers throughout downtown. He has enlisted sponsors and musical performers, including a reggae band featuring one of the founders of Black Uhuru.   Armstrong, who owns a large chunk of downtown real estate, said Hornaday's use of "cucarachas" was meant to evoke the smoked end of a marijuana cigarette, or a "roach."   "I am interested in promoting Pomona as a cultural center, a place where it is safe to come, families are welcome to come and catering to the wrong elements is going to continue the negative stigma that we acquired in the past," Armstrong said. Note: Owner of Hemp Shak angered over city's charge that La Fiesta de las Cucarachas will offend Latinos and shamelessly promote marijuana. Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)Published: Tuesday, April 17, 2001Copyright: 2000 Los Angeles TimesContact: letters latimes.comWebsite: http://www.latimes.com/Hemp Shakhttp://hempshak.com/Orange County Hemp Councilhttp://www.ochemp.org/CannabisNews Hemp Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/hemp.shtml
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Comment #5 posted by observer on April 18, 2001 at 16:07:27 PT
thinking styles, cannabis
 One of the first things to go with pot smoking is "executive thinking" i.e., "cause and effect thinking."Are you sure that's really what "executive thinking" is? . . .Sternberg & Lubart (1991a) proposes that there is a link between intellectual (or thinking style) and creativity. Truly striking levels of creativity are associated with global and legislative thinking styles compared with local executive thinking styles. Individuals with a global legislative thinking style prefer relatively large abstract issues, ignoring details. They prefer the task of creating, formulating , imagining and planning. Individuals with local styles prefer concrete problems requiring detailed work and tend to be pragmatically oriented. They prefer implementing and applying ideas or plans of others.Sternberg (1992) maintains that there are consistent biases in measurements of ability which benefit some thinking styles at the expense of others. He uses the multiple choice/short answer format as an example of a type of conventional test commonly used which favours test takers with an executive, local style and somewhat those with internal conservative styles as well. He also suggests that the type of student who gets good grades as assessed by conventional tests ìare unlikely to be the students who are most creative when it comes to generating new ideas in their research regardless of discipline (see Sternberg & Lubart, 1991a; 1991b, p. 179.) Creative students are more likely to show profiles of styles that are legislative and global. More recent tests emphasise critical thinking and analysis, indicating there may be a shift away from benefiting executive styles.-- Jean Lumb, 1996?http://computed.coe.wayne.edu/Vol2/lumb.html Maybe decrying a claimed lack of "executive thinking" is really just the difference between the more creative, and those more inclined to rule-following? Studies suggest insight as to why conservatives have focused so much of their attention on drugs. One scaled 4-year-old children on an index of creativity and adventure seeking to find that such characteristics are the greatest predictor of recreational use of marijuana in subsequent high-school years. Drug users are perhaps by personality disposed to be the least obedient to orthodoxy and convention just as the orthodox are most disposed to believe that social rules must be reinforced with persecution of the non-conformists. Conflict over drug use is the great continuation of the unending dialectic between what Freud called anal retentive personalities and their natural opponents, the oral compulsives. Rule lovers are in a constant effort to bring rule breakers to task, while rule breakers seek new horizons for their will to creative non-conformity.Drug Hate and the Corruption of American Justice, 1998David Sadofsky Bagginshttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0275959562/ 
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Comment #4 posted by Dan Hillman on April 18, 2001 at 15:32:43 PT
Landlorg Armstrong landlocked in the past.
> "I am interested in promoting Pomona as a cultural center, a place where it is safe to come, families are welcome to come and catering to the wrong elements is going to continue the negative stigma that we acquired in the past," Armstrong said. There is plenty of culture around cannabis use, everyone who uses cannabis is in a family, using cannbis is safe, you'd be surprised by how many of your peers use cannabis, and there is little negative stigma around cannabis use in people under 50 years of age in California. You are the wierd one, Armstrong.
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Comment #3 posted by observer on April 18, 2001 at 12:02:15 PT
La cucaracha
It's no surprise that the people promoting this affair don't get the connection between "roaches" and "cockroaches."The "connection" is from a Mexican folk song. The prohibitionsts, grasping, in their usual "any excuse will do" mode, thought that tossing out allegations of racism -- for using the title of a traditional folk song -- would be a dandy politically correct way to shut out the hated ideas. But we can see through that: it is just prohibitionists using any remotely plausable pretext for censoring ideas they don't like. Transparent.* * *La cucaracha, las cucarachaYa no puede caminarPorque le quiere, Porque la faltaUn marijuana que fumar [The cockroach, the cockroachHe can't travelBecause he wantsBecause he lacksMarijuana to smoke] http://www.cs.ut.ee/~gordon/varia/lyrics/cucaracha.html http://www.mixnet.de/texte/c/CMDES_00.HTMhttp://ww2.lafayette.edu/~shuppr/lamusic/lacuca.mid
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Comment #2 posted by frances on April 18, 2001 at 11:40:14 PT:
executive thinking & cockroaches
One of the first things to go with pot smoking is "executive thinking" i.e., "cause and effect thinking."It's no surprise that the people promoting this affair don't get the connection between "roaches" and "cockroaches."
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Comment #1 posted by Sudaca on April 18, 2001 at 08:43:54 PT
Politically correct excuse
Sure, this is about offending Latinos. As someone of hispanic descendence I feel that the lameness of the argument is more offensive than anything else. Would people in this country argue that holding a "cockroach party" on St. Patrick's day offends Anglos?This is ridiculous. If you're going put millions of people from an area more diverse than this diverse country in one bag and give them a special name that'll separate them from the others that's bad enough. If you then dismiss any respect that could have been left and treat them all as if they were Mexican that's worse. 5 de Mayo is a very local thing in this part of the world, it's not even a big thing in Mexico.What twisted logic these gringos employ to justify their prejudice and hatred. 
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