Touting Green Revolution, Ziggy Marley Campaigns For Pot Legalization

Touting Green Revolution, Ziggy Marley Campaigns For Pot Legalization

Touting Green Revolution, Ziggy Marley Campaigns For Pot Legalization

Reggae star Ziggy Marley is the new songwriter and pundit for the Prop 19 campaign.

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Reggae star Ziggy Marley entered the election fray with a new song this week. But unlike most musicians, who focus on bland turnout appeals or conventional candidate endorsements, Marley is calling for pot legalization.

That’s not just tour bus talk, either. As news junkies and potheads already know, the California ballot includes a referendum on legalizing marijuana, Prop 19. Marley’s new tune, "A Fire Burns for Freedom," can be downloaded for free from his homepage, and the grammy-winning star turned up on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan show to explain the campaign:

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

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Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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