My little town is going through a little uprising. It has been festering for years, the more that weed becomes an outsourced business, the more the discontent grows. Our town is typical of small Humboldt villages, lots of back to the landers, a little bit of meth, a few old time ranchers, more new fangled new agers, and everyone (except most of the meth heads) with a little too much untaxable income. Our land prices are high, we did not suffer in the crash of ’08, the land is too beautiful, it is always desirable. I have lived here for 17 years and I see the change. People come from out of town or out of the state and buy land, they camp long enough to pull in a huge crop, bring in tons of out of town workers, and then they all leave when the rain comes. They do not spend the time making an effort to get to know the wonderful community they make their living in. They do not care about our children’s soccer games or school plays. They don’t celebrate on the beach with us for May Day. Their money and ruthlessness makes us feel powerless and bullied.
The catalyst seems to be that recently one of our sons was killed as a pedestrian on the 101 hit by a car. He was 27, his death has made all the do gooders want to form committees to save our town, our community. He was addicted to meth, but that should not be his whole story he had parents who struggled and lost to their own addictions, he was isolated, he rarely left our town. After his father died he lived alone up on a hill that you could only drive up sometimes. He struggled to be good, to contribute. A few years ago a couple of his friends took great advantage of him, they plied him with drugs and got him to agree to let them grow on his property. He became so drugged up he lost a bit of his mind, his friends kicked him out he lived in his car they gave him more drugs so he wouldn’t say anything he lost more of his mind. Finally another member of the community made sure his friends left the valley and never came back. The son never really came back either. His death makes us feel guilty, we stood by and watched and didn’t do anything worthwhile.
Marijuana and the economy around it are inseparable from our community, its joys and its hardships. I make my money from weed, I hire itinerant workers, I love my community, I am both. I am concerned that we will forget where we came from, that we will judge without understanding. There are so many things we can blame when we forget that we are our own original melting pot of needs and desires. In the name of equality we will condemn those who don’t agree with us. In order to make our community greater we need greater understanding, not the fake judgemental kind. The kind that happens when you realize you are capable of terrible wasteful things too. The kind that happens when we realize we all are the same.
In Retaliation 