i am nothing without my words

RADIKAALIMARSSI 2010 / HELSINKI SMOKE OUT / 20.11.2010

On Saturday November 20th pro-cannabis friendlies were marching from Hesperia Park to the Parliament Building in Helsinki to light cigarettes, joints, bongs and whatever else at 4.20 pm to protest the immoral law of criminalizing nature.

I was there.

We left our friend's place in Petolahti, Ostrobothnia early on Saturday morning. We were late. We drove down to Pori watching an amazing sunrise (but that's another story entirely). We found the bus, as well as two "undercover" cops and a happy labrador. The dog marked two of us four and our bags were searched. Not very thouroughly, it was definitely quite laid back cops who were mainly looking for major amounts of illegal substances.

No one was kept from going on board. I guess we were all experiencing thc-deficiency more than illegally transporting drugs. Heh. Same in Turku, everyone got on, and everyone was excited.

The trip down to Helsinki went smooth until 10 minutes from the city center. A police car was clearly waiting for us to make that certain turn when they came after us, pulled us to the side, and within seconds a second police car was also present.

They called it a routine control. They talked to the driver, checked the tires, the logs and everything else for 25 minutes until giving the driver a 140€ ticket for something ridiculous and finally let us drive on. To the press they apparently said that it was not to stall the participants. Which cannot be true. This was one of the most obvious, ridiculous moves I've ever seen the police do.

As we had no chance of making it to the park to march we went straight for the Parliament Building. A big crowd was already there, as well as 50 some visible cops, apparently around 80 in total. The participants in the crowd were peaceful and happy to make a stand. What was the hardest to grasp was the amount of policemen present. They pushed people off the stairs, even press (credited or otherwise), and in the end they only arrested three people, of which only two were given fines. What exactly did they think we would do? Storm the building?

Finnish hemp minister Timo Haara was present, talking to the press and his fellow friends in the 200+ crowd.

Lots of regular cigarettes too, just for the sake of it.

The first big pipe was lit at 4.20 and the police were quick to wrestle down the smoker. The pipe did not have any illegal substances in it though.I would estimate that at least half of the crowd were smoking cannabis and I was happy to see no more than three being pulled away by police. This was peaceful disobedience, the way it should be. There were no victims (except the ones being taken by the police).

Peaceful hippies could not understand the laws and the police paws.

And all that just for this: a peace pipe.

In the bus home one of the participants read the headlines from all major media. It got all of us in a good mood for the long drive, because hardly any of the headlines or stories were aimed at us. Even media is mostly criticizing the police resources being used in such a useless way.

The message we were trying to spread was clear; You cannot criminalize nature. You are not above it, but a part of it. Don't separate yourself from that which makes sense.

//soulmama (all the way from Pietarsaari, who participated unfortunately without breaking the law)