Following the police killing of George Floyd and the nationwide uprising against police violence that still continues (even if the media’s gaze at protesters across the country is not quite where it was a few weeks ago), many people—mostly white people—felt more than a little lost. To understand the extent of the problems with American policing and this racial reckoning, many consulted reading lists and recommendations such as White Fragility, or more penetrating books such as The End Of Policing or Are Prisons Obsolete? One book The Outlaw Report would like to recommend is adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. The anthology “written and gathered” by brown connects social justice to pleasure and fun to create what she calls “pleasure activism.”
Some of the book also explores important personal and political issues surrounding cannabis. In a section titled, “The Politics Of Radical Drug Use,” Pleasure Activism contains a primer on harm reduction as it pertains to drug use, an essay by adrienne maree brown titled ‘Weed On, Weed Off,’ and ‘Experiments In Cannabis For The Collective,’ by Malachi Garza.
“We can create opportunities for communities of color, people directly impacted by criminalization, to own these companies. Of course, to become a legal investor in a cannabis company, one must have hundreds of thousands of dollars lying around available to invest. Yet, as organizers know, barriers are for overcoming,” Garza writes. “There are ways to have those with wealth enter this market and then give over ownership to those with fewer resources. There are ways to create ‘micro-investors’ to get in the game. These strategies are moving forward, here and now. This is some lifting-all-boats type of ish.”