My congresscritter, Kirsten Gillibrand, is one of the most prominent new Democrats elected to Congress in the 2006 "thumpin". I live in the supposedly conservative NY-20 district upstate near Saratoga Springs and Lake George, about an hour north of Albany. The district has been represented by a succession of Republican hacks and the congresswoman and national party seemed determined to keep her in office.
So far, she's acted like a modern liberal fighting democrat. But I was disappointed this morning to see in my email from a reform org list that she had voted "nay" on H R 3093, the Hinchey Amendment, which would take the feds out of the business of harassing medical marijuana patients in the 12 states which are trying to buck the federal prohibition on marijuana and allow for limited controlled use.
Here's what I emailed my congresswoman:
I'm really VERY VERY disappointed in your "nay" vote yesterday on Roll Call 733 on H R 3093 ("Hinchey Amendment").
My wife and I are big supporters of you (came to the Warren County Airport rally last fall with the Clintons) and most Democrats, but Democrats in the 21st century have to stop acting like DNC triangulating Clintons on the drug war. You really have to stand up to the federal prohibitionists and let states that want medical marijuana let their citizens have it. You have to stand up to stop federal goons from arresting sick people in wheelchairs, and from the federal government arrest 750,000 people a year for marijuana.
Don't you get it? The "war on drugs" (part of the "southern strategy" of Nixon's and Reagan's, a modern Jim Crow and payback for the civil rights legislation of 1964) is mostly a REPUBLICAN strategy. It's outlived its usefulness, if it every had any, and is tragically hurting real people, real families, especially women and children of those needlessly imprisioned.
Please don't let drug issues become your sacrificial "conservative" sop to your constituents. We're just as far ahead of the pols here as anywhere else. Overwhelming majorities of the people everywhere support marijuana legalization, not just for sick people, but for everyone. Overwhelming majorities do not think it proper to fill our jails and prisons with users or marijuana or other drugs.
We didn't elect you to be someone like McHugh or Sweeney. Be like Hinchey. Vote for his amendment when it comes up next year. Join the Democrats on this issue. It isn't a laughingstock anymore. One year soon, it's gonna pass. Are you going to be on the right side then, Kristen?
We really do watch these things. With the internets these days, it's easy. It isn't just what shows up in that "box score" thing in the Post-Star.
Disappointed,
J