Pubdate: Thu, 14 Aug 2003
Source: Stranger, The (Seattle, WA)
Copyright: 2003 The Stranger
Contact:  http://www.thestranger.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2241
Author: Hannah Levin
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Hempfest

HOME GROWN

Nine years ago a high-school dropout and daily pot smoker attended his first
Hempfest. That teenager, Dominic Holden, got involved and helped turn a
backwater hippie smoke-out into the largest marijuana-law reform rally in the
world.

So how come Holden isn't smoking pot anymore?

"One of the greatest things anyone with a political agenda can have is to be
exactly not what people are expecting you to be," Hempfest organizer Dominic
Holden tells me while sipping a Bloody Mary and holding my gaze intently. "I
think a lot of people anticipate that marijuana-policy reformists are all in
their 40s and 50s, have long gray hair, say 'far out' all the time, and are so
aligned with the counterculture that everything from the way they act and the
clothes they wear reflects that."

With a boyish face, a mischievous lilt in his articulate voice, and a shock of
spiky black hair, 26-year-old Holden certainly isn't what you would expect a
Hempfest organizer to look like. While it's relatively common knowledge that
there's no such thing as a typical stoner anymore, the idea of a pot activist
almost immediately triggers visions of a peace-loving guy toting a
Guatemalan-print backpack, wielding exceptionally well-developed Hacky Sack
skills, and exuding the olfactory assault of patchouli oil. (To be fair,
Hempfest wouldn't have grown from a small, informal 1991 rally into its
contemporary incarnation as a vivid, cohesive picture of the drug-law reform
movement without the hard work of folks like the aforementioned Hacky Sack
player--but you see what I'm getting at.)

Holden may not look like a stereotypical hemp activist, but he is clearly a
passionate young activist on the rise. As one of the pivotal members of
Hempfest's planning committee since 1997, Holden has helped expand the
grassroots event from its early manifestation as a loosely organized one-day
event in Gas Works Park to this week's carefully orchestrated two-day
production in Myrtle Edwards Park, complete with an avalanche of political and
celebrity speakers, dozens of bands, and tens of thousands of pot smokers.

Last year's Hempfest crowd swelled to 175,000. While the increasing success of
the event is undoubtedly due in part to the wise, diplomatic skills of veteran
organizers, much of the assertive, youthful energy of this year's festival is
shining brightly out of Holden. His demeanor is equal parts suave, professional
spin doctor and attentive, gregarious conversationalist; chatting with him
about drug-law reform could compel even the most complacent slacker or rigidly
opinionated baby boomer to take a second look at just how deeply the drug war
has wounded our country.

Oh, and Dominic Holden isn't your average Hempfest organizer in one other
respect. He doesn't smoke pot. Not anymore, anyway.

Shortly after his birth in Domme, France, Holden moved to Seattle with his
parents, settling on the edge of the Central District, a location that
contributed early on to his liberal leanings. "Growing up [in the Central
District] was interesting--rich white people on one side of the hill, and poor
African Americans on the other." The schools he attended throughout his
childhood also laid the groundwork for his eventual interest in the civil
rights movement. "I went to St. Therese elementary school, which was a
predominantly black, Catholic school, and I also went to Martin Luther King Jr.
Elementary," explains Holden. "So from a very, very early age, the civil rights
movement and the value of overcoming prejudice was something that was always
present."

His first exposure to local activism came at the impressionable age of 16, when
a WashPIRG canvasser showed up at his door, soliciting money to help fund
environmental conservation efforts. "Ultimately their goal was to hit people up
for cash, but I didn't have any money because I was only 16. Still, I was
really into [the cause], and I realized they were making money trying to
support it."

Holden was so taken with the idea of landing a paying job that aligned with his
political beliefs that he promptly dropped out of high school and started going
door-to-door for WashPIRG. "I found that I really loved it. Seattle is a pretty
positive place, and people are aware of the issues.

The very first door I went to, I finished my little rap and she immediately
said, 'Oh, let me go get my checkbook,' so I thought, 'Hey, this is so cool,
it's so easy!'--but of course, it wasn't that easy after I kept on going."

It wasn't particularly well-paying, either, so Holden took a job waiting tables
at the Palomino and began exploring other ways to continue his activism while
still surviving financially. "I knew going in that waiting tables was more or
less a dead-end job," he says pragmatically. "But I also knew it was a decent
way to make money, pay the bills, and still have the flexibility to be an
activist."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk