Pubdate: Sun, 09 Sep 2012
Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Santa Cruz Sentinel
Contact: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/submitletters
Website: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/394
Author: Jason Hoppin

Collective Endurance:

A DECADE LATER, LASTING IMPACTS FROM FAMED WAMM MARIJUANA BUST NEAR DAVENPORT

DAVENPORT - On Sept. 5, 2002, the country was debating whether to 
invade Iraq to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction, just 
as it was bracing for the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. 
Stocks were still down, but the Oakland A's had just notched their 
record 20th straight win.

Early that morning, 30 federal Drug Enforcement Agency-led law 
enforcement officers stormed the Wo/Men's Medical Marijuana Alliance, 
a high-profile collective with a small pot farm outside Davenport, 
chopping down plants and setting off a furor with lasting impacts on 
the statewide medical marijuana debate that endures today.

"I just remember waking up at 6:45 a.m., because I heard vehicles in 
the driveway of the house I was in," recalled WAMM's Mike Corral 
recently, who looked out to see agents carrying a battering ram. "We 
always knew that there was this possibility of the feds doing 
something. [But] at the time, we were the darlings of the medical 
marijuana movement."

Founders Mike and Valerie Corral were never charged, but the raid 
spurred a lengthy court case, contributed to local suspicions of 
federal law enforcement and beatified the Corrals as the spiritual 
center of the medical marijuana movement. Last week marked the 10th 
anniversary of the raid, and several key figures reflected on their roles.

"I think that event was one of the most important developments in the 
growth of understanding about medical marijuana in the country," said 
local attorney Ben Rice, part of an all-star legal team that leaped 
to the Corrals' defense.

But for a long time, prison was a real possibility. For Valerie 
Corral, the saga began when she heard boots crossing her porch. She 
knew who it was before she saw them, but said she was inoculated by calm.

GUN TO HER HEAD

"Something happened when they pushed me to the ground and put a gun 
to my head," Corral recalled. "It's hard to say exactly what it was. 
I wouldn't say I felt safe with a gun to my head - I'm not trying to 
make light or change the image - but there was something that came 
together and strengthened inside of me."

For the next several hours, Corral says she bent the ears of federal 
agents about the miracles of medical marijuana. The Corrals were 
taken to a holding facility in San Jose, while patients, some of whom 
needed help walking, gravitated toward the Corrals' property and 
barricaded the police in.

Back in San Jose, agents asked the Corrals to help disperse the 
crowd, which they did.

"I didn't want the energy to shift away," Valerie Corral said. "I 
didn't want it to become a screaming match."

"I made this comment to an agent and said, 'What do we have here, a 
hostage exchange situation?,'" Mike Corral said. "And he actually 
laughed a little bit."

It turned out to be a wise move. Sympathetic to broad swaths of the 
community, the Corrals were embraced, with a medical marijuana 
giveaway even organized on the steps of Santa Cruz City Hall.

"I always said it was like representing Mother Teresa," said Santa 
Clara University Law School professor Gerald Uelmen, of Valerie. "She 
is the most compassionate person I think I've ever encountered."

By this point, the story of the raid had gone national. Many states 
were following in California's Proposition 215's footsteps, and the 
Bush Administration seemed to be drawing a line in the dirt. Hundreds 
of reporters were on hand for the pot giveaway and CNN carried the story live.

"Virtually every mayor in, at that time, the last 20 years was 
there," Rice said.

Valerie Corral said she and Mike, now separated, spent the night in a 
hotel to avoid the risk of being taken back into custody before the big day.

MEMBERS CARRY ON

WAMM members kept the collective going by scrounging together 
marijuana and distributing it, and the DEA appeared unaware the 
Corrals had recently secured an industrial office on Santa Cruz' 
Westside, which is still in use. But members said marijuana was in 
short supply, and that the raid contributed to the deaths of many.

"Sure, they were going to die anyway. It's just that they died faster 
than they should have. And in pain that they shouldn't have had, 
because they took the medicine away," said longtime WAMM member Leona 
Powell, while rolling joints recently at WAMM's Westside office.

The raid seemed divisive, not just among local police - who had long 
known the Corrals - but perhaps even among federal law enforcement.

Santa Cruz deputies did not participate, and then-San Jose Police 
Chief William Lansdowne later yanked his officers off a joint DEA 
marijuana task force that executed the raid.

Many WAMM members also believe the raid order came from Washington 
and surprised the local U.S. attorney's office. Deborah SilverKnight, 
a patient then and now, said she even got a call from then-Sheriff 
Mark Tracy telling her what had happened. Rice was alerted by the 
county's top jailer.

"It was very tragic. Surreal," SilverKnight said.

The Corrals moved to suppress evidence from the raid before it even 
went to a grand jury, and it was clear fairly early that they 
wouldn't be charged. (Within months, federal drug prosecutors would 
turn their attention to another co-op - a storefront called the Bay 
Area Laboratory Cooperative, or BALCO, signaling the federal effort 
to root illegal steroids from pro sports.)

VICTORY IN COURT

Nevertheless, WAMM members went on the offensive, suing the Justice 
Department. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel eventually ordered that 
their farm be left alone, and the case stands as the only clear win 
for the medical marijuana movement in federal court.

WAMM struggles forward today. The collective was organized along 
Marxist principles - from each according to their abilities, to each 
according to their need - and has never been a cash register for its owners.

"We're connected to the people that we serve, and each of us serves 
one another," Corral said.

For all the well-placed criticism of the state's medical marijuana 
industry, WAMM's patients have always tended to be truly and severely 
ill. But it also acknowledges market realities, recently diversifying 
its product range and now offering cannabidiol-rich pot.

Richard Johnson, who has HIV, said many at WAMM mix marijuana with 
more traditional medicines. To control an illness, he added, one must 
be able to control their medicine.

"The beauty about this group is we have the support of people with 
very different illnesses coming here," Johnson said. "We share 
information about what helps you heal, both mentally and physically."

REMEMBERING FRIENDS

The collective has had thousands of members over the years, and 361 
have died. WAMM is collecting pictures of the deceased, assembling 
them into a mural in their Almar Street office. Valerie Corral seems 
to hold each one especially close, having visited many deathbeds.

"You think you know something," she said, "until you sit so close to 
something that you cannot imagine."

Most see the raid as backfiring on the federal government. WAMM was a 
public relations nightmare, and partly because of that, arguably a 
bigger legal problem for the feds than the Corrals. Mike Corral 
believes a prosecution might have toppled federal drug laws.

Ten years later, the state is in the midst of another searching 
debate about medical marijuana and how much autonomy California 
should have regulating it, with many accusing President Obama's 
administration of backtracking on a hands-off pledge.

Several dispensaries have been targeted for raids, with federal 
prosecutors saying they are targeting marijuana profiteers - 
something Corral (who believes the pharmaceutical industry is 
preparing to enter the business) has criticized. And in an uncertain 
legal environment, many have shut their doors.

"I think it really taught the feds a lesson that they took to heart," 
said Uelmen, who brings his drug abuse law seminar students to WAMM. 
"I think it's still being taken to heart. The fact that all these 
other dispensaries are being raided but WAMM is openly operating 
reflects that we taught the feds to make some distinctions that there 
are legitimate patients out there whose health depends on marijuana."

'WE WON THE WAR'

And when asked about the legacy of the raid, Mike Corral is clear: it 
led to the expansion of dispensaries throughout the state and the country.

"Medical marijuana is a done deal, in the United States and 
worldwide," Corral said. "We won the war; it's just 'What are the 
terms of surrender going to be?'"

Valerie Corral said the raid also contributed to a personal evolution.

"It's interesting how it moved us toward becoming the people that we 
really wanted to be," she said. "To help us model ourselves after the 
many activists, civil rights activists that had gone before us and 
taught us, and taught the world to awaken. To recognize that we're 
walking among need, and great suffering. To become what we wanted to 
be as human beings. To offer something that's bigger than ourselves 
to other people."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom