Pubdate: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 Source: Trentonian, The (NJ) Copyright: 2015 The Trentonian Contact: http://www.trentonian.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1006 Author: Edward Forchion, NJWeedman.com For The Trentonian 'SELMA' WAS A GREAT FILM, BUT MORE WORK IS NEEDED I went to see Selma on Monday, "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. day." I smoked two joints on the way and after seeing it, I gave it a 420 on the NJWeedman movie scale. A 500 means it's right on the money, but a 420 is as close as you can get in my THC-enhanced movie evaluations. Other movies that I gave a 420 to were Half Baked, Soul Plane, Friday, How High, and of course Cheech & Chong's Next Movie. I'm a history and news buff; I love to read history and current news events worldwide, and this movie Selma is a historical example of a worldwide news event. I don't want to be a spoiler, but I believe Selma is a great movie, far from my usual stoner classics to say the least. I was told it was a black movie starring a whole list of black celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey. Trust me, folks: Selma isn't a black movie white people, you should go see this movie. It's a movie about a very important segment of American history. It's a history movie. Selma could just as easily have been called "How the 1965 Voting Rights Act came to be." It's a movie Republicans won't see. The movie successfully captures the public pressure MLK and his nonviolent movement put on the president of United States (Lyndon B. Johnson), the governor of Alabama (George Wallace), and the racist South that prevented Negroes from voting despite the Constitutional guarantee of this right. Selma successfully conveyed how Martin Luther King Jr. specifically said to Lyndon Johnson that without the Negro right to vote, white state officials will continue to engage in oppressive policies with no fear of voter rejection; that when a white citizen is charged with a crime against a black person the all-white jury votes to exonerate him (like our secret grand juries continue to do now), and that black citizens couldn't serve on juries because they weren't voters and jury pools are picked from voters. The right to vote ensures the Sixth and Seventh Amendment rights to a fair trial and a jury trial of one's peers. I have always championed the right to vote, and as an adult facing criminal charges I demanded jury trials. I'm only free to write this column now because a jury found me "not guilty" in 2012 despite the FACT that I was as guilty as George Zimmerman. I understand jury nullification works both ways. This was a lesson I learned as a kid studying the civil rights movement, and it's why I've always thought voting is paramount - a vitally important aspect of patriotism and minority empowerment. I have no sympathy for those who choose not to vote - voter apathy affects everything from politicians' attitudes to the results of trials. The crazy thing is, at the end of the movie I was expecting a storyboard to explain to the audience that just shy of the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 the Republican dominated Supreme Court in 2013 eviscerated the Act. That's what Selma was about, so I think it was a mistake not to show at the end of this movie what recently happened to the Voting Rights Act. Otherwise I would have given it a rare 500. (Five full buds) Without the Voting Rights Act, many Southern blacks would still face all white juries, poll taxes, and registration questionnaires before voting or having to seek out a white voter to vouch for them in order to vote. At that time the federal government had to step in because the South and its politicians didn't want blacks to vote. It's apparent that they still don't. No sooner had the current Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013 than the current Republicans began rolling back the hard-won voting equality in those same states with proposed voter ID laws. It's no coincidence that these same Southern states and the same Republican Party now lead the fight against new citizenship and voting rights for our most recent minority Hispanics. Sometimes you need to watch history to deal with the present, and this movie is right on target. The anti-immigration and voter ID laws the Republicans are constantly advocating for are very thinly veiled racist barriers and attempts to roll back voting equality for brown people. Hispanics are the new blacks, and Republicans are trying to treat them like the old blacks of pre-1965. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its legislative restrictions contained in section 4 had applied on a blanket basis to Southern states with documented histories of racial discrimination. Selma told the story of how this came to be. The Supreme Court nullified it. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said, "The current coverage system is based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day; while Congress has the authority to monitor elections for fairness, the coverage formula is outdated and therefore unconstitutional." Roberts then invited Congress to "draft another formula based on current conditions." Which we all know the Republicans won't do. For the record: I didn't think conditions warranted the Supreme Court eviscerating section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, but if I were ever to get to chance to ask the chief justice of the Supreme Court a question it would be this. (No, I wouldn't ask him to take a puff!) NJWeedman: Chief Justice Roberts, I've studied your Voting Rights Act dictum. Couldn't this same legal logic apply to the CSA, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970? We all know the CSA classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug. Schedule I drugs are described by the CSA as having no medical value; they are not accepted by doctors and are federally illegal nationwide as per the federal Supremacy Clause. You don't have to be a stoner on his third joint of the evening to know that the classification of cannabis is clearly outdated. Currently 22 states, including New Jersey, and the District of Columbia have legally recognized marijuana's medical value in direct contradiction to the CSA. There are hundreds of thousands of Americans who now have a doctor's approval to use marijuana medically. The CSA is far more outdated than the Voting Rights Act was, and in regard to that the Supreme Court declared "outdatedness" as grounds for something being ruled unconstitutional. While elected officials like Governor Christie fight legalization, "We the American people" know the Controlled Substances Act is outdated, and according to Chief Justice Roberts' logic it is therefore unconstitutional. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom