...An Inevitable Revolution by Phil James...
Calm, determined, stoic, medicated and match fit could describe the crowd at Patients At Parliament 23rd of February 2018 at the heart of Britain’s historical political parliament buildings in the capital London.
Hundreds of people from all over the country old and young, sick and healthy, black and white, rich and poor but altogether to support a change in medical cannabis access laws.
After over 2 years battling brain cancer, I was on a mission to join them and to celebrate the gift of nature that heals are scars from the inside out. Joined by my North Wales Cannabis club comrade Isaac, we hopped on an early train across a bitterly cold land kissed by winds from Siberia to join the activists for the second reading of the Elizabeth Bryce Bill, championed by our man in Westminster the Right Honorable Paul Flynn MP who had earned a place in all our hearts for with his honesty and compassion for our basic of rights to a healthy life.
Beyond meets and greets of what cannabis seems to be evolving a smarter and kinder human, we knew our bill was at risk of those who are paid not to understand us with a blatant filibuster. As frustrating as it would be, with no words necessary, it would become crystal clear to us all that such a move by prohibitionists would be futile with the winds of change growing in our favour exponentially year on year just like the technology that had brought us all together.
We could turn up with confidence that no matter how desperate the opposition capitulates, that the science is now on our side thanks to the dying era of unchecked facts the Internet has moved us into. Precarious political times as they may be, science and technology are finally complimenting nature as more and more people learn that the pharmaceutical dominance involving synthetic medicine, just cannot compete with superior products found in the natural world like Cannabis.
Our champion Paul Flynn MP had already highlighted to me in my debates against my own prohibitionist MP David Hanson, who favoured “pharmaceutical solutions”, that those same drugs are responsible for a plague of deaths in the US as high as 23,000 in 1 year. Impressive as it is that something could beat the tally of gun-related deaths in such a nation he did not forget to warn us all that the same will be happening here as long as the beast of prohibition remains alive even if in its final breaths.
I put aside my anxiety of waiting for the results of my 7th MRI or the possibility of breakthrough seizures when so far from home to make sure whether there was a filibuster or not, there would be more than one of us from North Wales Cannabis Club to be there whatever the weather standing in support of the Elizabeth Bryce Bill. To protest against the corrupt anti-scientific legislation that criminalized Elizabeth Bryce and her family for treating her illness, we braved possession charges/cautions to show what an ass the law is when it's been paid for by unelected corporate lobbyists.
We were first met with 2 wise smiles from the UK Cannabis Social Club’s Greg de Hoedt and Michael Fisher who was well placed to greet people entering the park from the pilgrimage activists were making through central London. Badged up and comforted by the smell of good health and good times, we were soon gifted with freebies that were much more valuable than anything you could find inside Westminster Palace.
Instantly recognisable was The Boy in 7 Billion himself Deryn Blackwell who shared stories with me regarding our shared experience of hair loss from the Standard of care. Clearly wise beyond his year's thanks to his life-saving mother Callie, I felt genuine gratification that he was there looking healthy in weather cold enough to make everyone drags of a spliff need to be ever so slightly longer.
After a brilliant chat with Deryn, I got to meet some key activists from Durham Cannabis Club who like North Wales, within reason, have a more progressive and supportive police force. One of them was Simpa Carter who I had seen in a vlog the night before drumming up support for the event. Talking with him I discovered just how big the community was getting online thanks to magazines like ISMOKE with @tylergreen and related podcasts.
Eventually, after watching a brilliant but short gig by Keith Hudson AKA Kief Budson by the statue of King George, Deryn’s mother and writer of the book The Boy in 7 Billion (Callie Blackwell) showed up dressed as a Suffragette but with glorious pink hair
By late afternoon we had finally warmed up with some hemp tea and by now the medication was taking our minds off the cold combined with the ever-growing crowd combining both the press, UPA and patients with caregivers. Something that was commonly brought up was from the news that week that a child drug-resistant epilepsy sufferer named Alfie Dingley had been refused a license to have access to cannabis by the UK home office sociopath Amber Rudd.
It coincided with the local newspapers picking up my story in regards to my 2-year survival which eventually ended up in The Daily Mirror. This was thanks to North Wales Daily Post journalist Jez Hemming, who had shown a remarkable level of support for our movement along with the North Wales Police Commissioner Arfon Jones.
It was thanks to Jez inquiring with my MP who originally refused to support the bill, that got him to at least state he “wouldn’t oppose it” after a wordy and obvious repeat of the laws. What was most disappointing about his resistance is that it shows the Labour party still has a faction of Blairite corporatists with a voting record to match. So clearly Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour is still not 100% the radically progressive wing that he originates from like our champion Paul Flynn.
Before we had news from Paul Flynn himself, some of us were invited up by the UPA to tell the crowd some of our success stories medicating with cannabis. I felt that since I had already been in a documentary about it in 2016, and recently keeping the subject in the news off the back of the shameful actions by the home office, that I had enough confidence to get up there and do my first ever bit of public speaking.
First, the UPA political director Jonathan Liebling and Alex Fraser gave a short but brilliant set of truth bombing speeches that fired up the crowd. When I stepped up to the microphone I introduced myself and tried to explain that everyone there’s health matters more than the profits of any corporatist that gets in the way of our right to live a healthy life.
Looking out at the crowd, seeing them cheer when I told them I am a 2 year brain cancer survivor thanks to cannabis, I can honestly say I fell deeper in love with the community for not just their humanistic compassion but knowing that I was addressing a very clever group of people that had educated themselves and rebelled against the establishments bad science. Essentially they all looked like a large group of people that couldn’t be fooled easily with lies no matter what age or platform they source news from.
Listening to recording of talks by Terence Mckenna a few weeks before It was starting to make sense to me when looking at this crowd that not only had nature like psilocybin given us the ability to evolve advanced intelligence with a large neocortex in our foreheads compared to other primates, but it was also what helps humans use that neocortex for good by simply being a kinder human that looks out for each other as a species rather than the individualist approach being taken by the most corrupt people in parliament and big business.
Not long after I had thanked the crowd and stepped back down into the crowd, I watched some other patients tell their success stories treating anxiety, epilepsy and MS. One patient was Clark French who had already done great work that week getting awareness out in the media of how cannabis helps him reduce the pain caused by his MS. Like the other speakers, he was very articulate and not afraid to shout truth to power.
After some more music, we finally had news that there had indeed been a filibuster as expected but most disappointingly from labour MP’s So the bill was not read and instead given a new day on the 6th of July 2018. Because everyone was expecting this might happen, it didn’t put a huge damper on the atmosphere among us in the crowd. It was pretty much a unanimous agreement that we would all be back in July and more likely to be in greater numbers with a higher chance of good weather.
The only thing that really got to me was that many people who showed up, had done so out of their own pockets and at the same time travelling far or around London can be much more difficult for patients that were less mobile or still finding a strain of cannabis that works for them. I was disappointed in those MP's that out of ignorance for us and their own future health had wasted our time to simply kick the can down the road until a later date.
Paul Flynn came out to address the crowd along with one of my many heroes from bud buddies Jeff Ditchfield. Paul Flynn echoed many of the sentiments from the UPA and buoyed us all on to keep fighting prohibition and break the ridiculous laws against cannabis. Jeff also made a speech, that put a fire in the crowd's belly to not recognise such inhumane laws and grow cannabis on mass.
After his speech, I managed to thank him for writing his book The Medical Cannabis Guidebook which my parents had given me for Christmas. I would have asked him to sign it but he had cups in both hands so I just gave him a hug and told him he’s an inspiration.
My admiration for this man is because I’m acutely aware that he has seen worse things than I have and he has to deal with that every day and is constantly put under unimaginable pressure from parents of dying children who often contact him as a last resort.
It was an outrage to later find out he, Callie, her husband Simon and a number of other protesters were arrested or assaulted by the Metropolitan police on bogus grounds. The videos showed Callie and Simpa Carter bravely condemning them for their actions as they acted like robots under orders to "protect the State".
Although thankful everyone was released with either fines or cautions, I feel the met police are clearly displaying a lack of intelligence on cannabis compared to the wiser police forces outside of London. It's in their best interests not to bother those protesting against the prohibition of cannabis given no Met police officer is immune from the diseases that could force them to retire early and end up desperate for a treatment without horrendous side effects and give them a better chance of healing.
My only experience of seeing the worst that can happen with cancer is when I was getting treatment, seeing kids at the same hospital being tortured by toxic chemotherapy, in most cases all going through a kill or cure protocol that has barely changed since the mid 90’s. There is also the Beating Brain Cancer group I help moderate on facebook which now has over 2000 members.
Well known survivors on there that are quite active like myself often face immense pressure and sadness when people come to you very late in their journey begging for help and advice on where to get cannabis, only for me to refer them to their closest Cannabis social club to build up contacts.
When this happens, I feel useless compared to someone like Jeff and the rest of bud buddies because they are pretty much on the front line when it comes to dealing with the worst situations diseases can bring to reality. Because of this, I no longer call myself an activist because it feels like I have a lot to do in regards to securing my own future and how much I can contribute positively to public health at the same time.
I’ve had 6 clear scans and I feel miles better than I did before my diagnosis, but it never gets any easier for any of us long-term survivors with each MRI that comes our way. We live under a constant shadow of what tried to murder us a few years ago and it can be easy in life to become complacent with your health the longer you survive. One false move and the shadow can come back to hunt you down.
Modern life has encouraged people to be complacent with their health, the more society has embedded itself in the cult-like religion of what was once regarded as regular capitalism, is now more realistically described as crony corporatism where law is made by multinational corporations, immune to fair taxation at the expense of small businesses and sociopathic in its handling of humanity.
Things are now at the stage where most of what makes us sick come from ourselves, rather than misjudgments in nature. Yes, Mother nature gave us many diseases and sharp jaws to run from, but it's the sociopaths in the corporate world that gave you the poison in your fizzy drinks and the insulin resistance “Western diet” that is making metabolic diseases like diabetes, cancer and heart disease the biggest killers of all.
Not to mention the “war on drugs” by Big Pharma which is coming for you and your loved ones with eye-watering levels of addiction and overdoses as they prep physicians to hand out opioids like they are the best thing since sliced avocado.
There is a resistance to this unsustainable management of civilization though and all of those that support legalization of cannabis or anything else that puts money in crime, are all part of the resistance. Unlike the establishment, the resistance has a sustainable plan which is why the goals of the United Patients Alliance are inevitable...
Keep up the good work. 👍
Thank you kindly!