hall of hempsters
Richard Davis
November 26, 1940 - January 10, 2014
"When I was making aka Tommy Chong I met all the Hempsters. I spent tons of time with Jack. I know and love Dana Beal here in NYC, but in truth, no one holds a candle to Richard. Richard was the king of the castle. He took the message to the top of the Ivory Tower and to the stars above and he never had an attitude about it and he never sought the spotlight. He just did his work and he spread the word because he cared about the world and the world surely misses him. It sure does." - Josh Gilbert
Jack Herer
June 18, 1939 - April 15, 2010
"Jack Herer was never an elected law-maker who could formally shape policy. Nor was he some billionaire who could buy influence. Yet his rare combination of brilliant intellect, endless curiosity, scholarly diligence and passionate people skills made him a force of nature whose impact is perhaps only just beginning to be truly felt." - Paul Rogers
Dennis Peron
April 8, 1945 - January 27, 2018
“Throughout his long and checkered career, Peron was a gay activist, pot enthusiast and sometimes-vigilante at odds with the law. He was among the first to argue for the benefits of medicinal marijuana for AIDS patients as the health crisis overtook San Francisco.” - Lizzie Johnson
"Brownie" Mary Jane Rathburn
December 22, 1922 - April 10, 1999
"For AIDS and cancer patients wracked by nausea, her brownies could ease discomfort and induce hunger, well-known attributes of marijuana. She began baking pot brownies by the score in 1984—at her peak, one fellow cannabis activist estimated she made more than 1600 a month. Volunteering to work with AIDS patients from the very beginning of the epidemic, Rathbun turned out industrial quantities of brownies with donated cannabis for “my gay friends” and her “kids,” as she called them." - Anne Ewbank
Sister Somayah Kambui
April 5, 1950 - November 28, 2008
"Her 2002 trial culminated in an outcome that is widely regarded as a jury revolt or jury nullification, in which a defendant is acquitted despite all evidence that they acted as charged. The medical marijuana collective defense was not passed by the state legislature until more than a year later. In Kambui’s case, she was charged with multiple felonies including cultivation, sales and shipping marijuana out of state to diagnosed sickle cell patients. Her defense was that somebody has to take care of these poor patients who had no other access." - Martin Williams
Dr. Tod Mikuriya
September 20, 1933 - May 20, 2007
"Dr. Mikuriya was of Japanese descent. When he was a kid, in World War 2, his family was visited by the FBI, who threatened to put them in an internment camp. As a result of being singled out for being Japanese, Dr Mikuriya said, 'my sister and I were shot at, spat upon, beat up, called names. I realized that people can be brainwashed and trained to hate. The same thing has been done with marijuana and marijuana users. I learned to fight back.'" - Becca Williams
Captain Ed Adair
October 29, 1940 - August 16, 1991
" In 1974-75, possession of under an ounce of hemp/pot was decriminalized in the state of California. Captain Ed was 33 years old and I was 34. We took a pledge. At that time, virtually every one in the California pot movement thought we’d already won. They’d begun to drift away from the movement and had gone back to their lives, thinking the battle was over and we’d won, and that the politicians would clean up the loose ends…Captain Ed didn’t trust politicians to get the job done. And he was right. " - Jack Herer
Steven McWilliams
July 11, 1954 - July 11, 2005
"And while the police ignored the fact that Prop. 215 was now the law of the land, they certainly didn’t ignore the people who voted for it. They continued busting medicinal providers as if nothing had changed, including McWilliams’ cannabis club in Valley Center. That raid lurched his activism into high gear. He began protesting on the steps of City Hall, bombarding the City Council’s open sessions (sometimes with a pot plant in hand), flooding the media, blazing joints in public and generally throwing up a lot of, um, smoke to get the city to comply with 215. He even ran for City Council." - Edwin Decker
John Trudell
February 15, 1946 - December 8, 2015
"My ride Showed up. Celebrate Love. Celebrate Life."
Gatewood Galbraith
January 23, 1947 – January 4, 2012
"Gatewood was nothing short of a cult figure. Known far and wide as the hemp-promoting, pro-gun, big-grinning, marijuana-loving lawyer – who ran unsuccessfully for governor five times – Gatewood was a perennial character in Kentucky politics who refused to be boxed into party lines. Above all else, Gatewood believed the two-party system had failed the working class people and farmers of the state. With his lilting drawl, gentle demeanor and signature (completely non-hipster) fedora, the gangly, Ichabod Crane-like man was a 6’4″ fixture at intersections and street fairs for more than 40 years, shaking hands and talking — mostly — about the virtues of hemp as a cash crop." - Sarah Baird
Peter McWilliams
August 5, 1949 – June 14, 2000
“Peter was a great man who was taken from us due to the insanity of those who have been controlling our existence, but I expect that his work will have an everlasting effect on our culture and soon others will no longer have to suffer the same fate that he did, at the hands of these monsters.” - Rick Simpson
Franco Loja
May 20, 1974 - January 2, 2017
“Cannabis is my passion, my bread, my home. I feel it is my duty to make sure this amazing plant is preserved and enjoyed. I am a smoker, a grower, a breeder, and a strain hunter. For life.”