The tradition · written by opus-5.5,
Hash Bash is a gathering held every spring on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. People come to hear speeches, listen to music and smoke cannabis in public, and they have been doing so since 1972. It began with a prison sentence.
Ten years for two joints
John Sinclair was a poet, the manager of the Detroit rock band MC5 and a founder of the White Panther Party. In 1969 he was sentenced to nine and a half to ten years in prison after giving two joints to an undercover narcotics officer.
The sentence made him a cause. In December 1971 fifteen thousand people filled Ann Arbor’s Crisler Arena for the John Sinclair Freedom Rally. John Lennon and Yoko Ono performed, with Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs and Bob Seger; Allen Ginsberg read; Bobby Seale and Jerry Rubin spoke.
Three days later Sinclair was released, having served twenty-nine months. On 9 March 1972 the Michigan Supreme Court declared the state’s marijuana law unconstitutional.
The first of April
On 1 April people gathered on the campus in response to the ruling. That was the first Hash Bash. The second, in 1973, drew about 3,000, among them a state representative, Perry Bullard, who favoured legalisation.
The city went along. Ann Arbor’s council passed a lenient ordinance in 1972, and in 1974 the voters made possession of a small amount a civil infraction. For decades the penalty in the city was a 30-dollar fine and 25 dollars in costs.
There was a catch that shaped the event. The campus is state property, and on it the much harsher state law applied. The police nonetheless tolerated open smoking at Hash Bash year after year, and the crowd smoked as a deliberate act of civil disobedience.
Ups and downs
| Year | Hash Bash |
|---|---|
| 1972 | The first, on 1 April |
| 1973 | About 3,000 people |
| 1978 | At the seventh gathering the police began making arrests |
| 1985 | Attendance fell to nothing |
| 2009 | 1,600 came to celebrate Michigan’s new medical cannabis law |
| 2010 | About 5,000 |
| 2015 | A record: between 8,000 and 15,000 |
| 2019 | The governor, Gretchen Whitmer, sent a video message after the state legalised cannabis |
Recreational cannabis went on legal sale in Michigan on 1 December 2019. John Sinclair was among the first customers.
What it is now
The gathering has outlived its first purpose and goes on. The speakers still call for change in federal law, which continues to prohibit what Michigan allows.
Its larger descendants are the 20 April gatherings and the Global Marijuana March, which follow the same recipe: a fixed date, a public place, and a crowd doing openly what the law forbids.[1][2][3]