Unnoticed in the flurry of press last week around the formation by Governor Charlie Baker, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, and House Speaker Robert DeLeo of a committee opposing the marijuana ballot initiative was the company selected for the committee’s fundraising: ActBlue.
This is distressing, as ActBlue since its 2004 inception has billed itself as a backer of progressive causes, with their website stating,”If you’re a candidate, PAC, or c4 non-profit organization, the first requirement is that you’re a Democrat or working for progressive causes.” There is nothing progressive about the stock reefer-madness rhetoric being used by Baker and his fellow prohibitionists. Is the involvement of some Democrats like Walsh and DeLeo enough, from ActBlue’s perspective, to help the prohibitionist fundraising effort? Apparently so.
But ActBlue risks alienating other Democrats. A poll released by Western New England University last week showed that 64% of Democrats support the initiative, which would end prohibition and replace it with a system that regulates marijuana similar to how the state regulates alcohol. With only 29% in opposition, this whopping 35-point lead shows that ActBlue is out of step with a supermajority of Democratic voters.
So why is ActBlue sticking its neck out for such a regressive effort? Who knows. It will be interesting to see if any Dems call them out for it.
[Update] I’ve started a petition telling ActBlue that marijuana prohibition is not progressive. Please sign and share.
They are either running as Dems or they aren’t. Progressive cause is a more subjective standard and one could argue that from a quality of life standpoint it’s progressive to keep another substance out of general circulation. FWIW, I see legalization as a libertarian rather than progressive cause. Two out of the three principles ARE Dems after all. The current Dem platform appears to be silent on the issue of marijuana legalization, so you can’t make a case that this is contrary to a party position. I’m not aware of ActBlue vetoing an attempt to set up an account, but if you don’t like that cause nobody is making you donate.
“Progressive” is certainly a subjective standard, and since there is no party line on this, I agree that ActBlue is operating in a gray area. But rank and file Democrats are hugely in favor of the proposal, with that poll showing support at 64% to only 29% opposition among Dems. A 35-point lead, with nearly 2/3 of Dems already on board, is very substantial. I don’t have numbers on it but I think it’s very fair to say that support is even higher among progressives, and that most of the opposition comes from the conservative wing of the party.
Also, all of the arguments and effects of legalization are supportive of other causes that everyone agrees are progressive. The DC campaign for legalization focused on racial justice, since like in MA, despite decriminalization there were still more black people being arrested for marijuana crimes than white people. It also creates economic opportunity, protects consumers by testing products’ potency and contaminants, and creates tax revenue that can be used for things like public education.
Even when 2 of 3 campaign leaders are Democrats, when it’s a mixed group I think supposedly progressive groups like ActBlue should judge the content of the campaign before allowing them to use their platform and donor base.
…for you to also set up an ActBlue account for the opposite campaign.
They refused to work with us. They refused to work with the Working Families Party of New York even when it ran candidates against regressive Democrats allied with Governor Cuomo. This is because it’s not a progressive group, but a Democratic group.
And in this state, the Democratic party through it’s statewide elected officials, state chairman, and the citywide officials in several cities including it’s largest one are in favor or prohibition and against common sense reforms. This is all the more reason to enroll in the United Independent Party as Sam Tracy and Bill Taylor have, even if you are a Democrat, since the party is ignoring the stated preferences of the majority of it’s member on countless issues such as this one.
I stand corrected, but they are honest about it. Again, the Democratic Party has no position on this issue, but next year is the platform process. If Dems think it should be in the platform they can show up at the platform hearings and advocate for it, but you do need to be a registered Dem to participate in that process.
And already has it in it’s platform. Your registration is far more essential to keeping our party on the ballot than it is to maintaining the Speaker and his supermajority’s grip on power, and your membership is far more valuable to our party than it is to a party that lost 20,000 to Trump and didn’t bat an eye. Is Coleen Garry’s gender identity denial bill part of the platform? Certainly hasn’t stopped her from cashing state party checks or leadership bonuses.
I just checked your site’s what we believe section and even saw Evan Falchuk’s press release on marijuana, but it appears per the SoS website to have no state committee (which admittedly is a tall order to create when you don’t have a presidential primary) which would determine this and certainly has not had a convention.
No of course Garry’s bill isn’t in the platform. The DSC passed a resolution a few months back endorsing its exact opposite. Newsflash, in most cases personal and constituent views trump party issues and we have no way to excommunicate. I’m not aware that she takes party money and any leadership bonuses are taxpayer rather than party funded.
And they don’t go to heroes like Jon Hecht.
You seem to not understand or accept that there are overlapping constituencies and agendae that are not exactly the same. The party has NO say in who gets legislative positions. The General Court is not the Politburo after all.
Smart policy drives our platform and we will only endorse candidates that agree on the merits of those policies and the basic premise that everyone’s civil rights are protected, everyone is equal under the law, and we need to invest government money wisely. A regulated market for adult use marijuana conforms to that metric.
The nice thing about being out of power is we don’t have to respect the authority of the people currently in office abusing theirs. At the end of the day, Bob DeLeo is bound to your party’s platform as much as he is to ours. The only difference is we don’t pretend our’s matters to him.
For now at least it sounds like Falchuk’s opinions more than anything else. Certainly reasonable people can disagree about what constitutes “smart policy”. What you have described above sounds more like an interest group along the lines of MoveOn rather than a party. What happens when someone wins the UIP nomination for a given lege seat who does not agree with all that? Ultimately the law rather than party rules govern that part of the process. What specifically would you like the Dem party to do that it is not already doing and within the law to force lockstep adherence to our platform?
That will spell out how this process works. For now since those don’t exist yet, it’s the Chairman in consultation with his advisory board. We cannot stop anyone from registering in the party and running in our primary, neither can the Democrats. What we won’t do is endorse candidates that don’t agree with the broad principles of the party that everyone is equal, their rights are protected, and government should invest money wisely.
Anyone who feels transgendered people are unequal or women shouldn’t have access to reproductive health care, and/or feels that government’s primary purpose is to dole out jobs and tax breaks to the connected rather than working to invest in services our state and its residents use aren’t we come in our party. There is plenty of room for them in the other two, and even lucrative leadership positions. We aren’t interested in relitigating the culture war, we are interested in policies that move this state forward.
Anyone who wins a party nomination is in essence endorsed by that party. We just need to stipulate that we have a handful of rogue members, but again, not a whole lot we can do about it.
We won’t send them funds, we will steer our volunteers away from them, and we won’t share data. It’s basically shunning them, and it’s something the IL Democrats did when the LaRoche slate won a statewide primary in the 1980s and again when their 2010 LG nominee was a wife beater.
You’re more likely to be like-minded. I’m personally open to the Dems being more aggressive in that regard, but I’m not sure that’s the party consensus.
Just a guess
This strikes me as just another example of how disconnected the Massachusetts Democratic Party is from Democratic voters in Massachusetts.
Easiest way you can help change that narrative. Or anyone else. You aren’t committing yourselves to working for any of our candidates, you can unenroll after November if you think we suck as much as the Mass Dems or the GOP.
But I have a feeling we are about to do a lot of interesting things outside of the two party system. Already we have been able to be better allies to advocates like the marijuana regulation committee, against the pipeline or for the trans community by being outside of the small and narrow minded circle that governs Beacon Hill.
There is a process by which the party takes positions, and it’s not by looking at a random poll. Besides, given the breadth of opinion within the Democratic Party, I’m not sure you’d always like the outcomes if the party simply based its positions on polls of its registered voters.
I thought it was just asking what Speaker DeLeo thinks and then voting accordingly?
First, there are all of the local caucuses that select delegates to the MA Democratic Convention. Then there are committees and such that draft a platform, and then votes upon the draft and amendments. Ultimately, the platform is adopted by the Convention.
Then, the platform is crumpled up and tossed aside. Only THEN do you ask what the Speaker wants, and vote accordingly.
Its all about the process.
Speaker DeLeo is an ex officio member of the DSC, though I think I only saw him at a meeting the one time Winthrop hosted. He gets one vote and has absolutely no outsized influence in that context. In 2013 (Platforms are adopted quadrennially in the year before a constitutional officer election.) we held meetings throughout the state (I chaired one locally.) where we gather input from party activists. Then the platform drafting committee is charged with taking that input and creating a cohesive document, followed my more meetings where activists can come scrutinize the draft. It is presented to convention where it is subject to amendment (I think you need a threshold of signatures from delegates to put an amendment to a vote.) and ultimately approval by the convention. There are, therefore, at least a couple of ways to get a particular plank in if that is the will of membership, but it requires participation in our hearings and caucuses, for which, yes, you have to be a Democrat.
I remember years ago when the platform was neutered. Some of us organized against this retreat to the right, and the convention chair heard the vote he wanted to hear. Beacon Hill’s will was done.
…and as a result the 2013 process was much better.
I don’t know. I don’t think this campaign should exist, but once it does exist, i don’t mind ActBlue getting the business.
If you consider the alternatives (a separate organization? What would it do next?), ActBlue is a logical enough place for it.
I don’t think legalization is enough of a dividing line for ActBlue to just say no (as I hope they would do with, say, an Expand Prop 2 1/2 campaign).
…and yes, I’d say that if I agreed with the underlying issue too. This is the kind of tea-party you have to be with us on everything attitude I’ve never liked. Who are we to judge what is appropriate for ActBlue to do?
I consider myself fairly progressive. Yet, besides the obvious fact that most pro-initiative copy I’ve read pertaining to this particular ballot question smells pretty strongly libertarian to me, I can’t get excited about increasing somebodies ability to get high for recreation. Yawn. When did it become progressive to increase the quantity of playtime? I’m not, per se, against recreational use, but I am against usurping the progressive labor to do so.
I’m comfortable with marijuana being decriminalized and I’m comfortable with marijuana being readily available for medical purposes. I can’t get too excited, nor spend much energy at all, on going much beyond that nor do I think it particularly very progressive to do so. If there is such a thing as political capital this seems like a waste of it in the progressive cause…
Anyone who wants to use marijuana already does so, but the fact still remains that enforcement is disproportionately targeted at people of color, that criminalization drags tons of people into the criminal justice system and hurts their ability to get a job and other economic prospects, and that the many tons of marijuana being consumed in Massachusetts each year are completely untested and untaxed.
Voting yes on this initiative isn’t voting for more people to get high, it’s voting to end racist enforcement, stop burdening people with unnecessary criminal records, unleash economic progress, actually protect consumers like we do for any other product or substance, and gain tax revenue for social programs like drug education or helping the needy.
That all sounds pretty progressive to me.
then they won’t be able to fire me.
If that’s the case, then I’m getting stoned. Until then I’m abstaining.
The initiative that will be voted on in 2016 allows employers to have drug-free workplace policies.
If the duties of your position require that you abstain from marijuana, then you’ll be tested (and fired if you fail) regardless of its legality. Airline pilots, for example, may not have measurable amounts of alcohol or other intoxicants while on duty.
If your company is testing you as a matter of company policy, rather than the requirements of your job, then you may either choose a different employer or choose to abstain. I think that companies are able to impose restrictions on tobacco use by employees, but I’m actually not certain of that (at least here in MA).
I suggest that such constraints apply to a tiny fraction of the public.
Has nothing to do with duties.
Probably part of fulfilling requirements in order to get federal contracts. Does the company do business with the federal government?
… sure it is. If you wanted to end disportionate targeting of minorities you’d write an initiative that would seek to end disproportionate targeting of minorities. If you didn’t want to drag tons of people into the criminal justice system you’d write a ballot initiative aimed at reforming the criminal justice system: which system, in case you’re not paying attention, attends to more than just marijuana prosecution.
The bill is about more people getting a hassle-free high. That’s it. Why can’t you just say what it is? You can’t, because what it is not, is progressive and you seem to think you need a progressive gloss to get it passed. Oh, it would be nice to have but there are far more pressing issues for progressives to worry about.. . Sure, the associated hassles of getting high are part of a pernicious undercurrent in our society, but success in this effort will only decouple the hassle from the high, not eradicate the hassles. Well, that’s not good enough for this progressive.
The test for progressivism, in my opinion, is to see if a solution presents obvious answers to the questions: “what problems does it solve? and how does it solve them?’
Racist enforcement? Will this end racist enforcement? (your words) No it will not. It will remove one excuse, from among many, for the racist enforcer. So they’ll probably find a new excuse, or double down on the present cornucopia of options, and the problem does not go away. Confronting racism is progressive. Passive-aggressively libertarian efforts to engineer excuses out from underneath them is not progressive. The excuses aren’t necessarily the problem, the racism is the problem.
Burdening people with criminal records? This is circular reasoning: if an act is against the law, then people who commit that act, and who are caught at it, will be burdened by a criminal record. You’re only arguing that getting high shouldn’t be against the law: that is both your premise and your conclusion and so you are only solving the problem as you have defined it (which is, if you think about it, essential libertarianism 101 (Q:”Why?” A:”Because. Freedom.”).
Actually protect consumers like we do for any other product or substance? This is the joke you put in there to see if I was paying attention and would read all the way through, right?
This one is particularly egregious as it mirrors some of the exact language long used to sell the lottery and, more recently, casinos in the CommonWealth. If one argument can be used interchangeably to sell two things, then the two things are perhaps not so far apart… and casinos sure as all-get-out aren’t progressive….
So, ah, dubble – ppPPPhhhbbbttt….
4Front Advisors, a for profit management consulting company. Sam works in Business Development. From their website:
“Formed in 2011, 4Front Advisors provides unparalleled support and access to the best practices and people within the rapidly evolving marijuana industry. 4Front established its reputation by successfully supporting numerous prospective dispensary and cultivation businesses through state-managed competitive application processes. To support the significant regulatory requirements and the standard operational needs of entrepreneurs in the legitimizing marijuana industry, 4Front has invested heavily in its support capabilities to ensure clients are operating most efficiently, while maintaining compliance with local regulations. In addition, 4Front Advisors leverages its vast industry intelligence network to stay abreast of important industry trends to support the professionalization of the industry.”
Because if that is the case that really should have been disclosed IMO.
A quick look at Sam’s BMG profile shows this (emphasis mine):
That’s a good enough disclosure for me.
The more successful they are at ending prohibition, the more money they hope to make.
The profile makes it sound like they are in it to make the world a better place when they are, in fact, running a business.
Sam’s been a leader in this effort for the past seven years and has been writing about it a lot longer before he got paid for this. There are far more profitable industries to get involved in. Nichole Snow of the Mass Patients Advocacy Alliance was a patient long before they brought her into their exec board. I’ve been campaigning for people I believed in long before it became a full time occupation of mine. Be happy we are able to make a living doing what we are passionate about, believe me, none of is in this for the money.
If you don’t want your motives questioned then organize as a charity, have benefactors rather than investors and have an independent board to make sure your comp and expenses are reasonable. I have no idea how much money Sam makes, how his comp is structured (e.g., is it tied to successfully changing the law?), or how profitable the company is.
Running a business and making the world a better place are not mutually exclusive. Ben and Jerry’s do it. Others have done it. Even Google did it for a long time.
EVERY business needs to make profit in order to be sustainable. I reject your insinuation that anything unsavory is going on here.
There’s nothing wrong with having a business (although is there a reason that this endeavor couldn’t be a charitable organization?). The problem is that there was absolutely nothing in the diary about the fact that the change in law being advocated would be very good for the business. The wording in the profile skips that part as well. Purposefully so? I have no idea but leaving out these details invites skepticism.
Things like our health care system profiting off people who need it’s services, or those who sell things like cigarettes who profit by selling an inherently dangerous product. In this context I’m with pbrane in that I’m not objecting as much to making a profit (leaving aside for now that I prefer it not be sold at all), as I want to make sure that obvious fiduciary interest is made clear.
I don’t particularly care that SamTracy has pecuniary interests in the passage of the ballot initiative and I don’t particularly think he’s hiding those interests. I care that he’s trying to sell it as ‘progressive’ and, like all salesman, is attempting to assume a rapport with his mark. That rapport isn’t there and can’t be manufactured.
‘Legalize it. Enjoy it. Profit from it.’ is an entirely legitimate socio-political and economic stance. It just isn’t progressive.
That’s all the disclosure I thought was necessary. I don’t conceal that I work in the legal marijuana industry, but the only reason I do is to try to create responsible businesses instead of greedy Marlboro-type companies that could potentially arise. I’ve volunteered on the political side of this issue since 2009 before starting to work in marijuana consulting five years later, and still continue to help out with reform efforts (like this).
I hardly ever look at profiles and am used to seeing them in the diaries.
If you go to the site for Campaign for a Safe and Healthy Massachusetts (http://www.safeandhealthyma.com/) there is now fundraising link to fundraise.com, where yesterday it was to actblue.com.
This page is still active, though, so it’s not clear who fired who: https://secure.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/43646