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180.
Original handbill announcing the Yippie Smoke-In held in Madison, Wisconsin on September 25 (1971).
Printed in black on peach colour paper stock. 28x21.6cm.
SIGNED by Paul Krassner, a founding member of the Yippies. Illustrated with Gilbert Shelton’s Fat Freddy with speech bubble declaring “Help End Marijuana Prohibition!”, and lists four demands, beginning with “The repeal of all Nazi style Amerikan drug laws against marijuana” and “A guaranteed weekly stash of at least 1 oz. of grass for every man, woman, and child in America who digs getting high.”
A slogan along the left margin reads “Free Dope - Free Dana”, a reference to Yippie activist Dana Beal’s recent arrest by Madison police for hitchhiking on Interstate-94 and the charges against him of possessing marijuana and selling hashish.
The event inaugurated the First Annual Marijuana Harvest Festival (now the longest running cannabis rights festival in the United States) and was attended by about 1500 people, among them A.J. Weberman and David Peel, who sang “Up Against the Wall Mutherfuckers” and led chants of “The Pope Smokes Dope”. Many came from outside the area and most got stoned, some of them on brownies supplied by WERM (Wild Eyed Revolutionary Movement), name-checked in the handbill’s lower margin, though no one was busted for dope. The rally was followed by a mass march to the Capitol in support of Beal and to expose “the CIA conspiracy which currently provides 80% of the heroin in this country”, and ended in a protest outside the jail where Beal had been placed in solitary during the demo.
Near Fine. A scarce handbill marking a now legendary event.
