On November 26, 1975, a jury found Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme guilty of attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford on the previous September 5. The judge sentenced her to life in prison.
Fromme was a follower of then jailed (now dead) Charles Manson, cult leader of the infamous Manson Family whose members had murdered Sharon Tate (8 months pregnant) and her friends: Folgers coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring at Roman Polanski’s home in Los Angeles, California on August 9, 1969 as well as killing Leno and Rosemary LaBiana, wealthy Los Angeles residents, the following day.
Lynette Squeaky Fromme Sentenced
Early life
Lynette Alice Fromme was born in Santa Monica, California on October 22, 1948. In 1967, often an outsider whose didn’t fit into the traditional academic settings her parents wanted her to succeed in, she met Charles Manson in Venice, California. She joined his “family” and traveled with them.
Lynette Squeaky Fromme Sentenced
Squeaky
Back in California, the family lived as caretakers on the Spahn Ranch. The 80-year-old George Spahn nicknamed Fromme “Squeaky” because of the sound she made when he would touch her.
Fromme was not charged with involvement in the August 1969 murders. During the trial, Fromme and other family members “camped” outside the Los Angeles County courtroom where the Manson family trial occurred.
After a jury convicted Manson, authorities moved him from prison to prison, Fromme moved from town to town to be near him.
Lynette Squeaky Fromme Sentenced
Assassination attempt
In 1972, Fromme moved to Sacramento, CA and it was there on September 5, 1975 that she aimed a loaded pistol an President Gerald Ford in Sacramento. Fromme was concerned about the cutting of redwood trees in California and felt that her actions would bring attention to that concern. The gun didn’t go off, and Secret Service agents wrestled Fromme to the ground.
Lynette Squeaky Fromme Sentenced
Escape
On December 23, 1987, Fromme escaped from the Federal Prison Camp, Ain Alderson, West Virginia. She hoped to meet the still-imprisoned Manson whom she heard was ill. Authorities captured her two days later and sent her to the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas.
Lynette Squeaky Fromme Sentenced
Parole
She was released on August 14, 2009 at the age of 60, after serving 34 years.
Under parole, Fromme moved to Marcy, NY to live with her boyfriend. Oneida County District Attorney Scott McNamara confirmed that, but officials would not release her exact address.
With the death of Manson, the surviving members of his cult briefly became newsworthy again.
Lynette Squeaky Fromme Sentenced
Reflexion
In August 2018, the Peasenhall Press published Reflexion.
From the Manson Blog site: In nearly 500 pages Fromme vividly chronicles her life with Charles Manson from the time she met him in May of 1967 to the final arrest of the so-called “Manson Family” in Death Valley in October of 1969. From Venice Beach, to the redwoods around Mendocino, to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, to Topanga Canyon and the Spiral Staircase and Condemned Houses, to Dennis Wilson’s Sunset Drive mansion, to Spahn’s Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, and finally to the Myers and Barker Ranches in Goler Wash in the Mojave Desert — everything is here in Fromme’s reflexion on her extensive travels and experiences with Manson and the like people around them who were “preparing to survive either a revolution, or the static institutions that were systematically trading all of our vital necessities for money.”
November 25, 1915: a cross was burned on Stone Mountain, Georgia, on this day, marking the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century.
The Klan had been a powerful racist force during the Reconstruction Era in the South following the Civil War. It gradually faded away, but was revived as part of the racist mood of the country in the first decades of the century. (seeNovember 7, 1922)
Anti-Lynching Congress
November 25, 1930: a delegation from the Anti-Lynching Congress, which was meeting in Washington, D.C., delivered a protest to President Herbert Hoover, demanding that he take action to end the lynching of African-Americans. The group was led by Maurice W. Spencer, president of the National Equal Rights League and Race Congress. President Hoover did not respond.
Herbert Hoover was basically sympathetic to the needs of African-Americans in American society, but was not willing to expend any political capital on civil rights. He was very upset, for example, when Southern bigots protested when First Lady Lou Henry Hoover invited the wife of African-American Congressman Oscar DePriest to the White House for tea (along with all the other Congressional wives), on June 12, 1929. He responded by inviting Robert Moton, President of Tuskegee University, to the White House in a symbolic gesture. (next BH see Nov 22; next Lynching, see January 12, 1931; next T, see August 27, 1949; see AL3 for expanded chronology of early 20th century lynching)
Interstate Commerce Commission
November 25, 1955: the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the federal agency that regulated railroads and other transporters of goods, banned racial segregation on interstate buses, train lines, and in waiting rooms.
The ICC ruled that “the disadvantages to a traveler who is assigned accommodations or facilities so designated as to imply his inferiority solely because of his race must be regarded under present conditions as unreasonable.” The ban was consistent with a 1946 United States Supreme Court decision, Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia (see June 3, 1946), which held that a state law requiring segregation on interstate buses traveling through the state was unconstitutional.
However, neither the Supreme Court decision nor the ICC ban covered intrastate travel, and 13 states still required segregation on buses and railways that traveled exclusively within state borders. Some of these states ignored the new ban on segregated interstate travel and continued to enforce unconstitutional laws. According to a report issued by the Public Affairs Research Committee in December 1957, police in Flomaton, Alabama, had been called to arrest African Americans traveling in the white section of an interstate railroad line. The report additionally found that employees of rail and bus lines in Alabama “have flagrantly segregated colored travelers or called police to arrest those who would not easily be intimidated where their rights were involved.”
It was not until November 1961, six years after the ICC ban, that it was given force by order of the ICC and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, largely spurred by the Freedom Rides. (NYT article) (see Dec 1)
Randolph Evans
November 25, 1976, Thanksgiving Day: NYC police officer Robert Torsney fired a bullet into the head of Randolph Evans, 15, outside a housing project in Brooklyn. Officer Torsney would later claim he had been afflicted with a rare form of epilepsy that had never been noticed before the killing and was never seen after it. The ”epilepsy” defense worked. A jury acquitted Torsney of any criminal wrongdoing. (NYT article) (see Dec 17)
Sean Bell
November 25, 2006: a team of plainclothes and undercover NYPD officers shot a total of 50 times at three men killing one of the men, Sean Bell, on the morning before his wedding, and severely wounding two of his friends. (NYT article) (B & S and Sean Bell, see March 16, 2007)
Black Lives Matter
November 25, 2015: Minneapolis police released the names of four men arrested in connection with a shooting during a Black Lives Matter protest outside a police station that injured five protesters. The authorities identified the suspects in the shooting as Allen Lawrence Scarsella, 23; Nathan Gustavsson, 21; Daniel Macey, 26; and Joseph Backman, 27.
November 25, 1930: an agent of the New England Watch and Ward Society purchased a copy of Lady Chatterly’s Lover at the Dunster House Book shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts. James Delancy, the manager, and Joseph Sullivan, his clerk, were both convicted of selling obscene literature, a crime for which Mr. Delancy was fined $800. and assigned four months in the house of corrections while Mr. Sullivan was sentenced to two weeks in prison and a $200. fine. (see April 6, 1931)
November 25 Peace Love Art Activism
US Labor History
St Paul teacher strike
November 25, 1946: teachers strike in St. Paul, Minn., the first organized walkout by teachers in the country. The month-long “strike for better schools” involving some 1,100 teachers—and principals—led to a number of reforms in the way schools were administered and operated. [ST article] (see Dec 3)
November 25, 1960: CBS broadcast the documentary, “Harvest of Shame,” on US migrant farm workers the day after Thanksgiving.
Journalist Edward R. Murrow narrated, opening with these words over footage of workers: “This is not taking place in the Congo. It has nothing to do with Johnannesburg or Cape Town. It is not Nyasaland or Nigeria. This is Florida. These are citizens of the United States, 1960. This is a shape-up for migrant workers. The hawkers are chanting the going piece rate at the various fields. This is the way the humans who harvest the food for the best-fed people in the world get hired. One farmer looked at this and said, ‘We used to own our slaves. Now we just rent them.’ “
The hour-long telecast, shocking to many viewers, immediately led to a greater public and political awareness of the workers’ lives. [NPR article] (see October 3, 1961)
Google fires activists
November 25, 2019: Google fired four employees who had been active in labor organizing at the company, according to a memo that was seen by The New York Times.
The memo, sent by Google’s security and investigations team, told employees that the company had dismissed four employees “for clear and repeated violations of our data security policies.” Jenn Kaiser, a Google spokeswoman, confirmed the firings but declined to elaborate. (next USLH, see January 21, 2020)
November 25 Peace Love Art Activism
Religion and Public Education
November 25, 1947: the American Unitarian Association announced that it had received permission from the US Supreme Court to enter the McCollum v Champaign case. Its brief stated that the religious group “has an interest in the the proceedings by reason of the nature of the questions involved, the absolute separation of church and state being one of the cardinal principles of Unitarianism.” (see December 4, 1947)
November 25 Peace Love Art Activism
Red Scare
Hollywood Ten
November 25, 1947: movie studio executives agreed to blacklist the Hollywood 10, who were jailed for contempt of Congress for failing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. (Hollywood Ten: see June 13, 1949; Red Scare, see Dec 4)
Blacklisted Michael Wilson
November 25, 1956: the film Friendly Persuasion, starring Gary Cooper and later nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor, was released on this day — but without any screenwriter credit. The actual screenwriter was Michael Wilson, who had been blacklisted for refusing to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in September 1951. Hollywood motion picture companies refused to hire or credit people who did not cooperate with HUAC. The official blacklist began on December 3, 1947.
Wilson’s screenwriting credit was restored in later versions of the film. Wilson also co-wrote the script for the award-winning Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), but was not listed on the credits. Wilson was posthumously awarded an Academy Award in 1995 for his work on the Bridge on the River Kwai.
Wilson took his revenge for having been blacklisted when he wrote the script for Planet of the Apes (1968), which includes a scene that is a wicked parody of the House Un-American Activities Committee. In the scene, Charlton Heston has to stand naked and testify before what is, in effect, an Un-Ape Activities Committee.(see February 18, 1957)
The Cold War
November 25, 2016: Cuban state television announced the death of Fidel Castro. He was 90. [NBC News article] (see January 12, 2017)
November 25 Peace Love Art Activism
November 25 Music et al
The Beatles
November 25, 1963: release of Beatlemania!With The Beatles album in Canada. (see Nov 29)
Incense and Peppermints
November 25 – December 1, 1967: “Incense and Peppermints” by the Strawberry Alarm Clock #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Last Waltz
November 25, 1976, Thanksgiving Day, at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, The Band gave their farewell concert. They called it “The Last Waltz.” More than a dozen speicial guests joined The Band, including Paul Butterfield, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Ronnie Hawkins, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, Bobby Charles, Neil Young, and the Staple Singers. The musical director for the concert was The Band’s original record producer, John Simon.
The event was filmed by director Martin Scorsese and made into a documentary of the same name, released in 1978. The film features concert performances, scenes shot on a studio soundstage and interviews by Scorsese with members of The Band. A triple-LP soundtrack recording, produced by Simon and Rob Fraboni, was issued on April 7, 1978.
The Last Waltz is hailed as one of the greatest concert films ever made.
Band Aid
November 25, 1984: Band Aid recorded the charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” to raise money to combat the famine in Ethiopia. It is released December 3. (see January 28, 1985)
November 25 Peace Love Art Activism
Nuclear/Chemical News
November 25, 1969, President Nixonordered all US germ warfare stockpiles destroyed. (see March 5, 1970)
November 25 Peace Love Art Activism
INDEPENDENCE DAY
November 25, 1975: Suriname independent of Netherlands. (see June 29, 1976)
November 25 Peace Love Art Activism
AIDS
November 25, 1985: the Indiana Department of Education ruled that Ryan White must be admitted despite parent and government opposition. (see White for expanded chronology )
November 25 Peace Love Activism
Iran–Contra Affair
November 25, 1986: the Iran-Contra affair erupted as President Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese revealed that profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to Nicaraguan rebels. (see Nov 26)
November 25 Peace Love Art Activism
Jack Kevorkian
November 25, 1998: Michigan charged Kevorkian with first-degree murder, violating the assisted suicide law and delivering a controlled substance without a license in the death of Thomas Youk. Prosecutors later drop the suicide charge. Kevorkian insists on defending himself during the trial and threatens to starve himself if he is sent to jail. (see JK for expanded chronology)
November 25 Peace Love Art Activism
Terrorism
John Phillip Walker Lindh
November 25, 2001: John Phillip Walker Lindh, a US citizen, was captured as an enemy combatant during the invasion of Afghanistan. (Terrorism, see Dec 11; Walker, see July 15, 2002)
November 25, 2003: Yemen arrested Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, a top al-Qaida member suspected of masterminding the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker off Yemen’s coast. (see April 5, 2004)
November 25 Peace Love Art Activism
LGBTQ
Arkansas’ gay marriage ban
November 25, 2014: U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker struck down Arkansas’ gay marriage ban, which paved the way for county clerks to resume issuing licenses. Baker ruled in favor of two same-sex couples who had challenged a 2004 constitutional amendment and earlier state law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, arguing that the ban violated the U.S. Constitution and discriminated based on sexual orientation.
Mississippi’s ban on gay marriage
November 25, 2014: U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ruled against Mississippi’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex couples from marrying. Attorney Roberta Kaplan represented two plaintiff couples on behalf of Campaign for Southern Equality, arguing that Mississippi’s marriage ban violates the U.S. Constitution. (see Dec 18)
November 25 Peace Love Art Activism
Immigration History
November 25, 2018: a peaceful march by Central American migrants waiting at the southwestern United States border veered out of control as hundreds of people tried to evade a Mexican police blockade and run toward a giant border crossing that led into San Diego.
In response, the United States Customs and Border Protection agency shut down the border crossing in both directions and fired tear gas to push back migrants from the border fence. The border was reopened later that evening. [NYT article] (see Dec 21)
November 25 Peace Love Art Activism
Environmental Issues
November 25, 2020: the Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska, likely dealing a death blow to a long-disputed project that aimed to extract one of the world’s largest deposits of copper and gold ore, but which threatened breeding grounds for salmon in the pristine Bristol Bay region.
The fight over the mine’s fate had raged for more than a decade. The plan was scuttled years ago under the Obama administration, only to find new life under President Trump. But opposition, from Alaska Native American communities, environmentalists and the fishing industry never diminished, and recently even the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., a sportsman who had fished in the region, cameout against the project.
On this date, it failed to obtain a critical permit required under the federal Clean Water Act that was considered a must for it to proceed. In a statement, the Army Corps’ Alaska District Commander, Col. Damon Delarosa, said the mine, proposed for a remote tundra region about 200 miles from Anchorage, would be “contrary to the public interest” because “it does not comply with Clean Water Act guidelines.” [NYT article] (next EI, see Dec 8)
November 24, 1865: shortly after the end of the Civil War in 1865, Southern states sought to control and confine tcheir large populations of newly-freed black people by passing laws that authorized their arrest and incarceration. These laws, known as “black codes,” typically applied only to black people and criminalized acts that were not offenses at all when committed by whites.
In November and December 1865, the Mississippi legislature approved numerous black codes. One passed on November 24, 1865, declared that “all freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes” found without proof of employment or business or found “unlawfully assembling themselves” would be deemed vagrants and, upon conviction, owe up to $50 in fines and serve up to ten days in jail. The same law threatened whites with vagrancy convictions if found assembling or associating with freedmen “on terms of equality” or found “living in adultery” with a black partner. If convicted, whites faced up to $200 in fines and up to six months in jail.
As a result of black codes like these in Mississippi, and similar laws passed during the same period in states throughout the South, the post-Civil War era brought American black people more contact with the criminal court and prison systems than ever before. As the former Confederacy learned to wield the criminal justice system as a tool of racial control, countless black men, women, and children were convicted and sentenced under unjust laws that criminalized them for existing as free, black citizens. [CRF article] (see Dec 18)
Dramatists Guild
November 24, 1946: the issue of race discrimination in Washington theaters came to a head, it was reported on this day, when the Dramatists Guild signed a contract with local theaters demanding that there be no racial discrimination “on either side of the footlights.”
The issue of race discrimination in the nation’s capital had been brewing since the great African-American singer Marian Anderson was denied use of Constitution Hall by the hall’s owners, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). That controversy ended when the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt granted permission to hold the concert at the Lincoln Memorial, on April 9, 1939. The concert is regarded as a historic event in the history of racial equality in the U.S. (see Dec 5)
School Desegregation
November 24, 1958: the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided Shuttlesworth vs. Birmingham Board of Education, rejecting a challenge to Alabama’s School Placement Law. The law, designed to defy the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and maintain school segregation, allowed Alabama school boards to assign individual students to particular schools at their own discretion with little transparency or oversight.
Alabama’s School Placement Law, which claimed to allow school boards to designate placement of students based on ability, availability of transportation, and academic background, was modeled after the Pupil Placement Act in North Carolina — enacted on March 30, 1955, in response to the Brown decision. Virginia passed the second placement law on September 29, 1956. In 1957, after the North Carolina law was upheld by a higher court, legislatures in other Southern states passed similar pupil placement laws; by 1960, such laws were on the books in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and the city of Atlanta, Georgia.
After the Alabama law’s passage, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth sued on behalf of four African American students in Birmingham who had been denied admission to white schools that were closer to their homes. In its unanimous decision, the Supreme Court court wrote, “The School Placement Law furnishes the legal machinery for an orderly administration of the public schools in a constitutional manner by the admission of qualified pupils upon a basis of individual merit without regard to their race or color. We must presume that it will be so administered.”
Between the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 and 1958, a total of 376,000 African American children were enrolled in integrated schools in the South. This growth slowed significantly as states passed obstructive legislation like these pupil placement laws; the figure rose by just 500 students between 1958 and 1959, and by October 1960, only six percent of African American children in the South were attending integrated schools. . (next BH, see “In 1959”; next SD, see April 18, 1959)
In 1959: Charles Mingus released “Fables of Faubus” aimed at Arkansas governor Orval Fabus. Uncomfortable with the lyrics, Columbia records turned the song into an instrumental.
Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em shoot us!
Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em stab us!
Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em tar and feather us!
Oh, Lord, no more swastikas!
Oh, Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan!
Name me someone who’s ridiculous, Dannie.
Governor Faubus!
Why is he so sick and ridiculous?
He won’t permit integrated schools.
Then he’s a fool! Boo! Nazi Fascist supremists!
Boo! Ku Klux Klan (with your Jim Crow plan)
Name me a handful that’s ridiculous, Dannie Richmond.
November 24, 2015: officer Jason Van Dyke charged with first-degree murder. Hours later, the city released the police dashcam video that captured Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times and killing him. Protesters marched in the Loop into the next morning. (B & S, see Nov 25; McDonald, see Dec 2)
November 24 Peace Love Art Activism
US Labor History
November 24, 1875: the United Cigar Makers of New York affiliated with the Cigar Makers’ International Union (CMIU) to form CMIU Local 144. Samuel Gompers was elected first president of the local and served several terms before going on to serve as the international’s vice president. “[W]e are powerless in an isolated condition,” Gompers said, “while the capitalists are united; therefore it is the duty of every Cigar Maker to join the organization.” (see June 21, 1877)
November 24 Peace Love Art Activism
Edwards v. California
November 24, 1941 in Edwards v California the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a California law barring indigents from entering the state. California passed the law during the Depression in an effort to keep poor migrants out of the state and thereby avoid the costs of public relief.
The Court majority held that the law violated the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Justices William O. Douglas, joined by Hugo Black, Frank Murphy and Robert Jackson, however, argued that the law violated the Privileges and Immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Justice Douglas in dissent: “. . . I am of the opinion that the right of persons to move freely from State to State occupies a more protected position in our constitutional system than does the movement of cattle, fruit, steel and coal across state lines . . . The conclusion that the right of free movement is a right of national citizenship stands on firm historical ground.”
The New York Times headline for the article was “OKIE’S RIGHTS”
November 24 Peace Love Art Activism
Hollywood Ten
November 24, 1947: the House of Representatives issued citations for Contempt of Congress to the Hollywood Ten—John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo. They had refused to cooperate at hearings dealing with communism in the movie industry held by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The “Hollywood 10,” as the men were known, were sentenced to one year in jail. The Supreme Court later upheld the contempt charges.
November 24, 1973: Ringo Starr becomes the third former Beatle to earn a solo #1 hit when “Photograph” topped the Billboard Hot 100. (see March 13, 1974)
November 24 Peace Love Art Activism
My Lai Massacre
November 24, 1969: U.S. Army officials announced that 1st Lt. William Calley would be court-martialed for the premeditated murder of 109 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. Army Secretary Stanley Resor and Army Chief of Staff William C. Westmoreland announced the appointment of Lt. Gen. William R. Peers to “explore the nature and scope” of the original investigation of the My Lai slayings in April 1968. The initial probe, conducted by the unit involved in the affair, concluded that no massacre occurred and that no further action was warranted. (see MLM for expanded chronology)
November 24 Peace Love Art Activism
Marijuana
November 24, 1976, : a Washington, DC Robert Randall, afflicted by glaucoma, employed the little-used Common Law Doctrine of Necessity to defend himself against criminal charges of marijuana cultivation (US v. Randall).
On November 24, 1976, federal Judge James Washington ruled Randall’s use of marijuana constituted a ‘medical necessity…’
Judge Washington dismissed criminal charges against Randall. Concurrent with this judicial determination, federal agencies responding to a May, 1976 petition filed by Randall, began providing this patient with licit, FDA-approved access to government supplies of medical marijuana. Randall was the first American to receive marijuana for the treatment of a medical disorder. (see February 21, 1978)
November 24 Peace Love Art Activism
Nuclear & chemical weapons
Superpower treaty
November 24, 1987: the US and the Soviet Union agreed to scrap shorter- and medium-range missiles in the first superpower treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons. [DoS article] (Cold War, see Dec 7; NN, see Dec 8)
Iran’s nuclear program
November 24, 2013: the US and five other world powers announced a landmark accord that would temporarily freeze Iran’s nuclear program and lay the foundation for a more sweeping agreement. It was the first time in nearly a decade, American officials said, that an international agreement had been reached to halt much of Iran’s nuclear program and roll some elements of it back. In return for the initial agreement, the US agreed to provide $6 billion to $7 billion in sanctions relief. Of this, roughly $4.2 billion would be oil revenue that has been frozen in foreign banks. [NYT article] (see January 12, 2014)
November 24 Peace Love Art Activism
Crime and Punishment
November 24, 2015: Governor Steve Beshear, Democrat of Kentucky, issued an executive order restoring voting rights for nonviolent ex-felons who had completed their sentences. The order gave 170,000 ex-offenders the opportunity to register to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. (see January 25, 2016)
November 24 Peace Love Art Activism
Cannabis
November 24, 2021: the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled that a voter-approved marijuana legalization initiative was invalid on procedural grounds, a major setback for activists who have been awaiting the court’s decision for months. That said, advocates would pursue a two-track plan to enact the reform next year.
In a 4-1 vote, the justices upheld a circuit court ruling that found the 2020 ballot measure violated the state’s single subject rule for constitutional amendments, meaning it covered too much ground and was not narrowly focused enough to meet the electoral standard.
The lawsuit was officially brought by two law enforcement officers but was funded with taxpayer money supplied by the administration of Gov. Kristi Noem (R) [MM article] (next Cannabis, see Nov 30, or see CAC for expanded chronology).
November 24 Peace Love Art Activism
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
