kearns at aids-write & pan to the weho cc: poetry of journalism --- 2 mins on why all politics are local, 3-19-07

good evening. my name is richard kearns. i am a 55 year old gay man alive with AIDS for 20 years, residing over by the gateway. i am poet-secretary of pan, a non-profit medical cannabis education corporation. i am a grassroots journalist, a blogger. i publish aids-write.org. i taught journalism at loyola marymount for a dozen years before retiring because of my AIDS. i wrote and edited and published both fiction and nonfiction for another 20 years before that.

who?
what?
where?
when?
how many?
how much?
why?

there it is. the poetry of journalism in a list of questions that must be answered in the first 25-35 words of any news story. and it is the dateline — the “where?” and “when?” of the journalist’s poem — that makes all politics local politics

i’m telling you this tonight because i stopped by city hall after the DEA’s election-day raid to introduce myself and start a dialog, and a staffer offered the opinion that this was a federal issue. i realized right then everybody needs to know why all politics are local.

so here’s how it works. because of the poetry of journalism, the dateline places the event in west hollywood, not washington, dc [built on the tidily-written march 8 weho news lead from the story that topped the weho election returns, thank you ryan gierach–rk]:

the federal drug enforcement agency raided yet another west hollywood medical marijuana dispensary on tuesday, march 6, less than eight weeks after raiding the same dispensary, along with another dozen in the la area, in january. three patients were taken into custody by west hollywood sheriffs for obstructing a peace officer during the raid, cited and released on their own cognizance. another twenty patients, who attempted to block the DEA’s exit by laying down on the parking structure floor without actually coming into contact with federal vehicles, were convinced to disassemble peacefully, according to degé coutee, pan representative at the protest during the raid.

so that’s why all politics are local, i hope inside of two minutes.
i look forward to continuing this discussion.

namasté

ps — thank you jeff prang for voicing the weho city council’s outrage over the raid in which, again, with no notice to the city or sheriff, the DEA required “an exit” from the ensuing, growing storm of patient protest.


kearns at aids-write & pan to the weho cc: poetry of journalism — 2 mins on why all politics are local, 3-19-07 (566)