By P. Fernandez

Translated By Scott M. Vrooman

06 November, 2008


Spain - 20minutos - Original Article (Spanish)

Gay activist, architect of the legalization of marijuana and Vietnam veteran, Dennis Peron entered the race for the White House in 1996.

From his small hotel that he runs, he says that Barack ought to focus first on ending the war on drugs.

McCain isn’t the only ex-candidate for the Presidency of the United States. There are others who have their own history, and their own way of seeing life. This is the point of view of an ex-candidate who has spent more than a quarter century growing and selling marijuana.

His name is Dennis Peron and he’s the guy who brought the legalization of marijuana in California. He maintains that the most important thing Obama can do is, first, to put an end to the three wars: “the one we started in Iraq and the one in Afghanistan against invisible enemies, and the one that’s costing millions throughout the world, the one against drugs.”

The only thing he didn’t like about Milk is that, at the end, Harvey dies.
“Are you familiar with Milk? I have a role in it, and the character played by Sean Penn is my friend.” He’s talking about a film that narrates the life of the first openly-gay politician that was elected into a prominent political post. Peron shows the reports published by magazines, and the photos from the 70’s in which he and Harvey Milk appear together, with long hair and bell bottoms. A few days ago he went to the preview and, even though it won’t be in the theaters for another month, he was effusive in his invitation that we see it.

“It seems like the film remembers very well what happened,” he says, with a tired face while looking around what, to a recently-arrived person looks like an enormous room, where six people slept yesterday and appears to have been cleaned up in a rather hurried manner. “The only thing I didn’t like was that, at the end, Harvey dies again.”

That doesn’t spoil the film; it’s a wound that is opened once again. Milk was assassinated along with the mayor of San Francisco in 1978. Dennis gets his smile back when I ask him about the actors’ physical resemblance to the characters they play.

Mortgages and pumpkins for the President

The bay is now farther away. With the change I’ve come closer to the hills and the skyscrapers have disappeared. This is a few blocks away from the gay neighborhood of San Francisco and, as in the rest of the city, here’s where they still retain some memories of a long electoral campaign.

Obama lives here together with what remains of Halloween and the mortgage crisis.

Obama says "hello" to every three or four doors, and in some he has to live with witches, monsters and pumpkins. These are the leftovers from Halloween, as horrifying as the thousands of For Sale signs that now decorate the houses of the city. Neither monsters nor signs have served to erase the cardboard and plastic smile of the President-elect. Instead of disappearing, after so many months of an exhausting campaign, electoral symbols have flourished with the Democratic victory.

Technology, as in the rest of the city, covers it all with an invisible cloak.
To get to this part of the city, I’ve also had to change altitude. In a taxi driven by a tattooed Italian-American, probably a fan of Ferraris, I’ve flown from the 20th floor of the Intercontinental Hotel, smack in the center of the financial sector, to a first floor, almost a mezzanine in the Cozy Castro Cottage, which you get to by going up ten steps from the sidewalk. But I realize I’m still in the birthplace of the digital revolution and the latest technology hasn’t disappeared; it’s everywhere I look.

Every Bed & Breakfast offers free Wi-Fi. And if you want to get into the house you have to key a four-digit code into the lock of any of the three doors that open to the street. But there is one thing: there isn’t any central heating and the rooms are colder than the steppe. But it doesn’t seem to bother Peron: he’s got a hot tub in the yard where he can smoke without freezing his butt off.

Candidate for Presidency

More than 30 years ago, in 1975, he got involved in other things, and he mixed marijuana and politics. In his autobiography he discusses how he demanded that his clients register to vote before he would give them the merchandise. Milk’s death coincided with Peron’s serious problems with the police.

In his smoker’s club, there were raids in 1978, 1990 and 1996, and the last raid is the one that gave rise to a legal battle. That year he signed on to and pushed Proposition 215, similar in legal status to the one that just struck down gay marriage in California. The one Peron pushed achieved the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes which, in practice, gives a green light to any private use of the drug. “The only way we achieved this was with an army of lawyers,” he remembers.

A few months later, a political party from Minnesota tied to the defense of the illegalization named him its candidate for Presidency. He got 5,800 votes and, afterward, fell out of public view. He concentrates on his small hotel, and on the cultivation, drying, smoking and sharing of his plants.

In enemy territory

A few blocks away, the seed that Milk planted continues bearing fruit: multi-colored flags line Castro Street, the epicenter of the gay sector. Stores, businesses, residences and marriages broken by a vote. Another battle surges on Castro Street. In the adjacent neighborhood, also just a few streets away, a man watches both battles from another trench.

Against the liberal advance, the solution is to put up more photos of Reagan.
He lives on Noe Street and his windows, like a storefront display, show the other America. Photos of George Bush, Sr., of Laura Bush, of Ronald Reagan. Against the liberal advance, more and more photos of Reagan. It’s a conservative sanctuary, and its owner has lived in this area for decades and, with the passage of time and the extension of Castro Street, the contrast becomes even greater.

The media have called him, at times, “the only Republican in San Francisco.” Maybe it’s the early hour of the day, or maybe it’s because he doesn’t like to talk these days, but nobody comes to the door when you knock. He’s in enemy territory, politically speaking, in his neighborhood, in his city, and, since Tuesday, in his country, as well.