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Roots Elders Council

Roots Elders Council

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ROOTS Elders Council was born Feb 27, 2020, at Area 101 as a way of offering the cannabis community guidance, compassion, protection, intention, and love through sharing of stories, music, art, innovations, and publications that evolved during the prohibition underground and embody back to the land visions of the future based in the values of the culture and community.

Annie Waters presented a poster size Mandala of Values to guide the discussion — love, loyalty, truth, compassion, mutual respect, growing sustainably and regeneratively based on honorable agreements, cooperation, collaboration, in contrast to hate, fear, ego, debt, division, corruption, both sides separated by a river of transition. Casey O’Neill gave form to the formal statement of purpose, and Phoebe organized the gathering. Pebbles sparked the Council concept, traditional in Native American tribes and workers councils for cohesion. A core of 4 dedicated community people accepted the responsibility to pull it together: Annie Waters, Pebbles Trippet, Richard Jergenson, Jannella Stebner.

Roots Mandala

The Cannabis Cultural Museum opened Mar 1 in Willits, featuring speaker Fred Gardner and a full-color page write-up in Willits Weekly. The 2d opening @ ‘Emerald City’ featured Wendy Reed & Ed Denson with equally favorable Willits Weekly coverage. The following week COVID19 closed the state. Small meetings of the core 4 took place through 2020-2021 with discussions on how to proceed and protect the culture and community in light of Prop 64’s crippling regulatory program for small-medium grows with large scale grows denied registration access for five years 2016-2021 to give craft and small family farms a leg up before corporate farms invaded and dominated.

It turns out the community’s understanding of the 5-year delay proved incorrect due to the word ‘provisional’ in front of the permit, a deception that kept the door open to corporate grows, and land buys, allowing large grows to register early, not five years later, as the community was led to believe. California Growers Association sued and lost and made no effort to challenge the intentional deception on appeal.

Emerald Triangle-based corporations in league with local Mendocino and Humboldt County governments are moving to control the industry. This maneuver has resulted in cutting off the legs of half or more small family farms, which can no longer afford their garden, mortgage, or even the land and their home. Some call it ‘ethnic cleansing’ affecting whole neighborhoods of moms and pops, the majority medical. Many small craft farmers are multi-generational and go back decades of living underground as stewards and warriors who grew Cannabis as medicine in margins and shadows via independent economies, keeping tens of thousands of families alive economically as well as Emerald Triangle counties.

Despite losses, who are community standard-bearers?

*O’Shaughnessy’s, cannabis doctors’ journal, comprehensive compendium of current medical findings + economy, science, culture

*ProtoPipe All-in-1 Anniv50 indestructible brass vs breakable glass.*

*Emerald Cup Awards Laytonville roots to Sonoma Fairgrounds to LA

*Cannabis Counter Culture Museum Archives – Willits

*Cannabis Trail connects a series of plaques & monuments throughout northern California, comprising new era education.

*Hemp Connection 1st public hemp clothing store USA 1990-2022.

Roots Elders Council

is a formal inclusive body created

to offer guidance and compassion

by gathering and recording the

collective wisdom of elders

in the underground culture

who evolved during prohibition

–through their stories

music, art, publications

inventions, innovations —

and who embody the

heritage of the Emerald Triangle

with a vision for the future,

based on the values

of the culture and the community.

Our Mission

is to preserve, protect and celebrate

Cannabis and Hemp Cultural Heritage,

including the origins and future

of intergenerational and diverse

back-to-the-land, save the redwoods,

environmental, agricultural, indigenous

and social justice movements,

and honoring mycelia ecology.

The Elders Council reunion on 4/23/22 at the Cannabis Marketplace in Laytonville doubled our base from the core 4 — Annie Waters, Pebbles Trippet, Richard Jergenson, Jannella Stebner — to the great 8 —

Marie Mills/Fred Gardner/Laura Costa/Xochitl Martinez +Casey O’Neill as the primary advisor & Dan Turby as a ubiquitous chauffeur. With love and intention, we enhance cannabis culture for the greater good.

We had a brief, productive Council meeting in the booth after a group pic. We decided to open a DBA/Doing Business As basic account and appointed Jannella Council secretary, keeper of the records, including minutes of group proceedings & keeping track of email flow. Anyone can write up their impressions/opinions, which Jannella will send out to the membership.

Our focus is on those who commit to sharing what they do consistent with our mottoes and standards: Accentuate the positive, envision, imagine, reason, innovate, feature art, spotlight intent for the good of each & all. Xochitl volunteered to help pebbles organize her archives and make a more comfortable space for her to live.

Cannabis Elders Council introduces itself as plant-based stewards of the Earth, lovers of nature, guiding interaction between society and the cannabis community.

Annie-presents the Values Mandala, tapestry for a solid foundation.

Pebbles-Medicalcanna transportation=implicit right +Trippet standard.

Richard-Cannabis Cultural Museum Archives+ProtoPipe manufacturer

Jannella Stebner-Trained masseuse, experience in health & wellness.

Annie Waters introduces herself with flair:

“I have been an earth activist for over 50 years and find myself right at home in the Mendocino Roots Elders Council. Bridging the anti-war fight of the 60s with my wanderings across this continent in the 1970s with connections to gardens, rivers, and lands of Mendocino County, California, in the 80s, was very important to my life education.

Why did we form the Roots Elders Council?

The patterns of patriarchal governance and a materialistic-dollar-driven culture have brought us to this fragile moment in time. The dissolution of our cannabis & counter culture, along with this potential moment of re-awakening and building community, is a truth of our world in 2022. Our elders are indeed mentors with valuable knowledge and deep wisdom from the many years of living in harmony on their rural lands. Passing this wisdom on and finding help in our last decades of life are important works of a vibrant multi-generational community.

Moreover, Earth-centered spirituality and the renewed balance of divine masculine and divine feminine within and without is of necessity and great urgency to carry us through the economic, climate, and authoritative disaster we now face. At this moment, ‘All hands on deck.’

Do we hear the calling of the hawks, the suffering dolphins, and fish, toxins in the very air we breathe? How can we each bring our truest selves to this calling?

The Grange is one project that calls to me, and I wrote a book about the spiritual origins of this 150-year-old farmer-centered organization. We steward over 3000 buildings across the USA and locally have created a community center in Willits where we come together to learn and connect.

I also teach and practice herbal medicine making, offering my garden to all in need. Soon I’ll be traveling to ancient sacred sites to bring forward the lost songs of our forgotten ancestors.

This is my path. What is yours?

If you agree with the Mission Statement of the Roots Elders Council — cherishing the values of our community culture, bringing them forward to the enlightened future we wish to create — Join in. Offer something useful. Can you agree to make a difference in your family, community, and the world? We can be a part of something larger than ourselves, part of this alive world, a vital plant-based community, nurturing each other and the beings around us, sharing a legacy place in space.

May our work be blessed, and may the results be abundant.”

See Also
cannabis world news round green plastic containers with Mendo seeds in them

Ann Waters

Richard Jergenson, Counter culture rebel, back to the land archivist, took the path of street vendor seeking innovative products such as the all-in-1 ProtoPipe with local roots, made of brass, not glass, designed to last, invented by brother Phil, drawing Richard in as manufacturer and responsible business owner. His roots make him who he is.

In his own words:

“The undeclared war in Vietnam was part of this moment in time, as were the civil rights movement and political assassinations. Many youths fled the country, most to college and university to sit it out. Protests were happening everywhere; the youth culture was creating its place, UC Berkeley was the melting pot of youth, it seemed unstoppable. For me, Cannabis was the glue that helped hold the movement together. In 1976 we rebranded Contrivance as ProtoPipe, the business of manufacturing and selling pipes, licensed as a Berkeley street artist on Telegraph Ave, and with a vendor license to sell at SF Fisherman’s Wharf. We lived and worked for years in several warehouses in co-housing artist/inventor groups. UCBerkeley attracted students from around the globe, a real melting pot of youth,

ProtoPipe grew, and we decided to relocate to Mendocino County. Many Mom and Pop homesteaders had a small garden grew their own weed for home use, and also helped jump-start the solar industry by buying solar panels for powering their homes in the mountains and woods.

The Cannabis Culture Collective is a treasure trove of an era — the 60s, 70s, 80s plus 80 some years of marijuana prohibition; reputed to be one of the most inclusive collections of original articles/documents on the American youth counter culture in the world. Having lived to the fullest, collecting the culture of the day along the way, we created the Museum we know today. I have archived these stories for the future. The time is at hand to share the incredible story of going back to the land, a movement disappearing in the fog due to punitive post cannabis legalization growing laws. Smoking cannabis was originally an act of rebellion against the government, demonized by the media, yet simultaneously revered as medicine. My collection has it all.”

Richard is seeking a museum or warehouse space for storage & display.

My other primary commitments are —

*full-time Grange employee, keeper of the keys, receiver of messages;

*manufacturing ProtoPipes, durable brass instead of breakable glass.”

Richard Jergenson

Jannella Stebner-Health & Wellness masseuse onsite@cannaMarket

“There are tremendous forces set on fragmenting our communities, draining our resources, building walls, and usurping our sense of community and culture. It’s poignant that one of the main drivers helping to keep us together is something as sticky as Cannabis!

Cannabis relates to wellness not only of the physical and mental body but in the larger sense of wellness that comes from belonging to ‘community’ like the back to the land culture of trailblazers who engineered the journey for do-it-yourself cannabis family farms.

Jannella Stebner

Pebbles Trippet, aka the ‘migraine’ in Prop 215, suffered through childhood from age 6, was later prosecuted & jailed for transportation in 5 counties despite Dr. Mikuriya’s testimony retroactively applied to authorizing Cannabis for lifelong migraine headaches.

“My first social consciousness was awakened by human & civil rights in the 50s, by the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott spirit of unity, by sitting in to integrate Tulsa OK lunchrooms in 1960 as a teen. My marijuana activism is a result of my early recognition and renunciation of racism and my belief in equality for all.

I lived as a free spirit throughout most of my adult life at the low end of the spectrum, having no regular doctor since 1960, using cannabis leaf on my own for migraine control and relief, suffering multiple marijuana prosecutions for transportation of farmers’ throwaway leaf, including potential felony jeopardy for low-end access to plant medicine in bulk.

My marijuana prosecutions ran from 1990 to 2000 in 5 counties —Sonoma, Marin, Contra Costa, Humboldt, and Santa Clara. Trippet’s transportation victory was won on appeal from a Contra Costa conviction. The Court issued a 2-part ruling adding:

1) the ‘reasonably related’ Trippet standard re: amount allowed for medical purposes

2) transportation to Prop 215 as an ‘implicit right’ to transport/carry the medicine you legally possess or be unequal to other medicines. The quantity standard is the amount ‘reasonably related’ to your medical condition or need, an annual supply since you grow only once a year outdoors.

I felt compelled to challenge each conviction as an unconstitutional deprivation of medicine until I or someone forced the truth to be told. Medical freedom should have been written into the Constitution as the constitutional equivalent of religious freedom, equally protected. Schedule I equals law enforcement/DEA overseeing medicine in the states. Under what rationale should cops be in charge of medicine?

I’m also a 1st Amendment-protected free speech activist who believes in the initiative process allowing voters to decide policy and law and lowering the voting age to let youth have more of a voice in choice.

These are some of the issues I’d like to see taken up in Elders Council discussions. How much encroachment on medical rights should we tolerate as they steal the knowledge base and whole farming seasons, impose extreme conditions on our right to grow, and cleanse us from our communities and families with crippling regulations under legalization. If only authentic relationships need apply, will there be any?”

Pebbles was honored as a panelist at NORML’s Prop 215 silver anniversary conference with 200 stalwarts in attendance, affirming Dennis Peron’s visionary grasp of marijuana as medicine passed by the voters, which transformed the AIDS epidemic into a positive for the public good, i.e., access to a previously illegal beneficial medicine. This was followed by the Cannabis Trail’s installation of Pebbles’ plaque on the Mendocino coast, honoring her life’s work of challenging the constitutionality of the marijuana laws.

These monuments show the framework of the network: NORML, Emerald Cup, Cannabis Trail, Hemp Connection, Huckleberry Farm. Landmarks tell the stories we long to tell.

pebbles trippet

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