From: [focu 7] at [aol.com] (FOCU 7)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: NORML Plaintiff responds to Al Giordano
Date: 25 Jun 1995 20:59:38 -0400
Reply-To: [focu 7] at [aol.com] (FOCU 7)

Hi Al Giordano:

This is Jeanne Lang, one of the Old NORML board members.  I remember you
from when Abby (Hoffman) brought you down to help save the Delaware.
Wasn't that in '81?  You remember -- we laid in front of the bulldozers
because we knew we were right -- the Pump never should have been built. 
Unfortunately, many thought we were wrong, and it was built.  Now the
nuclear power plants can be cooled by the water taken from the Delaware. 
Some still say -- if only we were better organized, sooner.

Back then I was still only marginally involved in national NORML.  Mostly
I was involved in running New Jersey and NORTHEAST NORML and being its
Legal Services Director.  I did organize the first national NORML
Political Action Committee, I believe that same year.  You remember
POLITICAL ACTION, that little tool that gets (bad) laws changed -- that
little item Dick Cowan consistently fails to put into NORML's mix.  But
that's not what the suit is about.  

I am surprised as I read you "see no story."  The story is that we have an
idea whose time is way past due; we have a natural constituency of,
according to gov't figures, 70,000,000 (hardly even a minority,) and yet
NORML has no Political Action Committee, National Policy Committee, no way
for the rank and rebel rousers to interact, to communicate, to strategize
to work together for RESPONSIBLE MARIJUANA LAWS!  But that's not what the
suit is about either.

I am amazed as I read that you see no evidence of wrongdoing on Cowan's
part.  I should think not paying payroll taxes EACH AND EVERY SINGLE
QUARTER that he was in office, is good evidence of wrongdoing.  Perhaps it
is a regular course of business for some, but NORML directors always paid
the payroll taxes before Cowan. If they did not, they were fired! And that
is what the suit is about -- Where's the money, Dick? 

At a board meeting on July 23, 1995, EVERY MEMBER OF THE STAFF PRESENT (4,
including Alan St Pierre) told us that Cowan was embezzling and was
engaged in other managerial improprieties.  When we questioned him, Cowan
resigned in a huff.  When we tried to check the books, he refused to let
us see them.  One day after the staff informed us that the IRS informed
that Cowan would be personally liable, Cowan unresigned and staged a coup
to unseat those of us who attended the 7/23 board meeting and heard the
horrors that the whole staff related.  (What a coincidence that it is we
who attended the meeting, the "active" board members vs. the absentee
lawyers, who are the ones instituting the suit.)

Cowan refused harder than ever to let us see the books and embarked on a
smear campaign the likes of which has not been seen this side of Joe
McCarthy.  Now, it would have been so much easier for us to walk away and
not be hit with the putrid garbage Cowan was spewing; he insulted us and
lied about us in fax after fax.  Who needs that?  Not my ego.  No, you
missed the boat about this being about a power struggle.  My term was up
at the end of the year anyway.  I had accomplished what I got on the board
to do -- institute elections.   I am not married to my board seat; I have
a very full life, but I was empowered with the safekeeping of NORML the
MEMBERSHIP-BASED ORGANIZATION and I COULD not walk away, even though I
would rather have run away than gotten smeared as we did.        

But Cowan was not counting on our dedication -- to the movement, to truth.
 He embezzled the money and he's going over for it.  That's the way the
court WILL see it, MOST CERTAINLY.  In fact, we have just entered the
discovery phase of our case and already we have found out that things were
even worse than we had possibly imagined, as, for just one example, Cowan
had paid NORML staff members working on his Libertarian presidential
campaign.

Dick misappropriated funds that came from members, those hard working
folks who entrusted him with 25% of their weekly gross so that maybe their
chances of getting their home and children and freedom confiscated would
be just a little lower.  Dick abused that trust, and he's going over for
it.

So, that's what the suit is about.  That's easy; we "win."  Now, the hard
part -- reuniting the movement that Cowan and ? have so expertly put
asunder. 


Jeanne 

[FOCU 7] at [AOL.COM]