Behind the walls of Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street, the floor shook with the hip hop beats of Mysonne, his voice filling the room with “That’s How We On It” as a crowd of mainly black youths bumped and ground to the music, posed for pictures, and leafed through editions of The Source Magazine.
It was the fourth annual Source360 Festival and Conference, presented by NorthStar Charities and The Source Magazine, a longtime staple of hip hop coverage since its birth as a newsletter in 1988. A series of leadership panels led up to performances by Mysonne and Bianca Bonnie, or Young B. Deep.
Above the reception, music drifted through the heavy wooden doors as panelists before a packed room upstairs discussed the regulations and business opportunities surrounding the growing Cannabis industry.
The panelists spoke on the importance of legalizing and decriminalizing recreational and medical marijuana, which they called cannabis, because of the history of stigma they argued was attached to the word “marijuana.”
Former NFL player Marvin Washington discussed the lawsuit he has filed against the 1970 Controlled Substance Act, which identified cannabis as a Schedule I drug, the same class as heroin and LSD.
While there was talk of the process of legalization, Washington and other panelists emphasized increasing the presence of people of color in the burgeoning industry, speaking to a crowd largely made up of audience members of color.
“This is the largest emergent market since the tech industry took off over fifty years ago, [people of color] are less than one percent [in that industry.] ” said Washington. “With this plant being illegal, we participate more than one percent, with mandatory minimums and the prison industrial complex. I want to change that.”
“I just came back from a conference, there were 3,000 people, and maybe thirty of us in that room that were of color,” said April Walker of Walker Wear. “The opportunity is vast, and it’s there, it’s just how you want to participate and how you want to work for it.”
Kassandra Frederique of the New York State Drug Policy Alliance, argued that through history, drug laws have been used as a way to oppress people of color. She referenced opium laws that coincided with the presence of Chinese immigrants early in the country’s history, former president Richard Nixon’s War on Drugs in the 1970s, and the 1973 Rockefeller Drug Laws of New York.
Frederique also argued that under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, there remains a massive disparity in the arrests of black and latino New Yorkers, especially for possession of marijuana.
“Drug laws are not based on the pharmacology of the drug,” said Frederique, arguing that drug laws were used to disrupt communities of color, separate families, and deport immigrants. “They are based on the face of the dominant user population.”
Panelists insisted that the potential wealth involved in the rising cannabis industry must enrich entrepreneurs and workers of color, considering the destruction they said drug laws had brought to communities.
“We need to put on a different lens and say, ‘now let’s rebuild our communities with cannabis,’” said Rani Soto, of IDeserve Canna, arguing that dispensaries and cannabis-related industry could bring jobs and stimulate local business. “Let’s go back into these communities that have been destroyed by the war on drugs. Let’s get back into rebuilding what they essentially destroyed.”
At the end of the panel, the audience stuck around for an impromptu showcasing of digital coding work that kids from grades 6-12 had participated in during the SOURCE360 Tech Hackathon. One by one, the children, shy at first, spoke to the audience about the websites and blogs that they had built, each covering a different hip hop theme or artist.
The Source owner, L. Londell McMillan noted the huge variety in Source360’s events, from coding to cannabis.
“We went from cannabis to youth tech. Wow, hip hop has a scope,” said McMillan, as the crowd began to head downstairs towards the rumble of live music and free-flowing beverages. “But one connector is that innovation creation, ownership and opportunity are so important. And that’s what we’re about.”
Other panel discussions at the two-day event centered on such topics as the Glam Factor and How to Make it Work; Lights, Camera, Action: Hip Hop Culture in Cinema & Television; and SOURCE Latino: Bridging the Gap of Hispanic and Urban Culture.
