Commercial speech
Dear Editor,
We are writing with our concerns about the request by the organizers of Hempfest (the oddly named “Freedom Rally”) for three days of what amounts to (unlawful) smoking and naked commercial activity on Boston Common, covered in a thin veneer of free speech.
Over the last several years, this event has already increased in duration from one day to two days. For its duration, it is taking up the entire Common (because of the large crowds) and making it unusable by families or anyone with sensitivity to smoke or blasting music. If this were truly a free speech event, one day would be sufficient. But the fact is that the organizers of this event sell their permitted space on the Common to vendors and have sought the extra days to make more money for their organization, the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition, Inc. This is, at best, commercial speech, and therefore subject to far more limits than their nominal message that marijuana should be freely available (which it now is in Massachusetts).
Please to not allow this event to expand further than the two days it already has. If you give it another day, this will push off local schools that use the Common on Fridays, families and dog owners that use the Common during the weekend, only to put more money in the pocket of a narrow special interest organization.
Beacon Hill Civic Association
View Comments (3)
Interesting. I was unaware that the Beacon Hill Civic Association gets to decide what is personal and what is commercial speech.
When the beer gardens on Government Plaza go away, then talk to us about a once a year event that exercises not only free speech, but the celebration of a long and hard fight to legalize cannabis in the first place. It is our right, whether you like it or not. Much as it is your right to scold me about cannabis with scotch on your breath should you so choose. When the beer gardens on City Hall Plaza become so limited in regard to its illegal public consumption of alcohol, then we might be comparing apples to apples. Until then, take your stigmas and hypocrisy, good sirs, and stuff them firmly up your arses where they belong!
Fuck off you stupid cunts.