Events - Asked to give a speech on drug policy reform.

[fnord]

So i was just offered the chance to do something Ive always held high on my to-do list,simultaneously address a few thousand people about drug policy reform,the problem is the festival is happening in like 3-4 days and i suck at writing speeches/anything that involves writing anything besides commands in a Linux terminal. So what I'm looking for is some good ideas, The only thing i can think of the doesn't involve writing a speech/rant is maybe i could get a pig nose and billy club and give a demonstration on police tactics and the trickery they use one people? Proper ways to deal with an officers request to search you/car/house and some of the basics rights the courts are still pretending that we have.(god bless them for playing along!)

So ideas please! Even if its silly just throw it out there

[Panthers007]

I like the pig-snout and club idea. Do you have any African-American friends? You could give the speech with them lying on the stage with one of your feet on top of them. Google-up some Hitler speeches on Law & Order. Do the Dr. Strangelove routine where your right arm keeps rising by itself into a Nazi salute - and you have to keep pushing it (or use the club) back down.

If you get booed off the stage with bottles & cans flying - you did it right.

[FuBai]

The target audience are festival goers so they are likley to be inclined to agree with you. I would talk about it from a criminal perspective, a health perspective (examples like the 84% reduction in new addicts after the Swiss instituted injection clinics with heroin given on prescription) and then go on to look at specific examples of how the drug war is damaging communities and countrys such as Mexico and Peru where the Shining Path Gorrilas are making a come back purely on the back of the narco-trade. Then you can go to specific examples of the corruption it leads to amongst police officers, especially those cops who understand as well as we do that the war is unwinnable. Then drug use as a fundemental human right, as natural as sexual intercourse to the human condition and the fact that your body is your own to poison as you will, and to stop you from doing so is to take away part of the ownership over your own body. Next you can go into the specifics of how to get reform - writing to your representatives, writing to local and national papers, collecting for the drug policy foundation, LEAP, NORML, Transform and all friendly and proactive pressure groups because with concerted effort over time it is possible to make this a mainstream debate, and when you change voters minds you change politicians minds especially when the argument is presented as a fundemental and inailenable right.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Beautifully put fella.

[Panthers007]

Sure - make it an educational guerrilla-theatre performance-art piece. But let it roll - don't be rigid & contrived in the performance (unless that's part of it). Learning to goose-step is always a hit.

[Heretic.Ape.]

And you can always tell everyone to come here to learn and discuss the issues with like-minded people...
We can even start a new thread serving as a compendium and concise introduction to drug policy and reform. I'll help.

[MrG]

If you don't feel comfortable reading a fully scripted speech (blah blah, drone drone, snore snore, etc. etc.), you could simply divide a piece of paper up into sections and, in each section, you title it with a definitive topic (e.g. The War on Drugs, The Human Right to use Drugs), then, under each heading you write a series of key words or phrases that you really want to be able to incorporate into the talk (calling it a talk is less stressful than a speech).

This technique allows somebody who is confident enough to be able to talk more naturally about a subject while, as they talk, allowing them to scan the particular section they are covering at that time in order to focus on key points that they want to make. Once they can't think of anything more to say about one section they can move on to the next.

It can make presentations sound a lot more engaging and natural.

Although, in that you are no doubt going to some Hippie Festival, you may need to alter the traditional confidence building trick and, in this case, imagine the audience with their clothes on, and washed, and not smelly, or stoned.