Who is Marc Emery?

Marc Emery, also known as The Prince of Pot, is the main man when it comes to the fight to legalize marijuana.

If you don't know who he is then here is a quick list of just some of his important non-marijuana related activist endeavours.

1. In 1987 and 1988 he fought against the archaic Sunday shopping laws, prohibiting stores to be open on Sundays, by opening his store 8 Sundays in a row. For this he was charged for each of the 8 separate days he left his store open. In March 1988 he spent four days in jail after refusing to pay a fine for something that he believed should not be a crime

2. In 1991 he campaigned against the bid to bring the Pan-Am games to London, Ontario. He and his colleagues felt that increasing taxes to pay for something like that was irresponsible and would lead to the loss of millions for the city of London

3. In 1991 he also began to fight censorship. After 2 Live Crew's album "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" was banned in Ontario, he went to the U.S and brought back inventory of the CD for his store. He did this all out in the open taking out advertisements in the paper telling people to come to his store for the banned album.

"A bad law is one that restricts our personal choices in the way we live our own life." Marc Emery on Sunday shopping

This is just a small sampling of what Marc has done to help bring freedom about. He also provided free garbage pickup during a garbage strike in 1986, and participated politically with the Libertarian Party and the Unparty, now known as the Freedom Party

My next posting will be about his work towards the Legalization of Marijuana, and the politically motivated raid in 2005 which led to his extradition to the US for a 5 year sentence.