A California county has awarded $40,000 in hashish fairness grant funding to a neighborhood dispensary operator simply months after he slammed that very same program for allegedly discriminating towards white folks.
John Loe — who owns Loe Dispensary in Sonoma, about 40 miles north of San Francisco — blasted the county’s Board of Supervisors in October for what he claimed have been “racist, anti-white tropes” in its grant program authorization report.
“White folks will get up,” he mentioned on the board assembly. “You’ll not intimidate us.”
In Could, the county’s hashish fairness program awarded $635,000 to twenty native hashish operators, together with Loe. Grants ranged from $18,520 to $50,270, and have been awarded to these decided to have been negatively or disproportionately impacted by earlier hashish prohibition and the warfare on medicine, officers mentioned.
“This grant program goals to serve socioeconomically deprived people navigating the hashish allow course of,” Supervisor David Rabbitt mentioned in a press release saying the funding.
This system requires the grantee, or a member of their household, to have been arrested or convicted of cannabis-related offenses between 1971 and 2016. The applying doesn’t require candidates to submit details about their race.
“The county doesn’t take race under consideration when reviewing candidates for the hashish fairness program,” mentioned county spokesperson Matt Brown.
Loe didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark this week.
The county in its grant authorization report famous that Latinx and low-income populations have been disproportionately impacted by the warfare on medicine, and that “rich, white stakeholders more and more personal the county’s licensed hashish panorama, whose investments in land and sources end in restricted alternatives for small hashish operators.”
Loe referred to as this language racist on the October board assembly and threatened to take authorized motion towards the county after board members tried to chop his public remark time quick. He additionally claimed this system did use race as an element to evaluate candidates, regardless of the county’s denial.
“You need variety? What does that imply?” he mentioned. “White folks can’t stick up for themselves? You’re racist.”
Sonoma County supervisors created an Workplace of Fairness in 2020 and a “racial fairness toolkit” the next yr that requires proposed applications to stipulate how they are going to assist advance racial equality locally.
In Loe’s grant utility, submitted on Jan. 22, he referred to as the racial fairness toolkit unlawful and wrote that “this racist coverage shall be uncovered.” He additional attacked this system for requiring candidates or one in all their relations to have been arrested as a result of cannabis-related exercise, although he famous he certified due to his brother’s cannabis-related arrest.
“I needed to work very [hard] to maintain from getting arrested,” he wrote. “The concept that I wasn’t harmed by criminalization is racist and I can’t stand by whereas this county discriminates towards whites and towards non-criminals.”
Loe requested $1 million to make up for wildfire harm and an roughly four-year delay in aid as a result of points with hashish allow processing.
“You’re hated by all of us for good cause,” he wrote in his utility to the board. “You can be held accountable… With Minimal Respect, John Loe.”
