Touting Green Revolution, Ziggy Marley Campaigns For Pot Legalization

Touting Green Revolution, Ziggy Marley Campaigns For Pot Legalization

Touting Green Revolution, Ziggy Marley Campaigns For Pot Legalization

Reggae star Ziggy Marley is the new songwriter and pundit for the Prop 19 campaign.

Ari Melber
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Reggae star Ziggy Marley entered the election fray with a new song this week. But unlike most musicians, who focus on bland turnout appeals or conventional candidate endorsements, Marley is calling for pot legalization.

That’s not just tour bus talk, either. As news junkies and potheads already know, the California ballot includes a referendum on legalizing marijuana, Prop 19. Marley’s new tune, "A Fire Burns for Freedom," can be downloaded for free from his homepage, and the grammy-winning star turned up on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan show to explain the campaign:

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Ari Melber Ari Melber is The Nation’s Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine’s blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at [email protected]. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” “The Joy Behar Show,” “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004).  His reporting  has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review.  He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.  


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