Marriott Strike Impacts Oakland’s New West Summit Cannabis Conference

According to a Vox post this morning the low wages paid to Marriott servers, housekeepers and the like “make it impossible to live in some of the nation’s most expensive cities.” So their employees are seeking higher wages. They’re also asking the company to improve employment conditions by easing strenuous workloads “that often lead to injuries, and for more protection against sexual harassment and violence,” reports Vox.

Over the last hundred years or so the people who have kept the marijuana legalization dream alive by cultivating and selling an illegal plant have always had to put up with shitty working conditions. They still do. Actually anybody who’s ever enjoyed weed—since the dawn of marijuana prohibition—has had to tolerate shitty conditions. So we can empathize with marginalized Marriott staff who are fighting a mega corporation that raked in more than $22 billion in revenue last year and gave nothing back to its employees. And we can support Marriot’s striking workforce by not stepping across their picket line and stepping on laborers worldwide.

Fuck McCarthyism—we’re not judging anyone who crossed the line. Everybody’s got to make their own choices. And sure the cannabis industry here in California is a current mess. Nobody can get a license, family farms and mom and pop operations are getting pushed out. Have’s are snitching on have not’s. And the black market or as we like to call it “the traditional market” (aka family farms, mom and pop ops, the have nots) is under a greater threat now than ever before.

But we hope to see a flourishing cannabis industry someday. One that provides a living wage, safe conditions, as well as dignity and respect for its workers. And one of they ways that we think we can make this happen is by standing in solidarity with Marriott picketers today and with workers worldwide everyday.