Equity First Alliance
Equity First Alliance was an alliance of national community nonprofits groups steered by democratic cooperative leadership. The mission of Equity First Alliance was to harness the political power of cannabis organizers that work at the intersection of the cannabis industry, racial equity, and reparative justice. Through education, mobilization, dialogue, engagement, and collective action, we work to advance equity in the cannabis industry, to repair harms of the War on Drugs, and to seek justice for those who have been most harmed by it.
Our first action was to organize National Expungement Week, a series of 17 expungement clinics across the country pushing for public benefits and wraparound services for system impacted and formerly incarcerated people. National Expungement Week has continued on over the last 4 years.
Credit: EFA Founding Member, Community Organizer, Creative Director, Communications/PR, Web Strategy/Build, Copywriting
EQUITY FIRST ARTWORK
Worked with LA Based Artists to create collage poster for the EFA Launch available via digital download and in print. The poster was published in High Times Magazine and several other publications and in press.
EQUITY FIRST PROTEST @ SXSW
We flipped the press to highlight the protests, hung banners on the highway, and spoke about social equity in cannabis,
Excerpt from Forbes:
“Less than a mile from Travis County Jail, where people of color are still disproportionately incarcerated for cannabis possession, multibillion dollar conglomerates representing "Big Marijuana," that are predominantly controlled by caucasian men, will speak at South by Southwest (SXSW), Austin's preeminent convergence of art, music and technology, about the cannabis marketplace.
Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and Board member of Acreage Holdings, a Canadian-based cannabis investment firm, John Boehner, and Acreage CEO Kevin Murphy shared a SXSW panel on Friday, during the conference's cannabis symposium.
Many took offense to his presence, most notably the Equity First Alliance (EFA), mainly due to the fact that Republican Boehner was a documented prohibitionist while in office with a long history of opposing marijuana legalization.
While Boehner conveniently maintains that he can't change the past, Equity First Alliance takes umbrage with the systemically unfair dichotomy of wealthy white men in suits reversing their positions on cannabis in order to line their wallets, while a disproportionate number of people of color still languish in state and federal prisons for low-level, non-violent cannabis-related crimes.
"Our protest at SXSW sends a bold message in support of cannabis equity, justice, and repair. We stand together, recognizing that by defending the most marginalized among us, we defend all of us. We support the advocacy and resistance movements that reflect our multiple and intersecting identities, and we call on all defenders of human rights to join us,” says Felicia Carbajal of EFA and the Los Angeles-based non-profit the Social Impact Center.
