THE HISTORY OF HASH BASH

The origins and evolution of Ann Arbor's annual reefer rally.

On the Diag: Hash Bash 2016. (Photo: Allen Peisner)

This is the story of how a small Midwestern college town became the home of America’s longest-running cannabis event and a legendary legalization location.

FREEING JOHN SINCLAIR

It all began in December 1966, when prominent poet, pot activist, and White Panther John Sinclair unknowingly gave two joints to an undercover policewoman from the Detroit Narcotics Bureau. A month later he was arrested, tried, and in 1969, sentenced to a shocking ten years in prison. This disproportionately draconian penalty (no doubt intended to make an example of Sinclair), drew widespread outrage among the counterculture community—particularly with the Youth International Party. “Yippie” activist Abbie Hoffman famously stormed on stage whilst tripping balls during The Who’s set at Woodstock and shouted into the microphone, “I think this is a pile of shit while John Sinclair rots in prison …” before guitarist Pete Townshend violently ejected him.

While that stunt may not have done much to help Sinclair, the Yippies' follow-up efforts certainly did: in December 1971, they helped organize a massive rally on Sinclair’s behalf at the University of Michigan’s Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor. Known as the “John Sinclair Freedom Rally,” it included other Yippies like Jerry Rubin, marijuana minstrel David Peel, and future High Times founder Tom Forcade, as well as Beatnik poet Allen Ginsberg, and NORML founder Keith Stroup. More importantly, though, it featured performances by big-name musical acts like Bob Seger, Stevie Wonder, and most impressively, former Beatle John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, who even wrote a song for the occasion titled simply "John Sinclair." (A documentary film of the event, named Ten For Two after the movement’s rallying cry, was released the following year).

Just three days after that concert, Michigan’s Supreme Court ordered Sinclair’s release on bond pending appeal after serving only 2.5 years of his sentence. At the appeal hearing, that same court dismissed his case—ruling that he'd been entrapped and that his sentence was “cruel and unusual.” Moreover, the court declared that the 1952 state law used to convict him—which classified cannabis as a “narcotic”—was inaccurate and therefore unconstitutional, and overturned it. The state legislature quickly drafted and passed a replacement, but enforcement of that new law didn’t take effect until April 1st. This meant that for about three weeks, marijuana was technically legal in the State of Michigan.

RISE OF THE RALLY

Taking full advantage of this unique legal window—and inspired by the action that had set Sinclair free months earlier—local activists organized a pro-pot political rally on the very day the new law was set to take effect. And that, my friends, is how Hash Bash was born. Held at high noon on Saturday, April 1, 1972, at “The Diag” (the central Diagonal Green) on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, the original event—called simply “Hash Festival”—was reportedly attended by somewhere between 150-500 people and had no arrests.

The Democrat-led city council in Ann Arbor had already debated downgrading marijuana possession from a felony to a misdemeanor in 1971. In May 1972—just a month after the rally—they passed an ordinance reducing the penalty for possession to a mere $5 fine, followed by another in September allowing offenders to pay those fines through the mail rather than having to appear in court. This gave Ann Arbor the doobious distinction of being the city with the most liberal pot laws in America.

When April Fool’s Day rolled around again the following year, so did Hash Bash—this time drawing 3000-5000 attendees. Outraged, Conservatives fought back—repealing the lenient law in 1973. But less than a year later, the quarrelsome issue made it onto the ballot as a voter referendum and was voted back into law in April 1974—just in time for Hash Bash number three, which was now officially an annual event.

FREEDOM FIGHTERS

Thanks to the “Just Say No” Reagan era, attendance and interest in Hash Bash saw a steep decline in the 1980s, leading some local officials and newspapers to prematurely celebrate its seeming demise. But all that changed in 1988 with the arrival of High Times. Then editor-in-chief Steve Hager and his Freedom Fighters (including columnists Ed Rosenthal and Chef Ra, among others) rolled into Ann Arbor sporting Colonial tricorn hats and musical instruments—drawing a crowd of nearly 2000 and reinvigorating the faltering festival.

A further effort was made to increase attendance in 1991 when the annual date of the event was changed from the first of April to the first Saturday in April. In the years that followed, the University made several attempts to shut the rally down by denying permits and such, prompting five lawsuits from Hash Bash organizers, NORML, and the ACLU—all of which the University lost.

For the first decade and a half of its existence, Hash Bash was little more than a gathering of people smoking pot in public; but from the early 1990s on, it became a platform for some of the most prominent voices in the marijuana movement, including Tommy Chong, authors Jack Herer and Gatewood Galbraith, NORML founder Keith Stroup, hippie icon Stephen Gaskin, Yippie Dana Beal, and of course, John Sinclair, who returned to the event (and to Michigan) in 1996 after an almost 20-year absence living in New Orleans.

"MR. HASH BASH"

Other than Sinclair, no one has become more associated with the event than Sinclair’s manager, Adam Brook. Nicknamed “Mr. Hash Bash,” Brook started hosting the rally in 1993 and continued to do so for almost two decades, until 2011 when he passed the mic to other Wolverine State weed warriors like Charmie Gholson, Chuck Ream, Mark Passerini, and Nick Zettell. Brook’s specialty was getting media coverage of the event by playing the press:

Emcee Adam Brook (2018). Photo: Rick Thompson (Michigan Cannabis Business Development Group)

“In order to get the TV cameras to show up at Hash Bash, I’d call them on Saturday morning and tell them we’d just heard the police had 200 officers waiting in riot gear,” Brook recounts with a smirk. “Every April Fool's Day we’d publish some sort of claim...Bill Clinton was showing up, Sasha Obama…and sure enough, the media shows up!”

Though no longer serving as its emcee, Brook still attends each year, and since 2017, has hosted a private evening event called the Hash Bash Cup the weekend of the rally.

MARIJUANA IN MICHIGAN

The new millennium brought many changes to Michigan’s marijuana laws. In November 2008, voters passed Proposal 1 legalizing medical marijuana. In 2016, State Representative Jeff Irwin (D) attended Hash Bash and announced that he was sponsoring a bill to legalize marijuana for adult use. That September, several medical reforms were passed—officially legalizing cannabis topicals, edibles, and medical dispensaries.

In 2018, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer came to speak at the rally, and on Election Day that November voters approved another Proposal 1—this time called The Michigan Regulation and Taxation of Marihuana Act—which finally legalized cannabis use for adults statewide. The following April, Ann Arbor celebrated that monumental victory with their biggest Bash ever—boasting well over 10,000 attendees and zero arrests.

Signed/numbered photo of John Sinclair. Sold at Hash Bash 2018 [7]

John Sinclair, 2019. (Rick Thompson)

“Welcome to legalization in the state of Michigan!” Sinclair announced to the cheering crowd in 2019. “You haven’t been here before unless you were here in 1972 when we started it. We went three weeks without any marijuana law, and believe me we took full advantage of every minute of it. Then when the Michigan law went into effect on April Fool’s day, we said, ‘Fuck you—we’re going to go into the Diag to smoke some weed!’ That’s how it started and I’m proud to see it continuing in full force.”

This year, due to Covid-19, organizers were forced to replace the rally with a virtual Zoom event. But with any luck, Hash Bash will make it’s triumphant return to The Diag in April 2021 to celebrate its milestone 50th anniversary.

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For more about Hash Bash, visit hashbash.com, or listen to Episode 6 of our Cannthropology potcast here or wherever you get your podcasts.

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COLLECTION ITEMS:

[1] Second Annual Hash Festival flyer; 1973; Item #F006

[2] 9th Annual Hash Bash program booklet - “The A2 Bash Book”; 1980; Item #B025

[3] Hash Bash ‘93 bumper sticker; 1993; Item #C018

[4] 28th Annual Hash Bash mini-poster; 1999; Item #P010

[5] Photograph: Kieth Stroup speaking at Hash Bash; 2001; Item #PH007

[6] 46th Annual Hash Bash program booklet; 2017; Item #B007

[7] Limited-edition autographed photo print of John Sinclair (10/30), sold at Hash Bash 2018; 2018; Item #PH012