Nikolas Schiller | |
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Born | Nikolas Schiller October 10, 1980 Ballwin, St. Louis, Missouri |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | George Washington University |
Known for | Aerial Photography, Digital Art, Cartography |
Movement | Geospatial Art |
Nikolas Schiller (born October 10, 1980) is an American blogger and drug policy reform activist who lives in Washington, DC. He is primarily known for developing Geospatial Art, [1] which is the name he gave to his collection of abstract fantasy maps created from kaleidoscopic aerial photographs, and co-founding DCMJ, where he helped write Initiative 71, [2] which legalized the cultivation and possession of small amounts of cannabis in the nation's capital.
He was born in Saint Louis, Missouri. [3] In 1999 he moved to Washington, D.C. to study geography and computer science at the George Washington University. In 2004 he created a blog called The Daily Render and unlike many people at the time, chose to prevent search engines from accessing the content. [3] Over the next 1000 days he developed and published a unique type of map composed of kaleidescopic aerial photographs. [1] In the lead up to the second inauguration of George W. Bush, he developed one of the first on-line maps of the planned events to use aerial photography. [3] In May 2007 he created a site for image macros of his maps in the vein of the popular LOLcats meme [4] with his website LOLMaps. During the summer of 2007 he created website showing a simulated I.E.D. experience using a "drive" down a street constructed with Google Streetview. [5] At that time he also discovered that the aerial and satellite imagery of downtown Washington, D.C. was purposely out-dated for national security concerns. [6] In the fall of 2007 he designed the record cover for Thievery Corporation's 12" single Supreme Illusion (ESL110), [7] which features aerial photography of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In March 2008 he removed the robots exclusion protocols from his blog, which now allows his website to be accessed from all major search engines. In July 2008 he was assaulted on his doorstep by three men, but survived with only a bloody lip. [8] As a blogger, he has worked with writers at Wonkette [9] and the Huffington Post. [10] [11] He currently resides in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, DC.
In February 2013, Schiller, along with Adam Eidinger and Alan Amsterdam, co-founded DC Marijuana Justice, colloquially known as DCMJ. [12] the organization submitted their first draft to the District of Columbia Board of Elections. Due to the prohibition of the ballot initiatives from being able to appropriate funds to implement the proposed legislation, the first draft was withdrawn. [13] The second version, which became Initiative 71, was submitted by Adam Eidinger to the DC Board of Elections in early 2014. Schiller served as the campaign's Director of Communications. [14]
Beginning in 2016 his work with DCMJ focused on advocacy related to the removal cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act. DCMJ organized an extremely popular [15] smoke-in outside the White House, [16] which resulted in a meeting with White House staff. [17] Later that year he helped bring two 51' foot long inflatable joints to the Democratic National Convention to "make sure all candidates are for full legalization of cannabis." [18]
After the election of Donald Trump, in early 2017 DCMJ announced that it was going to distribute 4,200 joints at the inauguration in order to highlight that cannabis reform is a non-partisan issue. [19] Calling it #Trump420, [20] over 5,500 joints were rolled prior to the inauguration. [21] By January 20, 2017, over 8,000 joints had been rolled. [22] Schiller helped organize another joint giveaway near the U.S. Capitol, which ultimately resulted in numerous arrests. [23] [24] The following day 6 of the activists had their charges dropped, [25] which allowed DCMJ to come back to the Capitol four days later for a second smoke-in. [26]
In October 2017, DCMJ began their campaign to raise awareness that individuals living in government subsidized housing risk eviction if they are found to have cannabis in their homes. [27]
Since the beginning of 2004 he has been involved with the DC statehood movement. He was served on the steering committee of the DC Statehood Green Party from 2005 to 2007 and was a delegate to the Green Party of the United States from 2006 to 2007. He has been a vocal critic of DC voting rights legislation that would give residents of the District of Columbia only one vote in the United States House of Representatives. [28] He has created a DC Flag [29] and a DC license plate to express the concept of taxation with one-third representation. He has been known to attend voting rights demonstrations [30] wearing colonial outfits [3] [31] to emphasize the fact that District resident are colonists who suffer from Taxation Without Representation.
In February 2009, under the motto “The United States government operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so should Metro,” he created a Facebook Group called "Washington Metropolitan Area Residents for a 24 Hour Metro" to help lobby for expanded operating hours. [32]
In July 2009 he put up a sign on a street lamp outside of MTV's The Real World house in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC that said IN THE REAL WORLD ALL AMERICANS DESERVE FULL REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS. [33] In November 2009, while dressed in colonial attire, he was asked to take off his tricorn hat during a Congressional hearing on budget autonomy for the District of Columbia and was briefly detained by the U.S. Capitol Police, but was allowed to return to the hearing after promising to not put the hat back on. [34] [35] As an antiwar activist, he once arranged bricks on the rooftop of his home to spell out NO WAR [36] so that his message would show up on Google Maps.
In January 2010, he co-founded a non-profit organization called the DC Patients' Cooperative, which he hoped would become a licensed medical cannabis dispensary in the District of Columbia. [37] In May 2010, after the Council of the District of Columbia passed legislation to regulate the medical cannabis program, he went on record advocating for more employment protections for qualified patients. [38] In February 2011, he helped organize a town hall meeting to educate the public on the medical cannabis program's regulations. [39] [40] On the one year anniversary of Congress approving the legislation, he helped organize a press conference to call on the District of Columbia government to fully implement the program, allow patients to grow their own medicine, and to establish an affirmative defense for patients. [41] Due to the "glacial pace" [42] and a requirement to sign a legal waiver concerning federal prosecution for participation in the program, he said that the organization is taking a "wait and see" approach instead of applying for a license. [43]
On February 21, 2012, a photo of him in colonial attire appeared in Washington Post columnist Vivek Wadhwa's article America, keep rewarding your dissidents [44]
In the summer of 2013 Schiller began driving an art car around Washington, DC with a sculpture of a genetically modified apple attached to the roof in order to protest the U.S. government's policies on the labeling of genetically modified foods. [45] Named Goldie, [46] the Ford Escort was a part of a fleet of art cars that featured sculptures of a corn cob, soybean, sugar beet, and tomato [47] that were designed to appear cross-bred with a fish to humorously convey the message that unlabeled genetically engineered food was fishy. In August 2013 he drove the car across the United States from Washington, DC to Washington state in order to promote the passage of Ballot Initiative 522. [48]
In 2020, he served as the field director for Initiative 81, a Washington, DC ballot initiative that will make some plant medicines the lowest law enforcement priority. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the campaign was forced to suspend its operations in the spring. [49] After the Council of the District of Columbia passed legislation allowing the District of Columbia Board of Elections to change ballot access rules, the campaign was able to successfully mail over 200,000 petitions to District of Columbia voters and hire over 150 petition circulators to collect signatures from registered voters outside grocery stores using social distancing in order to successfully qualify for the general election ballot. [50]
420, 4:20 or 4/20 is cannabis culture slang for marijuana and hashish consumption, especially smoking around the time 4:20 p.m. (16:20). It also refers to cannabis-oriented celebrations that take place annually on April 20.
The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) is the largest organization working solely on marijuana policy reform in the United States in terms of its budget, number of members, and staff.
In the United States, the removal of cannabis from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the category reserved for drugs that have "no currently accepted medical use", is a proposed legal and administrative change in cannabis-related law at the federal level. After being proposed repeatedly since 1972, the U.S. Department of Justice initiated 2024 rulemaking to reschedule cannabis to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. The majority of 2024 public comments supported descheduling, decriminalizing, or legalizing marijuana at the federal level.
In the United States, increased restrictions and labeling of cannabis as a poison began in many states from 1906 onward, and outright prohibitions began in the 1920s. By the mid-1930s cannabis was regulated as a drug in every state, including 35 states that adopted the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act. The first national regulation was the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.
In the United States, the use of cannabis for medical purposes is legal in 38 states, four out of five permanently inhabited U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia, as of March 2023. Ten other states have more restrictive laws limiting THC content, for the purpose of allowing access to products that are rich in cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive component of cannabis. There is significant variation in medical cannabis laws from state to state, including how it is produced and distributed, how it can be consumed, and what medical conditions it can be used for.
In the United States, cannabis is legal in 38 of 50 states for medical use and 24 states for recreational use. At the federal level, cannabis is classified as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, determined to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use, prohibiting its use for any purpose. Despite this prohibition, federal law is generally not enforced against the possession, cultivation, or intrastate distribution of cannabis in states where such activity has been legalized. On May 1, 2024, the Associated Press reported on plans by the Drug Enforcement Administration to move cannabis to the less-restrictive Schedule III.
The legal history of cannabis in the United States began with state-level prohibition in the early 20th century, with the first major federal limitations occurring in 1937. Starting with Oregon in 1973, individual states began to liberalize cannabis laws through decriminalization. In 1996, California became the first state to legalize medical cannabis, sparking a trend that spread to a majority of states by 2016. In 2012, Washington and Colorado became the first states to legalize cannabis for recreational use.
Initiative 71 was a voter-approved ballot measure in Washington, D.C., that legalized the recreational use of cannabis. The short title of the initiative was "Legalization of Possession of Minimal Amounts of Marijuana for Personal Use Act of 2014". The measure was approved by 64.87% of voters on November 4, 2014 and went into full effect on February 26, 2015.
Initiative 59 was a 1998 ballot initiative in Washington, D.C., that sought to legalize medical cannabis. The short title of the initiative was "Legalization of Marijuana for Medical Treatment Initiative of 1998". Though the initiative passed with 69% of the vote in November 1998, its implementation was delayed by Congress's passage of the Barr Amendment, which prohibited DC from using its funds in support of the program. This Amendment delayed the start of the medical marijuana program until it was effectively overturned in 2009, with the first DC customer legally purchasing medical cannabis at a dispensary in the District in 2013.
Adam Eidinger is a Washington D.C. businessman and cannabis rights activist, known for his role in spearheading Initiative 71, which legalized cannabis in the District of Columbia in 2015.
Cannabis is strictly illegal in Wyoming. The state has some of the strictest cannabis laws in the United States. Cannabis itself is not allowed for medical purposes, but a 2015 law allows limited use of non-psychoactive Cannabidiol. An effort was made to place two initiatives on the 2022 ballot, one to legalize medical cannabis, and the other to decriminalize personal use.
Cannabis dispensaries in the United States or marijuana dispensaries are a type of cannabis retail outlet, local government-regulated physical location, typically inside a retail storefront or office building, in which a person can purchase cannabis and cannabis-related items for medical or recreational use.
Cannabis in Arizona is legal for recreational use. A 2020 initiative to legalize recreational use passed with 60% of the vote. Possession and cultivation of recreational cannabis became legal on November 30, 2020, with the first state-licensed sales occurring on January 22, 2021.
Cannabis in Florida is illegal for recreational use. Possession of up to 20 grams is a misdemeanor offense, punishable by up to a year in jail, a fine of up to $1000, and the suspension of one's driver's license. Several cities and counties have enacted reforms to apply lesser penalties, however.
Cannabis in Washington relates to a number of legislative, legal, and cultural events surrounding the use of cannabis. On December 6, 2012, Washington became the first U.S. state to legalize recreational use of marijuana and the first to allow recreational marijuana sales, alongside Colorado. The state had previously legalized medical marijuana in 1998. Under state law, cannabis is legal for medical purposes and for any purpose by adults over 21.
In Washington, D.C., cannabis is legal for both medical use and recreational use for possession, personal use, cultivation, transportation and gifting, and for retail sale once a regulatory system is implemented following an affirmative vote by the residents on a 2014 ballot initiative. The United States Congress exercises oversight over the government of the District of Columbia, preventing the local government from regulating cannabis sales like other jurisdictions with authority derived from a U.S. state.
The National Cannabis Festival is a yearly, one-day event held at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium festival grounds with a focus on the music, advocacy, education, and activism related to cannabis in Washington, D.C. The festival debuted in 2016 following the passing of Initiative 71, a voter-approved ballot initiative that legalized recreational use of marijuana in the District of Columbia. It was founded by Caroline Phillips, who announced the inaugural event with an Indiegogo campaign, raising an initial $21,000 to help cover costs through crowd-sourced fundraising efforts. The festival includes music concerts, an education pavilion, and vendor fair.
Two Is Enough D.C. was the main opposition campaign to Initiative 71, which succeeded in legalizing cannabis in the District of Columbia by ballot initiative in 2014. The campaign was announced in September 2014 by DC resident Will Jones III, at a news conference featuring former Senator Patrick Kennedy, founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. At the event, Jones publicly invited pro-71 activist Adam Eidinger to a public debate on the issue. In response to questions as to why the campaign was beginning less than two months before the election, Jones stated "We should have organized earlier... but it's better to start late than never.