Video: Happy Travels at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference

I’ve been working pretty intensely on Europe projects for five months nonstop. Now that I’m home, I’ve given myself a little two-day holiday. So where do I go for a break? To a convention about something not directly related to European travel! This little trip to Georgia is a vacation for a professional traveler.

I’m at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Atlanta, freshening up my tired mind with a different kind of stimulus. In this clip, I’m being drummed into the big hall with an amazing variety of people.

A few minutes after I recorded this clip, I was front row for Michelle Alexander’s keynote address. Michelle is the darling of the drug reform movement for her groundbreaking book The New Jim Crow, which explains how the drug war is, in a way, the slavery of our day. She gave a powerful and insightful speech about how the war on drugs, mass incarceration, and racism are intertwined…and not accidentally. This was the highlight of the conference for me.

Ira Glasser and Rick Steves

At conventions like these, I get to reconnect with inspirational leaders like Ira Glasser (Executive Director of the ACLU from 1978 to 2001).

There’s an intangible value in being with a group of people who care. So many people complain about this or that. But there are ways to actually mobilize and make a difference in our society, and conventions like these are a good springboard. My point: While you may not get an invitation in the mail, groups like this one are eager to enroll newbies. For a couple hundred bucks, you can have your official nametag, your schedule binder, and a chance to connect with the leading movers and shakers in whatever cause arouses the activist in you. Along with this convention, I’ve enjoyed an affordable housing convention in Portland, a big agriculture and world hunger convention in Des Moines, a pharmaceutical industry gathering about medical marijuana in Everett, and others. Each one had an impact on my outlook, and each one was wide open to anyone who was interested.

If you care about good citizenship, I consider conventions like this one to be very good travel.

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