Editorial:
Going
Out
of
Business
Day
4/20/01
David Borden, Executive Director, [email protected] Every now and then, most nonprofits, including DRCNet, write to their supporters and ask them for the large and small donations that keep the bills and staff paid. On occasion, we've laid it on the line and let our readers know that they were the only thing keeping our work from going under before the next grant or major gift. Thankfully, that's not the kind of "going out of business" to which I am referring in this column. (Though if the thought of that is what got you to actually open up the e-mail, the title served its purpose.) Today I'm talking about a different "going out of business," the kind on which you and we and all our allies have pinned our hopes: the end of prohibition and the ill-fated drug war; the day when the engine of drug incarcerations and drug trade violence and all the related oppressions come to an end -- going out of business day at the DEA, and then some. A lot of other operations will go out of business too, or be downsized: fewer police officers, very little drug testing, fewer border patrols, less military... the list goes on and on. Other things will be drastically altered in form: Drug treatment and education, for example, will face a very different landscape. They might not shut down, they might even benefit and grow, but will definitely have to change the way they function, and change is difficult. Organizations like ours may also go out of business -- not automatically, as the post-prohibition world will doubtless still have work that needs to be done, including making sure that the drug war travesty never happens again. But that's not the same thing at all as struggling for fundamental, almost revolutionary-level social change. DRCNet, and all the other groups in our movement, will cease to exist, at least in the form that we know them today. It is important for organizations to stay focused on their ultimate goals. A late, great elder of our movement, Rufus King, felt this way, and was upset when the Drug Policy Foundation moved into an office with carpeting. Our movement shouldn't get too comfortable, too institutionalized, Rufus felt; we should fix the problem now and take our place alongside the organizations and great causes of the past. There is merit in this way of thinking, though the specific length of the timeline can be debated. Organization-building is crucial to any political movement, but ultimately is only a means to an end. When that end is finally achieved, it will be none too soon: Every day the drug war rages, thousands more lives are disrupted or ruined, all needlessly. Maybe remembering that fact is the best way keep in mind the importance, the profound urgency, of the goals for which we labor and strive.
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