Episode #71: How Community Organizers Helped Legalize Recreational Marijuana in Arizona with Alejandro Chavez

Hello everyone and welcome to A Pretty Normal Podcast, I am your
host, Xavier Diaz and we have an amazing new interview for you
this week! 


Its been a week since the election was held and there were some
amazing results on a variety of fronts including the fact that 5
different states passed some form of marijuana legalization
measures. This was a huge victory for the cannabis industry and
another step forward in ending the drug war. 


One amazing comeback story came to us from the state of Arizona,
where voters passed proposition 207, which legalizes recreational
marijuana. In 2016, the initiative failed to pass but only by a
few percentage points, which left proponents of legalization, no
pun intended fired up and ready to finish the job. And it
certainly paid off because this time prop 207 was passed with 60%
of the vote and was, once again no pun intended, the highest vote
getter in Arizona state history with 1.92 million people voting
in favor of legalization. I wanted to take the time out to learn
about what changed in those 4 years and how community organizers
got the message out.


So I spoke with Alejandro Chavez, a Political Director at
Strategies 360, who joined to help win the Smart and Safe Arizona
campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in Arizona.


He’s done a lot of amazing work with MoveOn.org where he helped
the successful campaigns of Arizona State Representative Ruben
Gallego, Texas Rep Veronica Escobar and Nevada Senator Catherine
Cortez.


Oh yeah and he just so happens to be the grandson of legendary
civil rights activist Cesar Chavez.





Connect with Alejandro Chavez on Twitter @alejchavez


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