Global Ganja Report

"Diamond" Dave Whitaker, a local legend and longtime counterculture figure in San Francisco, died March 2 at the age of 88. Long known as the "mayor of Haight Street," Whitaker was an organizer of underground poetry readings, pirate radio broadcasts, and countless other hippie-spirited events, keeping alive the flame of the city's vibrant 1960s scene for new generations of youth.

"Country Joe” McDonald of the band Country Joe & the Fish, immortalized as an icon of the 1960s counterculture through his proudly subversive performance at the Woodstock festival, died March 7 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 84. In the defining moment of his career, he led a crowd of nearly half a million at the 1969 Upstate New York mega-concert in the "Fish Cheer" (spelling out the word FUCK) before launching into his satirical anti-war anthem "I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin'-to-Die Rag."

Bob Weir, who helped define the sound of the Grateful Dead, flagship band of the 1960s San Francisco scene, died Jan. 10 at the age of 78. His life was synonymous with the Dead, which he saw through its various incarnations—from its early roots in the Bay Area folk revival and bluegrass circuit to preeminent symbol of the youth counterculture, to an American institution and grand-daddies of the "jam band" tradition.

Jimmy Cliff, the Jamaican singer who helped transform the local genres of ska and rocksteady into the international sensation of reggae, died Nov. 24 at the age of 81. Jamaica's Prime Minister Andrew Holness called him "a true cultural giant whose music carried the heart of our nation to the world."

New York City's Democratic Party primary winner for the 2025 mayoral race Zohran Mamdani was a big supporter of marijuana legalization in New York state when the bill passed in 2021. He's also reportedly a cannabis consumer himself. In 2024, City & State New York said, "Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani enjoys cannabis personally." It's unclear whether Mamdani's ever been asked specifically about his personal use of cannabis. But on the day the Marijuana Regulation & Taxation Act (MRTA) was signed into law by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, March 31, 2021, Mamdani enthusiastically tweeted no less than 11 times. He also made the following memorable floor statement:

For those, such as myself, who came of age in the prohibition era, it was a tad surreal to see the giant electronic billboard overlooking Manhattan’s Times Square (focal point of the world-famous New Years Eve countdown) displaying a “countdown to 420” promoted by a leading brand of rolling papers. But that is what gathered revelers witnessed in the minutes leading up to 4:20 PM on the afternoon of Sunday, April 20.

April 20 has become a national day of celebration for the hedonistic cannabis subculture, but it has also long been marked by the radical right and Nazi-nostalgists around the world for unsavory reasons. It now emerges that Trump's Inauguration Day executive order declaring a state of emergency on the southern border also set a deadline of April 20 for a joint Pentagon-Homeland Security recommendation on whether to invoke the Insurrection Act. This has sparked much speculation that Trump will immediately do so, declaring martial law and consolidating a dictatorship... this weekend. How likely is this, and is the date a mere coincidence? In Episode 274 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg breaks it down. 

In Episode 233 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg recalls his days as a young neo-Yippie in the 1980s. A remnant faction of the 1960s counterculture group adopted a punk aesthetic for the Reagan era, launched the US branch of the Rock Against Racism movement, brought chaos to the streets at Republican and Democratic political conventions, defied the police in open cannabis "smoke-ins"—and won a landmark Supreme Court ruling for free speech. The Yippie clubhouse at 9 Bleecker Street, the hub for all these activities, has long since succumbed to the gentrification of the East Village, but it survived long enough to provide inspiration to a new generation of radical youth during Occupy Wall Street. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.