Butcher Bob
Lone Wolf
John Sinclair, poet whose imprisonment inspired Ann Arbor’s Hash Bash, dead at 82
Published: April 2, 2024By Ryan Stanton
ANN ARBOR, MI — John Sinclair, the poet whose imprisonment for marijuana inspired the start of Ann Arbor’s long-running annual Hash Bash in the 1970s, has died.
He was 82.
“It’s a tremendous loss,” said friend and Hash Bash organizer Jamie Lowell, who credits Sinclair for helping kick off what he calls the modern cannabis movement over 50 years ago.
Sinclair’s death on Tuesday, April 2, at a Detroit hospital came just four days before he was scheduled to speak at the 53rd-annual marijuana rally on the University of Michigan Diag.
This year’s event now is expected to be a memorial of sorts paying tribute to the longtime activist.
“This Hash Bash is the John Sinclair memorial Hash Bash and we will carry on in his name until we win complete freedom for cannabis,” said Ann Arbor activist Chuck Ream, calling it absurd that pot is still illegal at the federal level.
Sinclair, who also once managed the legendary proto-punk rock band MC5, struggled with health issues in recent years, getting around in a wheelchair while living in Detroit, though he continued to make appearances at Hash Bash through 2023.
Heart failure was his official cause of death, the Detroit Metro Times reported.
“He’s a tough dude, but he has been physically up and down for the last few years for different reasons — he’s had diabetes, he’s taken some falls, he’s had heart surgery,” Lowell said.
Lowell said he visited Sinclair a couple weeks ago at his daughter’s house near Detroit where Sinclair was staying before he went into the hospital. Lowell came bearing gifts — fresh joints from Winewood Organics in Ann Arbor — and they hung out and smoked down together one last time, he said.
“We definitely partook,” he said, adding he’s happy now they had that last time together.
Sinclair’s passing will be a huge focus at Hash Bash, which starts at noon Saturday, April 6, Lowell said, indicating he expects people to speak and pay tribute in a meaningful way.
The annual marijuana celebration and smoke fest originated in April 1972, four months after musician John Lennon and others came to town for a freedom rally for Sinclair, who was partway through serving a 10-year prison sentence for two joints.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono appeared at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally in Crisler Arena, the first Lennon performance since the end of the Beatles. The rally attracted tens of thousands to free Joh Sinclair from prison for a marijuana charge. Photo provided by University of Michigan.University of Michigan
After Sinclair was freed and Michigan’s felony marijuana law was declared unconstitutional, the first Hash Bash was held as a new state law with lesser penalties took effect.
The Ann Arbor City Council then blazed new trails with a lenient $5 fine for marijuana in May 1972, though not without a fair amount of controversy. The measure was repealed by Republicans in July 1973 before the issue went on the ballot in April 1974 and voters enshrined the $5 fine in the city charter, decriminalizing marijuana in Ann Arbor.
Nearly half a century afterward, Michigan became the 10th state to legalize recreational marijuana.
John Sinclair pictured at a book event on August 26, 1988. Colleen Fitzgerald | The Ann Arbor News
Sinclair said in a 2011 interview the original goal of Hash Bash was total legalization and he was still hoping to see that happen in his lifetime.
“They need to get rid of this idiotic, hypocritical war on drugs. Marijuana, there’s nothing wrong with it,” he said. “It doesn’t harm anybody, it’s not a dangerous substance, and millions of people use it — and they’re just characterized as criminals by these people whose drug of choice is alcohol. So the first thing you get rid of is tremendous hypocrisy.”
Sinclair and his wife Leni and about 30 members of their counterculture commune Trans-Love Energies famously came to Ann Arbor from Detroit in 1968 and packed into a pair of houses on Hill Street, a stone’s throw from the University of Michigan. They lived with the MC5 and started the White Panther Party, an anti-racist political collective that grew into the Rainbow People’s Party, and started putting on free live concerts in Ann Arbor’s West Park until the city shut them down.
“Everybody was on acid at West Park. We just had a ball at that motherf*****,” he once recalled, noting they called themselves “acid freeks,” spelled with two Es like “free.”
Sinclair, who was born in Flint, left Ann Arbor in 1975 to go back to Detroit and also later spent time in Amsterdam and New Orleans. He performed poetry with different musical ensembles, worked as a disc jockey, made records and wrote books, among other endeavors.
During his days as a left-wing radical in Ann Arbor, he also was involved in putting out the Ann Arbor Sun, an alternative newspaper, and helped get progressive Human Rights Party candidates elected to City Council, paving the way for Ann Arbor to decriminalize marijuana decades ahead of other cities.
“John Sinclair was the key person who legalized marijuana in Ann Arbor,” Ream said, adding Ann Arbor was the first place that really relaxed and made it possible for people to use marijuana without risk of imprisonment.
“All of that was because of John’s forcefulness within the Human Rights Party,” he said. “As long as we had two members in the City Council where we held the balance of the vote, he would not let anything go forward until we had legalized marijuana.”
Marijuana activist and poet John Sinclair speaks during the 48th annual Hash Bash on the University of Michigan Diag, Saturday, April 6, 2019 in Ann Arbor. Ben Allan Smith | MLive.com
Sinclair was instrumental in fundamentally breaking down “the myth of reefer madness” and showing a path to legalization in the United States and the world, Ream said.
“What’s really cool with him is he pointed to those who inspired him, too, and those who did action before him,” Lowell said. “I mean, this whole thing has been going on in cycles for years as far as broader activism, but specifically the cannabis movement.”
Sinclair’s now ex-wife Leni, who carried on the cause while Sinclair was in prison for over two years from 1969 to 1971, also doesn’t get enough recognition or credit, Lowell said. They were married in 1965 and had two daughters together in 1967 and 1970 — before they legally separated in 1977 and later divorced in 1988. Sinclair later married Patricia (Penny) Brown.
“His two daughters are saints, by the way,” Lowell said. “They really were caretaking for him for the end of his time here on earth and they did a great job.”
John Sinclair, poet whose imprisonment inspired Ann Arbor’s Hash Bash, dead at 82
John Sinclair, the poet whose imprisonment for marijuana inspired the start of Ann Arbor's long-running annual Hash Bash in the 1970s, has died.
www.mlive.com
