Celebrate John Sinclair & Cannabis Freedom next Friday!

Join former Michigan marijuana prisoner John Sinclair, his family and friends to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his release from Jackson Prison 50 years ago. The party takes place from 6-10 PM on Friday, December 10th at the Ralston Holistic Healing Center and Stonehouse Bar at 19730 Ralston Street (near State Fair).

The event will be held exactly 50 years after the John Sinclair Freedom Rally at Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor when John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Bobby Seale, Phil Ochs, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Seger, Commander Cody and a host of others gathered to speak, play and protest the imprisonment of their friend John Sinclair following a sentence in Detroit Recorder’s Court in July 1969 of 9-1/2 to 10 years for possession of two joints of marijuana.

The event is open to the public and will be held as a benefit for The John Sinclair Foundation, a Michigan non-profit foundation chaired by Sinclair’s granddaughter, Beyonce Sinclair, a junior at the Flint College of the University of Michigan, her grandfather’s alma mater. The benefit is being produced by Foundation Board members Jamie Lowell and Adam Brook with the assistance of Foundation Steering Committee members Matty Lee, Darrell Stavros, Tino Gross, Ben Horner, Rick Thompson, Debra Young and Christian Greer. The event poster is by Carl Lundgren.

Music & poetry will be provided by John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars with special guests to be announced. Food and drink will be catered by the Ralston Center and music performances will take place on stage at the Stonehouse Bar, scheduled to reopen to the public on January 2, 2022. A $50.00 commemorative ticket for the event will be available to benefit The John Sinclair Foundation.

For those whose memory is not 50 years long, Sinclair was released from prison three days after the Freedom Rally and returned to civilian life, where he has cut a wide swath of political and cultural activism and artistic production since January 1972. He presently resides in downtown Detroit after years in New Orleans and Amsterdam and continues to program and manage his internet radio station, RadioFreeAmsterdam.org, which posts two hours of original music daily by its 12 deejays including Tino Gross, George Klein, Bruce Pingree, Leslie Keros, Roger White, arwulf arwulf, Bob Putignano, Soul Lucille, Steve The Fly, David Kunian, the late Tom Morgan, and Sinclair himself, who was voted most popular deejay in New Orleans from 1999-2003 in recognition of his “Blues & Roots” and “New Orleans Music Show” and his production of the live broadcasts from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Sinclair’s current poetry book releases are always know—a book of monk, volumes 1 & 2 (Trembling Pillow Press, New Orleans) and the 2nd edition of Fattening Frogs For Snakes—Delta Sound Suite (Horner Books, Flint). His latest recordings are an album with the Planet D Nonet called monk’s dream (Eastlawn Records, Detroit) and the forthcoming 4-LP box set of Fattening Frogs For Snakes—Delta Sound Suite (Jett Plastic Recordings, Detroit).

For more information on the 50th Anniversary Celebration or The John Sinclair Foundation, please contact Matty Lee at 248 931 2443, Jamie Lowell at 734 276 6318, or John Sinclair at 313 231 5764.

Still here? Fantastic! Enjoy this absolutely awesome video with a short interview of Sinclair & Lennon’s performance.