History
MPP co-founders Rob Kampia, Chuck Thomas, and Mike Kirshner originally worked at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). In 1995, after months of in-fighting, NORML director Richard Cowan fired Kampia, Thomas, and another staffer who had been pressing Cowan for organizational change. Kirshner quit NORML at the same time. Kampia, Thomas, and Kirshner began creating their own organization, implementing the ideas they'd pushed at NORML. On January 25, 1995, the three activists incorporated the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) as a not-for-profit organization in the District of Columbia.
MPP has grown to over 32,000 dues-paying members and is the largest marijuana policy reform group in the United States. The organization has 21 staffers and an annual budget of about $2.85 million.
Read more about this topic: Marijuana Policy Project
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The basic idea which runs right through modern history and modern liberalism is that the public has got to be marginalized. The general public are viewed as no more than ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a bewildered herd.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)