An Open Invitation To Healing
What happens when the city council calls in the federal government to close medical cannabis collectives with no regard as to whether the organizations are beneficial or harmful to the communities they inhabit? They throw the baby out with the bathwater. From the loss of safe legal access for thousands of patients and the loss of employment for hundreds of staff to the destruction of patient communities, the ramifications of forced closures in the city are severe and wide spread.
Trauma is an emotional response to terrible and life changing events. Trauma is often accompanied by a feeling of violation of familiar ideas about the world and human rights, putting individuals in a state of extreme confusion and insecurity, especially when an institution that individuals depend on violate or betray the individual’s interest. We are aware that the closure of medical cannabis facilities, whether by force or by threat, may be a traumatic experience for any patients that found healing at a medical cannabis collective. Right now, there are literally thousands of patients in Los Angeles who have done nothing wrong and depend on the city to regulate with compassion who have seen their community centers ripped out and lost safe access to their medicine from a trusted source.
The Union of Medical Cannabis Patients would like to invite anyone experiencing trauma or unmanageable stress as a result of the recent actions by the city to attend this workshop free of charge. The workshop will explore trauma and the varying range of human sensitivity and response. Participants will be offered time to explore their own feelings on how trauma has affected them, support each other in confronting past traumas, and address strategies for coping and protecting against the harmful effects caused by unmanaged emotional stress.
What the City Council has done is not in the emotional, social, or publicly espoused interests of the citizens of Los Angeles. While we all work to finalize a city ordinance and restore regulation to our city, join us to tend to the emotional wounds that may have been inflicted by federal actions.
