Veteran marijuana and free-speech activist Ben Masel passed away on April 30 at the age of 56 from complications due to lung cancer in Madison, Wisconsin. Unfortunately, Masel was a lifelong cigarette smoker. Masel died at a local hospice surrounded by family. Among Masel’s accomplishments was creating Weedstock, an annual celebration of cannabis held every Memorial Day in various Wisconsin locales. In 1990 he held The Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival outside the Wisconsin Sate Capitol in Madison. Masel had served as vice-president of the Wisconsin state chapter of NORML for the last decade and was the state director during the late 1980s and early 90s.
 
While trying to enter Weedstock 2000, Masel and 11 others were arrested on a technicality for having an improper permit. Arresting officers dragged Masel to the ground. Masel shouted that he was being denied his constitutional right to free assembly. He may have had a point – for a simple permit issue, 50 police officers from the surrounding county arrived that day, giving the impression that Weedstock was being targeted by the authorities for its pro-legalization promotion.  
 
Masel was born in the Bronx in 1955 and raised in New Jersey so it’s no surprise he was a fighter who never backed down. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in 1971, when campus radicalism was in full swing. Masel was even more extreme, expelled for participating in a demonstration during his freshman year, but he remained drawn to the hotbed of activism and liberal attitudes toward pot that uniquely define Madison. Masel was always a political animal, even running for office numerous times; for governor, state senator and county sheriff. He never won, but that wasn’t the point. He released campaign posters displaying his nude image on the premise he would be a politician “with nothing to hide.”
 
Masel garnered notoriety – some would same infamy – and national headlines for incidents like his 1976 conviction for spitting on neoconservative U.S. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-Wash.) as Jackson campaigned for president in Madison. Masel was soon dubbed as “Spitter” by the press. He also drew media attention for sitting in a wheelchair he didn’t need and berating George Wallace, the controversial segregationist and presidential candidate who was paralyzed for life after a 1972 assassination attempt.
 
But Masel wasn’t some counterculture clown – Jeff Scott Olson, Masel's attorney for the past 20 years, told Madison.com whenever law enforcement or government tried to prevent Masel from protesting, he would sue – and almost always won in court. Longtime friend Amy Gros-Louis added: “Ben knew the laws better than the police did.”
 
Masel remained radical up to the end of his life. He was recently spotted at the protests when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker proposed to abolish state employee unions, walking around with a sign reading: “This is a test of the Emergency Free Speech System.” Pot and free speech activists in Wisconsin will now have to carry on the fight without Ben Masel, but will continue to be inspired by him.
 
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