{"id":35966,"date":"2021-04-24T15:23:21","date_gmt":"2021-04-24T15:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=35966"},"modified":"2021-04-24T15:23:25","modified_gmt":"2021-04-24T15:23:25","slug":"birmingham-mayor-randall-woodfin-celebrated-4-20-by-sending-15000-marijuana-convictions-up-in-smoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=35966","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin Celebrated 4\/20 by Sending 15,000 Marijuana Convictions Up in Smoke&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theroot.com\/birmingham-mayor-randall-woodfin-celebrated-4-20-by-sen-1846723702\" target=\"_blank\">The Root<\/a>: &#8220;Birmingham, Ala., Mayor Randall Woodfin gave residents a reason to celebrate when he officially pardoned anyone convicted of misdemeanor marijuana possession by the city over the last three decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Tuesday, Woodfin announced a blanket pardon for anyone with a closed marijuana conviction in the Birmingham Municipal Courts between 1990 and 2020. The blanket pardon, issued in conjunction with the city\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.birminghamal.gov\/pardons\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pardons for Progress initiative<\/a>&nbsp;sent more than 15,000 possession cases up in smoke. In an exclusive interview with&nbsp;<em>The Root,&nbsp;<\/em>Woodfin explained that the move was a last-ditch effort to blunt the devastating effects of the war on drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe started Pardon\u2019s for Progress in 2019,\u201d explained the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/interactives.theroot.com\/root-100-2018\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2018 Root 100<\/a>&nbsp;honoree<em>. \u201c<\/em>The program was intended to help people with marijuana convictions obtain driver\u2019s licenses, jobs and other opportunities. But I was not pleased with the number of people participating.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Progress for Pardons allowed anyone convicted of misdemeanor marijuana possession to apply for a pardon and have the conviction sealed. After fewer than 20 people signed up for the project, many from outside the city, the mayor launched a campaign involving media appearances, town halls and a direct mail blitz to inform citizens about the initiative, to no avail. Undeterred, the mayor concluded that there was only one thing left for him to do.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Root: &#8220;Birmingham, Ala., Mayor Randall Woodfin gave residents a reason to celebrate when he officially pardoned anyone convicted of misdemeanor marijuana possession by the city over the last three decades. On Tuesday, Woodfin announced a blanket pardon for anyone with a closed marijuana conviction in the Birmingham Municipal Courts between 1990 and 2020. The&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35967,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35966\/revisions\/35967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}