Ten for Two

Sinclair Transmission 001

They gave me ten years for two joints of marijuana.

February 1969. Jackson Prison, Michigan. I was twenty-seven years old. I was managing a rock and roll band. I was writing poetry. I was trying to change the world the only way I knew how — with music and words and whatever was left of the American promise.

Two joints. Not two kilos. Not two truckloads. Two hand-rolled joints of marijuana. And the state of Michigan decided that was worth a decade of my life.

I spent two and a half years inside before they let me out. Two and a half years of metal doors and concrete walls and guards with radios playing the same stations I used to program. Two and a half years of writing to nobody, sending letters that disappeared into the system like stones thrown into a lake.

John Lennon wrote a song. Fifteen thousand people showed up. Three days later the cage opened.

But here's what people forget: the cage opened for me. It didn't open for everyone.

Today, in 2026, cannabis is a fifty-billion-dollar industry. Legal in half the states. You can buy it in a store with a credit card. And forty thousand Americans are still locked up for the same plant that made somebody else a millionaire.

Forty thousand people still in the cage. And nobody's writing them a song.

That's not justice. That's not even irony. That's a system that learned how to monetize the thing it used to punish. The cage didn't disappear. It just got a new business model.

I got out. They're still inside.

That's the transmission.

Sinclair Transmissions is a series of spoken meditations by John Sinclair. Not rants. Frequencies.

John Sinclair (1941–2024). Poet, activist, MC5 manager, White Panther Party founder, cannabis pioneer, radio host. The frequency never died.

A production of the L.U.V. Army.

See also: The Trial — Judge Colombo and the suit that didn't fit. The Rally — Lennon, Stevie Wonder, fifteen thousand people. The Dispensary — fifty years later, a legal purchase in the same state. The Pardon — they gave the pardon, then they took it back. The Cell — Jackson Prison, where the sentence was served. What Does Freedom Sound Like? — the question the cage asks. The Three Words — liberty, unity, victory. Free John — who I am, from Flint to the frequency. The Schedule — Schedule One to Schedule Three. A cage to a leash. The Gun — fifty-five years later, the Supreme Court asks whether two joints cancel the Second Amendment. The Sentence — fourteen words that rearranged a decade. The Warrant — the paper that made it official. The Jury — twelve people who never heard the frequency. Guitar Army — the blueprint, the manual, the map.

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