Cynthia Johnston, Sports Desk Editor
Cynthia Johnston began writing about her experience as a medical
marijuana patient as soon as she “got legal.” She went public on behalf
of legalization in 1980 with the California Marijuana Initiative and a
headline: “Marijuana Protester Busted at High Noon.”
“CIA-Brat”
turned gonzo blogger, Cynthia Johnston learned her politics in the
belly of the Beast — at age 21 in the infamous Watergate building,
answering letters to President Lyndon B. Johnson at Democratic National
HQ. When President Johnson decided not to seek re-election, she became
assistant to the National Political Director of Vice President Hubert H.
Humphrey’s 1968 presidential campaign against Richard Nixon.
In
1972, the year of Fear and Loathing, she was assistant to the National
Political Director of Senator Edmund S. Muskie’s doomed presidential
campaign. In 1976, she served as statewide labor coordinator in New
Jersey for the Carter/Mondale campaign, an assignment that inspired her
to move to California, quit national politics, put down the bottle, and
pick up a joint.
In 1977, Johnston became one of four political
consultants to the California Teachers Association/National Education
Association, charged with organizing teachers into as powerful a
citizen-lobbying machine as the NRA. With that mission accomplished, she
turned to coalition-building among labor unions, environmentalists and
community activists, putting up a “Green Umbrella” for disparate groups
to find shelter from political storms and work on projects of mutual
interest–like urban gardening and tree-planting. But her own personal
triumph was to help conceive and execute “From Streets to Streams,” a
wilderness survival training program for the teen leaders of Oakland
Community Learning Center–the Black Panther school in East Oakland.
With her radicalization well under way, Johnston then decided it was
time to turn on, tune in and drop out of politics altogether. As her
ultimate bridge-burner, she became Marin County Coordinator for NORML’s
California Marijuana Initiative of 1980 (CMI ‘80.) While producing a
concert for the campaign, she got mixed up with “proto-Deadhead” Steve
Brown. For the next seventeen music-filled years, they worked together
on film and video production in Pacifica, California, where she also
tried her hand at freelance writing. For nearly ten years, she was an
active member of Bay Area Women In Music (BAWIM) and served variously as
Secretary, Vice President, President and Advisory Board Member.
In 1995, Johnston became public relations director for online
publication, Sources eJournal, covering intelligence, espionage and
terrorism. There, she wrote a three-part series, “Confessions of a CIA
Brat.” She also wrote a business column, “In the Loop,” for an
independent filmmaking web publication, and several pieces for Bay Area
computer magazine Micro Times.
Deciding to fly solo once
again, Johnston moved to San Francisco. Sources eJournal went down in
the dot.com crash of the late Nineties. With a raging case of
hyperthyroidism, a/k/a Grave’s Disease, she figured it was time to jump
out of the hamster wheel. She moved into a funky cab-over camper and
began living curbside on the streets of San Francisco. She still thinks
it’s as close to Free as she ever got.
Johnston published her
first blog before blogging was a word. A subsequent online journal
earned her the opportunity to write a piece, “Mobile Homeless,” for The
San Francisco Chronicle. She’s been blogging ever since.
