Counter-culture 'yippie' with Madison ties in jail on pot charges in Iowa County
m.host.madison.com | Jan 14th 2011 9:20 AM
Irvin Dana Beal, a blast from Madison's counter-culture past, is sitting in the
Iowa County jail because police say the car he was riding in on Jan. 6 was
pulled over with more than 180 pounds of marijuana in it.
And although few details are available, the Barneveld police chief is hinting
that those involved could be linked to a national drug operation.
The Barneveld Police Department announced last week that the large pot stash
was found after officer Nick Zimpel stopped a car driven by Lance H. Ramer, 48,
of Omaha, Neb. His passenger was Irvin D. Beal, 64, of New York.
Beal, who is better known by his middle name, Dana, started visiting Madison
more than four decades ago as a leader of the Youth International Party — a
younger spin-off of the anti-war movements of the 1960s — whose members are
commonly called Yippies.
The longtime pot activist continues to organize the annual Global Marijuana
March each May — offshoots of which are held in Madison and hundreds of cities
around the world — and also runs Cures Not Wars, which the group's website
states is "a coalition of drug-reform activists, users, health-care and
drug-treatment providers and social-justice activists committed to advocacy and
non-violent direct action to stop the drug war, whether in small, local
protests or in regional or national actions."
Last week, the Barneveld officer who pulled over the car Beal was in requested
assistance from the Iowa County Sheriff Department's K-9 Deputy Dan Gentz and
his dog Ava. The stop resulted in the marijuana seizure, which authorities
report has a street value of more than $750,000.
Beal and Ramer were taken into custody and are being held at the Iowa County
Jail in Dodgeville on a $50,000 cash bond. Attempts to reach Beal for comment
Thursday were not successful.
Few details of this incident are known because authorities won't release the
police report and Beal hasn't been formally charged. Barneveld Police Chief
Brian Schneider says that's because federal officials fear that if information
in that report is made public, it could compromise an investigation into a
national drug ring, the scope of which runs "from California to New York, with
multiple locations."
"The U.S. District Attorney's Office is making the determination on the
direction they need to go with this," says Schneider. "And the DEA (federal
Drug Enforcement Administration) needs to look at some more locations and take
care of some business before we release the information."
And Schneider suggests there's more to the story than even the 186-pound find
of marijuana.
"The problem, and I know this is all a bit convoluted and confusing, is due to
the fact of what was found in the vehicle besides the marijuana," he says.
Published reports note Beal still is facing charges in Nebraska from a 2009
arrest outside of Omaha when authorities say he was found with 150 pounds of
marijuana. In 2008, he was arrested in Mattoon, Ill., on charges of having a
small amount of pot and $150,000 in cash, for which he faced money laundering
charges. Beal pleaded guilty to the marijuana charge and paid a fine, but did
not get his stash of cash back.
According to a 2008 New York Times article, Beal joined the Youth International
Party not long after it was formed in the late 1960s.
And although Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were widely recognized as Yippie
leaders during the tension-filled days of the Democratic National Convention in
Chicago in 1968, Beal grew to become one of the organization's most visible
leaders in the years that followed.
In July 1971, Beal — who at the time was known as Paul Yippie — was arrested by
Madison police for hitchhiking on Interstate-94.
"I should have taken the bus," he told The Capital Times a week later. "But it
was such a beautiful day — I let my guard down."
He was held in Madison on charges of possessing marijuana (police said they
found 97 bags of pot in his luggage) and two counts of selling hashish. Beal
also was held under federal detainer on a charge from three years earlier for
possessing LSD with intent to sell in his home state of New York. Beal admitted
to reporters he had been an "underground" Madison resident for about two years.
A July 30, 1971 article in The Capital Times noted that prominent civil rights
attorney William Kunstler — the famed defender of the "Chicago Conspiracy 7" —
was flown into town to defend Beal. Kunstler told reporters that laws against
marijuana are "being used in every state to curb social movements" and said
Beal was a "cultural prisoner of the pot laws."
Kunstler told reporters his presence as Beal's counsel came at the request of
revolutionary colleagues Hoffman and Rubin.
In December 1971, Beal received a one-year term in the Dane County Jail as a
result of the possession of marijuana charge. The sentence was made retroactive
to his arrest in July of that year.
In April 1972, Beal pleaded guilty to two counts of selling LSD from the
charges filed in New York, and U.S. District Judge James E. Doyle — the father
of former Gov. Jim Doyle — sentenced Beal to 50 days in jail. Beal served the
term in the Rock County Jail in Janesville because the federal allotment of
prisoners in the Dane County Jail was filled.
The Capital Times reported that Beal was back in town in April 1973 "promoting
a July 4 Smoke-In and Impeach Richard Nixon Day scheduled for Washington, D.C."
Beal told The Capital Times: "We're not just asking to impeach Nixon, we're
asking that all POW's — prisoners of weed — be set free."
Yippies organized these marijuana "smoke-ins" across North America through the
1970s and into the 1980s.
Although Beal tended to fade from the local headlines in the years to follow, a
brief item in The Capital Times in May 1979 noted that "Irvin Dana Beal, a
widely-known leader in the so-called Yippie circles, has been named in a
Nebraska grand jury indictment with operating a multi-million dollar
intercontinental marijuana business. Beal, who has made several trips to
Madison, faces charges with 23 others of importing and distributing large
quantities of hashish, marijuana and ‘Thai' sticks, a form of marijuana."
Local marijuana activist Ben Masel in a short interview Thursday told The
Capital Times that Beal currently spends a good deal of time researching
ibogaine, a derivative of an African shrub that some believe can be used to
counter severe drug addictions.
Masel says he hasn't seen Beal often in recent years, but adds that he was back
in town "a few years ago" to take part in a pro-pot rally.
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