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Up In Smoke

GLYNN WASHINGTON, HOST:

OK, so in my previous life, I was a radical - ran a merry band of social activists. Our sole mission - fight the power. We hit the man in the only place he cared about - the pocketbook. My job - lead the charge. We'd stage actions, organize protests, let the people know about the evil committed against them. Rise up, my brothers and sisters. Rise up. Now, one of the wickedest mobs of all turns out to be the tobacco industry. No letters, please. Instead, write the federal courts that found big tobacco guilty of running a criminal enterprise, targeting toddlers with poisons and so on. So we organized to stop the targeting of minority communities, to cease marketing to children worldwide, to quit adding dangerous additives to dangerous products, all right? And here's the thing I'm most proud of. Smokers themselves joined our actions because they don't want to see their kids targeted any more than anyone else. In fact, smokers understand the real war being waged. So our group - smokers, non-smokers, believers, doers, dreamers, good guys, hopers, students, lovers - they were there to support each other, believe in each other, worked in concert with and for the benefit of each other - trust. Now, you need money to fight the man. So I decided to go to a funding conference, and I asked several of my partners to join me. And one of the biggest funders, the one writing checks, with people wearing suits, calls us into a room to tell us about the brand new anti-tobacco initiative - cool, cool. A fancy woman in a fancy suit, fancy shoes, she stands up to explain.

(Imitating female voice) We're so excited about this. We really are. We call it blow the whistle on smoking. What we want you to do - what we want you to do is get a bunch of these whistles, see. And then go to college campuses, parks, places of business. And wherever you see someone smoking, that's when you get right up in their face, right up as close as possible. And then you blow the whistle as loud as you can at them and say, I'm blowing the whistle on smoking tobacco.

(SOUNDBITE OF WHISTLE)

WASHINGTON: (Imitating female voice) You see? You see how effective this is going to be at changing attitudes?

Now, the room goes silent - crickets - because this is maybe, certainly, the single-most stupid idea anyone has ever heard of. Sneak up on unsuspecting people and blow whistles in their face. Hell to the no - we're not going to do that. I can feel heads turning. My people, people I have invited, partners in the struggle, they are waiting, waiting for me to say something - say anything - to fix this lunacy. But I have a problem. This crazy person has money. I need some of it to make things go. And bazillionaires have to be handled just so. So I stall. Uh, um, uh, where do we get these whistles? And all of a sudden, the looks of horror, of rage, that were directed at the woman, they're now aimed directly at me. (Imitating female voice) Oh, we have plenty. We'll be able to deliver every partner organization as many whistles as they need.

(SOUNDBITE OF WHISTLE)

WASHINGTON: And I hear people behind me getting up and walking out. I need to signal to them that I'm still down. I'm still down with the cause. I'll come up with something. I'm still the radical that walked up in here. I just got to talk the nice lady down. I need a little bit more time, just a little bit more time. But I turn around to a room that's almost completely emptied out. And I know they didn't walk out on her - uh-uh - they walked out on me.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

WASHINGTON: Today, on SNAP JUDGMENT from PRX and NPR, Overthrow, amazing stories from real people discovering that whomever they're with might not be with them. My name is Glynn Washington. We have got a crazy episode. Please make sure all your papers are in order because this is SNAP JUDGMENT.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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