“Black communities are being locked out while corporate interests consolidate power. Equity cannot mean exclusion dressed up as regulation” – Alderwoman Dr. Monet S. Wilson
“In the end, corporate cannabis is going to lose — and crime is going to rise” – Tyrone Muhammad
This is what people mean when they talk about privilege.
Getting rich off the same thing that put millions of Black people in prison.
Cannabis was criminalized to cage Black communities — then legalized to enrich corporations once we were removed from the market.
Now the same playbook is being used again.
Black entrepreneurs built hemp because it was federally legal, accessible, and created real ownership.
Instead of protecting that foothold, politicians moved to hand it over to corporate cannabis monopolies.
This isn’t progress.
This isn’t safety.
This is economic erasure — repackaged.
If the rules only change when billionaires are ready to profit, that’s not justice.
That’s exploitation.
The world needs to understand this clearly:
Corporate cannabis is built on Black bodies, Black prison sentences, and Black graves.
Cannabis was our economy before it was theirs.
We built it in the streets.
We built it under surveillance.
We built it while being hunted, prosecuted, and caged—especially after the 1994 Clinton Crime Bill turned cannabis into a pipeline to mass incarceration for Black America.
Now the same system that destroyed our families has rebranded our suffering into a billion-dollar industry—and handed ownership to a tiny group of ultra-rich corporations known as MSOs (Multi-State Operators).
Let’s tell the truth about MSOs.
They are billionaire-controlled cannabis conglomerates that dominate licenses, capital, supply chains, and legislation across multiple states.
They didn’t build the culture.
They didn’t do the time.
They didn’t lose decades of their lives to prison.
They waited until Black people were removed—then bought the market with lobbyists, lawyers, and political access.
In Illinois, cannabis has never been a real social equity program.
Black ownership is minimal.
Licenses are concentrated.
Capital is inaccessible.
Black operators are systematically pushed out or crushed altogether.
So we did what our people have always done—we adapted.
We built hemp.
Hemp became our model for survival and repair.
Hemp was federally legal.
Hemp was accessible.
Hemp created real Black ownership, real jobs, and real community stability.
Hemp was—and is—the economic stronghold we built after being deliberately locked out of cannabis.
And now—today—Black elected officials helped destroy it.
At Chicago City Council, Black elected officials partnered with corporate cannabis, lobbyists, and high-priced lawyers to ban hemp products. (Let’s hope Mayor Brandon Johnson vetoes this hemp ban, as he stated.)
Let that sink in.
They handed a federally legal industry to corporate cannabis—which is still federally illegal.
They didn’t regulate hemp.
They transferred power.
They didn’t protect communities.
They sold them out.
This decision will:
- Kill Black-owned hemp businesses
- Spike unemployment in already struggling neighborhoods
- Recreate a black market
- Increase street-level criminalization
- Fuel violence driven by underground economies
- Open the door to another wave of mass incarceration
All so billionaires don’t have to compete with small businesses and entrepreneurs like Tyrone Muhammad.
This is not leadership.
This is economic violence.
Black elected officials didn’t just abandon us—they violated us.
They took the last legal foothold we had and handed it to the same corporate interests that profit off our exclusion.
This is not about safety.
This is not about children.
This is not about regulation.
This is about monopoly.
This is about control.
This is about ensuring only billionaires eat—while Black communities starve.
If Black people are not allowed to build wealth, corporate cannabis should not be allowed to profit off our culture, our history, or our trauma.
Hemp was the solution they couldn’t control—so they controlled politicians to kill it.
We will not comply.
We will not be silent.
We will not accept another generation sacrificed to protect corporate profits.
Corruption may be the Chicago way—but betrayal does not go unanswered.
The world is watching.
Now—what are WE going to do?
