Women's History Month 2026 - Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future

The theme of this year's Women's History Month is “Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future,” encompassing "financial sustainability, community resilience, leadership succession, and intergenerational equity." 

"Whether developing green technologies, advancing economic justice, strengthening education systems, or building civic power – women are designing blueprints for sustainable transformation," says the National Women's History Foundation. "This theme affirms that shaping a sustainable future means fostering systems that support both people and the planet." 

The cannabis, psychedelics and environmental movements have many women to honor who have advanced sustainability. 

One is Tina Gordon of Moon Made Farms, in Southern Humboldt, California. In her sustainably grown garden, Gordon incorporates "aspects of nature, native soil, and on-site composting, we introduce forest and plant material to our gardens to ensure the best and healthiest product. We want to encourage the genetics, and ultimately epigenetics of the plant to carry through an expression of this unique geographic environment."

Sophia Buggs—also known as Lady Buggs—is an urban farmer, medicine woman, and community leader in Youngstown, Ohio. Through stories, blessings, and reflections, she explores themes of ancestral connection, Indigenous practices, food justice, and the challenges and joys of negotiating community partnerships. Her talk at the Women's Visionary Congress 2023 is both a celebration of cultural heritage and a call to honor the unseen forces and generational wisdom that guide us toward collective healing and empowerment. 

Winona LaDuke (pictured), the Native American activist who ran for Vice President on Ralph Nader's ticket in 1996 and 2000, is growing hemp and other crops in Osage, MN, where she operates a hemp market store and coffee shop. "I want to scale up and join the 400,000 other horse powered farming operations in North America, understanding the sacred relationship between life, power and the future," LaDuke writes. "I would like to live well, I am interested in decoupling food and hemp from fossil fuels, and I am also interested in the quality of life which small-scale farming creates." 

Paul McCartney: Man on the Run

The new Amazon Prime documentary, "Paul McCartney: Man on the Run" charts McCartney's marijuana arrests and their affect on his music, and life. 

Through archival film footage and interviews, the film follows McCartney's musical journey, starting with the breakup The Beatles. Criticized for putting out apolitical albums of what he later called (unapologetically) "silly love songs" with his band Wings—featuring his wife Linda on keyboards—the band and Paul's songwriting gained an edge when he faced jail time for growing five marijuana plants on their family farm in March 1973. 

According to a TV interviewer in the film, it was said in court that, "McCartney had a considerable interest in horticulture, and many of his fans sent him seeds to grow. The cannabis seeds, it was said, came to him in such a way."  He admitted he had knowingly growing the plants, but claimed he didn't know what they were. 

The film does not mention the statement McCartney made in court regarding cannabis's legal status. “I feel that there should be legislation on the use of cannabis," he said. "Drink is a much worse drug to my mind than cannabis.” 

Later that year, Wings hit their stride with the release of their album "Band on the Run." The album was recorded in Nigera, where McCartney said he smoked the strongest weed he ever had in an interview with Marc Maron where he noted that "for the creative process it was required." 

Alysa Liu: From Oaksterdam to the Olympics

I've always loved figure skating, maybe since watching the graceful and glorious Peggy Fleming winning the Olympic gold medal in 1968 when I was just a girl. Where I grew up in Pennsylvania we skated in the winter, on ponds at our local mall that had an ice skating rink where scenes from the movie "Flashdance" were filmed. 

At this year's Olympics I fell for Alysa Liu during her short program, which placed her third going into her final triumphant free skate. Liu is an entirely different kind of skater, one more focused on her art than the competition, resulting in a relaxed and joyous presence on the ice that's captivated the world. 

Liu trained at the public rink in the city of Oakland, CA, just a few blocks away from the area known as Oaksterdam for its preponderance of Amsterdam-style cannabis shops that started springing up after California voters legalized medical marijuana in 1996. She gave a shout-out to her home city, pointing to an Oakland flag that a fan had brought, after her championship skate that was set to Donna Summers's disco version of "MacArthur Park," a 1970s song about a park in Los Angeles. “I’m just glad,” she said, “that I could bring Oakland to Milan.” 

Liu's father, who (as everyone knows by now), fled China after organizing protests against the government there, saw promise in his oldest child and paid for skating coaches, taking her to winning her first US National Championship at age 13 (the youngest female champion ever). At the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, she came in sixth despite the extra pressure of the Chinese government attempting to "naturalize" her, after sending spies to gather information on her and her father. Doubtlessly traumatized by that, and tired of the regimented life of a competitive skater, she quit the sport that year at the age of 16, so that she could have more of a normal teenage life, going to concerts, taking her first vacation, and getting her driver's license. 

Describing going on a ski trip with friends in 2024, Liu said it "was such an adrenaline rush, to get down the mountain when your legs are that tired. It's hard, and you had to tap into that part of you that fights, and I hadn't felt that since I quit skating.....and I was like, if I can get what I'm feeling from skating, I should just do that." 

Liu told 60 Minutes that she initially went back to skating for "quick hits of dopamine." She told ESPN, "I have ADHD and I love situations that I'm not expecting. It gives me a dopamine rush. With little mistakes, I love working through it. I have to think. And although it's not ideal to make those mistakes in competition, it was made and my brain still was releasing those chemicals and I had to think, 'What next? I have to add a combo here and here.' It was a little bit of fun and a nice little challenge."

It's Time for the NYT To Admit It Has an Editorial Problem

A discussion titled, “Marijuana is Everywhere. That’s a Problem” with New York Times editorial writers Emily Bazelon, David Leonhardt and German Lopez, who co-wrote Monday’s NYT editorial calling for greater regulation of cannabis, focuses on theory rather than practicality, except when used for prejudicial purposes. 

The conversation starts with the clarification that, like the famous NYT editorial series of 2014, theirs is pro-legalization, due to the harms of cannabis prohibition—namely huge numbers of arrests, disproportionately for people of color. They pointed out that they say in the editorial that they oppose the current ballot measure in Massachusetts that would re-criminalize cannabis. 

During the discussion, both Leonhardt and Lopez went right away to the fact that things are too loose now because marijuana can be smelled walking down the street. In Lopez’s case he says he was offered a hit on the street in his native Ohio, and Leonhardt talked about the streets of NYC and DC, where he spends time. Leonhardt also seemed distiurbed by the proliferation of cannabis shops in Colorado. 

Lopez expressed concern that legalization has increased use, drawing on his perspective reporting on the opioid crisis. He was also alarmed that we have “culturally embraced" cannabis. “You see Gwyneth Paltrow investing in Big Weed in CA,” was an example he used, picking up on the prohibitionist organization SAM’s drumbeat about Big Weed.  

Other issues like increasing numbers of people in polls saying they have problems with marijuana, and emergency room visits for CHS, were mentioned. Also mentioned, as in the editorial, were names of products that sounded like cookies and were marketed to kids (something that isn’t permitted by licensed vendors in California and elsewhere). 

Much was made of the 2024 NSDUH survey finding that more people smoke cannabis daily than use alcohol, with everyone assuming this meant people get totally stoned all day long. Leonhardt said twice that he “very much likes” alcohol or his martini, and Lopez said he “partakes" himself. But apparently everyone else who uses cannabis does so problematically in their eyes. People who have a problem with pot aren’t productive, and create problems for society, is Lopez's opinion. "We’ve gone way too far it glorifying its use,” he said.

On medical marijuana, while it was acknowledged that some people in pain or with specific ailments might benefit from it, cannabis hasn’t gone through the rigorous studies and government oversight needed to establish it as a true medicine, and we should re-think a system by which cannabis dispensaries sell a product claiming medical use, the speakers said. 

It's a Green Day in the Bay

Lost in the controversy about Bad Bunny appearing at the Super Bowl halftime show is the fact that the cannabis-loving band Green Day will kick off the music portion of the Super Bowl with a performance at the game's opening ceremony.

In 1987, guitarists Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt, both 15 years old at the time, along with bassist Sean Hughes and drummer Raj Punjabi, a fellow high school student from Pinole, CA, formed the band Desecrated Youth, later renamed Sweet Children. 

After signing with Lookout! Records in 1988 and before releasing their first EP in 1989, the group adopted the name Green Day. In the Bay Area, where the band was formed, "green day" was reportedly slang for spending a day doing nothing but smoking marijuana.

The band's name "was absolutely about pot," Armstrong told Bill Maher, adding, "We were trying to be the Cheech & Chong of punk rock." Armstrong went on to say that he stopped smoking weed after he had children, and then described a gravity bong to Maher. "I like burning the substance" as opposed to vaporizing, he said, because he "it smells good, it fills the room." Vaporizing felt like "one more reason to hide the fact that it should be legal." 

"Join the Club" Film Tells the Story of Dennis Peron and Medical Marijuana

"Join the Club" is a powerful documentary about Dennis Peron and the origins of the medical marijuana movement, set in the gay rights movement and the AIDS crisis in San Francisco. The tactics of the US war on drugs that began with Richard Nixon and was carried on by successive US presidents is also presented in the film, making the DEA and its multi-jurisdictional forces look like the ICE of its day. 

Filmmakers Kip Andersen and Chris O'Connell were able to conduct the last interview with Peron just before he died in 2018, and his story is told in flashback with remarkable footage of Peron's historic Cannabis Buyer's Club, including police video from an officer who infiltrated the club, news reports, and interviews all skillfully edited together. 

Born in the Bronx, Peron was drafted into the Vietnam War where he recounts seeing 1000 dead soldiers the month that he arrived. Eschewing alcohol as "the war drug," Peron smoked his first joint instead, and the filmmakers do a wonderful job of depicting how that changed his life. Bringing back three pounds of marijuana when he returned from Vietnam launched his career as a pot dealer and activist in San Francisco. 

Peron began his political involvement as a supporter of Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay man elected to public office in California when he became a San Francisco supervisor. The assassination of Milk and Mayor George Moscone highlighted the terrible ongoing prejudice against the gay community, as did the arrests and police shooting of Peron. 

The film does an excellent job of taking us to the origins of the AIDS epidemic and the relief that patients were getting from cannabis. The death of Dennis's young, beautiful lover Jonathan West from AIDS catapulted him to begin distributing cannabis to AIDS patients and operating what was described as the first AIDS hospice, where patients could gather and support each other in community.

A "Jewel Robbery" with a Marijuana Twist

Kay Francis is offered a marijuana cigarette by William Powell in "Jewel Robbery"

In the pre-Hayes Code film "Jewel Robbery" (1932), William Powell ("The Thin Man") plays a suave jewel thief who romances a bored, jewel-grubbing Baroness played by Kay Francis. "In my own eyes, I'm shallow and weak," says Francis. "I fly about all day, pursuing furs, jewels, excitement....In the morning, a cocktail, in the afternoon, a man, in the evening, Veronal [a barbiturate]."  

After invading a jewelry store where Francis and her elderly husband are picking out a large diamond ring, Powell congenially holds everyone hostage and robs the store's inventory. He then takes the unusual step of offering the shop's owner a marijuana cigarette, saying, "Do smoke one of my cigarettes. Now, inhale deeply...." 

Despite having just been robbed, the man begins giggling so vociferously that Francis asks Powell, "What did you give him?" Powell replies, "A pleasant, harmless smoke. He'll awake in the morning fresh and happy, with a marvelous appetite."  

He then offers her a cigarette, saying, "They're harmless, really. Two puffs, and you'll be hearing soft music. The world will begin to revolve pleasantly. Three, a beautiful dream." She asks, "How do you know this?" and he replies, "Experience. I assure you, all the ladies fall asleep happily." "So that you steal their jewels in peace, I suppose," she replies. Refusing to smoke, she says, "I prefer to keep my wits about me, thank you" (which, considering her circumstances, was rather wise). 

Powell then hornswoggles a security guard into carrying his loot out to the getaway car, and gives him as a tip his box of marijuana cigarettes. The guard fully enjoys smoking one of the joints, inhaling deeply. When he is questioned by the police, he offers the chief one of his stash and the two are soon yukking it up fully. Francis of course falls for Powell, but never gets a chance to try another of his cigarettes.