About 30 feet away from me, about a half dozen people are shouting "a little bit of weed is all we need." As a group of police in riot gear walked past, one of these people shouted out to the officers who were about a few feet away, "damn girl, you look good." All of the officers were men.

Just now, one of them called out to the officers, "you know you want to get high" and " I got some here in my pocket. When I first noticed them about 90 minutes ago , I thought they were xenophobic and jingoistic counter-protesters against the people calling for a change in US policy toward Ethiopia.

Originally, I had thought they were chanting "go breed your disease!" to the people protesting against the Ethiopian dictatorship. They were actually chanting, as I have learned after hearing it about a 100 times, "smoke weed, cure disease!"

Perhaps it's with my non-THC-induced paranoia that I wonder whether these protestors for weed are corporate-funded decoys meant to distract the public away from the protests for environmental and social justice causes.