It was a Tuesday in 1981 when the San Francisco police kicked in the door.
Inside the small apartment, they expected to find a hardened criminal. They expected a drug kingpin. They expected resistance.
Instead, they found a 57-year-old waitress in an apron.
The air in the apartment smelled sweet, thick with chocolate and something earthier. On the kitchen counter, cooling on wire racks, were 54 dozen brownies.
The police officers began bagging the evidence. They confiscated nearly 18 pounds of marijuana. They handcuffed the woman, whose name was Mary Jane Rathbun.
She didn't look scared. She didn't look guilty.
She looked at the officers, smoothed her apron, and reportedly said, "I thought you guys were coming."
She was booked into the county jail. The headlines wrote themselves. A grandmother running a pot bakery. It seemed like a joke to the legal system, a quirky local news story about an older woman behaving badly.
But Mary wasn't baking for fun. And she certainly wasn't baking for profit.
To understand why Mary risked her freedom, you have to understand the silence of the early 1980s.
San Francisco was gripping the edge of a cliff. A mysterious illness was sweeping through the city, specifically targeting young men. Later, the world would know it as AIDS. But in those early days, it was just a death sentence that no one wanted to talk about.
Families were disowning their sons. Landlords were evicting tenants. Even doctors and nurses, paralyzed by the fear of the unknown, would sometimes leave food trays outside hospital doors, afraid to breathe the same air as their patients.
Men in their twenties were wasting away in sterile rooms, dying alone.
Mary knew what it felt like to lose a child.
Years earlier, in 1974, her daughter Peggy had been killed in a car accident. Peggy was only 22. The loss had hollowed Mary out, leaving a space in her heart that nothing seemed to fill.
When the judge sentenced Mary for that first arrest, he ordered her to perform 500 hours of community service. He likely thought the manual labor would teach her a lesson.
He sent her to the Shanti Project and San Francisco General Hospital.
It was a mistake that would change American history.
Mary walked into the AIDS wards when others were walking out. She didn't wear a hazmat suit. She didn't hold her breath. She saw rows of young men who looked like ghosts—skeletal, in pain, and terrified.
She saw "her kids."
She began mopping floors and changing sheets. But soon, she noticed something the doctors were missing. The harsh medications the men were taking caused violent nausea. They couldn't eat. They were starving to death as much as they were dying of the virus.
Mary knew a secret about the brownies she had been arrested for.
She knew they settled the stomach. She knew they brought back the appetite. She knew they could help a dying man sleep for a few hours without pain.
So, she made a choice.
She went back to her kitchen. She fired up the oven. She started mixing batter, not to sell, but to save.
Every morning, Mary would bake. She lived on a fixed income, surviving on Social Security checks that barely covered her rent. Yet, she spent nearly every dime on flour, sugar, and butter.
The most expensive ingredient—the cannabis—was donated. Local growers heard what she was doing. They began dropping off pounds of product at her door, free of charge.
She packed the brownies into a basket and took the bus to the hospital.
She walked room to room. She sat by the bedsides of men who hadn't seen their own mothers in years. She held their hands. She told them jokes. And she gave them brownies.
"Here, baby," she would say. "Eat this. It'll help."
And it did.
Nurses watched in amazement as patients who hadn't eaten in days began to ask for food. The constant retching stopped. The mood on the ward shifted from despair to a quiet sort of comfort.
Mary Jane Rathbun became "Brownie Mary."
For over a decade, this was her life. She baked roughly 600 brownies a day. She went through 50 pounds of flour a week. She became the mother to a generation of lost boys.
She washed their pajamas. She attended their funerals. She held them while they took their last breaths.
She did this while the government declared a "War on Drugs."
By the early 1990s, the political climate was hostile. Politicians were competing to see who could be "tougher" on crime. Mandatory minimum sentences were locking people away for decades.
In 1992, at the age of 70, Mary was arrested again.
This time, the stakes were lethal. She was charged with felonies. The district attorney looked at her rap sheet and saw a repeat offender. He threatened to send her to prison.
One prosecutor famously whispered to a colleague that he was going to "kick this old lady's ass."
They underestimated who they were dealing with.
They thought they were prosecuting a drug dealer. In reality, they were attacking the most beloved woman in San Francisco.
When the news broke that Brownie Mary was facing prison, the city erupted.
It wasn't just the activists who were angry. It was the doctors. It was the nurses. It was the parents who had watched Mary care for their dying sons when the government did nothing.
Mary turned her trial into a pulpit.
She arrived at court not as a defendant, but as a grandmother standing her ground. The media swarmed her. Reporters asked if she was afraid of prison. They asked if she would stop baking if they let her go.
Mary looked into the cameras, her voice gravelly and firm.
"If the narcs think I'm gonna stop baking brownies for my kids with AIDS," she said, "they can go fuck themselves in Macy's window."
The quote ran in newspapers across the country.
The court didn't stand a chance.
Testimony poured in. Doctors from San Francisco General Hospital wrote letters explaining that Mary’s brownies were medically necessary. Patients testified that she was an angel of mercy.
The charges were dropped.
Mary walked out of the courthouse a free woman. But she didn't go home to rest. She realized that her personal victory wasn't enough. As long as the law was broken, her "kids" were still in danger.
She needed to change the law.
August 25 was declared "Brownie Mary Day" by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It was a nice gesture, but Mary wanted policy, not plaques.
She teamed up with fellow activist Dennis Peron. Together, they opened the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club—the first public dispensary in the United States. It was a safe haven where patients could get their medicine without fear of arrest.
But Mary wanted more. She wanted the state of California to acknowledge the truth.
She campaigned for Proposition 215. She traveled the state, despite her failing health. She spoke in her simple, direct way. She didn't talk about liberties or economics. She talked about compassion. She talked about pain.
She forced voters to look at the issue through the eyes of a grandmother.
In 1996, Proposition 215 passed. California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana.
It was a domino effect. Because one woman refused to let her "kids" suffer, the public perception of cannabis shifted. The Economist later noted that Mary was single-handedly responsible for changing the national conversation.
She never got rich.
She had always joked that if legalization ever happened, she would sell her recipe to Betty Crocker and buy a Victorian house for her patients to live in.
She never sold the recipe. She never bought the house.
Mary Jane Rathbun died in 1999, at the age of 77. She passed away in a nursing home, poor in money but rich in legacy.
Today, over 30 states have legalized medical marijuana. Millions of people use it to manage pain, seizures, and nausea.
Most of them have never heard of Mary.
They don't know that their legal prescription exists because a waitress in San Francisco decided that the law was wrong and her heart was right.
They don't know about the 600 brownies a day.
They don't know about the thousands of hospital visits.
Mary didn't set out to be a hero. She told the Chicago Tribune years before she died, "I didn't go into this thinking I would be a hero."
She was just a mother who had lost her daughter, trying to help boys who had lost their way.
She proved that authority doesn't always equal morality.
She proved that sometimes, the most patriotic thing a citizen can do is break a bad law.
Every August, a few people in San Francisco still celebrate Brownie Mary Day. But her true memorial isn't a date on a calendar.
It is found in every oncology ward where a patient finds relief. It is found in every dispensary door that opens without fear.
It is found in the simple, quiet courage of anyone who sees suffering and refuses to look away.
Mary taught us that you don't need a law degree to change the world. You don't need millions of dollars. You don't need political office.
Sometimes, all you need is a mixing bowl, an oven, and enough love to tell the world to get out of your way.
Sources: New York Times Obituary (1999), "Brownie Mary" Rathbun. San Francisco Chronicle Archives (1992, 1996). History.com, "The History of Medical Marijuana." Weird Everything, FB december 12, 2025
I'd be only too happy to do that. I was suspicious to start, too. It seemed a bit on the nose to have the weed brownie grandma named "Mary Jane," but also, that's a very common combination in a certain place and time, so I thought it was worth the extra effort.
What I did was find sources that made the claim (in this case, that a woman named Mary Jane was a medicinal marijuana activist in California, USA in the 1980s and 90s.) I checked the dates to get some certainty those sources aren't AI slop, then checked that the sources are generally reliable.
Then I followed useful details about the place and time, and other people involved, to explore it more fully.
The first thing I did was search for "Brownie Mary" and see if that turned anything up at all. It turned up a LOT of results. Predictably, some of them were recipes, but not all of them.
Next up, I checked sources and dates. Wikipedia can be dodgy for academic use, but their policy on LLM-generated input is very clear: they don't want slop. I started by reading that page and then went on to read others.
The Atlas Obscura article is from 2018. I found another one from SFWeekly from 2017.
Both of those are decent sources - Atlas Obscura gets a High factual reporting rate from MediaBiasFactCheck, and while MBFC doesn't have a rating for SFWeekly, the verbiage in that article is very close to what GastroObscura has. (Also to what the post itself has, right down to the choice of pull quote.)
Now, we can stop there and feel pretty confident that articles published before the wide availability of LLMs are not, in fact, LLM generated.
...or we can go deeper, and run this all the way back to source.
I spotted references to a Chicago Tribune imterview of Mary Jane Rathbun, published in 1993.
My search string of "Chicago Tribune 1993 Mary Jane Rathbun" hit it in the top 3 results. That article includes some fun new details: she wore a cannabis leaf shaped pendant to her trial!
She also objected to being portrayed as a cuddly grandma up against The Man, so I must retract my flippant tags, above.
The evidence now strongly points to Brownie Mary being a real woman who really went to court for giving AIDS patients weed brownies. But can we get closer? I've now seen several mentions of a 1980 attempt at convicting her too.
The articles have mentioned Sonoma County and a nonprofit called the Shanti Project, so let's hook onto that and see what we get.
Searching for "Mary Jane Rathbun Sonoma County 1980" gets me an article from a law firm; that mentions the prosecuting attorney by name, and points to a book: Lust for Justice: The Radical Life & Law of J. Tony Serra, by Paulette Frankl. It even has an excerpt!
We can run the book down too, just for fun (now we have a primary source.) My favorite used book site has a copy for $1. Amazon gives a view of the back cover, too:
...wow. I should see if my library has that!
The excerpt on the site has a mention of a candelight vigil held for her death in 1999. It took some hunting past things I'd already read and a bunch of shops giving written tributes, but I found a news report about that, too.
There's a lot of information out there, and it's worth digging into. Otherwise it's altogether too easy to think something real and worth knowing is just another bit of slop.
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Learn about opposing IL26-001, IL26-638, two harmful initiatives on the November ballot that threaten student safety.
IL26-001 puts kids at greater risk of abuse, mental health issues, and even homelessness by forcing school counselors and teachers to knowingly put kids in danger.
Allows parents under criminal investigation or charged with raping, assaulting, or otherwise harming their child, to access sensitive information, discouraging kids from seeking help from trusted school counselors
IL26-638 could force invasive genital exams on girls of any age to play sports at any level. It’s the most extreme MAGA measure of its kind in the country and discriminates against girls.
The EPA has approved two new fluorinated pesticides for corn and soybeans, sparking controversy over health risks and legal challenges follo
Campaigners describe all of these as long-lasting compounds tied to serious health harms, a characterisation the EPA firmly rejects. The clearances landed five days after the Supreme Court sharply curtailed Americans' ability to sue pesticide makers over cancer warnings, sharpening a fight that has split the president's own base.
Join us in urging the Trump administration to protect the endangered Gulf of Mexico whale from extinction.
As part of its efforts to cater to the oil and gas industry, the Trump administration has already taken aggressive steps to undermine protections for imperiled species, including invoking the “God Squad” to exempt oil and gas activities in the Gulf from the Endangered Species Act in favor of increased offshore drilling. Now, the administration appears poised to go even further, mischaracterizing the science to justify a “review” to reconsider whether the whales are worthy of any Endangered Species Act protections at all.
Without strong opposition, this review could eliminate crucial protections for the Rice’s whale, presenting a clear and existential threat to its survival as a species.
Reasons for hope: Lots of amazing people did a ton of work to make this fantastic, fully interactive resource available - because no matter how bleak things seem, there are millions, and millions of people doing everything they can to protect both the world and their own communities.
You can use this to view and subscribe to updates, project statuses, and for at least some of them even whole dossiers. This is an amazing resource, I highly recommend checking it out
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Buried inside the KIDS Act are provisions that will push online services to verify all users’ ages, require government-directed moderation p
TELL CONGRESS TO REJECT THIS AGE-GATING BILL
Buried inside the KIDS Act are provisions that will push online services to verify all users’ ages, require government-directed moderation policies for online speech, and even create new rules about private and encrypted communications. While supporters continue to claim this bill protects minors online, its requirements come at the expense of privacy, free expression, and the ability of people of all ages to use the internet without revealing sensitive data.
Please call your representatives: VOTE NO on the FEDERAL BOOK BANNING BILLS HR 2616, HR 8705, and HR 7661!
Transcript below the cut.
Page 1:
There are currently THREE FEDERAL BOOK BAN BILLS aiming to ban all TRANS BOOKS from U.S. public schools! HR 2616, HR 8705, HR 7661
June 2026 / Maia Kobabe (a trans author, for three years in a row the most challenged author in the U.S.)
Page 2:
HR 2616 threatens to cut federal funding from public schools if they “teach or advance concepts related to gender ideology,” as defined by an Executive Order signed by Trump in Jan 2025. It would also cut funding from schools unless they require “parental consent before changing a minor's gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name on any school form.” HR 2616 HAS ALREADY PASSED IN THE HOUSE! Please call your Senators to say NO ON HR 2616!
Page 3:
HR 8705 threatens to cut federal funding from public schools which teach “discriminatory equity ideology or gender ideology,” as defined by two Executive Orders aimed at suppressing “critical race theory” and trans representation. This bill is named after the late far-right activist Charlie Kirk, “The Charlie Act.” HR 8705 has passed out of committee, but has not yet been introduced in the House. Please call your House Reps to say NO ON HR 8705!
Page 4:
HR 7661 threatens to cut federal funding from public schools which offer material deemed “sexually oriented," treating any LGBTQIA+ identity as sexual content. It specifically forbids “gender dysphoria or transgenderism,” and “lascivious dancing” (drag). This bill, titled “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” has 22 co-sponsors and has passed out of committee but has not yet been introduced to the House. Please call your House Reps to say NO ON HR 7661!
Page 5:
CALL SCRIPTS
“My name is [name] and I’m calling from [city, state, zip code]. I’m asking [Senator] to vote no on HR 2616. I oppose HR 2616 because it would restrict student’s access to books and it would specifically harm trans, nonbinary, and intersex students. Please stand against book bans and protect queer students!”
“My name is [name] and I’m calling from [city, state, zip code]. I’m asking [Rep] to vote no on HR 8705 and HR 7661. I oppose these bills because they would restrict student’s access to books and accurate history, and would especially harm BIPOC, trans, nonbinary, and intersex students. Please stand against book bans and support public education funding!”
Page 6:
Author Maia Kobabe: If HR 2616, HR 8705, or HR 7661 pass, it would be almost impossible for any public school in the U.S. to offer or teach my books, unless they’re willing to risk their federal funding. Students would be even less likely to learn about trans stories or accurate U.S. history.
Page 7:
Please call your representatives: VOTE NO on the FEDERAL BOOK BANNING BILLS HR 2616, HR 8705, and HR 7661!
Follow AUTHORS AGAINST BOOK BANS on insta & bluesky for updates on these bills!
insta / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my books / print store / bluesky
Maia always makes these actions clear and accessible and I so appreciate eir work.
If you don't know who your Senators or Representatives are, you can use Ballotpedia's Who Represents Me tool! (Note: there's a field for you to input your email address on their page, but it's not necessary to get your results. They just need a mailing address to confirm who your reps are.)
Once you've got names, you can look up and save your Reps' phone numbers in your phone. I find this makes it easier when I'm wavering about feeling brave enough to place a call. Just pressing a button instead of going and looking up the phone number all over again makes it just a liiiiittle easier, and sometimes that makes the difference between calling and not calling!
With outdoor recreation growing in popularity, extending the Legacy Restoration Fund is crucial for repairing infrastructure, and protecting
Tell Congress to Reauthorize the Legacy Restoration Fund
The Legacy Restoration Fund—established in 2020 through the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act—has delivered billions to repair trails, fix crumbling infrastructure, and restore access to America's public lands. The fund expired in September of 2025.
With thousands of maintenance projects still unfinished and a growing $41 billion backlog across federal lands, Congress needs to reauthorize funding for maintenance projects that protect outdoor recreation experiences.
Congress is building momentum to reauthorize the Legacy Restoration Fund but they won't do it without hearing from their voters. Ask your lawmakers to support extending the Legacy Restoration Fund today.
Right now, the Trump Administration is attempting to roll back housing protections for LGBTQ people by rescinding the Equal Access Rule (EAR). We're pushing back.
The EAR guarantees equal access to federally funded housing resources, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status. And for over ten years, it's helped provide life-saving protections for trans people seeking emergency housing services, including access to homeless shelters.
Now, the administration wants to undo that progress by proposing a new rule that would force HUD-funded housing providers to turn away homeless people just because they are transgender or intersex.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is accepting public comments on this dangerous proposal. Customize and submit a comment now urging HUD to reject this proposal and protect equal access to housing. Housing is a human right. Take a minute to submit your comment to HUD below to make our message clear: every person deserves safe, dignified housing free from discrimination. Preserve the Equal Access Rule.
You will have the option to submit your comment anonymously. The proposal rule is open for public comment until June 29, 2026.
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Trump's EPA is trying to gut critical safeguards that protect communities from coal ash, the toxic sludge produced by burning coal for electricity. This rollback would let coal plants off the hook for their pollution, allowing them to expose more people to hazardous chemicals linked to cancer and other serious health issues. Our communities deserve healthy neighborhoods, safe drinking water, and protection from toxic pollution — not giveaways to the coal industry. We need to speak out against this dangerous proposal.
The comment period closes JUNE 12 and the EPA needs to hear from you. Don't wait — add your name today and tell the EPA to protect communities from toxic coal ash!
We shouldn't have to navigate a minefield of dangerous cyanide to enjoy our country's wild places.
Tell the Bureau of Land Management: No deadly cyanide bombs
BLM Principal Deputy Director Bill Groffy,
M-44 devices, or cyanide bombs, are too dangerous to allow on public lands. In 2017, an Idaho boy and his dog were exploring near their home when they detonated a cyanide bomb. The dog died within minutes, and the child was poisoned and rushed to the hospital.
Cyanide bombs are intended to kill predatory animals — but the fact is that no one can control what, or who, will detonate a cyanide bomb once it’s been deployed. Thousands of animals are killed by these devices annually, including endangered species.
Our public lands should be safe for people, wildlife and pets to explore. We shouldn’t have to navigate a minefield of dangerous cyanide to enjoy our country’s wild places.
I strongly urge you to reinstate a ban on M-44 devices on the 245 million acres of public lands managed by the BLM
Our public lands are a cherished legacy to be passed along to future generations, not sold off to the highest bidder.
Tell your U.S. senators: Public lands belong in public hands
When we see public lands, we see some of America’s most important natural spaces. From the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, to the national forest down the road where you hike, camp or swim, these are places that are worth protecting.
But some members of Congress don’t see wild places that need to be protected. Instead, they see dollar signs that they can sell off for development.
Tell your U.S. senators: Public lands belong in public hands.
Right now, a foreign mining company wants to roll back protections and build a toxic mine right at the headwaters of two rivers that feed Bristol Bay, an area that currently sustains more than 30 million wild salmon and some of the world’s most spectacular wildlife.
This reckless mining threatens this entire ecosystem and will cause irreversible damage to our environment.
Protecting salmon strongholds means protecting healthy forests, climate action, recreation opportunities, wild protein, and local jobs.
Now is the time to act. Join us and speak up for Bristol Bay and salmon strongholds around the Pacific. Add your name today.
The Arctic Refuge should be protected, not sold off to the highest bidder for oil and gas drilling. Decades of leadership from the Gwich'in people and sustained pressure from people like you have kept oil companies out of the Arctic Refuge, and it's crucial that they stay out.
Tell Big Oil today: Do not bid on Arctic Refuge leases! Not now, not ever.
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U.S. factory farms are raising more animals than ever before, affecting the environment and accelerating climate change.
Big Ag’s factory farm model — which treats farms as animal warehouses, farmworkers as expendable, and the environment as a dumping ground — harms us all, and especially those living next to them. This report documents some of the most egregious damages caused by factory farm expansion, including:
Polluted Water: U.S. counties like Washington County, Iowa are overflowing with factory farm manure that threatens clean water. In 2022, Washington County’s factory hog farms produced 4.8 billion pounds of manure — 156 times as much as the county’s human population, and more than all Iowans combined.
Polluted Air: Maryland’s factory chicken farms in 2022 produced enough manure to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool each day, while releasing a slew of toxic air pollutants and odors that plague nearby residents.
Food Supply Disruptions: Factory farms are ripe breeding grounds for pathogens like bird flu, which was blamed for spikes in egg prices in 2022 and 2023. While consumers pay more, corporations can rake in record profits; Cal-Maine (the U.S.’s largest egg producer) enjoyed a five-and-a-half fold increase in net income during fiscal year 2023 compared to the previous one.
Environmental Injustices: While rural communities see their groundwater wells run dry, California’s mega-dairies suck up 152 million gallons of water each day just to water and wash cows and buildings — more than enough water to meet the indoor water needs for the entire San Diego metropolitan area.
Gutted Farm Income: As corporate consolidation has grown, so too have prices for ground beef, which are among the highest ever today, even when adjusting for inflation. However, farmers have seen their shares of retail beef sales fall from a high of 67.8 percent in 1973 to a low of 36.8 percent in 2021.
Urge the EPA to prioritize people's health over plastic.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin:
I am writing to urge the EPA to take immediate action to protect public health and set rigorous drinking water standards for microplastics.
While I applaud the EPA’s recent recognition of microplastics as a drinking water contaminant, this must be followed by concrete regulatory limits. As plastic waste breaks down over decades, it infiltrates our environment and, ultimately, our bodies. Research suggests that these particles may damage our digestive and reproductive systems, as well as our lungs.
As long as the manufacturing and use of plastics continues, microplastics will persist in our water cycle. We need enforceable safety standards to ensure that the water coming out of our taps is safe for people to drink.
I urge the EPA to add microplastics to the contaminants list and establish formal limits on microplastics in our drinking water.
