Kevin Zeese

Kevin Bruce Zeese (October 28, 1955 – September 6, 2020) was an American lawyer, U.S. Senate candidate and political activist.

Zeese was born in New York City in 1955.

He grew up in Queens, New York, where he attended public schools.

He received a bachelor's degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

He graduated from the George Washington University Law School in 1980.

Zeese began his career as an advocate working as chief counsel for National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) in 1980 and served as NORML's Executive Director from 1983 to 1986.

During his time at NORML he helped stop the spraying of herbicides on marijuana in Mexico and the United States, and he became a leading advocate of the medical use of marijuana.

Zeese served as Vice President and Counsel to DPF from 1986 to 1994.

Drug Policy Foundation was the largest drug policy reform advocacy group until it merged with Drug Policy Alliance, now the largest reform group in U.S. history.

Zeese co-founded the Drug Policy Foundation (DPF) with Professor Arnold S. Trebach in 1987 which merged with the Lindesmith Center in 2000 and is now the Drug Policy Alliance.

Zeese was a founder in 1993 of Harm Reduction Coalition, which advocates for a public health approach to drug policy that reduces the harms from drug use and abuse.

Harm Reduction Coalition is "driven by a commitment to drug user rights and social inclusion of marginalized communities" and has advocated for and helped put in place policies like needle exchange programs, treatment on request, overdose prevention strategies and low threshold access to methadone treatment among other issues.

In 1994 he co-founded the Common Sense for Drug Policy along with businessman and philanthropist Robert E. Field and attorney Melvin R. Allen.

Zeese continued to serve as president of Common Sense.

Common Sense has published Drug War Facts since 1998, providing facts and citations covering 47 issue-areas related to drug policy.

The organization ran 152 public service advertisements in Reason, The American Prospect, The National Review, The Nation, The New Republic, and The Progressive from 1999 to 2007.

In 2002, he worked with Washington, D.C. area peace groups in opposing the war in Iraq including the Montgomery County Coalition Against War.

Zeese had his first official campaign involvement serving as an advisor to Linda Schade, who was running for the Maryland House of Delegates in 2002.

From 2003 onward, Zeese worked on a broad range of progressive issues and third-party and independent electoral campaigns.

He was primarily active with the Green Party and even ran for office himself.

In 2003, Zeese went to California to work on the gubernatorial campaign of Peter Camejo in the election that followed the recall of Governor Gray Davis.

Zeese was involved in writing position papers and organizing grassroots support for Camejo.

In 2004 he joined with Ralph Nader's Democracy Rising to make opposition to war a focus of the organization.

In 2004, Zeese joined the presidential campaign of Ralph Nader.

His initial responsibility was developing a strategy for ballot access.

He went on to become press secretary and spokesperson for Nader, and also worked with Nader in drafting position statements.

In 2006, Zeese founded a national antiwar group, Voters for Peace and served as its director until 2011.

Zeese ran for the U.S. Senate for Maryland in 2006 against Democrat Ben Cardin and Republican Michael Steele.

After months of campaigning, Zeese received the Maryland Green Party's nomination for the U.S. Senate, and was also nominated by the Libertarian Party of Maryland in April 2006 and the Populist Party of Maryland in June.

This is the only time the Greens and Libertarians nominated the same person for a statewide office.

It is also the only time all three parties had nominated the same candidate.

However, in early April 2006, the Maryland legislature passed SB 129, which held a candidate can be nominated by only a party with which he is registered.

He worked to end the war on drugs and mass incarceration, and was instrumental in organizing the 2011 Occupy encampment in Washington, D.C. at Freedom Plaza and occupying the Venezuelan Embassy in the District of Columbia.

Zeese co-founded the news site PopularResistance.org in 2011 with his partner, Margeret Flowers.

In October 2011, he was one of the co-founders of Occupy DC, which later merged into Popular Resistance.

On January 29, 2021, another of the co-founders of Occupy DC died, Reverend Bruce Wright of the Poor Peoples Army.

In January 2018, Zeese outlined his anti-interventionist position in a column, stating: "The United States cannot be a moral or ethical country until it faces up to the realities of U.S. empire and the destruction it causes around the world. The U.S. undermines governments (including democracies), kills millions of people, causes mass migrations of people fleeing their homes, communities and countries and produces vast environmental damage."

He also criticized humanitarian intervention saying that it is "based on the dubious claim that the U.S. has a 'responsibility to protect.'"

Zeese is listed in the U.S. Peace Registry which also provides a summary of his work.

Zeese died of a heart attack on September 6, 2020.