Dr. Mike Alcalay, MD 1941 - 2006: Longtime Bay Area AIDS activist, medi cannabis advocate Odam News file photo.

Longtime cannabis reform advocate and cannabis-consultant / physician Michael Alcalay, MD, passed away on Nov. 18, 2006 in Oakland, CA. He was the medical director of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative and a local icon.

Dr. Alcalay was a medical marijuana patient and lived with AIDS for decades. He was also a pediatrician and a Vietnam veteran. Alcalay was also the founder of a migrant farm workers clinic in Watsonville, CA, and had used his medical skills all over the world — including Kenya, Nicaragua, England, Germany, and Mexico.

Affectionately known as “Dr Mike” among the many patients and groups he worked with in the East Bay area, Alcalay saw his role as being a duality as physician and political activist. He was a common presence at conferences in the state, often with a videocam in hand to record the event.

“I see the medical marijuana movement as part of a much larger movement that is global now and it has to do with economic and social justice. And most of it you’re not going to hear in the corporatemedia,” Alcalay once said in an interview on the radio show Democracy Now.

“It’s all below the radar, but anybody who’s in these various movements the tentacles are linking together. Pacifica radio is part of it. Air America is now a part of it. The Internet in great measure is a part of it. and we’re coming together in ways that the other side doesn’t even want to acknowledge and will do everything to stop. But, we’re in the great majority.”

His brother, Glenn Alcalay, talked about their story in an interview available online at democracynow.org/article.pl? sid=06/11/20/1448252.