On Tuesday August 21st, Karma Chavez subbing for Cynthia Lin interviewed poet, essayist, novelist, and journalist in Mexico Javier Sicilia about drug policy and the Caravan for Peace. Karma also spoke with Treva Ellison of the Oakland-based group Critical Resistance. Critical Resistance seeks “to build an international movement to end the prison industrial complex (PIC) by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe.”
“A Trans-border Caravan for Peace and Justice with the Poet and Peace Leader Javier Sicilia
More than 60,000 people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico in the last few years. 10,000 people have been disappeared and over 160,000 displaced. Global Exchange and Mexico’s Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) led by Javier Sicilia have made “End the Drug War- No More Violence” campaign a priority in 2012. Starting in August, a high profile caravan will cross the US starting in San Diego/Los Angeles, heading east along the US-Mexico border and then up to Chicago, New York and DC.
Sicilia’s son, Juan Francisco was murdered along with six friends on a fateful night in March of 2011. He has since become an inspirational voice for peace, justice and reform– drawing huge crowds throughout Mexico. He comes north this summer with a call for change in the bi-national policies that have inflamed a six-year Drug War, super-empowered organized crime, corrupted Mexico’s vulnerable democracy, claimed lives and devastated human rights on both sides of the border.
2012 offers a uniquely fertile moment to internationalize the struggle for peace in Mexico. Latin American elite opinion is shifting rapidly on the question of ending drug prohibition. This call for reform has not yet echoed in the United States. The Caravan represents an unprecedented effort by Mexican civil society to impact U.S. thinking and policy.”
-Caravan for Peace
To read more about Caravan for Peace:
http://www.caravanforpeace.org/caravan/?page_id=753
To read more about Critical Resistance:
http://criticalresistance.org/
To listen to the entire interview:
