That’s a wrap: The Democracy Defenders Roadshow

That’s a wrap!

After 14 stops across 11 states, the Democracy Defenders Roadshow has officially come to a close.

Our final stretch took us to Chapel Hill, NC; Atlanta, GA; and Dalton, GA.

In Chapel Hill, with the support of LILA Latinx LGBTQI, Ernesto Ledesma, Lucía Vijil, and Elena Gutiérrez joined grassroots Latinx leaders, local media, and community members to explore how U.S. policies affect migration, violence, and democratic stability across borders and why democracy must be sustained through community-building and organizing beyond the ballot box. Enlace Latino NC covered the gathering, highlighting the many ways immigrant community members can make their voices heard, regardless of their ability to vote.

After carrying these conversations to Atlanta, we concluded in Dalton with the Coalición de Líderes Latinos (CLILA) and the Coalición de Federaciones Mexicanas en el Exterior (COLEFOM). Latino community members, particularly Mexican workers, shared how they are organizing against ICE enforcement and for labor rights, voting access, and representation, while building strong mutual-aid networks that provide English classes, citizenship support, childcare, and other essential community resources.

What we learned across the country

From St. Paul, Chicago, Kalamazoo, South Bend, and Louisville to the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, California, North Carolina, and Georgia, our Democracy Defenders met with students, journalists, labor organizers, elected officials, immigrants, faith leaders, human rights defenders, and community members. Each stop reflected a distinct local reality, but the same lessons resurfaced across the country.

Democracy takes many forms across the Americas and it is powered by people. Across the Roadshow, we heard different understandings of what democracy means and what it requires in different communities. But one idea surfaced again and again: democracy is not only something that happens at the ballot box or inside formal institutions. It is built between elections, through people-powered movements, neighborhood organizing, community meetings, mutual aid, and collective action. In Louisville, participants emphasized that democracy lives in neighborhoods and local institutions. In Sacramento, we heard that community itself can become the nucleus of democracy. In Dalton, mutual-aid networks showed what this looks like in practice: neighbors helping one another learn English, prepare for citizenship, care for their families, and participate in public life.

Trustworthy information is essential to democratic power. Journalists in Chico described the difficulty of producing reliable local reporting while misinformation spreads rapidly. Participants reinforced throughout the Roadshow that documenting what is happening, both locally and internationally, is necessary for communities to understand the forces shaping their lives and hold those in power accountable.

Our struggles are connected across borders. From conversations about migration in Philadelphia and Chapel Hill to discussions of reparations in Chicago and political repression in South Bend and New York, participants traced how violence, authoritarianism, economic injustice, and U.S. policy connect communities throughout the Americas.

Perhaps the Roadshow’s clearest lesson was that democracy cannot depend on institutions repairing themselves. It depends on people willing to investigate, organize, share knowledge, care for one another, and build the trust necessary for collective action.

The Roadshow may be over, but the relationships it strengthened and the conversations it began are not. This work now continues at the Binational Peace Summit, where hundreds of organizations, community leaders, and advocates from Mexico and the United States, including people from many of the communities we met along the Roadshow, will come together to examine the root causes of violence and explore how we can build peace with justice across borders.

Thank you to every speaker, host organization, partner, student, journalist, organizer, volunteer, and participant who made this extraordinary journey possible.

Across different cities and different struggles, we are part of the same resistance and none of us has to face it alone.

Follow @globalexchange to stay updated on the Binational Peace Summit and the work ahead.

Our latest stretch brought the Roadshow to Northern California, where journalists, organizers, elected officials, students, and community members came together for conversations about press freedom, disinformation, institutional trust, organizing under pressure, and what it takes to build durable democratic power.

We began in Chico, in a beautiful and fitting setting: the historic Bidwell Bowl Amphitheater overlooking Big Chico Creek. Local organizations including Chico Peace Alliance, Indivisible Chico, Chico Democratic Socialists of America, and NorCal Resist joined us, bringing together members of the local Defenders of Democracy Coalition. Chico City Councilmember Addison Winslow welcomed the crowd, and Catalina Sanches, the first Latina councilwoman in the nearby town of Gridely, moderated our opening conversation on Journalism at Risk.

Local journalists from ChicoSol and the Chico Enterpris-Record spoke candidly about the challenges of producing trustworthy local journalism with limited resources while competing with an ever-growing ecosystem of misinformation. Their conversation raised questions that have followed us throughout this Roadshow: How do people know what to trust? What responsibility does journalism have when confidence in public institutions is declining? And how can reporters rebuild trust without simply becoming advocates for those institutions?

Afterward, around 70 participants shared lunch together at Chico State, where local organizations hosted a small democracy fair and attendees had a chance to meet, exchange ideas, and learn more about organizing happening in the region.

The afternoon turned toward lessons from Latin America.

Our Roadshow speakers brought their own experiences confronting corruption, disinformation, weakened institutions, and threats to democratic participation. Ernesto Ledesma spoke about building independent investigative journalism through Rompeviento TV and the risks journalists face when official sources themselves cannot always be trusted. Omar Trejo reflected on his experience working as a special prosecutor on the case of the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students in Mexico and the institutional barriers he encountered as evidence pointed toward military involvement.

Mynor Alonzo shared another side of the story: what becomes possible when people organize. Drawing from his experience with FOCO and Guatemala’s recent political history, he described how years of corruption and declining civic participation were interrupted by an explosion of student-led protest and renewed public engagement.

The stories were different, but the thread connecting them was clear: democracy cannot depend on institutions repairing themselves. It requires people who are willing to investigate, organize, document what is happening, and build enough collective power to demand accountability.

The Chico program ended with local organizations sharing their own work and the room joining together in chants of “The people united will never be divided” and “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido.”

From Chico, the Roadshow continued to Sacramento, where we gathered at the Communications Workers of America union hall.

Rather than beginning with a traditional panel, each Roadshow speaker had time to tell the story of what brought them into this work. The conversation quickly moved toward a fundamental question: What do we actually mean when we talk about democracy, and how do we distinguish democratic culture from authoritarianism?

Mynor reminded the group that democracy is ultimately built through community. Just as the family can be a nucleus of social life, he argued, community can become the nucleus of democracy. At a time when social-media algorithms increasingly shape what people see, care about, and engage with, rebuilding democratic life means creating real relationships and communities strong enough to compete with those forces.

Ernesto returned to the importance of documentation. Investigative journalism, he argued, requires us not simply to put personalities or influencers at the center of the story, but to document what is actually happening on the ground, in our communities and internationally.

And the Sacramento gathering itself reflected the diversity of organizing across Northern California. Participants included people who had traveled from El Dorado County, candidates organizing in the deeply conservative community of Paradise, a longtime Sacramento DSA organizer, and people connected to the California Trade Justice Coalition.

Across these California gatherings, one message kept resurfacing: democracy is not simply something we inherit or something institutions preserve for us. It is something people create together.

It is built through local journalism that keeps communities informed. Through organizers willing to work in places where organizing is difficult. Through people documenting abuses that others would prefer remain unseen. And through the relationships that make collective action possible in the first place.

That is exactly what the Democracy Defenders Roadshow is trying to strengthen: connections across movements, communities, and borders so that people confronting authoritarianism and democratic erosion do not have to do that work alone.

The Roadshow continues from here to North Carolina and Georgia, carrying the stories, strategies, and relationships built in the Midwest, East Coast and California into our next stops.

You can learn more about the roadshow, speakers, and upcoming events here and make sure to follow us on social media @globalexchange for updates and footage from the events.

What a week.

The Democracy Defenders Roadshow has just wrapped up an incredible East Coast tour, bringing together close to 500 people across Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New York City for four powerful conversations on democracy, human rights, and international solidarity.

Over the course of five days, we met with high school students, university students, migrant communities, and longtime activists, each bringing their own experiences, questions, and perspectives. While every event was different, one thing remained constant: people are hungry for honest conversations about what democracy looks like in practice and how we can defend it together.

We began in Philadelphia, where the Philadelphia Ethical Society welcomed a full room of community members eager to engage with perspectives from Guatemala, Colombia, and Mexico. Audience members drew connections between democratic backsliding in the United States and across Latin America, asking thoughtful questions about foreign policy, social movements, and the role ordinary people play in defending democratic institutions. The evening set the tone for the rest of the tour: honest, nuanced conversations grounded in shared values and lived experience.

One of the most inspiring parts of the week came during our two New Jersey stops, where we met with both high school and university students through partnerships with Groundwork Elizabeth, the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, and Fairleigh Dickinson University. Rather than simply listening, students actively wrestled with big questions: Is democracy more than elections? Can people who fundamentally disagree still build democratic societies? How do history, identity, and lived experience shape the way we understand justice? They reflected on the importance of listening across differences, recognized that every community contains a diversity of perspectives, and spoke about the need to resist reducing people to simplistic labels.

Many shared that hearing firsthand from our speakers expanded their understanding of democracy beyond the U.S. context and helped them see how struggles for peace, human rights, Indigenous sovereignty, and civic participation are deeply interconnected across borders. Their curiosity, openness, and willingness to engage gave us tremendous hope for the next generation of democratic leaders.

The East Coast tour concluded with our largest event at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, where approximately 200 people gathered for an evening moderated by Steven Donziger and featuring Chris Hedges alongside our Democracy Defenders from Guatemala, Colombia, and Mexico. The conversation explored the rise of authoritarianism around the world, the impact of U.S. foreign policy throughout Latin America, organized crime and migration, peace-building, sovereignty, and the urgent need to strengthen democratic institutions before they are further eroded. The discussion was both deeply rooted in the lived experiences of our speakers and remarkably relevant to challenges communities are facing here in the United States.

Across every stop, our Democracy Defenders reminded audiences that democracy is much more than elections. Through stories from Guatemala, Colombia, and Mexico, they showed how democracy is built every day through community organizing, defending human rights, protecting Indigenous territories, advocating for peace, confronting corruption, and creating spaces where ordinary people can participate in decisions that affect their lives. They challenged audiences to think beyond borders, recognizing that many of the forces threatening democracy today, from growing inequality and concentrated political power to violence and attacks on civil society, are deeply interconnected.

Perhaps most inspiring was what happened after the formal programs ended. Conversations spilled into hallways, over shared meals, and in small groups that lingered long after the events concluded. Students exchanged contact information with organizers. Community members asked how they could get involved. New relationships formed between people who, just hours earlier, had never met. These moments of genuine connection are exactly what the Democracy Defenders Roadshow was created to foster.

To everyone who attended, hosted, volunteered, interpreted, organized, and helped spread the word: thank you. Your energy, curiosity, and commitment made this stretch of the Roadshow an extraordinary success.

The conversations don’t end here. As the Roadshow continues with upcoming stops in California, we’ll keep building bridges across communities and borders, creating spaces where people can learn from one another and strengthen the movements working to defend democracy throughout the Americas.

You can learn more about the roadshow, speakers, and upcoming events here and make sure to follow us on social media @globalexchange for updates and footage from the events.

The Democracy Defenders Roadshow continued last week in South Bend, Indiana, with a powerful gathering rooted in Black movements, reparations, and solidarity across the Americas.

On July 2, our delegation joined Black Lives Matter South Bend at the St. Joseph County Public Library for “Democracy in Black: Reparations, Repair, and Black Movements Across the Americas.” The event created space for a deep conversation about how democracy, racial justice, and material repair are connected, not only in the United States, but across the hemisphere.

Before the evening program even began, the group appeared together on WUBS 89.7FM, South Bend’s historic Black-owned community radio station, for a bilingual broadcast that helped reach the city’s Latino community. Despite record-breaking heat, the day was full of energy, connection, and purpose.

Jorden Giger opened the evening by connecting the Roadshow’s different stops and the shared struggles communities are facing across borders. Ted Lewis then offered an overview of the Roadshow and Global Exchange’s work to bring frontline democracy defenders into conversation with communities in the United States.

The panel featured moving reflections from Colombia, Mexico, and Guatemala. Alí Bantú Ashanti spoke about his work with Colectivo Justicia Racial, his racial justice collective in Colombia, and connected the fight against fascism and white supremacy to the concrete conditions communities need to survive and thrive, including access to potable water. Turning to the audience, he asked a question that captured the spirit of the evening: “Will you struggle with me?”

Elena Gutierrez spoke about the long struggle of Afro-descendant communities in Mexico to achieve formal recognition, a struggle rooted in centuries of history, marked by hard-won gains, and still far from complete.

Mynor Alonzo shared lessons from Indigenous communities in Guatemala that have built their own governance structures outside the formal political system, including community leadership models that address conflict, administer services, and protect the natural environment. His reflections offered a powerful reminder that democracy is not one fixed model, and that communities often create the systems they need when official structures fail them.

One of the most striking moments of the evening came during the Q&A, when Alí reflected on white supremacy as part of a broader global struggle. Drawing on Malcolm X’s evolving internationalist vision, he reminded the room that the fight against white supremacy is not separate from the fight for all oppressed people everywhere. It is the same struggle, and it cannot be won in isolation.

South Bend showed what the Roadshow is making possible: honest conversations across communities, histories, and borders; lessons grounded in lived experience; and a growing commitment to defend democracy by confronting the systems that deny people dignity, safety, and self-determination.

You can learn more about the roadshow, speakers, and upcoming events here and make sure to follow us on social media @globalexchange for updates and footage from the events.

Caravan Logo

Written by Laura Carlsen

Friday, April 1, 2016 we (the 33 people traveling from Honduras to New York City on the Caravan for Peace, Life and Justice) awoke in a pine forest.

The night before, the Caravan decided to stay at an ecotourism center, a cluster of cabins about an hour out of La Esperanza called EcoSol. Many human rights and popular education workshops have been held here, and activists seeking respite from the constant pressure—and threats—of defending rights and territory in Honduras have found a place to breathe freely here, even if just for a few days.

We were grateful for the space–and the Internet–and caught up with tasks of internal organization, multimedia production and spreading the word about the now 3-day old Caravan.

There are 33 of us now. The caravan has gained strength along its path. After breakfast, we set off for Utopia, the COPINH’s (Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras) cultural center outside La Esperanza.

COPINH Caravan Image 1COPINH leaders received us–Tomás Gómez, Lilian Pérez, Marleny Reyes, Sotelo Chavarria, Gaspar Sánchez and Selvi Milla among them, later joined by Berta’s daughter Laura Zúniga Cáceres. Years of experience, training and knowledge-building are reflected in this group, even in the younger ones. Also a different kind of leadership that consciously creates room for new people and new ideas. A feminist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, environmentalist leadership that refuses to be reduced to just one of those terms.

After we eat—mounds of beans and rice, thick tortillas and fried bananas, we enter the meeting room where we form a close circle around an altar to Berta. The photo that has spread across the globe, of her sitting on a rock beside the river, smiling and half-turned toward the camera, is poised in the center of the circle of colored candles, multi-hued corn, leaves and seeds. The room fills with the smoke of natural incense, as people from the caravan and the organization file in.

COPIHN Image 2Gaspar Sanchez, director of sexual diversity in the leadership of COPINH, begins. Later in the day he’ll explain that COPINH is possibly the only national indigenous organization with a commission devoted to sexual diversity. Although the work’s still getting off the ground—mostly because the attacks on Lenca land and resources have intensified, he explains–the recognition that gays and lesbians exist in indigenous communities, that they have rights, that the discrimination they face is double or triple, has been a huge advance for the organization and its LGBTQ members.

It is another sign that the political and economic elites behind the assassination of Berta Caceres knew exactly what they were doing. COPINH is a model for the power of resistance when it is inclusive, spiritual, cultural, and integral.

“The war on drugs in Honduras is an excuse to eliminate us”, Gaspar states. Chavarría relates the history of COPINH, beginning with its founding in 1993 “to confront the destruction of the environment”. The organization now works in 6 departments, demanding the right of indigenous communities to consultation under Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, recuperating ancestral lands, and facing off with powerful transnational companies to block megaprojects on indigenous lands.

Lilian Pérez notes that last year the organization achieved its dream of having a Casa de la Mujer, a women’s house. Here women from the communities receive leadership training with a different concept of leadership, gender equality, health and education workshops, etc.

at3yYyG - ImgurWhile the murder of Berta has been a terrible blow to the work, Lilian says they always had a pact– “that whether she’s here or not here, COPINH will continue forward… We’ll be many Bertas”.

Tomás Gómez, COPINH’s interim coordinator, emphasizes the importance of developing their own forms of autonomous and independent communication. The Honduran press is controlled by handful of families and frequently vilifies the COPINH and its actions. The organization has a network of five community radios.

Gómez explains that the spiritual aspect of the struggle reinforces identity and the strength to move forward collectively. La Pascualita, en elderly Lenca woman who conserved traditional ways even as the rest of the group lost the language and customs, now serves as the spiritual guide to the organization and a pillar of the effort to recover ancestral ways.

As the night winds down, we ask how they’ve come as far as they have, recovering ancestral lands, blocking the designs of powerful companies, overcoming repression, moving toward gender equality and uniting communities and the answer is the combination of the spiritual connection to the land, the development of autonomous media and productive projects, participatory democratic leadership and unity.

All these will be put to the test in this new phase of the organization after Berta’s death. But amid the laughter and the tears, the firm step of the leadership and the strong base and convictions of the organization–built through years of careful guidance–assure that the transition will be solid. The role of international solidarity, they emphasized, will be especially crucial in the months to come. 

You can follow the Caravan on Facebook  and Twitter, and please ask your friends to do the same.

By Laura Krasovitzky, Ted Lewis / Published on AlterNet March 25, 2016. 

Starting in Honduras on March 28th, the Caravan for Peace, Life and Justice will travel through El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and the United States with the goal of reaching New York City on the eve of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on Drugs beginning on April 19.

Made up of a diverse group of people including victims of the drug war, families who have lost relatives to violence or incarceration, human rights defenders, journalists, faith leaders, activists and others, the Caravan will travel through some of the places most affected by the war on drugs with the purpose of giving way to an inclusive, collective and open dialogue on drug policy and creating alternatives to the failed prohibitionist regime.

Why Latin America?As one of the primary regions for drug production and trafficking, Latin America has become a hub of human rights violations, organized crime, systemic impunity and environmental destruction. In Central America, the legacy of brutal civil wars combined with militarization strategies funded by the U.S. has given way to some of the most dangerous cities in the world, forcing thousands to abandon their homes in search of safety and risking deportation once they reach Mexico’s southern and northern borders.

In Honduras, Garifuna, indigenous and rural communities have been hit the hardest through gang violence and drug trafficking operations encroaching on their ancestral lands. Speaking out against the drug war comes at a high cost and those who engage in social justice and environmental activism are brutally silenced, as evidenced by the recent murders of Berta Cáceres and Nelson García from the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH).

In neighboring El Salvador, between 20 and 30 people are murdered every day and approximately $400 million (USD) are paid by civilians in extortions every year. Similarly, Guatemala’s drug trafficking networks are responsible for 45% of homicides and overcrowded prisons with almost three times the people they can hold. Crossing into Mexico, over 150,000 people have been murdered and more than 27,000 disappeared since 2006, along with approximately 120 journalists who have been killed since 2000. There, the human cost of the drug war has been largely fueled by militarized national security strategies financed with a $25.6 billion (USD) budget from the U.S. as of 2016.

Caravan LogoWhile Latin America has paid a heavy price for implementing interventionist drug policies, the devastating effects of prohibition are not unique to the region. In the United States, over 2.2 million people are currently incarcerated and 80% of those in federal prisons for drug offenses are black or Latino. Drug law violations have been the main driver of new admissions to prison for decades and while federal and state governments have spent $1 trillion on the drug war in the past 40 years, federal assistance for harm reduction initiatives, such as syringe access programs that would help tackle the upsurge in opioid overdoses, has been nonexistent.

Clearly, we still have a long way to go.

Why now?

After decades of punitive global drug policies revolving around UNGASS 1998’s unrealistic pledge of a “drug free world“ and the 1961, 1971 and 1988 International Drug Control Treaties, many governments and civil society organizations alike are calling for a different approach to drug policy that prioritizes human rights, public health, harm reduction and sustainability.

As people from around the globe convene in New York for UNGASS 2016, the Caravan aims to shed light on the human faces and heartrending stories of the U.S.-driven drug war and its impact across the Americas.

Making its final stop in New York City on April 18, some of the actions planned for that day include a walk from City Hall to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan in order to highlight the ties between drug policy and criminal justice reform, a gathering outside the U.N. with families of drug war victims from around the globe and an evening event at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem bringing together faith leaders opposed to the drug war.

Twenty-two days, five countries, one message: end the drug war. If the people lead, the leaders will follow.
========================

Laura Krasovitzky is the Drug Policy Alliance representative for the caravan. Ted Lewis, human rights director for Global Exchange is the coordinator general of the ‘No More Drug War’ Caravan to Visit Five Impacted Countries on way to UN Session in NY

Women and the War on Drugs
by Robin Lloyd

The following piece was originally published by Peace and Justice Newsletter of Burlington. The author, Robin Lloyd, is a filmmaker and peace activist from Burlington VT.

I first smoked marijuana when I was thirty years old. I found it to be more fun than alcohol. And more spiritual. It reminded me why I became a Quaker. It helped me see the inner light in people.

The next realization was that it was insane to make this simple plant illegal.  In reading books on the subject I learned a surprising fact: the legal prohibition of cannabis, coca and poppy plants is determined at the highest level, not by God (since after all it is reported that Jesus used a cannabis extract in healing) but by the UN’s Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961.  In 1970, Richard Nixon signed the legislation implementing national prohibition in compliance with the Convention: the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act.

So just to make that clear, US drug policy is determined by a United Nations Convention.

A potentially momentous reconsideration of that Convention will be taking place this April in New York City at the second United National General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS).

I attended the first UNGASS in 1998 as part of the effort by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) to change policy and especially to assert our position that ending the war on drugs is a women’s issue.

Why? There are many things wrong with this War – its racism, its reliance on military solutions – but one not frequently mentioned is its impact on women.

The War on Drugs condones a form of macho violence. In earlier decades, that violence was played out between cops and robbers, then cowboys and Indians, and now the DEA and narco traffickers.

The War allows men to find an excuse to be violent and to militarize societies. Women lose in time of war, no matter what George Bush says.  And what are the results of criminalizing a natural human desire to change consciousness? A massive international slush fund of illegal money funding brothels, gun running, bribes, and casinos: all endeavors that are not much fun for women.

The legal enforcement of prohibition leads to racism and punitive incarceration. On the supply side, the chaos caused when Latin American governments, bullied by the US, agree to spray farmers’ land to destroy coca crops – without asking their permission of course –  in the middle of a civil war, has been an ongoing environmental tragedy and political disaster.

I accompanied a WILPF delegation to Colombia in 1996 and documented our meetings with the courageous but melancholy victims of the war: women heartbroken that their sons were forced to join a paramilitary group to kill other women’s sons who had joined the guerillas. A high point of our visit was a meeting with the secretary of the Small Coca Farmers Cooperative. Olmyra Morales arrived at our meeting at a human rights center in Bogota carrying a small suitcase. Like an Avon door-to-door saleswoman, she set out the healing lotions and teas made from he coca plant and described their beneficent uses.

A year later, WILPF US, under the leadership of executive director Marilyn Clement,  got a grant from the Drug Policy Foundation for a US tour of women survivors of the War on Drugs:  North and South. Olmyra came from Colombia, joining a coca farmer from Bolivia and Peru and an African-American former cocaine addict who was HIV positive – Marsha Burnett from Montpelier VT.

On one of the stops on the tour we met with the staff of a anti-drug abuse program  in Baltimore. It was an amazing but gentle confrontation between women who grew the crops whose product was destroying the communities in the inner city of Baltimore, and those who had to deal with the effects of this epidemic. Who was to blame?  Who was ‘evil’? New insights were gained that day.

The next year Olmyra came back to the US  to testify at the first UNGASS on Drugs in 1998, sponsored by the Transnational Institute from the Netherlands. She and Marsha Burnett were chosen from amongst civil society participants to address (from the balcony) hundreds of diplomats making up the UN Committee of the Whole. They spoke as victims of the supply and demand side of this war.

They held hands aloft and said “We together, representing the two criminalized extremes of the drug problem, say that we are united in seeking a sustainable way of life for our communities…”.

It was moving to hear poor women speaking the truth in those august halls. But did anyone really listen? What was the outcome of that first UNGASS? Titled “A Drug-Free World — We Can Do It!”, President Clinton cajoled the rest of the world into increasing the military response to drug use. The US government was happy to assist Latin American  countries in acquiring high speed motor boats for interdiction and low cost loans to build prisons for drug offenders (and anyone else who offended the state).

A lot of drugs have passed under the bridge since that time. This April, UNGASS II will take place in a much changed atmosphere.  According to the Transnational Institute,  UNGASS 2016 is an unparalleled opportunity to put an end to the horrors of the drug war and instead prioritize health, human rights, and safety.WILPF’s attempt to speak truth to power before UNGASS 1 was a low profile, grassroots effort. By contrast, this April, survivors and victims of this war, north and south, will be traveling as part of a much more robust caravan, starting in Honduras, to present their case to the UN.  Sponsored by Global Exchange, with a large grant from George Soros’s Open Society, this movement for freedom from government oppression has a chance to be a game changer.

To follow the Caravan, and for information on UNGASS,  please go to http://www.globalexchange.org/programs/caravan-peace-life-and-justice. For info on the film Courageous Women of Colombia, visit www.greenvalleymedia.org.