The talk is about the drug war that has killed more than 60,000 in Mexico.
WHAT: The leader of the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity, Javier Sicilia, will be giving a talk about the violence caused by the drug war in Mexico today Saturday Sept. 8, 2012 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Juan Francisco, Sicilia’s 24-year-old son, is one of the more than 60,000 people that the drug war has killed in Mexico since December 2006. Sicilia was named Time Magazine’s People of The Year for becoming an inspirational voice for peace, justice and transformation in the wake of his son’s murder in March of 2011.
Baltimore is one of the more than 20 stops of this broad binational coalition traveling the United States from coast to coast raising awareness on the human costs of the war on drugs and the social disasters caused by violence in Mexico and in the United States. The Caravan offers five solutions to stop the violence and its ramifications in Mexico and the United States: the exploration of alternatives to drug prohibition; a halt to the illegal smuggling of weapons across the border to Mexico; concrete steps to combat money laundering; the immediate suspension of U.S. assistance to Mexico’s armed forces; and an end to the criminalization of immigrants. The Caravan will culminate on Sept. 12, 2012 on International Day of Action in Washington, D.C.
WHO: The National Alliance of Latin American & Caribbean Communities (NALACC), along with other 100 U.S. civil society organizations, has formed an alliance with Mexico’s Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), co-led by Mexican poet and activist Javier Sicilia, on the Caravan as a sign of solidarity with Mexicans as well as a way to share its “Somos” / “We Are” initiative, which mirrors the same goal: to humanize the debate of policies that directly affect the immigrant communities in the United States.
WHEN: Saturday Sept. 8, 2012 at 7:00 PM
WHERE: Hodson 110, Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus, Baltimore, Maryland
WHY: The war on drugs has left more than 60,000 people dead in Mexico in the last five years, and has resulted in over 500,000 Americans behind bars for drug offenses. Blacks and Latinos are vastly overrepresented among those arrested and incarcerated for drug offenses in the United States. The Caravan opens the possibility to initiate a transnational debate among the stakeholders searching for a new program of “human security”, whose main criterion should be the well-being of the people, including the decriminalization of migration.
