WHAT: The National Alliance of Latin American & Caribbean Communities (NALACC) and other civil society groups aboard the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity are coming together at “The Summit to End the War on Drugs: Baltimore and Beyond the Borders” today Sunday Sept. 9, 2012 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Panelists include Caravan members who will talk about alternatives to the war on drugs that has killed more than 60,000 people in Mexico since December 2006. 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: 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:
Kurt Schmoke, former Baltimore Mayor and Dean of Howard University Law School
Caravan for Peace members
Laura Carlsen, CIP Americas Program
Jasmine Tyler, Drug Policy Alliance
Dan Morhaim, Maryland State Delegate
Gillian Maxwell, Canadian Drug Policy Coalition
WHEN: Sunday Sept. 9, 2012 2:00-6:30 PM
WHERE: Sojourner-Douglass College, 200 N. Central Ave., 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.
About NALACC
The National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC) is a network of community-basead, Latino and Caribbean immigrant-led organizations, that seeks to raise the quality of life for immigrant communities in the United States, as well as communities in migrant-sending countries in Latin America. Facebook:facebook.com/NALACC2004 • Twitter:@NALACC_ORG • Web page:www.nalacc.org
