Nobel Peace Prize Winner Jody Williams' Message of Support to the Mexican Peace Caravan

The Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity demanded an end to the drug war in the capital of the nation that launched the war. After setting off from AFL-CIO headquarters where the nation's largest federation of unions saluted its efforts, the caravan planted itself in front of the White House, then proceeded to Freedom Plaza.

In the Plaza, as the sun set over the Capitol, Xochitl Espinosa of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities read a statement of support from Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams. Below is the statement in its entirety:

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MESSAGE FROM NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER JODY WILLIAMS TO THE MEXICAN CARAVAN FOR PEACE WITH JUSTICE AND DIGNITY.

As a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, as director of the Nobel Women’s Initiative and as a sister peace activist, I send this message to express my support for the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity, and to congratulate all the members of the caravan for the sacrifice and commitment that have brought you across the country to share your pain-- and your hope-- with the U.S. public.

I’m really sorry that I can’t be with you in person today, to welcome the Caravan for Peace to Washington DC, to stand beside you as you deliver your message to stop the drug war that has devastated your country and your families, to support you as you ‘speak truth to power’ here, in the center of power.

I have lived and worked in Mexico and consider that great country not just a neighboring nation, but another home. It has grieved me to see Mexico, and Mexicans, immersed in violence over the past years. As a result of that growing concern, my organization, the Nobel Women’s Initiative along with Just Associates led an international delegation to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. We heard hundreds of testimonies from women who are confronting violence. Many of those terrible stories and most of the pain we listened to was caused by the war on drugs.

Our conclusion was that: the war on drugs has become a war on women. We see on this caravan many examples of brave women who have turned their pain into action, who have converted grief into a tireless demand for justice.

And so I send a warm greeting to the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity.

For there is no other kind of peace. There can be no lasting peace without justice. There can be no peace as a result of militarization, and fighting violence with violence. There can be no peace not founded on respect for human rights and dignity.

It is only through collective, non-violent action--where women are recognized as equal partners and leaders--that we can build peace.

That is why the work of Mexico’s peace movement is so important. That is why your presence here in the United States—a nation that continues to support the war on drugs that has claimed the lives of so many of your loved ones--has such meaning for all of us who work for peace.

Thank you. I wish you much success.

Jody Williams received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban landmines through the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which shared the Peace Prize with her that year. At that time, she became the 10th woman - and third U.S. woman - in its almost 100-year history to receive the Prize.  Since her protests of the Vietnam War, she has been a life-long advocate of freedom, self-determination and human and civil rights.  www.nobelwomensinitiative.org

Survivors of Mexico's drug violence tell US government 'We need a new approach'

Christian Science Monitor. Sept. 21. More than 100 victims of the drug war went to Washington as part of Mexico's Caravan for Peace to demand justice for their families. The group is pressing both governments to rethink a policy that has cost so many lives.

By Lisa Haugaard. One hundred and ten victims of violence from Mexico and human rights activists traveled thousands of miles, caravanning in 2 buses to visit 25 cities across the United States to urge communities from Los Angeles to New York, Tucson to Montgomery to help them stop the ... violence that is afflicting their families and their country. The Latin America Working Group was proud to join with Global Exchange and other partners to host this historic caravan as they ended their journey on September 12, 2012 in Washington, DC.

They came, in this “Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity,” to deliver a message: The United States has a responsibility in the violence that is causing us such immense pain. You must rethink the ways in which your actions or your failure to act are contributing to the sorrow we endure. There are over 60,000 dead and 10,000 disappeared in Mexico since 2006 as [a] result of the violence of the drug war. These are our sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters. There should not be one single victim more. Read more.

Mothers Bond to Heal as Baltimore's Drug War Meets Mexico's

Kimberly Armstrong of Baltimore shares a hug with a caravan mother

As the peace caravan arrived in Baltimore yesterday morning, many of the 100-some people on board still slept, hunched over their seats or slumped on the shoulders of their bus mates. With a light summer rain falling, we began to pass row after row of abandoned houses. A member of a Baltimore host organization explained the background of a city that has been bombed out--not by aerial strikes, but by economic crisis. The results were strikingly similar.

Along North Avenue and Fulton Avenue, entire blocks of houses were boarded up and abandoned. Some have been gutted by time or rehab speculators. Others stand as they have for more than a hundred years, ready to house families behind their strong brick walls. Except that money, racism and the perversion of the financial system have blocked their doors. Families are on the street while houses remain empty.

We drove up to Irvington Park where a coalition of Baltimore groups hosted a picnic with the theme "Keep Them Home". Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), a community organization that works with imprisoned and recently released youth, greeted the caravan, along with the NAACP, Casa Maryland and others.

Two women rappers/singers performed works protesting the construction of yet another prison in a community that lacks basic services. Local groups like LBS have managed to block the prison so far and are working to have the multi-million dollar project cancelled altogether.

Kimberly Armstrong, a community organizer, took the stage.

"I don't know Spanish," she told the caravan. "But I know a lot about losing a loved one."

On Sept. 27, 2004, Armstrong's sixteen year old son Eric was shot and killed. Just this February, she said, she heard a knock on the door. "It was the police. They told me they found my son's murderer. he was shot with a 9mm rifle by a 14-year old."

"I thought to myself, 'why do we have 9mm rifles on the ground?  how can it be that we live in a neighborhood where it's easier for a 14-year old to get a gun, than it is to get a tomato.'"

Among the crowd, the many mothers and other relatives of the murdered and disappeared nodded. One woman's lost son became the brother of the other's.

"Now they are all my angels," said Araceli Rodriguez, displaying the photo of Armstrong's son alongside that of her own, kidnapped and disappeared in the state of Michoacan.

Laura Carlsen

Laura's Blog: HSBC: How laundering drug money fuels the drug war violence

Today the Peace Caravan will pay a visit to HSBC Bank, to protest the financial crimes that enable drug cartels to launder their huge illegal earnings. These crimes are rarely punished because of the importance of illegal money to the financial system. HSBC was caught with highly questionable practices between its US and Mexican branches and currently faces charges. They expect to settle for record fines, while avoiding criminal charges.

But financial crimes are not victimless, nor are they non-violent crimes. What looks like white-collar crime on the books is red with blood in the streets. The Caravan will challenge the bankers on Wall Street to look the victims in the eyes and will also call for stricter enforcement and punishment.

HSBC Money-Laundering Fuels Violence in Mexico

FACTS:

* HSBC is a British bank and the largest European bank. HSBC has vast interests in Mexico since 2002, when it bought Banco Bital, Mexico’s fifth largest bank. HSMX (HSBC in Mexico) has $2 billion dollars in assets.

* A Senate investigation found that HSBC transported $7 billion dollars in cash from Mexico to the United States in armed cars or aircraft in 2007 and 2008 alone. The Mexico-U.S. transfers far surpassed that of any other branch. Despite this highly suspicious activity and known cartel activity in the country, HSBC gave Mexico a low-risk rating for money laundering and permitted the transfers.

* A typical strategy of drug cartels to launder money is to smuggle US dollars from drug sales into Mexico, and then use international banks to send them back to the U.S. This is what HSBC did.

* HSBC was also found to have established accounts for Mexican money exchange businesses and other suspicious entities, and cleared billions of dollars in travelers cheques.

* The bank opened US dollar accounts in the Cayman Islands for Mexican clients for more than $2 billion dollars.

* The Mexican regulatory commission fined the bank $27 million in July of this year—a slap on the wrist for one of the world’s largest transnational financial institutions.

* On July 17, a Senate sub-committee published a lengthy report on HSBC case, concluding that it failed to apply anti-money laundering measures.

The over 300-page Senate report, from which most of these facts are taken, can be found here: http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/hearings/us-vulnerabilities-to-money-laundering-drugs-and-terrorist-financing-hsbc-case-history

HSBC in the United States:

* HSBC is being sued in a class action suit for foreclosing on homes of veterans in the U.S. 

As hundreds of families are evicted from their homes due to a crisis caused by the banks themselves, drug money assures the banks themselves see growing profits.

We call for: 

* Real vigilance and strict enforcement of anti-money laundering laws

* Exemplary fines for banks found guilty of money-laundering, like HSBC.

* Divert military/police drug war funding to increased public funding for enforcement of money-laundering laws—destroy the financial structures of the drug cartels, not human lives.

Laura's Blog: Breaking the Silence in New York; Historic Harlem March to End the Drug War

The Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity arrived in New York today and hit the ground running. In the early evening, hundreds of caravan members and New York supporters met each other in Riverside Church to hear the testimonies of the drug war's devastation on both sides of the border. A mammoth, neogothic structure built by the Rockefellers, the church has a long history of housing causes for social justice. It was here on April 4, 1967 that  Martin Luther King made one of his last speeches before he was assassinated--a glaring indictment of the Viet Nam war.

In his speech, called "A Time to Break Silence", King cited his reasons to oppose the Viet Nam war. His words apply almost uncannily to the drug war today. Despite the difference in historical contexts and the differences between the two wars, their similarities and the truth of the words stand not only the test of time but the test of conscience as well.

Both wars were, and are, deadly; both unconventional for their time; both fought for motivations distinct from those professed to the people.

The first reason King listed to oppose the war was "the war as an enemy of the poor". He had watched as advances in fighting poverty and inequality were dismantled to feed the war machine. The trade-off was starkly obvious:

I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.

We also know that today. With a budget in crisis, social programs have been stripped in historic rollbacks of rights and living standards as the defense budget not only maintains its girth but grows. With the Middle East conflicts waning in attention, it's the drug war that has moved in to justify militarism's insatiable appetite.

In Mexico, where the financial crisis, free trade and governmental indifference have created some 12 million more poor people in just a few years, the drug war has absorbed an enormous part of the budget. The war economy in both countries has powerful backers, and the the drug war has the added advantage for them of not only keeping the poor poor, but eliminating a large number of them--behind bars or in mass graves.

That's, of course, King's second reason.

[The war] was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.

Today's drug war doesn't even have to send young men and women thousands of miles away. It puts them away right here at home. By the millions and with the same discriminatory criteria that sent the poor and African American to fight and die in Viet Nam.

The peace caravan from Mexico marched in a candlelight vigil through the heart of Harlem, Manhattan's poorest areas. A place where every day youth are plucked to fill the cells and coffers of a private prison system. Where drug laws do the dirty work of justifying criminalization based on race and poverty and treating victims as villains.

Carol Eady of Woman on the Rise Telling Her Story (WORTH), a former prisoner on drug charges who has kicked drugs and become an educator and community activist, explained at the church,

Many women in New York, and probably all over the world, are usually incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses. Most of the time, they started using drugs due to past abuse, abandonment by parents, victimization and sexual assaults. Instead of treating these occurrences as health hazards or diseases, when we turn to drugs to medicate our pain they lock us up.  

More than 400 people marched chanting 'No More Drug War' and calling for justice in the streets of Harlem. The "cruel manipulation of the poor" that King spoke of is the modus operandi of the drug war and the prisons are the new battlefields where young lives are lost.

King's third reason stemmed from his deep commitment to non-violence.

I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. 

Likewise, if we do not oppose the drug war, we cannot claim to be non-violent and credibly stand up against more conventional wars or invasions. The U.S. government's Merida Initiative promotes violence and militarization as a solution to drug trafficking. We either condone that and abandon all pretenses of non-violence or we oppose it, despite its political popularity and remain consistent in our beliefs.

By keeping silent since Bush launched the Merida Initiative in 2007, we have allowed the militarized drug war model to spread. Now both political parties have elevated counter-narcotics efforts to national security, as if a white powder used to get high could blow up the world or a corner dealer were tantamount to a terrorist. This is a blatant lie. We are supporting a prohibition model where Mexican communities suffer the presence of violent and corrupt security forces and drug gangs, both funded and armed, whether directly or indirectly, by our country.

Violence becomes the norm and moral outrage dulls through endless repetition.

Another reason is the "vocation of sonship and brotherhood", a religious calling that--when women are added into the language--demands making common cause and understanding the suffering of others. The peace caravan has over this past month forged those bonds and sought out that common cause. The victims, with their photos of murdered or missing loved ones and their stories of pain, have challenged the U.S. public to consider the devastation wrought by support of a drug war without end. 

The stories at Riverside--45 years later after MLK spoke out on Viet Nam--again broke the silence about the war. Not a war on a foreign continent, but a crossborder war that rages within our communities from Harlem to Jalisco. As the U.S. government extends the failed drug war from Colombia and Mexico, to Central America, the Caribbean and Africa, King's closing words fit as well now as then:

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam [or in the drug war] and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors.

This model of annihilation drags us all into more violence. We have alternatives. As hundreds of marchers moved through New York City with the pictures of the victims, calling for an end to the war--again--they carried us closer to what King called "a creative psalm of peace". 

And this time, the silence was broken in two languages. 

Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity marches to end failed war on drugs

New York Daily News

Their task is titanic, but so is their determination to end the war on drugs.

The Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity, a group originally composed of 110 Mexican fathers and mothers, wives and husbands, sons and daughters — 49 of whom lost loved ones to the violence of the drug war — arrives in our city tomorrow.

One of those mothers is Margarita López, whose daughter, Yahaira Guadalupe Baena López, 19, was taken from her home in Oaxaca by an armed group on April 13, 2011. She joined the caravan at its inception.

“My daughter was innocent but the authorities never took an interest in her disappearance, so I joined the caravan,” said López. “I don’t want any more mothers to suffer the way I am suffering.”

The group’s journey began August 12 in San Diego and when it ends on Sept. 12, it will have traveled over 5,000 miles and 25 cities including Los Angeles, Santa Fe, El Paso, Houston, Montgomery, New Orleans, Chicago, New York and, finally, Washington, D.C.

“Our goal is to become citizen-diplomats — to reach out to the people of the U.S.,” said Javier Sicilia, a distinguished Mexican poet, and the man who conceived the caravan idea. Read more.