"Plan Colombia," the U.S. program to use $1.3 billion in mostly military aid to halt drug production in the Andean region of Latin America, will be the subject of a major conference at Columbia University on Mar. 23-24. Entitled "Widening Destruction: A Teach-In on the Drug War and Colombia," the event will bring together leading Colombian human rights activists and experts on the drug war here in the United States. Participants include:
· Luis Gilberto Murillo, former governor of El Chocó department and a leading Afro-Colombian activist, who was forced into exile after repeated death threats from right-wing paramilitaries.
· Regulo Madero, a human rights advocate from the northern city of Barrancabermeja, currently the scene of intense fighting among guerrilla, paramilitary, and government forces.
· Kevin Zeese, a former executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and now president of Common Sense for Drug Policy.
· Eric E. Sterling, an attorney who helped write the draconian anti-drug laws of the 1980s as a staff counsel for the House Judiciary Committee and has since emerged as a leading drug-war critic.
· Coletta Youngers, an expert on drugs and the Andean region who is now a senior associate with the Washington Office on Latin America.
· Dr. John P. Morgan, a professor at CUNY Medical School who, with Lynn Zimmer, a Queens College sociologist, is author of Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts.
· Nazih Richani is a political scientist and visiting scholar at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
· Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, also in Washington.
· Graham Boyd, founder and director of the ACLU Drug Policy Litigation Project.
Randy Credico, an attorney, stand-up comic, and leader of the campaign to repeal the Rockefeller drug laws, will also be a key speaker.
Sponsored by the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), the Columbia University Institute for Latin American Studies (ILAS), and Columbia Law Students for Enacting Human Drug Policies (FEHDP), the teach-in will explore how drug prohibition has led to a growing prison population in the United States while fueling Vietnam-style military intervention in Colombia and growing chaos in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. The conference will begin at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, Mar. 23, at the Columbia Law School, 435 West 116th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive. Tickets are $8 on-line at www.nacla.org and $10 at the door.
For further information, contact NACLA at 212-870-2716.