Santa Cruz City Council takes a stand against U.S. military aid to Colombia
After hours of waiting in the hot Santa Cruz, California city council room, listening to the impassioned arguments in favor and against off leash dog use at a nearby beach; and seeing a lengthy power point presentation on the plans for a new building in downtown Santa Cruz, we were losing our steam.
It seemed likely that our resolution, requesting that all US military aid to Colombia be re-directed to domestic drug prevention and rehabilitation programs, wouldn’t be considered until after 7pm when the council members returned from their evening recess.Fortunately Santa Cruz Mayor Ryan Coonerty noticed that we had been patiently waiting all afternoon (thankfully we had all brought work with us: the UCSC Colombia research cluster grad students were grading papers and others worked on their laptops) and pushed our agenda item to the top of the list before the break. At 6pm, life-long activist Bert Muhly from 3 Americas took the floor.
Reminded after two minutes that his time was almost up, Bert was not distracted and continued speaking about US policy towards Latin America over the years and that he himself had “been in Colombia with FOR and stepped over the dead bodies there.” Then Sandra Alvarez, a local Colombian, Ph.D candidate at UCSC and long time Colombia activist spoke to the power of passing local resolutions on international issues, saying “it is here where we can have an impact.” A Vietnam Vet, clearly a regular at Santa Cruz city council meetings and who had offered his thoughts on every issue on the agenda that afternoon, also spoke in favor of the resolution and went on to profess about the evils of electing John McCain (only to be reminded by the mayor that we were talking about Colombia!).
When the time for the vote came, it was passed unanimously! Although some council members usually don’t support resolutions that touch on international policy and prefer to focus on local issues, this resolution was an exception. After it was passed, council member Mike Rotkin referred to the specific language included in the resolution, which requested that the mayor notify other cities across California and ask them to also take a stand on the failed drug war and its impacts on people at home and abroad.
The Santa Cruz Sentinel briefly noted the resolution, saying, “the council approved a resolution calling for a shift in U.S. drug policy away from fighting illegal drug production in foreign countries, especially Colombia, to curtailing the demand for illegal drugs in the United States.”
This resolution is the third of its kind (Berkeley and Fairfax have passed similar resolutions) and FOR hopes to repeat the effort in many more cities.
