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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2001 San Francisco-A multiethnic band of 150 marched from 24th and Mission Streets to United Nations Plaza on Saturday, July 21, to protest Plan Colombia, the U.S.'s $7.5 billion assault on Colombian plants, animals and people in the name of fighting drugs. Of course marchers knew better, as indicated by the chant, "Urgente! Urgente! La guerre en Colombia es en contra de la gente." A woman from JUNTOS, a coalition organizing against U.S. militarism, said the date for the march was chosen because it was Colombian Independence Day. Her focus was on solidarity between movements. She told the crowd, "We can't be sectarian anymore and win anything." An activist representing the American Indian Movement (AIM) concurred as he saw the struggle of indigenous people in Colombia the same as in the U.S. and practically everywhere else in the world. Like many other speakers he called for solidarity between participants of this action and the G8 summit protesters in Genoa, Italy. Indeed many there had marched in Berkeley the previous night to express outrage at the police murder of a young Italian man demonstrating in Genoa. A Black youth from Revolutionary Anti-authoritarians of Color for Equality (RACE) saw Plan Colombia as an extension of the United States' racist domestic drug policy: "This is not a war against drugs; it's a war against people....Don't talk to us about some anarchist who throws a brick through a Starbucks window when the U.S. government is out killing Black and Brown people in the streets every single day." The racist nature of the U.S. intervention in Colombia is corroborated by the testimony of Luis Gilberto Murillo, an African Colombian whose term as governor of Choco state was cut short by right-wing forces in state and national government. Murillo was exiled by the paramilitary group Auto-Defensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) under penalty of death to himself and his family. In a June 4 interview with Pacific News Service he stated, "I would like African Americans to note that their tax money is used to support a U.S. policy, including Plan Colombia, which is detrimental to African Colombians. And not just detrimental to their standard of living, but to their lives. It is a policy that kills them." He told of an Easter Sunday massacre in which 100 were killed in Upper Naya, most of them African Colombians. Much has been rightly said of the continuing campaign to remove indigenous people from their land, yet 70% of those violently displaced are Black. According to Murillo 82% of African Colombians live under the poverty line. And although they number 11 million of Colombia's 42 million citizens' they occupy no seats of real power. Murillo said he and the coalition of independent liberals that nominated him for governor of Choco "wanted to represent new processes of thought in the black community." This is not unlike the message delivered by the AIM brother here in San Francisco when he said to marchers, "You wanna talk about arms? Let's talk about arming your mind....You have to commit yourself to a new way of life. This demonstration is a ceremony for a new thought, a new beginning." -David M. |
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