Your opportunithy to work in your faith community now

Friends,
Faith communities across the nation are being asked to sign a letter to the Obama Administration encouraging criminal justice reform.

This is not a radical letter. But this is a valuable opportunity for you to encourage the social concerns committee of your faith congregation to begin a discussion of these issues. Naturally you can use this discussion to educate your faith community about the drug policy and criminal justice issues that the letter does not address -- from ending drug prohibition as the only way that the violence can be substantially reduced or ending capital punishment.

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American Violet -- a new feature film on the drug war run amok, and an ACLU lawsuit that successfully fought it

On April 17, American Violet will be released in theaters across the country. It will be featured in the Philadelphia Film Festival on April 4 and 5.

This powerful, dramatic movie is based on the drug cases in Hearne, TX, a small town between Waco and College Station, TX, about 100 miles northeast of Austin.

The drug raids in the case were successfully challenged by the ACLU Drug Policy Litigation Project. The movie revolves around Regina Kelly, the lead plaintiff in the ACLU case. In 2005, the defendants settled, admitting a practice of 15 years of racially motivated drug raids in Hearne. There was a 22 minute documentary made, Hearne, Texas: Scenes from the Drug War. The video is the third one down the page.

You can click here to see the American Violet trailer. This case echoes the infamy of the better known cases of Tulia, TX.

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Evo Morales: Let me chew my coca leaves

Bolivia's President Evo Morales has an op-ed in The New York Times. He notes the absurdity of the Single Convention on Narcotics of 1961 that made the chewing of coca leaves an international crime. The indigenous people of the Andes have been doing it for, oh, about 5000 years. Coca leaf is also prepared as a tea, mate de coca, which is widely used in Bolivia and Peru.

In August 1983, as counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, I accompanied a delegation of U.S. Members of Congress to Peru and Bolivia (as well as Mexico, Colombia and Jamaica). In La Paz, the Bolivian capital, we were at about 13,000 feet above sea level, and feeling the effects of altitude. To minimize those effects, coca leaf tea was provided to the members of the delegation in our hospitality suite. In our meeting with the Minister of the Interior (the head of the police) in his office, all the Members of Congress were offered mate de coca, the way a guest would be offered a cup of coffee at a meeting in the United States.

Morales' complaint is perfectly valid.

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Another small drug war failure -- money laundering

As the U.S. financial industry increased its filings of currency transaction reports with U.S. investigative agencies, drug traffickers have increasingly relied upon the export of U.S. currency in bulk. A major U.S. initiative to stop money from being shipped to Mexico is Operation Firewall. The operation reports it has seized a little over $115 million since it was started in 2005. This is a pathetically small sum.

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Bloody Mexico and drug legalization

Debra Saunders, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, reports on how the violence in Mexico is prompting discussion of legalization or decriminalization of drugs.

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