 I want to begin by bearing witness to a basic truth that where we meet to speak of our children is holy ground, whether it's in the street or it's in this room or it's in our homes. It's a sacred territory and it's a sacred conversation. So I'm going to ask you to introduce yourselves in a different way until I do it formally and follow my lead. My name is Asha Bandelli. I'm the mother of Nisa Rashid. That's why I'm here. My name is Merrily Odendal. I'm the mother of Ian Murphy, Machard. I'm Javier Sicilia. I'm father of Juan Francisco Sicilia and I also represent five guys who died together with him. I'm Gretchen Burns Bergman and I'm the mother of two beautiful sons, Ilan and Aaron. My name is Joyce Dreckland and I'm the mother of two beautiful sons, Charles Christopher Lewis, Chris Lewis and John David Lewis. Mi nombre es María Herrera Magdaleno. Soy Michoacana. Estoy aquí con ustedes. Soy madre de ocho hijos. Cuatro de ellos desaparecidos desde hace cinco años, cinco meses que no sé de ellos. Gracias. Mi nombre es Teresa Carmona. Soy la madre de Joaquín y también de Diego y Fabián. Buenas tardes. Mi nombre es Aracely Rodriguez y soy madre de cuatro hijos. Uno de ellos, Luis Angel León Rodriguez, desaparecido. Good afternoon, I'm Karen Garrison. I'm the mother of two sons that were formerly incarcerated in their home now, but I still fight for the impact of family members. These are the names of our children. We keep our children in the center. We put our children in the center and we put our arms around our babies. And our hearts are with our hands, whatever we're fortunate enough to have. Let's take a minute. Let's hold the space for our children. Thank you. Thank you. Let me do a little bit more formal of an introduction of this very esteemed and brave panel of parents who joins us today. Marely Odendal here, just beside me, is a writer, poet and artist whose son, Ian, died from an heroin overdose in 2007. She works with the organizations Broken No More and Grasp. Please welcome her to the panel. Javier Cecilia has been transforming nations as the father of Juan Francisco Cecilia Ortega. Been transforming certainly our movement here in the United States as the leader of the movement for peace with justice and dignity. He has done the hard, courageous work after losing his son in drug-related violence at Ground Zero in Mexico. Join me in welcoming Javier Cecilia. Gretchen Burns Bergman, I've worked with for eight years. She's the executive director of a new path, Parents for Addiction and Treatment and Healing and also the leader of the Mom's United campaign. Both of her children have struggled with addiction, gone in and out of prison. She was one of our leaders for what remains the largest sentencing reform this nation has ever known. Prop 36, join me in welcoming this wounded healer. My friend, Joyce Strickland, is from Texas and is the CEO of Mothers Against Teen Violence. Her own boy, she wrote a beautiful book, beautiful book called Joy in the Morning, about her beautiful son, Christopher, who we lost in a drug-related violent act. He was about to attend college. Join me in welcoming Joyce Strickland. Maria Elena Herrera is a widow and has seven children. She's primarily worked in the gold business in August of 2008. Two of her sons disappeared in Guerrero, Mexico in September of 2010. Two more of her sons disappeared and better crews. Both of these instances occurred after her sons went through military checkpoints. Since then, Donia Marie continues to bring her case to the authorities to demand justice with dignity. Join me in welcoming her. Atacelle Magdalena Rodriguez-Nava is the mother of Luis Angel. She was a federal police officer who disappeared in November of 2009. She's been an activist and advocate ever since, has bravely spoken out against the drug war in Mexico and is bringing her wisdom and her heart here to us. Please join me in welcoming her. Teresa Camarona's son was murdered August 7th, 2010 in prohibition-related violence. He was 21, talented, gorgeous, her firstborn. And he smoked cannabis, she says, and for that he lost his life. We are here to reclaim his name in life. Join me in welcoming Teresa. And finally, Karen Garrison is with us today. She's the mother of Lawrence and Lamont, the proud mother of Lawrence and Lamont Garrison who were incarcerated under mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. For 14 years, she's worked to end the war on drugs. She's been a voice many of us are familiar with here. She co-hosts mommy activists and sons, a radio show to assist prisoners and their families. Please join me in welcoming a spirit guide. This, it's hard to begin to think about how one becomes an activist. In the face of what is probably the worst pain one can go through. And it can't be an easy or a simple journey. And sometimes we see you speaking out and on panels and we see your courage, but I have no idea the work that it's taken to get here. I'd like to ask each of you to talk a little bit about the journey. It's not even know if it's a journey from grief to activism. I think the grief is always there. Individually and collectively for what we collectively lose and we don't know, children are not cared for. So if each of you, we can just go right down, would please answer that question and tell us a little bit about your own journey into activism. First of all, can you hear me? I've had a lot of trouble during this conference hearing from the back. I want to speak to you as my son's mother. His name again is Ian. He was born in September 21st, 1979. And we lost him to a heroin overdose in Chicago in September 24, 2007, three days after his 28th birthday. So what's the journey from a victim to an advocate? To me, you're a victim when you have no more choices. My son was a victim of the war on drugs and of his drug of choice. It took me about a year to realize that although I am a damaged person for the rest of my life, I am not a victim. I don't really identify as a victim. I made a choice for life and I identify as a mother, an activist, a wife, a pretty bad writer and a pretty good gardener. All of us who have children like to tell everybody else how wonderful our children are. And so I'll tell you a little bit about Ian. He was bright, he was funny, he was intelligent. He was a gigantic pain in the ass. He caused a lot of chaos in our family and I caused a lot of chaos in his life through my own ignorance. It wasn't until years later that I realized there's an entirely different way to approach people who are addicted to drugs. And I think most of us in this room realize that that is with compassion and kindness and to never give up hope. When he was about 13 years old, he began to have social problems, anger problems, he was depressed and eventually he tried to kill himself and we put him in a mental hospital for about four months and it was the worst decision we ever made in our lives. I think that his time there was so damaging to both him and us and it was an endless round of diagnoses and treatment that didn't work and eventually when he was 16 and we lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he decided to leave home one night after a bad, bad argument with his father. And really Ian never came home again until four months before he died. For a lot of that time, I didn't know if he were alive or if he were dead. I didn't know where he was and he was basically on the streets. He traveled from one end of this country to the other and knew people all over and he had a family of choice and those were the people on the street with him and although it's hard for us to understand, he found more comfort with those people and more understanding and support than he got in his own home and certainly more than he ever got from his community. And society will tell us that a heroin user is a dangerous animal that you cannot trust, that can't be trusted to make a rational decision. And I'm here to tell you that that is not true. It is just simply not true. I had a psychiatrist tell Ian once, well I understand why you do heroin. It's the best pain medicine in the world and you are in pain. So was it a rational choice for Ian to decide to use heroin? I believe that it is. But unfortunately that realization came too late and my focus these days is to tell parents before they've lost their children to become educated, to become compassionate, not listening to those words, enabler, bad parent, what's wrong with your kid, and all the rest of the stuff that society tells us. He wasn't perfect. He certainly wasn't a saint. He committed nonviolent crimes. He sold himself for drugs. He was ashamed. He was stigmatized. But most of the time, was he an animal? No, he was an empathetic, intelligent, hysterically funny, very caring person. That's who he was. He just simply had an addiction. Sometimes he tried to get straight and sometimes he embraced his usage. Sometimes he was broken and brokenhearted. In short, he was a whole complex human being and a very good son in so many ways. His story of mental illness, homelessness, arrest, drug usage, death. It's tragic and it's so common. Excuse me, I made a few notes because my memory is so bad that I forget what I wanna say. People talk about my loss but I don't think that I've lost him exactly. I've lost his physical presence but he is with me every day, every moment of every day. I heard a quote recently by a mother who lost her young, very young child to cancer. As she said, a life does not have to be long to be beautiful. And that went straight to my heart. I believe he had a beautiful life. He had a hard life but it was his life. And coming to that realization that Ian's life is not mine is one of the things that helped me to move from a very deeply grieving parent like we all are here to being able to be an activist. And I thank many people who are at this conference today for helping me along that journey because it's an arc when you lose a child at first you are immobilized with grief, physical and emotional grief, but over time you can begin to make choices for your life again. And my journey really began listening to NPR and hearing Eliza Wheeler being interviewed, talking about Narcan, talking about clean syringes, talking about supporting people. And that is the first time that was a year after Ian died. It's the first time I ever heard anybody say those words. And it was like a light bulb went on in my head. And I made it a point to contact her. And you know when you hear somebody on the media you think, oh well there's some highfalutin, somebody or other. Well I tell you Eliza Wheeler is not that person. She was embracing and here's how it went. From Eliza she said, oh you need to get in contact with Dan Big, he runs Chicago Recovery Reliance near where you live. So I went to Dan. Dan showed me the harm reduction van. He said, oh you need to get in contact with Greg Scott. He's doing a piece for NPR about the drug trade in Chicago, so I met Greg. Greg says, oh you need to meet Megan Ralston of DPA. Megan Ralston said, oh you need to meet Grant Smith of DPA who helped me to go to Washington to testify at the FDA hearing about naloxone over the counter, that question. At that meeting I met Maya Dosuncans who introduced me to Suzanne Carlberg Rasich and then to Alice Bell. And the point of all naming all these names is first of all I'm very grateful for them. But each one of those people was welcoming, was non-judgmental and gave me something to do which is the best cure for anything. And they're inclusive. In fact everybody I've met in this movement has been inclusive and not exclusive. I'm not from academia, but nobody said that my voice was unimportant, that I could stand up and speak for my son. Eventually I became aware of GRASP which is grief recovery after a substance passing. And through GRASP I met Denise Cullen. I met Barry Lesson. I got involved with Broken No More, our sister organization. So each person has given me something intangible that's hard to describe and very, very tangible in that here's a job you can do. So after that it's up to me. How involved I wanna be, how much I wanna speak out, how many people I want to challenge. At the International Overdose Awareness Day event at Roosevelt University outside of Chicago last August I was urged to give a call to action. And really the whole message of what I said was to stand up, to speak out and to get loud. This is not a movement about being careful about what you say or whose toes you're going to step on. So I would say, stand up, speak out, get loud, be heard, show up, donate your money to all of these causes in as much as you can. And finally I do not despair. I refuse to despair. Ian informs my choices. He holds me to this life which at first was a pretty tenuous, pretty tenuous thing. And he introduced me, I call all of these people the friends that Ian gave me. He may not be here, but he gave me all these wonderful people in replacement. And although they can't replace him, they come pretty darn close on a good day. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation, thank you for your presence. I am a poet, I am a writer, I am a journalist, but I have always believed that I formed with these generations, especially the French, who talked about the committed writer and always had a participation in my life as a writer and activist. I believe that a writer should give testimony in life, in his condition as a citizen, for his dignity. And I have participated in all of my life in issues of activism. I am a strong ally of the Zapatista movement in Mexico. That is why activism is not even before the murder of my son, unknown or far away, it was part of my life. It was very critical and it has been, since before the murder of this war against drugs, very critical of the United States, because this war was born here. Don't forget, the decree of President Nixon and it has become a state policy that is gravely damaging not only the United States, but the whole world and Mexico and Colombia are the faces of Central America, more tortured in their victims for this war, the responsibility of the United States, for this war that also sends weapons, sells weapons. That is to say, they have inverted politics. Drugs are not a matter of national security, it is a matter of public health. The weapons are a matter of national security. A addict can die or not. If there were better laws of protection, perhaps they would die less. But the weapons are national security. Those kill, they are contundent, expansive, they kill, they don't commit. My son is an innocent victim of this war. My son and his friends died together with him. They were not addicts, they didn't smoke. They were athletes, they were professionals. My son was about to finish his career as an administration of companies and worked for an administrative body, a medical institution. This war that Felipe Calderón bought and that has continued, unfortunately, the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto exacerbated the crime. And my son, let's say, they simply kidnap him with his friends and kill them to claim a robbery. They are dead. They didn't kill them with fire weapons, but they submit them with fire weapons and they suffocate them with plastic bags. They tortured them. That filled me with a deep indignation that was added to the indignation that I already had against this stupid and political government. Our government is responsible for taking this war that you invented. Your government invented it and they have implemented it there. My country is responsible for the corruption that allowed all this. I left with a cry that is difficult to translate into another language and with a letter that was irresponsible to the state and the criminals, it seems to me the same. Legals and other illegals, a difficult word to translate that is called, we are even the mother, that is to say, they have already touched us the most sacred. At that moment, they began to see 40,000 victims of this war, that had been not only killed, many of them or disappeared, but that had been criminalized by the state. To be a victim in my country was to be a criminal. And we went out to fight it and we have walked along the Mexican Republic, hugging and visibilizing the victims. And last year we crossed the American territory and we have come back to tell you that you have a great responsibility for our dead people, for this war, for this prohibition of drugs, for this liberation of weapons. And we want to walk with you and that you walk with us to stop this. It is a matter of nations, it is a humanitarian matter, it is a matter of people, it is a matter of our lives. To us, to none of those who are here is going to return life to no one. We have our dead or disappeared children as in the case of Mrs. Amari. No one is going to return them. We hope that the children of Mrs. Amari are back, alive, healthy. But we have left because we do not want that more parents live what we are living. Because we do not want that this policy of violence and prohibition is being carried out more and more children both due to lack of medical attention both due to lack of care, innocent people die or the organized crime is carried out and the reserve army of its own crimes we are losing our youth because of this stupid politics. And this has been a struggle to fight. Our children are no more sacred, no one is going to return them. With this I end there was a little while ago Mrs. Amari in the last intervention in another panel that there is no name for those who lose a child. There are those who lose a wife for the children parents, orphans, widows they do not exist for those who lose a child is anti-natural in all senses. How do you feel one I'm going to look for a word, I think there is one unfortunately that has been used very badly for vampires. It is called in French in Spanish someone who comes from death and brings it with him and together with his own life he also carries the life of death and it is from there where we take our strength our love to not succumb to it and to dignify our children through the struggle for the justice that is owed to them and to avoid it to where we can that other boys other children and other parents have to suffer what we have suffered thank you very much. Thank you for your presence and by your courage your extraordinary courage you teach us to be better parents so I just wanted to thank you personally Gretchen, my friend First I have to share with you that I feel very overwhelmed incredibly honored and blessed to be on this panel this was a vision a dream that I had in the middle in the middle 90's that parents would actually start speaking up together about the injustices that we were experiencing and at that time people weren't talking about it there was so much shame and stigma as there still is really but then it was this deep dark dirty secret if you had kids who had addictive illness and their sons are beautiful they're bright they have all kinds of promise they're intelligent but they do have this chronic illness of addiction and in 1999 when I started a new path which stands for parents for addiction treatment and healing I and some other parents had children who had addictive illness and that can be really difficult and you also experienced the shame the discrimination if you will that's heaped on people and the way that the criminal justice system handles this mishandles this and the roadblocks that they throw in the way of people having successful lives is so tremendous that you know you asked how do you go from being a victim to doing advocacy work to me I have I've been blessed to have very many roles in my life I have a dance and theater background I have a fashion show producer I had wonderful parents and I have wonderful sons and I serve many roles but the very very most important role in my life is mother and mother goes forever no matter what whether you lose a child or not my two sons are survivors they're survivors of the war on drugs they're survivors of prison and the criminal justice system and they're survivors of overdose I am incredibly blessed I still have hope I have one son in long term recovery now the one that spent 11 years behind bars or in the criminal justice system it was really in and out I mean got picked up for marijuana and then comes out he's using harder drugs learn to inject heroin behind bars it goes on and on I couldn't help but speak out I knew this was happening in other people's homes and I felt that in order not to be a victim you must speak out if my child had any other kind of disease or problem I would be fiercely fighting for the best kind of services for them so I never intended to learn so much about drug policy and addictive illness but I did and because I learned that I felt it was my obligation to speak out and in so doing enable other people to speak out so that we can change this it's a human rights issue it's a huge human rights issue so we must all work together and this is a blessing to have us all speaking out different countries, different perspectives different damages by the drug war but parents who were marginalized who have been marginalized as if this was bad parenting on your part you know we must shake off the shackles of shame and speak out and so I see over the last several years changes I see many many more voices joining in this chorus for change and we're making a beautiful sound and we're making some changes that's right just Gretchen has been at the center of this work and certainly has done so much over the last eight years since I joined DPA and was running the grants program not to remind me to always be compassionate with my own daughter so you have been teaching me as well thank you Gretchen Joy Thank you Asha this is a real privilege and like Gretchen it's overwhelming to be among parents who have experienced so much pain it's really an overwhelming thing my again my name is Joy Streckland I'm the founder and CEO of Mothers Against Teen Violence and my journey from victimization to advocacy I guess began when I lost my son and he was he didn't use drugs he was doing all the right things he had graduated from the premier college prep academy in Dallas St. Mark's school of Texas he was home from his first year at Morehouse college and he was doing a friend a favor by dropping him off at a club when he was he and his friend were accosted by a 16 and 17 year old and they were looking for someone to carjack and they were looking for money for crime and I think the this tragedy turned my life upside down I'm a former IBM marketing executive I'm a graduate of UT Austin and I was a math major and I think it's because of my math background that I always felt that to solve a problem you know you have to be asking the right questions you have to start with the right questions and my first question was how in the world am I going to heal my life from this and I did manage to do that and of course healing doesn't mean that you're totally over it it doesn't mean that your life goes on as it did before but it does mean that's grace you can have you can still have a life you can still have joy in your life you can still have meaning and purpose and I am so thankful for that we began as an organization we began by offering services to other mothers and fathers who had lost their children and shortly after that we moved into violence prevention again I'm always wondering how the question now became how can we end this scourge in our communities how can we stop the violence how can we stop what is happening to so many other families how can we end that and so I was listening to when I heard the first speaker mention an NPR interview that she was listening to and I was listening to NPR one day in my office and I heard Judge James P. Gray talking about the war on drugs and his book which is entitled how our drug laws have failed us and what you can do about it and that was the first time in my life I had ever heard the the drug policy reform message I didn't know anything about drugs drugs I was part of my life my sons thank God never used drugs so I didn't know anything and even though my son was killed by gang members reputed gang members I never made the connection between gang activity and the war on drugs I never made the connection between both wars and drug prohibition I never made the connection between the war on drugs and so many of the intractable ills that are part of our communities and when I heard this messaging I felt it was incumbent upon me to lead my organization in rebranding itself to be about public information education and advocacy for drug policy reform so we made that transition and fast forward this past year in the Texas legislature did I say that I was from Dallas, Texas okay this past year in the Texas legislature we championed a harm reduction agenda we championed a syringe exchange bill and a good Samaritan bill the syringe exchange bill made it all the way through the process can you hear me oh, okay the syringe exchange bill made it all the way through the process and lost after a floor debate by one vote wow the good Samaritan bill which I authored actually submitted to my legislator and it made it again all the way through the process but did not actually get a debate because we ran out of time that's the game that you play in the Texas legislature I have so many days so we ran out of time but we feel very good about where we are and we again will be back in two years the legislature meets every two years in Texas so we'll be back in 2015 and we'll be stronger we're building coalitions we're holding strategy meetings we held the first biannual Texas Drug Policy Conference in 2012 we will hold the second in January of 2013 2014 and we're making tremendous progress and I will close by saying that when you have this kind of experience it carries with it a responsibility and I think the first responsibility that you have as a victim is to heal your life because you can't do an effective job from a position of grief and anger those are those are not affirming or evolving emotions they're not transformational emotions so you have to heal your life and once you heal your life then it's in common upon you to reach out to other individuals who had similar experiences and help them understand that they can they can heal their lives and then from there if you're able and you feel up to it then you have to work to change the system thank you much joy Doni Mare very good morning, thank you for being here listening to us I see that the partner just said something very strong for us she says we have to heal we have to heal our pain our anger to help others because the truth is for us it's very difficult maybe she for having found let's say an answer to her pain because she already had the grace to have her son to depute him but we don't know about our children it's a pain that persists it's an infinite rage it's something that we can't we can't it's very difficult to survive with this courage with this anger, with this pain and more knowing that the only fault of all this is the state because our governments very far from taking care of protecting us they expose us they make us weaker more fragile and the consequences take advantage of our children of our loved ones for us this is very very difficult as I tell you because we don't know if our children live or are already dead it's a search let's say in the dark I'm going to make you this comment for two years four months looking for my children well not only because my children my four children who stay with me have always accompanied me always been with me making me strong but my light my hope was when the movement was born thanks to this great valentine of Javier despite his pain despite his courage he had the delicacy the gentleness to call us to summon the victims and meet us to raise the voice through him through his misfortune through his pain he knew how to have that valentine he knew how to give us his value give us that strength in the midst of our courage and here we are thanks to the birth of the movement through peace we have reached not the complete peace because we don't have it until we find our loved ones but if we feel sisterly we feel attached by Javier by the movement and thanks to him thanks to that blood that burned his innocent son we are here many victims we have felt protected we consider him as our father despite being us at least me much older than him I consider him as a father because I feel protected I feel as I say attached by the movement after this great loss of my children I felt suspended in the wind I didn't know what to do I did everything I could in the search for my children but after two years four months we no longer had resources to continue in this search for everything and I said what do I have to do I didn't think I had more children I thought I was going to die because I didn't receive any help I thought no one was helping me that's why I always thank God for finding this man with his arms open to help us fight because thanks to him I'm alive fighting they ask me since when you became an activist believe me I didn't know I didn't know when I reached this path because from the moment I presented myself in the movement I started to meet other people other mothers who had lost their children I felt that I was alone that those people from the first moment they shouted I wasn't alone I wasn't alone they gave me their hearts they gave me their hands and here we are my first two children Raul 19 years old Jesus Salvador of 24 disappeared in the state of Guerrero in 2010 on August 28 from that moment our search started because we the mothers we presented when our children were at risk nobody wanted to believe that same day that my children were being arrested my heart was already warning me and I was suffering my children told me wait mom they could have suffered some harm the truck was broken or we didn't know wait but I told them help me find them find them it's something so painful so cruel I repeat I haven't resigned to the loss of my children I keep looking for them with the same pain with the same strength that I started looking for them from the first day thank God I repeat my children have always accompanied me and I thank God and Javier that through him he has made us present to you that it has been a community that has listened to us that has attended us and that has received us because unfortunately in our country there are no laws we don't have there nobody who helps us it's been 5 years 5 months and my children are not with me I hope the date that the prosecutor just gave us is in the search for my children I hope to find them alive I hope to find them alive I told the lady my son he was a wonderful son I think that all our children are part of our hearts we gave them the best of us as mothers and for us all our children are wonderful everyone has their own life a story and it's something that nobody can forget my son Salvador has two little children wonderful some cute children who have not been able to enjoy their father thanks to these people without hearts without feelings they have been taken away my son Raul is single but I miss him like everyone and each of my children as if this was little in the search for our first two children our answer was the loss of the other two of my children Luis Armando and Gustavo they disappeared they disappeared on September 22 2010 now my question is when will this stop when will we reach peace when will we reach justice each of my children are husbands are family parents all have their children those houses are full of sadness they are in the dark because I have always said my grandson needs the figure of his father like in any other of the places of the houses where the father is missing I don't explain how it is possible that I am here before you because the truth there are times when I don't feel to get up less to fight but however here I am with the little that is left of me in front of you waiting to awaken consciousness and that you here in the United States help us do something I don't know to be able to find our loved ones you as mothers know that the biggest loss the biggest pain for a mother is the loss of her children I lost my father to my mother to my husband but all these losses are few when a child is lost there is nothing nothing that is the same this pain I know that the reason here is another but we can't go unnoticed they need to be informed to where they are coming all this that is being propagated here in the United States help us please have mercy on us we are waiting for part of you an act of mercy and your authorities can do it help us find our loved ones thank you which is just hold the space for a minute we we often hear things like this and we just rush to the next we're just going to hold the space a minute we're going to hold the space that is silly you alright do you need a minute well you have to have a lot of strength to be able to speak because sometimes the words can't come out of so much pain to hear the voice of Maria Herrera I have Luis Angel maybe he's murdered but he already has four children and if there is no life for me I don't understand how she can walk but the history of Luis Angel is not only him but the seven federal police and a civil disappeared on November 16 2009 they were commissioned to the city of Hidalgo Michoacán to occupy the Secretary of Public Security Municipal they didn't give them more than a long charge and an officer of commission and they left for their own means until today I don't know how it is possible that Mexico has not allowed that seven of its elements came out of a institution with great renown as it was before the Secretary of Public Security Federal in charge of the then engineer Genaro García Luna I don't fit in my head so much negligence I mean, it was their elements that were going to occupy a federal municipality to serve and protect the city I wasn't even going to the countryside from that day until today eight families in Mexico we are living the pain because I don't speak for Luis Angel nothing else I speak for other seven people six federals and a civil and it hurts me so much to know that until today there are six weapons lost of them that maybe more people are killing in my country because I haven't even made the government search for those weapons I want to tell you that for me I don't know if it is easier to accept that my son is missing or to know about the narrative of the victims with whom I have interviewed because I have only asked for the authorities under my responsibility to interview with people the so-called Michoacan family now Templars even though I know that my life is in danger but for me it is more fear not knowing the historical truth of Luis Angel to be afraid and sit down and be quiet on February 3, 2010 I heard from you of the Federal Police of Federal Forces of Contelista, Palapo in Mexico that my son, his companions and the civil were murdered but we will never have bodies that they had ballasted they had discarded them with motosierras and they had incinerated them and they were dead but they were never going to have bodies because they had thrown them into a Michoacan fountain when the families heard that in such a large living room like this some of them fainted others didn't stand up and they fell I went out of the living room running and shouting to God that because they had covered their eyes or sold them to their children because he had allowed it and I swear to God that if he had not been able to stop this terror that Luis Angel and his companions and the civil were not going to be impunished that I didn't know how it was going to be but it was going to be retombating its name in the whole world of those seven Federal Police and the Civil because it was not fair that impunished were left if they were beings that were dedicated to the citizenship and it filled me with impotence because I was a mother and father of my four children since I was little I worked to get them ahead by inculcating the principles and values and it was not so ethical that the institution itself the State itself was disappearing to Luis Angel that's why I started my struggle from the beginning alone to all the other journalists that announced that they were going to be found in some lagoon the bodies of the seven Federal Police and the Civil and always putting the name of my son Luis Angel Leon Rodríguez and the fellow companions and it was all fake it was to see if the families were falling we collected those bodies and we didn't do anything when they told me that they didn't do anything and when the first death threat came to me telling me that I was going to be in criminal kidnapping I couldn't stay quiet and I couldn't do it because it wasn't ethical on my part I also fell in the window of the government's porqueria I took away my fear and I took steps in front when I received the photo of Luis Angel and his fellow companions where before executing them they were portrayed they were my son was killed by a tree with huge eyes full of terror seeing that at that moment they were going to execute me I have those photos and for me I must believe that I have learned to survive looking from my interior peace because if I stay with the last photo of me leaving the house smiling and with the family and I see the photo where they had the criminals or I die or I go crazy it's unbearable but I want to tell you that even though they wanted to deliver us once on December 19, 2009 eight bodies that were murdered in San Juan del Río we fought so that they would give us DNA tests they weren't they were hoping to find them alive but then the authorities told us that one of the bodies was positive to Commander Pedro Alberto we went back to the eight families to demand that he didn't pick his wife to the body and indeed it wasn't ours I mean in any way they wanted to give us something that wasn't ours having distance between the police telling us not to pick up the body it wasn't ours and having a few meters a body of the same federal police wanting to give us the body where was the coordination of the same institution on one side they said don't pick it up and on the other we already had the body really believe me, we lived not just me all the victims of Mexico very difficult moments all the victims of my country when I found the movement for peace with justice and dignity when I first saw Javier on television crying and telling his son immediately the tears came out of one of my eyes I said what's going on how human beings are destroying each other we can't continue like this I didn't know I came to the movement for peace and thanks to the movement for peace the organizations that have joined us to the guys of drugs to Sara to Ted to many organizations to Sam, Laura, Carlson I made possible what I had promised Luis to be able to return his name in the world and now I see my son in every face of you because Luis Angel is here his companions are here and they are here because they are my energy to move forward and the threats believe me that they don't intimidate me I am more afraid to shut up than to continue fighting for the justice of my country and I will continue doing it while I live because he made me direct to Genaro García Luna and he told me to think for ten minutes how I would like to die and that threatened me because here I am now sitting with you I want to tell you that I have three more children two men and one woman one of my children Joanie is a federal police also active in the same institution of your brother and for the struggle and struggle for all the police for all the police in my country that don't protect them, they don't take care of them and those who are active they don't even have them working dignified and I won't stop my voice won't shut my voice won't shut my voice will continue until the day God wants to and decide call me but for me I will continue standing and facing and together we will continue Teresa? Yes I was planning on speaking English so I will just say a few words in English then I will switch to Spanish because this is overwhelming first of all thank you for being here and thank you for staying here a lot of people have left the room and we understand that there is too much pain to be contained in this room and not everybody is up to it so thank you I wish the legislators we just had a conversation with after the previous panel they participated in some Mexican legislators we had a gathering with them in private very intense very moving some compromises were made there but I do not see their faces here so I am sorry for that they ask us how do we go from from pain to activism we go from activism to pain pain is our fuel and we hope we hope to reach peace this pain changes every day as everything changes but it will be our fuel in my case I did not realize how activism happened one day the poet said who accompanies me who is feeling the same as me and I was feeling the same as him Joaquín my beautiful little cousin he was murdered eight months before he was Francisco and that day that Javier called the civil society serious and painful I left the street of my city with a photo improvised by my son and I guess that day I became an activist and I did it because I could not do anything else because we have to find a sense of this pain and this life and this horror because we have to we have to put ourselves in your shoes as well as you put yourself in our shoes and we have to understand that anyone is vulnerable that everyone could be in the place where we are so that is why we walk together thanks to nothing because it is always it is ironic that we come to talk to our legislators in the United States in Mexico it has cost us more work to talk a little about Joaquín I like to talk a lot about Joaquín it was quiet, it was tremendous it also gave me headaches they came out green now they are white but the first were green it was brilliant it was also fantastic I ate the world of a bite they did not reach the hours of the day to do everything I wanted to do I studied sports I made a mess with my friends I conquered girls I drew I really liked the sea Joaquín was born in Cancun and since 13 or 14 years he discovered the boogie board then he told me that he was going to sea to meditate wait for the next wave spent many hours there I wanted to be able to take the ashes of Joaquín to the sea I could not do it because there is an open investigation but unfortunately that investigation does not advance because I do not think it matters to anyone in the board it is the expedient saved in a cajon but I hope to be able to do it give it a big farewell with music and friends with your brothers and your father but I also I also want to thank Javier in front of you who has known us we have been able to recognize that same value within us and that it has been very, very big because indeed without that conscience that we are strong and brave possibly we would have been crazy he has also taught us to walk together to recognize what we can do in the general law of victims we have had an important role in terms of visibility not only the issue of the war against drugs in this conference I learned a term that I think all of you would also have to know we talk about organized crime and here yesterday they told us that it is not exactly organized crime it is authorized crime so I think we have a lot of work we have to learn to talk we have to learn to feel we have to learn to feel comfortable with suffering with the pain of others to understand that if we open the heart and embrace that pain it can happen big and very luminous and I think it is a beautiful way to celebrate the life of our dead children or missing you live in a country that I personally had very satanized however from the caravan that we did last year and now of this meeting so important with so many people I see them in another way I see them as people like us that sometimes do not make a great effort to learn Spanish but in the end they are here listening to us and that for us is very important thank you very much and remember that the war against drugs is responsibility of all I am about to hear from our final speaker you know it was hard for me to think about how this discussion would go because it is hard to sit in the face of so much pain but harder of course to live in it and often in these sessions we have time to have discussion with the audience but I am realizing the importance sometimes of just listening to people when your own legislators won't and not everybody can stay in the room I just it's interesting that you said that Teresa I was having a conversation with Jim Garland right before I came to this panel and he was telling me about your meeting with legislators and I said you know everybody can sit in the face of that everybody can't sit there you have to learn how to do it unfortunately we usually learn it in the face of horror having the courage and the heart to sit and listen and to hold the space for our incredible speakers and with that Karen I'm just going to offer you the final word of the afternoon in these last 10 minutes that we have together thank you very much I'm so pleased to be here and I realize how important it is for us all to come together and you see a parent's pain you know my pain is nothing compared to the losses that they've suffered and I remember when Gretchen told me about the caravan for peace coming through the United States I tracked it every day every city I even at the end when they got to Baltimore and I went to Baltimore in DC my show when we highlighted the end I had a lady I think her name was Marta she called in and translated it in Spanish so I made sure that everyone got the idea of what happened but my thing is the criminal justice system the injustice that my sons face they were sentenced to 15 and a half and 19 and a half years for a cocaine conspiracy where they knew no one in the conspiracy but one guy and he had my mother's car getting her car repaired and when he got arrested he put my sons in it and they took they had no drugs, no guns they even tested and went at a rest in their system they had nothing but they went to jail anyway you know the short part of it is that we live in DC they took it to DC wouldn't take it Maryland wouldn't take it Virginia the commonwealth that hasn't changed a bit said take them and they took my sons to jail I watched them go but what's you know it's like I never was really mad I was hurt because they were just physically there I saw the end come they haven't had closure and they don't see the end you know and I think all the time about how it's not luck it's the way God chose it but it hurts just the same but it's God's plan but it makes you strong because so many other people need you to do what you do you know you represent so many people even though you had the buses come there when I saw so many people in Baltimore was unbelievable they slept on the floor you know and they went to wash their clothes nobody had a nobody was like mad because they had to do what they did what they did coming all the way across country just to ask for our country to help them but when my sons went to jail and came home I knew that there were things that I had to do in between that time you talking about a mommy becoming an activist and I made a joke in my speaking I said well everybody got a PhD I have a PhD professional hair designer because that's what I was I had all the papers and everything you need esthetician I could make the oils I could tell you every chemical that was in anything that I used I had no clients lose their hair because of me so you know these things were good and they hurt but you heal and you get over it to remember you treat everyone the same these are all our people these are all our children you have to embrace the issues and so I knew that God had ordered some steps for me my son came home in 2008 and I found out about a free radio show you could do and he and I used to do it called coming home it was on my way home then simply because it was so much I thought I had covered and got him ready to come home he was a twin he came home a baby came home first and it was so many things he didn't have covered that we thought we did so we decided to share it and the radio show began to roll on and on until now I'm doing it and I have a pretty good listening base I make sure that my thing is to be able to give everybody the information because I didn't know nothing about this as they call it hood rat I knew all about my neighborhood when it was beautiful then they changed it to something ugly call hood but I'm living right there not knowing everything but the radio station I know helped me to get information helped me to give information so that we all could as citizens go to these politicians that we elected in and be able to deal with them in a responsible way and that's my theme to make a difference in a responsible way and to cover issues in criminal justice system that human rights and civil rights issues and you know because I know my steps were ordered I see it every day I know that it was time for me to do things outside of my job because they didn't do enough there was more to it and knowing that it's more to this drug war than just crack cocaine but one thing I'm gonna do I'm gonna show how my steps were ordered and how things come together when I first started out it was Steve Silverman after I was on the news he told me he said no don't you sit there these people want to see you I said see me do what I don't know them he said oh they see you they watch the news go stand by somebody you knew I went and stood by Eric Sterling that I saw because he was on the news at the same time and from then on they start talking then I knew how to move and work the crowd you know and those things were very important to learn and I know that without Dorothy Gaines on my radio show she's one that we pump it together you know I decided after a while to do something because I felt that Dorothy was never ever given her full her full credit and so I decided to do a project which I have many but one I stuck with to call her a reunification specialist to do consulting and she does just that from the beginning when you get your papers and you're indicted she takes the family and embraces the whole issue as well as ones in prison you know but in between there I met Nikichi Taifa everybody knows that name she helped me to make sure that I kept on track that knowing that it's not fair it's not working when we did the the media the media the resource kit which was very important still very important and getting online and attending other activities I met Andrea James that's in the audience with her daughter that's an author as well as she has an organization healing for justice or justice for healing I'm sorry and also Regina Kelly from American Violet her story was the one from American Violet these are people that helped me put it together helped me track it every day and my new friend friends we went to dinner and Manuel told me don't forget when you go down there to speak that how good you are and you're in charge so now that's what I'm remembering last from that I learned so my steps are always ordered and my radio show is to make a difference in a responsible way and I feel that I keep pumping it up for that reason because if anything you can get on your cell phone or you can get online and you can get this information and that's why I'm here thank you so much thank you thank you Karen is that incredible moment the first time I heard you speak with your sons and I want to let me acknowledge Daniel Rebello who did so much to ensure that that caravan traveled throughout the states he slept on floors when I first sat down with Global Exchange they said can we just have a small grant to do a little administrative work in the beginning I said okay where does this just be a little thing we didn't know it would transform our organization become our focus for that entire summer practically and we're so grateful that it did we're so grateful you took that work up Daniel and you know I want to say something too about hope I started doing this work focusing on this work when I was still an editor at Essence magazine and one of the first stories that I did was I edited a story on Dorothy Gaines who was given 19 years and 7 months for a drug crime that she did not do and I sat around the table of black women and they said so what they said so why I had to fight for that story you don't know that I had to fight for that story and it did run in Essence and we were able to ask readers to please sign in Essence has the largest penetration into the black women's market 8 million people read it every month and Dorothy did come home shortly after that article but I'll tell you this nobody would say so what now because people have had the courage to raise their voices to challenge this war on drugs to say it matters every life has value every life matters had courage and walked through the blood of their children to be here and I want you to join me in thanking this incredible panel of people who came from so far away to be with us over the course of the next day please take time to ensure that our guests from other countries are made to feel welcome here to start looking at what are some of the policies that we need to change and be active on so no more children go missing no more children are found dead and no more children are put in prison because they have an addiction that's our job and that's our call thank you I wanted to tell you something we all all the victims in our walk we find more and more victims needed support, help many victims don't know how to get to the authorities like us we already have a path we seek the way to help them but there is something that is interposing our path the resources there are occasions that they call us and we don't have the resources to go to their call we also put this in their hands in their hearts because it's here on behalf of you where we have received the greatest support to achieve to do what we can or want to do there in our Mexico thank you for listening thank you for being here with us and we hope that you don't forget and continue to give us the hand for what we are seeking peace justice and our loved ones justice