Mexican poet Javier Sicilia destroyed a gun during the Caravan for Peace this summer, 2012.

Millions of anguished conversations about the murder of so many small children at a Connecticut elementary school have produced new resolve to do something. As the holiday season starts, there is a palpable wave of revulsion against the gun industry, the gun fanatics, and the powerful lobbyists who have intimidated our political representatives into allowing all manner of guns – even military style weapons – to be widely and easily available.

Now, with a sense of sea change in public attitude, politicians are waking up. Several unlikely Democrats have spoken in favor of the initiative by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D. CA) to reintroduce the now expired ban on assault weapons she successfully championed in the mid 1990s. Meanwhile, for the first time, the Obama Administration is tentatively articulating leadership on gun regulation. If President Obama commits to strong and sensible gun regulation, we should have his back.

This new commitment to at least talk about gun restriction is heartening. Nevertheless, those, such as myself, who have watched previous waves of horror sweep in, and then recede in the wake of other gun-murder outrages, know we need a broad and resilient coalition against gun violence. We have to be able to win battles now as well as in future confrontations with gun industry interests.

A coalition that can effectively parry the U.S. gun lobby needs to work at a local, state, national, and international level. Locally, we need to involve the representatives of communities and neighborhoods most affected by the more than 30,000 annual gun homicides in the United States in the evolving conversation about how to make our communities safe. At the state level we need to work with legislators like California Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) who is working (with our partners at the Brady Campaign and other Senators like Kevin de Leon, (D-Los Angeles) to make California a laboratory for sensible and exemplary gun policies.

At the national level we need vision and leadership from an Administration that has not previously engaged the difficult politics of gun control. For more than a year, we have worked with allies from Mexico, Washington and important networks like Presente.org to petition Obama to use executive power to ban the import of assault to the U.S. This request to President Obama was a central element of the Mexican Caravan for Peace that crossed the country last summer, led by victims of the wave of violence 60,000 and counting – fueled by drug profits and guns smuggled from the U.S.

Candlelight vigil at East Los Angeles Church for Caravan for Peace

Restoring the ban on assault weapons, as Senator Dianne Feinstein seeks to do, would be a vital first step that would go much further than any available executive action to limit access to military style assault weapons. But passage, even such a common sense bill, is by no means guaranteed. Those who profit from the gun trade and their lobbyist enablers like the NRA have a strong grip on the leash of legislators, especially the Republican who control the House of Representatives.

For sensible gun control measures to succeed, the local political math must change. That is why sea change moments – when Washington’s policy silos disappear momentarily and the grief of a few moves the hearts of millions – are so important.

Such a moment came in Mexico when the Mexican President Calderón suggested that 14 teenage victims of an October 2010 massacre at a birthday party in the border town of Ciudad Juarez were linked to organized crime. In fact, the teens were all football players mistakenly targeted by cartel hit men. Later, when the boy’s mothers confronted the President about this during a televised meeting the video of the encounter went viral and caused an opinion watershed and eventually a powerful movement led by victims of Mexico’s drug war. This is the same movement that crossed the border to dramatically make the case for steps to regulate assault weapons in 29 US cities last summer.

As the New Year dawns and members of Congress will likely face decisions about how to weigh in on restoring the assault weapons ban and other possible gun control legislation. We must keep alive the urgency of these initiatives even as attention to the families and victims of Newtown recedes.

Constituent pressure on specific members of Congress will be key to any legislative success. Additionally, the voices of people from both sides of the border with loved ones lost to this long plague of gun violence bring a powerful and morally urgent voice to this conversation. There is no question that banning assault weapons would benefit the security and safety of Mexican border communities. Ending the large scale smuggling of assault weapons used by criminals throughout Mexico is human and national security priority.

As the year closes people gather. I hope we can all look each other in the eyes and muster the courage to ask what kind of world we want to live in and how we can love and work together to get there.

TAKE ACTION!

Please join the call on President Obama to stop the flow of assault weapons into our communities.

Most of the 60,000 people killed in Mexico as a result of the “Drug War” were killed with guns sold in the U.S. Tell President Obama that you don’t want greedy gun merchants selling assault weapons, built for war, into our communities where they are then used to massacre tens of thousands of innocent people on both sides of the border.

Javier Sicila and Mexico Program Director Ted Lewis in front of the CA state capital.

As the California state Senate opened on Monday May 14, Senators Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) and Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) welcomed Javier Sicilia to the capital in Sacramento and recognized Javier’s work in a State Resolution. The Resolution states:

“[T]herefore, be it resolved by Senator Y. Yee, Ph.D., and Senator Kevin de León, that they take great pleasure in meeting Javier Sicilia upon his visit to California, commend him on his illustrious record of accomplishments and extend best wishes for every success in the future.”

Javier addressed the Senate and asked Mexico Program Director Ted Lewis to read his statement:

“Good Day. I appreciate the recognition of the Senate and am thankful to Senators Leland Yee and Kevin de León for their support. But I wish I were not here.

Nothing can bring back my son or staunch the grief of those who have loved the more than 60,000 murdered and 20,000 disappeared in six years of violence in my country. No one can return a parent to more than eight-thousand orphans. Nevertheless, thank you for helping shine a light on the atrocious violence that is killing our youth, tearing our society apart, and devouring our already weak and corrupted institutions.

You, our powerful neighbor, consume tens of billions in illegal drugs every years even while spending other billions on a drug prohibition regime that criminalizes millions in your country and leaves tens of thousand of dead in ours. And so many of the dead are killed by guns smuggled into our country by the tens of thousands after being “legally purchased” at guns stores and shows.

This summer a Caravan from San Diego to Washington DC will pierce the silence that allows this horror to continue. We invite you and all people of good conscience to join and support us. No one else should lose a child, parent, sister, or brother to this senseless violence. Thank you.”

Javier then requested a moment of silence in recognition of the tens of thousands of victims and their families in Mexico.

CA Governor Jerry Brown met with Javier Sicilia.

Governor Jerry Brown also met with Javier before the event at the Senate and asked questions related to the discovery of 49 headless bodies near the northern industrial city of Monterrey, Mexico and listened intently to the demands of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity – the movement of victims families.

The Caravan, to be led by victims of Mexico’s atrocious war and their partners in pain north of the border will cross the border from Tijuana to San Diego on August 12 and arrive in Washington DC in early September.

The Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity invites North Americans from all backgrounds, walks of life, and a rainbow of communities to join them their cross-country cry for peace, justice and dignity.

This initiative seeks to promote dialogue with American civil society and its government regarding: the need to stop gun trafficking; the need to debate alternatives to drug prohibition; the need for better tools to combat money laundering; and the need to promote bilateral cooperation in human rights and human security in two priority areas: promotion of civil society and safety, as well as protection and safety for migrants.

Please join part or all of this caravan if you can. Meet us along the route. And even if you can’t go on the road you can support Global Exchange to make the caravan a success.

Sign up for our Mexico News email list to get the latest updates about the Caravan.