A "peace caravan" on a cross-country crusade to end to the US war on drugs that organisers blame for the violence tearing up Mexico was expected to arrive in New York Thursday evening. The two-bus, four-car convoy is driving to the east coast metropolis from Cleveland, and will be welcomed with a vigil at a Manhattan church - organised by civic groups including Occupy Wall Street and the Drug Policy Alliance.
"New York is a very important stage of the caravan and we hope our message has a major impact," caravan member Daniel Gershenson told AFP as the convoy travelled on an Ohio road. After the vigil, the protesters will stage a march as a tribute to the victims of the war on drugs - ending at a church in the traditionally African-American neighbourhood of Harlem.
Among other activities in New York, a press conference is scheduled for Friday in front of City Hall, as well as a demonstration outside the headquarters of the HSBC bank, which the protesters accuse of having laundered money from the drug cartels they blame for the murders of thousands in Mexico. The Big Apple is the second-to-last stop on the caravan's more than 6,000-mile (10,000-kilometer), month-long journey from Tijuana to the US capital, which the group is scheduled to reach by Monday.
Led by Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, who launched the campaign against the drug war in his homeland after his son's murder last year, the caravan is pressing for a change in US policy that would treat drug use more as a public health problem than a criminal matter. According to Mexican estimates, more than 60,000 people have been killed in drug related violence in Mexico over the past six years. The group is also pushing for tighter controls on the sale of weapons in the United States, which the Mexican government says is helping to fuel drug violence on its side of the border.