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After hours of waiting in the hot Santa Cruz, California city council room, listening to the impassioned arguments in favor and against off leash dog use at a nearby beach; and seeing a lengthy power point presentation on the plans for a new building in downtown Santa Cruz, we were losing our steam.

It seemed likely that our resolution, requesting that all US military aid to Colombia be re-directed to domestic drug prevention and rehabilitation programs, wouldn’t be considered until after 7pm when the council members returned from their evening recess.Fortunately Santa Cruz Mayor Ryan Coonerty noticed that we had been patiently waiting all afternoon (thankfully we had all brought work with us: the UCSC Colombia research cluster grad students were grading papers and others worked on their laptops) and pushed our agenda item to the top of the list before the break. At 6pm, life-long activist Bert Muhly from 3 Americas took the floor.

The Berkeley City Council passed a resolution on Tuesday calling for an end to military funding of the Colombian Army as part of the “drug war,” and re-direction of money to domestic drug treatment efforts.

The city government urged Congresswoman Barbara Lee to “step up her leadership to terminate all military assistance to the Colombian Army, and to re-direct these funds” to “substance abuse prevention, harm reduction, and treatment programs.”