Chicago was one of the 20 stops on the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity tour, a broad bi-national coalition traveling 6,000 miles across the country, Tuesday as thousands took to the streets of the Cook County Building to bring awareness to the human costs of the drug war and violence in Mexico and the United States. The caravan will culminate on Sept. 12 on International Day of Action in Washington, D.C.

The Caravan offers five solutions to stop the violence and its ramifications in Mexico and the United States: the exploration of alternatives to drug prohibition; a halt to the illegal smuggling of weapons across the border to Mexico; concrete steps to combat money laundering; the immediate suspension of U.S. assistance to Mexico’s armed forces; and an end to the criminalization of immigrants.

The war on drugs has left more than 60,000 dead in Mexico in the last six years, and resulted in over 500,000 Americans behind bars for drug offenses. African-Americans and Latinos are vastly overrepresented among those arrested and incarcerated for drug offenses in the United States. The Caravan opens the possibility to initiate a transnational debate among the stakeholders searching for a new model of “human security”, whose main criterion should be the well-being of the people, including the decriminalization of migration.