Confronting Inequity and Seeking Social Justice in the Psychedelic Movement

Diana Negrín

On April 20, an Indigenous Nasa governor from Colombia, Sandra Liliana Peña, was assassinated. Her death is evidence of the intensification of violence against the defenders of Amazonian territories where the consequences of decades of state and market policies continue to be felt in the high numbers of affected, displaced, and murdered people. As in so many other countries of Abya Yala, to belong to an Indigenous or Black community and to be an environmental defender, demand justice, and exercise self-determination with respect to one’s land, culture, and governance often comes with a death sentence. How many names must be remembered and exclaimed out loud in order to not forget? And what are some of the threads that help us understand the connection between the lives and deaths of Sandra Liliana Peña and Breonna Taylor, a Black woman murdered after a “no-knock” warrant was ordered at her home in Louisville, Kentucky on the night of March 13, 2020? An important place where we should pause our sights and minds is on the persistent link between these forms of violence and the transnational policies that have shaped the commercialization and penalization of so-called narcotics... continue reading.