Last week, we delivered to Senator Kerry, President Bush, and their staff a petition just under 4,000 signatures on a list that filled 79 single spaced pages asking for fundamental changes to be made to US-Colombia policy. Thank you to everyone who signed the petition and collected signatures, or forwarded the petition link to their friends! You've helped send a clear and decisive message about the direction we want our country's foreign policy to take, and the way we want to interact with and relate to the rest of the world. To see the text of the petition, click here.

Close to four thousand signatures on a petition was a great way to close the pre-election period this year. Now that the elections are over, it’s time to take a deep breath and assess where we are and where we want to go. November will bring more Colombia activity as the foreign aid bill, which contains $731 million in anti-drug and anti-terror funding for Colombia and neighboring countries, is finalized during the lame duck session of Congress.

Included in that bill are conditions requiring the secretary of state to certify that Colombia is making progress at cutting ties between the armed forces and the brutal paramilitaries. Conditions requiring the secretary to certify that aerial fumigation has no "adverse effects" on health or the environment have been included in the Senate version of the bill, and we will work over the next month to ensure that they make it into the final version of the bill. These conditions aren't by any means adequate—our vision is for a much greater change—but they do put roadblocks in the way of officials who want a blank check for Colombia, and they’re a vehicle for debate and education in Congress. They're more complex than conditions governing US policy toward any other country, including Iraq and Afghanistan-- and that reflects your concerns about the policy and your effectiveness at conveying these concerns to your members of Congress.

We’ll have more updates on this and other issues in the weeks to come. Thank you, as always, for your deep commitment to changing the direction of US foreign policy.