Two important tasks got a real boost in Miami on July 27. Ignoring threats by rightist Cuban organizations to disrupt the event, thirty-five people attended a meeting at Florida International University’s Biscayne Bay campus. Raising funds to send urgently needed pacemakers to Cuba and speaking out against Washington’s illegal, immoral, and totally unfounded placement of Cuba on its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
The meeting was co-sponsored by an important segment of organizations in the Cuban community joined by others opposed to bipartisan Washington’s unjustified, illegal, and immoral inclusion of Cuba on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terror. Co-sponsors included the Miami Coalition to End the U.S. Blockade of Cuba; the Democratic Socialists of America Miami chapter; the Miami-Dade Green Party; the Antonio Maceo Brigade; the Circulo Bolivariano of Miami; Casa de la Colombianidad; Code Pink Miami; and the Young Democratic Socialists of America at FIU.
The meeting was co-chaired and opened by Pete Seidman from the Miami Coalition and Wesley Chau, internal coordinator of the Miami DSA.
The opening speaker was Carlos Lazo, organizer of Puentes de Amor, an anti-blockade group emphasizing the delivery of humanitarian aid to Cuba. Lazo detailed his personal evolution from having been imprisoned in a Cuban jail from 1988-89 for stealing a boat to go to Miami, from hating everything about Cuba despite the fact that his father was a revolutionary (who loyally visited his son in prison despite these disagreements).
Lazo, now a Seattle school teacher noted that after having arrived in Miami and experiencing the hatred and intolerance of the Cuban community there, he began to think that Cuba wasn’t as bad as he’d originally thought. After serving for three years as a combat medic in Iraq during the war, he emerged as an opponent of the blockade. He organized a bike trip from Seattle to Washington, DC, to protest it.
That ride later inspired a Miami Cuban named Jorge Medina to start a new wave of caravans. Despite whatever differences they had during the 2020 elections or even over the character of the Cuban government, caravanistas put aside differences to unite in action against the blockade! Medina invited Lazo here to help out, and so began three years of end-of-the-month caravans that inspired people to join in this unexpected monthly rhythm set by Miami Cubans.
Urging support for the project of sending pacemakers to Cuba, Lazo recounted a conversation he had in Cuba with someone whose father’s pacemaker battery was down to seven percent. “Can you imagine being in that position, or knowing that a teacher who taught you how to read needs a pacemaker to live? They’re killing our people! That’s what brings us here.”
Max Lesnik, a leader of the fight by Cubans here against the blockade for 6 decades, followed Lazo’s talk. Lesnik said he had to choose that night whether he himself should go to the ER for some medical problem or come to the meeting. He thanked all those who were in the streets of Miami and urged us to stay there. “It doesn’t matter who’s going to be the next President,” he said. “Because whoever it is, he [the meeting was before the stepdown of Biden from the campaign] will need to face Cubans saying no to the blockade.”
In introducing Kefira Baron, representing the UHURU 3 Defense Committee, Pete Seidman noted the serious attacks on democratic rights taking place in a number of Florida cities. He pointed to struggles in Miami for political space against rightist Cubans, who had called in social media for people to demonstrate against this evening’s meeting as well.
As he was speaking, one of these rightists tried to barge into the room screaming anti-Communist slogans. The coalition’s security team quickly ejected her and University police, who had been notified of these threats, kept her from further disruption.
In an outrageous and violent attack, the FBI raided headquarters of the African Peoples Socialist Party in St. Louis and St. Petersburg, FL, in July 2022.
A year later, three supporters including party chair Omali Yeshitela were indicted on charges of being illegal agents of Russia because of their support for that country’s war in Ukraine. The charges are a serious attack on the civil liberties of everyone because the government is not charging the defendants with illegal actions, but only for what they have said.
Baron noted that the party opposes the U.S. blockade of Cuba, and that is part of what puts it in the government’s sights. She urged people to attend a protest in Tampa demanding that charges be dropped when the trial begins there on September 3. There will also be a march in St. Petersburg the weekend before.
A video message from Murid Abukhater, a Palestinian studying at Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine was up next. Murid described how only three days earlier, the house where his family was staying in Gaza had been bombed. The family was staying in the part of the house that had not already been destroyed by an earlier bombing three months before. Unfortunately, Murid reported his father was seriously wounded in the second bombing. When taken to the hospital, they found no beds available and no means to stop the bleeding, which went on for four hours!
He contrasted this to the medical care available in Cuba, but also how the blockade had created unbearable shortages even in a country dedicated to providing good health care to its people.
Oscar Alvarez followed up Murid’s seven-minute video (given in Spanish with English subtitles) with an enthusiastic fund appeal for the pacemakers Saving Lives Campaign. He explained that he is a Cuban-American who grew up in a home full of falsehoods about the Cuba his parents had left. It was not until he met the Young Democratic Socialists at FIU that he began to learn things about Cuba of which he had never heard. “Let’s build a united front in South Florida against the blockade,” he urged.
His words hit home, as the audience donated or pledged a total of $1,775 in response. The Miami DSA donated $500 of this. And another $300 came from a fundraising event organized at the home of Max Lesnik aimed at Cubans here against the blockade. This brings the total amount raised and pledged in Miami to $4,195 since the campaign here began.
The final speaker was another Cuban-American youth, Gabriella Cortes representing Code Pink Miami. Her concluding remarks captured the feelings of many in the audience:
“We don’t have to wait and watch as politicians stand by hoping Cuba will be overcome. We shall overcome! By demonstrating the concrete support by people in the US, including many Cubans in the U.S., Code Pink gives the lie to the claim by Washington and the Miami lie machine that criminal sanctions like SSOT are carried out in the name of Cubans! Not in our name!”
The chair recognized leaders present of the Miami Caravan Against the Blockade, the Miami-Dade Green Party, a prominent Haitian activist, and Rachel Fruit, Socialist Workers Party 2024 Presidential candidate.