Vol. 72/No. 23      June 9, 2008

BY BEN JOYCE  
NEW YORK—Young socialists around the country are actively building a June 14 conference here in New York City to widen support for the Cuban Five. They are stepping up their work with other defenders of political and workers rights to win new supporters to this important fight for justice.

The Cuban Five—Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, and Fernando González—are serving sentences ranging from 15 years to a double life term in U.S. jails.

Organizations in the New York/New Jersey area have called a one-day working conference at Hostos Community College in the Bronx. The gathering will plan fall activities, especially from September 12—the 10th anniversary of their arrest—to October 8, as part of an international campaign (see ad on page 3).

The five Miami residents were arrested by the FBI in 1998. They had been monitoring the activities of rightist Cuban-American groups in Florida that have organized attacks on Cuban soil with U.S. government blessing. In a federal frame-up trial they were convicted on false charges of “conspiracy to commit espionage” for the Cuban government; “conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent”; and, in the case of Hernández, “conspiracy to commit murder.”

On May 21 Young Socialists Ben O’Shaughnessy and Michael Ortega gave presentations about the Cuban Five defense campaign to the MEChA (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán) chapter at the University of California at Davis. MEChA is a nationwide Chicano rights student organization.

Among those attending the MEChA meeting were several students who the previous night had learned about the case at a panel discussion on the book Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution.

O’Shaughnessy pointed to the unjust and arbitrary treatment meted out to the five men by U.S. authorities in the decade since they were arrested: from the repeated break-ins of their homes by FBI agents, to the 17 months they were put in solitary confinement before their trial, to the repeated denials of visas for the wives of two of the men to visit them in prison.

“The case of the five is a part of the broader assault by the U.S. rulers on the rights of workers and farmers,” said O’Shaughnessy.

“Over the past 15 years, the same kind of methods the U.S. government used against the Cuban Five have been directed against wider numbers of working people,” said Ortega.

Ortega pointed to activities supporters of the Cuban Five have organized around the country in recent months, including speaking engagements for defense lawyer Leonard Weinglass, film showings, and picket lines. He urged the MEChA chapter to become a supporter of the campaign to free the Cuban Five, to help sponsor educational activities on the case in the fall, and to consider participating in the June 14 conference in New York.

During the discussion, one student asked if the speakers thought it was important to connect the case of the Cuban Five with other political prisoners, such as Puerto Rican independence fighters or Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black rights activist framed up on charges of killing a cop.

O’Shaughnessy said yes. He said it was important to reach out to all defenders of political rights, to those engaged in the fight for the legalization of all undocumented workers, and others in order to win the broadest support possible for the five.

In New York, Young Socialists are participating in the June 14 conference organizing committee, helping to coordinate the student/youth workshop and other aspects of the program. YS members have been meeting with students at Hunter College and other universities, as well as high school students in the city, who are now planning to attend the conference. They are organizing to use the summer months to circulate a petition demanding the release of the Cuban Five and to help plan campus meetings on the case, among other activities.

On May 23 a program on the Cuban Five was held at the Militant Labor Forum in New York. Speaking on the panel were Jessica Zannikos, a member of the Hunter College Undergraduate Student Government, and Emily Paul from the Young Socialists.

“Regardless of your views on Cuba,” said Zannikos, “five innocent men have been in jail for nearly 10 years and together we need to fight for their freedom.”
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. diplomat in Cuba funneled money to counterrevolutionaries
Join effort to free Cuban Five!
Free the Cuban Five Working Conference leaflet  
 
 
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