Vol. 73/No. 20      May 25, 2009

Sigma Lambda Beta, a Latino-based fraternity, sponsored the meeting. The campus chapter, mostly Chicano students, has organized a number of “cultural awareness” events at the Davis campus, located in the heart of the Sacramento Valley, an agricultural center. The fraternity’s members mobilized to build the meeting on short notice, distributing colorful flyers urging students to learn about the five—Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, René González, Fernando González, and Gerardo Hernández.

Known as the Cuban Five, the men, who are serving draconian sentences in U.S. federal prisons, are considered heroes in Cuba.

The guest speakers were Alicia Jrapko, national coordinator of the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five, and Martín Koppel, managing editor of the Militant newspaper. They emphasized the importance of such meetings in getting out the truth about the case and winning new support for the defense of the five.

“The prosecution and jailing of the five Cubans by the U.S. government is a travesty of justice that threatens the constitutional rights of all of us,” Koppel said.  
 
Frame-up charges
The charge against the five of “conspiracy to commit espionage” was a frame-up, Koppel said, as was the charge against Hernández of “conspiracy to commit murder.” What they were doing, he explained, was gathering information on U.S.-based ultra-rightwing groups that have a history of violent attacks on Cuba, including a string of bombings of Cuban hotels in l997.

“Because there was no evidence that the five Cubans spied on the U.S. government,” Koppel said, “prosecutors charged them with ‘conspiracy’ to do so. They wiretapped their phones, burglarized their apartments, and used secret evidence that the five and their lawyers were given restricted or no access to.”

Koppel pointed out that this and brutalities such as holding the five in solitary confinement for 17 months are examples of the stepped-up attacks on the rights of working people in this country.

Jrapko opened her remarks by pointing to pictures of the five at the front of the room, telling a little about each of them and the length of their prison sentences—Guerrero and Labañino, life in prison; René González, 15 years; Fernando González, 19 years; and Hernández, a double life term.

“Cuba has a right to defend itself,” Jrapko explained. “For years, the U.S. has attacked Cuba, including a 1961 CIA-organized military invasion,” known as the Bay of Pigs. She pointed to how, while incarcerating the five Cubans, the U.S. government has supported and protected opponents of the revolution who have carried out deadly attacks on Cuba, including the blowing up in midair of a Cubana Airlines plane in l976, killing all 73 on board.

Jrapko urged the students to join the international campaign to win the right of Adriana Pérez and Olga Salanueva, the wives of Gerardo Hernández and René González respectively, to visit their husbands in prison. The two women have been repeatedly denied visas by U.S. authorities.  
 
Working-class fighters for justice
“The Cuban Five are working-class fighters for justice,” Koppel added. “Most were student leaders in their youth. Three of them were among the more than 300,000 Cubans who responded to a call from the government of Angola to help drive back invasions of that country by the racist South African apartheid regime. While in prison they have extended solidarity to other militants, including the Puerto Rican political prisoners, and support the struggle of immigrant workers.”

“The employers and their government know that with the deepening economic crisis, as they drive down our standard of living, there will be more resistance from working people,” said Koppel. “The struggle against the injustices in the case of the five is part of the fight to defend workers’ rights in this country.”

An hour-long discussion period followed the talks. “Is it worthwhile to defend the Cuban government?” one student asked. “Are the Cuban people better off? What is the situation of racism in Cuba? Is it segregated?”

In response, Koppel pointed out that joining the campaign to free the Cuban Five is not contingent on a person’s political views or what they think of the Cuban Revolution. “The campaign to free the five should be built on the broadest basis possible and include all supporters of democratic rights who believe the injustices meted out to them should be fought.”

He then described how the 1959 revolution uprooted the institutionalized racial discrimination that existed under the U.S.-backed dictatorship. “Because of such social gains the revolution has strong support among working people who are Black,” he said. “Millions of people became involved and workers won greater control over their livelihood and destiny.”

Jrapko pointed to the role of Cuba’s system of free education, free health care, and more access to child care, as important to bringing more equality to Cuba.

Other questions from students included: Why does the U.S. government go to such extremes to attack Cuba? Do you think a revolution is possible in the United States?

“The government has a double purpose in its attack on the five,” Koppel pointed out. “First, it’s aimed at us. To make us think twice before standing up to the government and the employers. Second, it is to punish the Cuban people for having the audacity to make a socialist revolution. They hate Cuba because of its political example, for the revolution itself, where millions rose up, carried out a land reform, a campaign against illiteracy, and took over the means of production.”

Koppel added that not all of the young people who led the revolution in Cuba started out as socialists. “But they found that to end the brutal conditions they faced, to gain land for farmers, to create jobs, to win their national sovereignty, they had to take on the wealthy rulers in whose interest it was to block these changes. They had to take over the sugar refineries, the banks, the industries.”  
 
Fight for right to hold meeting
“The U.S. is part of the world,” Koppel emphasized. “As we enter what will be decades of economic crisis, intertwined with imperialist wars, we will face the same challenges and necessity to take the power out of the hands of the wealthy ruling class.”

Daniel Mendoza, a member of Sigma Lambda Beta and a participant in a university-organized study abroad program in Cuba in 2008, chaired the meeting. He described a fight waged by the fraternity to have the right to hold the meeting. Mendoza said the application for the room was initially denied by school administrators on the basis that Koppel was described on some Web site as a “registered communist,” and a talk by him could potentially provoke “violence” on the Davis campus.

To applause, Mendoza explained that the fraternity did not fall for this argument or back down. Despite continued stalling and roadblocks thrown up by the administration, they persisted and the meeting was able to take place.

Many leaving the room at the end of the meeting picked up literature on the case of the Cuban Five and signed the mailing list to get more information and future updates.

On May 4, Koppel also spoke about the Cuban Five at a U.S. history class at the Mission campus of City College of San Francisco. The 25 students in attendance engaged in a lively discussion following Koppel’s presentation.

In response to Koppel’s account of the FBI wiretapping and burglary of the homes of the five before their arrest, one student said he didn’t realize such undemocratic attacks were used before the Patriot Act was passed into law.

Koppel answered that both the Republicans and Democrats have been responsible for using assaults on constitutional rights. Laws passed under the administration of William Clinton allowed the government more leeway to wiretap and use secret evidence, which was expanded under George W. Bush with the Patriot Act.  
 
 
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