Vol. 77/No. 16      April 29, 2013

Featured speaker and coordinator of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five Gloria La Riva described the government’s frame-up and the fight for their release. “These men will never give in to pressure, and the more people learn about this case the more will defend their fight for freedom,” she said.

“They are our brothers,” Richard Monje, vice president of Workers United, told participants. “Whether we’re fighting for health care, education, immigrant rights, we need unity and solidarity. It’s not just the fight for a contract, a union or even a strike. We have to get beyond that to international solidarity.”

“President Barack Obama says he’s for human rights in countries like Cuba and Venezuela, but he will not listen to Latinos in the United States who are denied their basic human rights,” said Eduardo Villanueva, chairperson of the Human Rights Committee of Puerto Rico.

“We have to fight for the freedom of Oscar and the Cuban Five,” he said, referring to Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera, 70, who has been imprisoned in the U.S. for more than 31 years, 12 of them in solitary confinement.

Alejandro Molina, co-coordinator of the National Boricua Human Rights Network, also spoke on the group’s campaign to free López and the Five.

Prior to his 1981 arrest and frame-up conviction for “seditious conspiracy,” López was well known in the Puerto Rican community here. He helped organize the Committee to Free the Five Puerto Rican Nationalists, who had been jailed in 1954 for carrying out an armed pro-independence demonstration in Congress, and was active in other social struggles. Along with Guerrero’s works, the exhibit also includes three paintings and two miniatures by López.

Several members of Workers United Local 9691, who work at an industrial laundry, attended the event. “I came to get more information on the Cuban Five that I can take back to other workers so they can learn about this fight,” shop steward Micaela Castro told the Militant. “Many of us have been part of protests in the fight for legalization, and the fight for freedom for the Five is a part of that fight too.”

The exhibit runs through May 4. Sponsors include the Chicago Committee to Free the Five, Chicago Cuba Coalition, National Boricua Human Rights Network, the Chicago Venezuelan Consulate, ANSWER Coalition, Centro Autónomo of Albany Park, M-19 Anti-War Coalition, All African Peoples Revolutionary Party and the Chicago Council on Black Studies.
 
 
Related articles:
‘Cuban 5 show us how to fight, stand tall, never bow’
Students at Columbia U host meeting on frame-up and fight to free jailed revolutionaries
Who are the Cuban Five?
 
 
 
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