Vol. 77/No. 24      June 24, 2013

Bill Hackwell

June 1 protest at White House was among wide range of activities organized May 30-June 5 to advance international fight to free Cuban Five.

Last week’s Militant coverage, written as the week’s activities were only beginning, didn’t capture the breadth and scope of that solidarity — what was accomplished through the common effort of many organizations and individuals, with diverse areas of interest and political viewpoints, who came together to advance the international fight to free the Five. Altogether, these were the most significant activities so far in the U.S. in support of this worldwide campaign.

Participants came not only from up and down the East Coast, Jrapko told the Militant, but from the Midwest and as far away as California. They traveled from 22 countries, including journalists, artists, actors and writers, as well as members of parliament from seven nations in Latin America and Europe, who spearheaded visits to 43 offices in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Joining the June 1 picket line and rally of several hundred outside the White House were two busloads of workers, unionists, students and others from New York City, including some just learning about the case. Vanloads came from Montreal and Chicago, and dozens from other cities and towns. A contingent of 38 Cuban-Americans from Miami, organized by Alianza Martiana, took part in the rally and other events.

Activities included an opening press conference May 30; meetings of trade unionists from several countries; an ecumenical gathering; a panel of attorneys discussing the case; a community event in Takoma Park, Md.; a panel discussion on Cuba’s internationalist mission in Angola and another presenting several new books about Cuba and the Cuban Five; concerts, an art exhibit, and other cultural events; congressional lobbying; a live video conference with participants in Washington and Havana; and a closing plenary to discuss ongoing work.

Break the silence
“We still face the most important task of the struggle, which is to break the silence and break another blockade, the one imposed on the people of the United States by the U.S. government and the corporate media,” René González, one of the Five, told a June 1 ecumenical-cultural event at Saint Stephen’s Church via a pre-recorded video from Havana. Jrapko chaired the meeting.

González recently won the battle to return to Cuba after being released from prison on parole in 2011. “We were protecting Cuba against violence,” he said, referring to the work he, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and Antonio Guerrero had been doing before their arrests, gathering information for the Cuban government on right-wing Cuban-American groups with a history of bombings and other attacks on Cuba and supporters of the revolution in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Angela Davis, the featured speaker Saturday night, was introduced by José Ramón Cabañas, chief of the Cuban Interests Section. Davis, now a professor at University of California, Santa Cruz, was framed up in 1970 while a leader of the Communist Party USA. Cabañas recalled that the fight to free her had wide support in Cuba. “The Cuban people played a key role in my defense,” she said, as part of the worldwide campaign that helped win her acquittal in 1972.

Davis noted that this year is the 50th anniversary of the racist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., that killed four young girls in 1963. “At that time the U.S. government knew who the Ku Klux Klan members were who planted that bomb,” she said. “But it was many decades before anyone was charged. Just as the government wasn’t interested in preventing acts of terror against peoples of African descent in the U.S. struggling for freedom, it also wasn’t at all interested in stopping attacks of terror against the Cuban people.”

“Free the Cuban Five! End the embargo! Shut down Guantánamo!” Davis concluded.

Other speakers included John McCullough, executive director of Church World Services; British actor Andy De La Tour; Nicaraguan diplomat Sofia Clark D’Escoto; Miguel Barnet, president of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba; Nacyra Gómez Cruz, Secretary of International Relations of the Christian Conference for Peace for Latin America and the Caribbean; Rev. Edgar Palacios, member of the Baptist World Alliance; and Argentine Nobel prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who sent a video message. Calypso singer and Barbados’ cultural ambassador Anthony “Mighty Gabby” Carter performed a song he wrote calling for freedom for the Five. He also performed at a hip-hop cultural event, along with rapper Head Roc.

On June 3 a panel of lawyers brought participants up to date on legal appeals in the case. The event, held at the Georgetown University Legal Center, was chaired by José Pertierra, a lawyer for the Venezuelan government, and featured Martin Garbus, lead attorney for the Five; Rafael Anglada, also part of the Five’s defense team; and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark.

Garbus and other lawyers for Gerardo Hernández — who received the longest sentence, two life terms plus 15 years — filed a habeas corpus motion in federal court in Florida in 2010 asking that his conviction be vacated on several grounds, including new evidence that Miami-area journalists got government funds to write articles during the trial that were prejudicial to the defense. Habeas petitions for Labañino, Guerrero and Fernando González have also been filed.

The court, Garbus said, has still not held even a preliminary hearing on the 2010 habeas motions or additional ones filed this year asking the court to require the government to turn over documents on the payments made to journalists.

Also speaking were Peter Schey, Center For Human Rights and Constitutional Law; Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund; and Gloria La Riva, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five. Jan Fermon of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers announced an international tribunal on the Five to be held in the United Kingdom early next year.

Another highlight of the “5 Days for the 5” was the exhibit, “I will die the way I lived,” new watercolors painted by Guerrero, one for each of the 15 years since the arrests. The title is from a song by the famous Cuban singer Silvio Rodríguez. The June 3 opening, together with a panel of prominent writers, artists, and others from Cuba, France, Italy, and the U.S., was held at Busboys and Poets, a popular restaurant, bookstore and meeting place.

Introducing the exhibit, Gilbert Brownstone, a longtime museum curator, said the paintings are “exceptional in their clarity and sense of justice.” Guerrero gave each painting a title and short text. For “Number!?” Guerrero writes, “They do not only take your freedom away, but turn you into a number.” For “The Night Watch,” with eyes glowing in the dark: “There is a timetable for the officers of the night watch to count the prisoners. However, they can do it at any time of the night and day.” And in “Fishing” Guerrero depicts how prisoners in their cells exchange magazines and other items.

‘In Cuba the Five are heroes’
Earlier that evening a panel of union officials and activists discussed how to win more unions and workers to the fight. “Here in the U.S. promoting the case of the Cuban Five in the labor movement is a critical part of our work,” said Cheryl LaBash, an organizer of “5 Days for the 5” who chaired the meeting.

The panel included Denis Lemelin, national president, Canadian Union of Postal Workers; Santos Crespo, president, AFSCME Local 372, New York City; Dena Briscoe, president, American Postal Workers Union Local 140, Washington, D.C., and Maryland; Carl Gentile, American Federation of Government Employees District 4; Rob Miller of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in the United Kingdom; and others.

Briscoe said she first learned about the Cuban Five during a 2010 labor delegation to Cuba. “At every union place in the country we visited they told us about the Five. They see them as heroes,” she said.

On June 4 authors of three new books about Cuba or the Cuban Five spoke at Busboys and Poets: Fernando Morais, author of the Last Soldiers of the Cold War; Arnold August, author of Cuba and Its Neighbors: Democracy in Motion; and Stephen Kimber, author of What Lies Across the Water. The meeting, which also celebrated the birthday of Gerardo Hernández, was chaired by Cuban writer Miguel Barnet.

“We have to convince others about this injustice,” Kimber said. That includes letting people know concretely what the Five were doing to prevent violent attacks on Cuba, one of the aims of his book, he said.

At the Cuban Interests Section on the morning of June 5, a panel discussion took place with Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet and Alicia Jrapko in Washington, D.C., and, via a video connection from Havana, René González; Adriana Pérez, wife of Gerardo Hernández; and Kenia Serrano, president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples.

“We’ve achieved a lot, receiving solidarity from every continent,” René González said. “Now we have to focus winning that solidarity in the United States.”

A closing event that night at the Bolivarian Hall of the Venezuelan Embassy was a plenary discussion of ongoing efforts in support of the international fight to free the Cuban Five.
 
 
Related article:
Who are the Cuban Five?
 
 
 
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