Vol. 77/No. 47      December 30, 2013

“CLUW members join with our founding member Delores Huerta, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and eight Nobel Prize winners in calling for the Cuban 5 to be released and returned to their families,” the resolution states.

“We must do all we can to win the release of these five innocent men,” said Huerta, who is also a founding member of the United Farm Workers, in a YouTube video referred to in the resolution.

The resolution calls on “the U.S. State Department to grant a visa to Adriana Pérez in order that she may visit with her husband, Gerardo Hernández,” one of the Five. During 15 years of imprisonment, Washington has repeatedly denied visa requests for Pérez to come to the U.S. to see Hernández, who was sentenced to two life terms plus 15 years on trumped-up conspiracy charges. “According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, denial of the right of a spouse to visit their incarcerated husband or wife is a violation of human rights,” the resolution says.

While the case of the Five “has received very little attention in the U.S. press,” the resolution states, “it is widely known around the world because the activities for which they were convicted posed no threat to the American people (they were monitoring the activities of anti-Cuba terrorist groups based in Miami which had planned and carried out deadly bombings in Cuba.)”

More than 400 delegates from 40 unions attended the CLUW convention in Reno, Nevada. The AFL-CIO-backed coalition, founded in 1974, has chapters around the country.

The resolution, which was approved unanimously, was submitted by Katie Jordan, president of the Chicago chapter of CLUW. She is a retired garment worker and leader of the Workers United labor union.

“This is a good time for us to be more vocal on this issue,” Jordan said in a phone interview Dec. 13. Jordan said she sees the fight to free the Five as part of the fights for justice in the U.S. “You can be doing something worthwhile here that someone else doesn’t like and wind up being detained.

“This resolution is part of the priorities of what we will be working on and we hope other unions will do the same,” she said.
 
 
Related articles:
Who are the Cuban Five?
Gerardo Hernández salutes Nelson Mandela, South African revolution
 
 
 
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