Vol. 78/No. 14      April 14, 2014

“I had to be here for this occasion,” Tre Guevara, a 21-year-old art student told the Militant. “This is a transnational effort as part of the fight to protect Cuba from U.S. imperialism. Antonio’s art is creating another level of consciousness in that fight.”

“Tonight is a wonderful example of why we opened this space to the community,” said Renny Molenaar, co-director of the Imperfect Gallery in Germantown, which hosted the evening event that included a program and refreshments.

“All these images have one thing in common: They were memories of the unjust and cruel treatment given to us since the very first day of our detention,” Guerrero, who learned to paint in prison, wrote about the exhibit. “After I finished painting 15, I decided to stop. That number coincides with the number of years of captivity we will complete on Sept. 12, 2013.”

“The courts were forced to lower some of their sentences because, as one judge put it, ‘there’s a little too much noise about this case,’” said Chris Hoeppner of the Socialist Workers Party, who chaired the program. “Well, we want to make a lot more noise. And tonight we celebrate the return of Fernando González, who like René González left prison as he entered it — as a revolutionary,” he said to applause from participants.

Katherine Mejia, a student at Temple University and member of the campus group People Utilizing Real Power, helped put together the displays and spoke as part of the program. “We are fighting against everything that’s oppressing us, and holding us back in life.”

Roger Zepernick, Urban-Ministry Director of the St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, called on participants to join in the international campaigns to free the Cuban Five and Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López.

During the evening, several participants spoke informally about why they had come to the event. Mia Reed, a student at Temple, said, “The Cuban Five is one of the greatest injustices of my time. I was 8 years old when they were arrested, and now I am 24.” Samantha Heywood, a 21-year-old worker, said, “I have interest in revolutionary groups and think of myself as a prison abolitionist.”

“I want to know more about the three of the Cuban Five who fought in Angola against the South African apartheid regime,” translator Paul Horner, 27, told the Militant.

“The Cuban Five are heroes to me, as they are to my own father, who is half-Cuban,” said Lorenzo Cannon-Umstad, 21, an athletic coach for youth at community centers and mentor programs, as he looked attentively at Guerrero’s “Fishing” painting, which shows a common method prisoners surreptitiously use to exchange reading materials and other items. “My father was in prison in upstate Pennsylvania for three years, two months in ‘the hole,’ and he used that same fishing line method with his fellow prisoners.”

“I spent a long time looking at Antonio’s painting [“The Rec”] of the shadow of a bird and the fence,” said Jim Sullivan. “It reminded me of a poem by Bobby Sands about a bird he could hear from his prison cell.” Sands died during a hunger strike of Irish political prisoners he led in 1981 at Long Kesh, a Northern Ireland prison.

“Capitalism has failed us,” said Kashara White from the Black Student Union at Temple. “We must start making plans for our future as human beings knowing that capitalism will not be in that future.”

Participants bought eight copies of I Will Die the Way I’ve Lived; three copies of Voices From Prison: The Cuban Five; and one each of Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own; Puerto Rico: Independence Is a Necessity; and Socialism and Man in Cuba. Fifteen signed up to help with the campaign to free the Five.
 
 
Related articles:
‘Cuban 5 art will reach those interested in fights for dignity’
Showings of paintings by Antonio Guerrero
Who are the Cuban Five?
‘Revolution was first step toward women’s equality’
Federation of Cuban Women leaders speak in New York  
 
 
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