Fighters against US police brutality visit Cuba

Delegation marches in Havana on May Day, learns about values of socialist revolution

BY RÓGER CALERO
AND JACOB PERASSO

HAVANA — “If we had been living in Cuba my son would still be alive,” Andree Penix-Smith told leaders of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) here May 3. Her son, Justin Smith Jr., was killed by the police in 1998 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She and other close relatives of victims of police killings in the United States visited Cuba to learn firsthand about the gains made by working people in this country through their socialist revolution, and to speak about ongoing fights against cop brutality in the U.S.

The Federation of Cuban Women and the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) hosted the one-week tour, which included fighters against police abuses from New York, Detroit, Chicago and Oakland, California.

FMC General Secretary Teresa Amarelle Boué welcomed the delegation at the headquarters of the organization. She described the social and economic inequality that existed in Cuba prior to the revolutionary overthrow of a U.S.-backed dictatorship in January 1959, and the gains women, blacks and working people made with the revolution. During the two-hour exchange, members of the U.S. delegation described the circumstances in which their relatives were killed, and their efforts over many years demanding the indictment, conviction and jailing of the officers responsible for these and other killings.

Their fight struck a chord among many they spoke with here. The courage of Cuban mothers whose children were killed under the military regime of Fulgencio Batista before 1959 is part of their revolutionary heritage. Many Cubans are also aware of police brutality in the U.S. through news reports and experiences of relatives living there.

The visit began with joining the march in Havana of hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers and students in the celebration of International Workers Day on May 1, an annual mobilization of support for the revolution. Hundreds of contingents marched across the Plaza of the Revolution with colorful homemade banners identifying their unions and workplaces amid chanting, singing and dancing.

“I’ve never seen anything like it! Workers marching without being surrounded by the police,” said Juanita Young after the massive celebration. Her son, Malcolm Ferguson, was killed by New York police in 2000. Many Cubans approached the delegation during the march to ask about their struggles, shake their hands and take pictures.

Members of the delegation spoke at an international conference in solidarity with Cuba the next day, and displayed banners they had brought reading “Mothers Cry for Justice,” and “Families against Police Brutality in the United States in Solidarity with Cuba: End the US Embargo against Cuba.” They received a standing ovation from the more than 1,600 delegates from some 20 countries present.

Congratulating the Cuban people for building a society where working people come first, Iris Baez told the conference that “the killings of our sons in the United States” must stop and “capitalism is not for working people.” Her son Anthony Baez was killed by New York cop Francis Livoti in 1994. Three other members of the delegation — Juanita Young, Anita Wills and Nellie Bailey — also addressed the gathering.

Different values

The tour included visits to the Orlando Pantoja Elementary School, a neighborhood family center run by the FMC and community projects that organize activities and work closely with local residents, especially with teenage youth and the elderly. They also visited the Literacy Campaign Museum and met with U.S. students at the Latin American School of Medicine, which has trained more than 23,000 students from all over the world, including from the United States, free of charge.

Leaders of the community programs described the attention paid by mass organizations like the Federation of Cuban Women and neighborhood committees to social questions such as domestic violence, prenatal care, children falling behind in school and crime prevention. “In socialist Cuba our priority is the human being,” said the director of the Pogolotti Community Center, located in one of the oldest working-class neighborhoods in Havana, founded in 1911 for tobacco, factory and port workers. “From a very young age we are taught to respect, share and care for others.”

Víctor Dreke, a leader of the Cuban Revolution for more than 50 years who fought in the Rebel Army and at the side of Che Guevara in the Congo in 1965, met with several of the delegates. Dreke described how as a teenager he had joined the revolutionary movement that overthrew a regime marked by brutality, corruption and subservience to the interests of U.S. imperialism and Cuba’s landlords and capitalists.

“Many trade union leaders and young people were killed by the Batista dictatorship,” said Dreke. “President Barack Obama asked us during his recent visit to Cuba to forget about the past, but how could we? It would be like asking you to forget about your sons.”

At the Literacy Campaign Museum the delegation saw displays of photos and other items from the 1961 campaign in which more than 100,000 volunteers, mostly teenagers, went into the countryside to teach reading and writing. At the time illiteracy, especially among women, was often well over 50 percent. Within a year the volunteers reduced illiteracy nationwide from 30 percent to 4 percent.

“What would inspire people so young to leave home and participate in something of so high a moral character, and that required so much discipline?” asked Young.

“The revolution transformed us,” replied Olga Santos, who took part in the literacy campaign when she was 13 years old. “People were inspired to participate, it was a way of contributing to the revolution.

“The discipline came from the commitment to fulfill the task ahead of us,” Santos added.

Supported the Cuban Five

A high point of the visit was a meeting with Fernando González, one of the five Cuban revolutionaries who were framed up by the U.S. government in 1998 for their work monitoring counterrevolutionary Cuban groups in Florida to prevent violent attacks on Cuba. He is currently ICAP’s vice president.

“I’ve been following your case for years,” said Young. “I lost my son to police murder, and I could not help thinking what the mothers of the Cuban Five were going through.”

The idea of relatives of victims of police brutality traveling to Cuba originated in October 2014 when Baez and Young spoke at an event in New York to extend support for the fight to free the Five. Young said there that she and other mothers should visit Cuba and meet the mothers of the Cuban Five. The following year, Baez hosted a meeting at her church in the Bronx where relatives of victims of cop killings from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania joined a panel with Maritzel González of the FMC.

In addition to the seven family members, participants in the trip included Jacob Perasso and Róger Calero from the Socialist Workers Party, who worked with the hosting organizations in Cuba and with Mothers Cry for Justice in New York to coordinate aspects of the tour; Alyson Kennedy, who has been active in fights against police killings and torture in Chicago and is the SWP’s presidential candidate in 2016; and Nellie Bailey of the July 26 Coalition and the Harlem Tenants Council in New York. A project of the New York July 26 Coalition, the tour received the support of Cuba solidarity groups in several cities, as well as from individuals active in combatting police abuses.

“I’ve been fighting the government in the United States for 20 years to get justice for my son, and have yet to see the end of police brutality in our country,” Arnetta Grable told González. “I have joined with many other mothers around the country so that we can, in solidarity, bring an end to this terrible brutality suffered by our young people.” One of her sons, Lamar Wayne Grable, was killed by a Detroit cop in 1996 when he was going home after a party in a local church. Her other son, Aaron, has been active in the fight against police brutality and also joined the visit to Cuba.

Many members of the delegation take part in the National Stolen Lives Families Tour — a joint project of Mothers Cry for Justice and The Adam Project, Inc. led by Rev. Jerome McCorry based in Dayton, Ohio — through which they offer solidarity to families who have lost their loved ones to police killings across the country. Baez is also founder of the Anthony Baez Foundation, which likewise extends support to victims of police brutality and their families.

The Stolen Lives Families Tour recently organized trips to Cleveland and Chicago where they joined actions with relatives of Tamir Rice, 12, killed by police in Cleveland in 2014; Justus Howell, killed by the Zion, Illinois, cops in 2015; and others.

“We focus on the police but we’re aware that behind the police there is an entire system,” said Wills, pointing to how the government, courts and prison system work against working people, disproportionately those who are Black, Latino and Native American. Wills, who has a son in prison, is involved in the fight in California against solitary confinement in U.S. prisons.

“The years I spent in prison gave me the opportunity to be with many African Americans unjustly held in U.S. prisons,” said González. “I learned about the reality of their communities, the reality in the United States, which is not the same one we see on television.” He thanked the relatives on behalf of himself and “my four brothers for your support to us, and for struggling.”

“It’s an honor to be in the same room speaking with you,” said Joshua Lopez. “You’re not only a hero here in Cuba but you’re a hero to a lot of us in America.” Lopez’s uncle, John Collado, was killed by a New York undercover cop in September 2011 when he tried to separate two people involved in a fight, not knowing one was a cop.

“This is going to continue in the U.S. no matter who is elected president. If we want to see these horrors go away it’s going to take a revolution, and real leadership like that of Fidel and Raúl,” said Lopez.

“In Cuba they were fighting and fighting until they got change,” Juanita Young told the Militant after the visit. “Without this trip I would have never known another way of living. In the U.S., value is put on material things and it causes constant stress. They don’t do that in Cuba. Now that we are back we want to speak about what we learned on our trip.”

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