NEW YORK — Opponents of Washington’s six-decade-long economic war against Cuba demonstrated here and across the country Oct. 29. Some 200 people from New York, New Jersey and cities as far away as Boston and Miami marched from Times Square to the United Nations.
The actions were timed to draw attention to the upcoming vote in the U.N. General Assembly on a resolution, presented by Cuba’s revolutionary government, that calls for “ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” Similar resolutions have been adopted every year by a resounding margin over the past three decades.
Demonstrators carried signs and banners calling on the U.S. government to end its sanctions against Cuba, get out of Guantánamo, lift restrictions on travel to the island and take Cuba off its despicable “state sponsors of terrorism” list.
Among them was a lively delegation of more than 20 Cuban Americans who have held monthly car caravans in Miami calling for an end to the U.S. embargo. Other Cuban Americans came from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. One group carried a huge Cuban flag down the march route.
Speakers at the opening and closing rallies included Carlos Lazo of Miami-based Puentes de Amor (Bridges of Love), Medea Benjamin of CodePink, Angie Langdon of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, and Ike Nahem of the New York-New Jersey Cuba Sí Coalition.
Also participating were two members of the Cuba Solidarity Committee in Puerto Rico, including its president, Milagros Rivera, who spoke at the rally across from the U.N. building. She pointed to the example of Cuba’s socialist revolution for those fighting for Puerto Rico’s independence from U.S. colonial rule, and condemned the FBI’s harassment of a Puerto Rican solidarity brigade that visited Cuba in July.
More than 75 people rallied at the Federal Building in Los Angeles Oct. 29 and marched in the neighborhood. Among the speakers were Floyd Bryan from the Southern California District of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Mike Vera, a business agent with the ILWU’s Inland Boatmen’s Union; James Lafferty of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles; Diana Cervantes of the L.A. Hands Off Cuba Committee; Ysabel Gonzalez from CodePink; and Ellie García from the Socialist Workers Party.
Vera announced that the Inland Boatmen’s Union in Southern California has passed a resolution calling for lifting all U.S. sanctions on Cuba.