Dear John,

Many of us remember when World Central Kitchen arrived in Cuba after hurricanes. They stepped forward to feed people in a time of great crisis and loss. 

Today, Cuba faces another emergency. Not a natural disaster, but a man-made one. Sign the petition urging World Central Kitchen to feed Cuba again and refuse to stay silent while The U.S. government uses hunger as a weapon.

Cuba is running on weeks, not months, of remaining fuel. This is the direct result of U.S. sanctions and a deliberate restriction on fuel. Without fuel, trucks cannot move food from farms to cities. Refrigeration fails, spoiling food and medicine. Hospitals struggle to keep generators running. Parents stretch every meal, skip their own portions, and still there is not enough.

This violence is deliberate, the desired outcome of policies driven by hatred and carried out by those in power who treat human life as expandable. 

Under Donald Trump, the U.S. doubled down on this cruelty by formally declaring Cuba a so-called “national emergency,” and labeling it an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the U.S. security. That declaration is a lie. Cuba poses absolutely no threat to the United States. But the designation allows the U.S. government to tighten sanctions, block fuel shipments and further choke off the resources civilians need to eat and care for each other.

Ask World Central Kitchen to return to Cuba and do what they do best: Feed the people.  

Sanctions are often described as “nonviolent,” but in reality, they are a lethal weapon that targets innocent civilians, affecting children the most. By restricting fuel, trade, banking, and transport, sanctions dismantle the systems people depend on to live.

U.S. lawmakers like María Elvira Salazar openly acknowledge that sanctions cause hunger in Cuba and still argue for tightening them, treating suffering as leverage instead of a moral red line. This is collective punishment. 

We are better than this. Or at least, we should be. 

For more than 60 years, the Cuban people have refused to be starved into submission. They share food, they organize collectively because they know they are living under siege. Even with limited resources, the Cuban government does everything it can to serve its people and still sends doctors abroad, responding to earthquakes, epidemics, and global health emergencies. The U.S., on the other hand, does everything to starve them. What it has never managed to take away is their dignity. Like the Palestinian people, Cubans endure policies meant to break them, and still choose care, solidarity and life. And so must the World Central Kitchen. 

The World Central Kitchen knows what hunger looks like. They know what an emergency feels like. This is one. And it demands action. Urge the World Central Kitchen to feed Cuba again. 

In radical solidarity,
Jodie, Medea, Michelle, Leonardo and Teri