Sun. April 25: Join Car Caravans to
say
"End the U.S. Blockade of Cuba"
Dear Friend,
On Sunday across the United States and countries around the
world, community, peace and social justice activists will drive
through streets of their cities. They will call on President Biden to
act now to lift the more than 240 anti-Cuba measures signed by Trump,
and to take immediate action to overturn the U.S. blockade of almost
60 years.
The U.S. blockade against Cuba is actually a series of laws, with
the first one signed by President Kennedy in 1962, whose sole purpose
is to starve and deny medicines and essential trade to the Cuban
nation. The objective: Regime change of a government and country
simply because it is socialist and no longer under U.S. economic and
political domination.
One of the harshest laws in the blockade arsenal, passed by U.S.
Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1996, is known as the
Helms-Burton law. Fully implemented by President Trump in 2019, it has
caused even greater economic hardship on the whole Cuban people, by
internationalizing its application, forcing other countries to comply
with the blockade. Then Trump added to the pain, cutting all
remittances from Cuban-American families in the U.S. to their loved
ones in Cuba, and signing 240 executive orders and measures in
total.
Yet, disgracefully, Biden's National Security Council advisor on
Western Hemisphere affairs, Juan Gonz?lez, stated April 11 that Biden
sees no reason to take action to overturn Trump's reactionary
measures.
This means that Trump's aggression towards Cuba is now Biden's.
"Between April 2019 and March 2020, damages to
Cuba's economy totaled $5,570,300,000. In 60 years, the damages total
$144,413,400,000 or, taking into account depreciation of the U.S.
dollar against the price of gold, $1,098,008,000,000. The human cost
to the Cuban people is incalculable." Read
the full report presented to the UN.
The role that the people of the U.S. play in this crisis is
crucial. First is the public rejection of U.S. policy. The caravans
help us send the message that Washington does not speak in our name.
Nor does it act in our or the Cuban people's interest, no matter its
rhetoric. Punishing a people to try to overturn a government or to
bend it to the U.S. will, is a crime against humanity, as defined by
International Law. The United Nations General Assembly has
consistently voted?each year since 1992 for the U.S. blockade
(embargo in UN terms) to be ended.
Especially in the time of pandemic, international cooperation is
essential to save lives and overcome COVID-19 for humanity's sake. The
U.S. medical industry is an enormous resource of equipment and
technology that could be shared with Cuba, instead of complying with
the blockade. Cuba has a world-renowned biotechnology industry that
has produced 5 lines of COVID vaccine, ready to share with the world,
as it has thousands of its doctors. Its free and universal health care
system has shown that it is possible to minimize casualties, keeping
deaths to 569 on the island as of April 23, even in time of
blockade.
Join us where possible in the Cuba caravans to say End the U.S.
Blockade Now, Let Cuba Live! And let's work together to eliminate
U.S.-imposed sanctions and blockades against Cuba and all peoples, and
for a world of peace and social and economic justice.
?
In solidarity,
Brian Becker
National Director,
ANSWER Coalition
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