The US National Network on Cuba's solidarity meeting in Boston. Photo: Prensa Latina.
They came to Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, from all over the country on their own resources. Some paid for over priced plane tickets to this region of New England, some took buses, but regardless it was worth it because “Cuba is calling us,” as a young activist from Virginia told Resumen English.
Representatives of now 70 organizations (13 new groups joined at this meeting) are gathered here for the US National Network of Solidarity with Cuba’s (NNOC) annual conference to analyze, develop and to come up with new strategies. It also provides a renewed impetus to their main objective which is to lift the economic, commercial and financial blockade, imposed for more than 60 years by both Democratic and Republican governments, on Cuba.
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The meeting, with the slogan “Victory in Unity,” was also extended to those who could not attend in person through virtual participation from different US cities.
The weekend events kicked off on October 14, Friday night with a Pan-African Forum coordinated by the African Studies Department of the of the University of Massachusetts where the conference was hosted.
The meeting began the next morning with a powerful speech from Cuba by Fernando González, president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), who recognized the value of the friends in the US “who are committed to the struggle to lift the coercive measures that try to suffocate our people.”
“We have to do everything we can to defend our Cuban family,” said activist Gail Walker, a co-chair of the NNOC, speaking on a panel at the event that started this morning and runs through Sunday at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
The executive director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) highlighted the health internationalism of this Caribbean nation by saying, “we owe Cuba for the efforts it has has made to train thousands of young people from 120 countries as doctors, who are not just any doctors, they are doctors trained in Cuba.”
The meeting was attended by officials of the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC. Diplomat David Ramírez, who thanked the solidarity of the US people who are in favor of the elimination of the unilateral siege of his homeland that has lasted more than six decades. He stressed how the continuity in the current Democratic administration of the policies of Republican Donald Trump has exasperated the accumulative effect of shortages and the resulting misery it heaps on the Cuban people.
Ramírez pointed out the impact of those measures of asphyxiation against Cuba has in the number of people leaving in the last last three years.
Before the meeting began, support for the cause of the Palestinian people in their historic struggle against the occupation of their lands by Israel and the horror of what is transpiring in Gaza was raised.
“Cuba is an example of true brotherhood with Palestine, shown especially through its medical internationalism,” said Calla Walsh, co-chair of NNOC.
Hundreds of Palestinians have studied to become doctors at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana since the beginning of the century, the young activist recalled.
“They tell us that Cuba’s example of surviving more than 60 years of blockade and siege by the most powerful country in the world gives them hope that Palestine will also survive and live on,” she said.
Walsh quoted Professor Tony Vandermeer, who at the Pan-African Forum denounced the devastation caused by the current Israeli siege of Gaza, which has already left more than 1,600 dead and more than 7,000 injured since the escalation Israel unleashed, with all its US provided weaponry, against the Gaza Strip after the surprise attack by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) into Israeli held territory on October 7.
Its open war against the Palestinian people has resulted in the daily bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a total blockade that aggravated the humanitarian crisis in this coastal enclave. Israeli has now cut off water, electricity and fuel services, as well as the entry of food and medicine while now threatening to kill anyone who does not leave Gaza, despite the fact that the people of Gaza have no where to to go.
The Let Cuba Live campaign to gather a million signatures against the blockade and the convening of the next international tribunal to be held in Brussels, Belgium, to denounce that hostile policy towards the Caribbean nation, are some of the initiatives discussed by the delegates in the Saturday session.
The conference concludes on Sunday in this coastal city in the New England region, famous for its key role in the revolution for US independence, with the NNOC coming out of it stronger, more united and more determined.
As Cheryl LaBash, a co chair of the of the NNOC, pointed out in a previous statement to Prensa Latina, that if President Joe Biden listened to the voice of the American people he would lift the economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba because the majority of the people in this country are against it, along with the overwhelming majority of the people of the world
This is being concretely demonstrated by the 106 resolutions approved throughout the country by organizations representing more than 55 million people. LaBash concluded by saying, “We condemn “Biden’s inhumane starvation strategy; he owns this cruelty now, not Trump.”
(Resumen Latinoamericano English) by Deisy Francis Mexidor
