Gov't threatens workers for travel to Cuba

When the Bush administration crows about freedom, it is not freedom for workers. That’s what union members from UAW, SEIU, AFSCME, UNITE and the Teamsters, as well as community leaders and peace activists, found out as they prepared to attend the Fourth Hemispheric Conference Against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Havana, Cuba, to be held April 27 to 30.

Just two weeks before departure, the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange received a “cease and desist” letter from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Treasury Department. The order specifically prohibited travel to attend the conference against the FTAA.

An emergency response network is forming. Bail/legal fund pledges and contributions are needed. The call for support was distributed to the April 27 Cuba Action Day, a day of mass lobbying in Washing ton, D.C., to start the defense movement before the group returns to the U.S.

Every worker has a stake in this struggle. The U.S. government and the Bush administration are trying to impose the FTAA on all the countries of the Americas. The FTAA demands privatization of natural resources, industries and social services such as energy, water, roads, education and health care.

From Mexico to Brazil, from Argentina to Venezuela, workers, Indigenous peoples and rural poor are fighting for the right to live like human beings. Cities across the United States—like Detroit, where the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange is based—are struggling against the same false free-market privatization “solutions.”

Today corporations can move freely from one country to another, transferring capital, technology and jobs at lightning speed, yet the workers from the U.S. who are affected by globalization are prohibited from traveling to Cuba to talk with other workers.

Of course, as anyone who has visited Cuba knows, the entire world travels there. Only the U.S. government tries to bully and intimidate its citizens into not seeing Cuba with their own eyes.

Before 1959, when Havana was a playground for rich, white North Americans, anyone from the U.S. who had the money could go there and play in the casinos and beaches. Today, when Cuba is universally recognized for its accomplishments in health care and education, Washington has declared it off-limits. The exploiters must try to conceal the gains that are made when workers, not banks, corporations and profit margins, determine the goals and priorities of society.

For exercising their constitutional and human rights, the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange travelers are threatened with “criminal and/or civil penalty proceeding.” The letter says that “Criminal penalties for the violation range up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in individual fines. OFAC may impose civil penalties at $65,000 per violation.”

Human and constitutional rights can’t exist on paper alone. To be real, rights must be exercised. In this spirit, the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange continues to encourage international discussion, exchange and solidarity between workers in Cuba and the United States.

Labor Exchange travelers say they will continue to see for themselves the realities faced by workers in other countries, publish their findings and demand that the U.S. government grant entry to Cuban union leaders whose visa applications are routinely denied. Cuban musicians, educators and scientists are also refused U.S. visas, all because they will not denounce their socialist homeland.

It is noteworthy that the U.S. government has no qualms about admitting convicted and self-admitted terrorists, as it is now doing with Luis Posada Carriles. Orlando Bosch, Pedro Remón, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo and Guillermo Novo Sampol, all of whom have been convicted of terrorist acts leading to death, are also allowed to freely walk the streets of the U.S.

The U.S. Congress has repeatedly voted against enforcing regulations banning travel to Cuba, but these amendments have been undemocratically removed from the final legislation as a condition for the president’s signature. On April 26 and 27, people of all walks of life gathered in Washington, D.C., for Cuba Solidarity Day to discuss with their representatives and senators ending the trade and travel ban.

The time to end the blockade of Cuba is now. In the words of the great African-American abolitionist, Frederick Dou glass, without struggle there is no progress.

Also: See Cuba for yourself