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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the May 9, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Fasters For Life: "In many ways we've already won"

By Brian Becker

It has been 66 days since they last ate solid food. Still, the four hunger strikers camped out in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington are strong. They are determined to win the release of 395 medical computers destined for Cuba that were seized Jan. 31 by U.S. Customs Police.

"Organize, Organize, Organize, that's the message we are sending to the thousands of supporters who are sending press releases, writing letters to elected representatives, calling the Treasury Department and White House," the Reverend Lucius Walker told Workers World in an April 29 interview.

Rev. Walker, a leader of the Pastors for Peace, started the hunger strike with Lisa Valanti, Jim Clifford and Brian Rohatyn in San Diego on January 31 at the conclusion of a confrontation with U.S. Customs Police at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The seized computers were to be used as part of a new system to put Cuban health facilities on-line, allowing medical personnel to share up-to-date diagnostic information. The Customs police seized the computers because they contend they violate the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba. The blockade was imposed 35 years ago after the CIA-organized military invasion aimed at overthrowing the government of Fidel Castro was decisively crushed by the armed Cuban people.

"In many ways we [the hunger strikers] have already won," Walker stated. "At a time when U.S.-Cuba relations nose-dived, when the Helms-Burton Bill was passed and signed by President Clinton, our hunger strike allowed the movement a vehicle to maintain a high visibility campaign to end the blockade of Cuba."

Rev. Walker reported that the hunger strikers and their supporters have met with over 100 members of Congress with "sixty members pledging to advocate on our behalf with the Treasury Department." The Treasury Department is the agency that oversees the U.S. blockade.

"This is turning into a big embarrassment for the Clinton administration. The Treasury Department has been so flooded with calls on our behalf that they have actually set up a special office to handle the calls. The Treasury is being barraged not only with calls, letters and faxes from inside the United States. They have received an overwhelming number from other countries as well," he noted.

What the hunger strike hasn't achieved, Walker pointed out, was "fairness from the mainstream media. We may not be able to prove that the White House has made calls to the media to reduce coverage but given the silence it wouldn't surprise us."

The Pastors for Peace is fighting on several fronts simultaneously. In addition to supporting the hunger strike the group is also facing federal Grand Jury subpoenas regarding their humanitarian shipments to Cuba in the past.

The Grand Jury hearings in Buffalo were recently postponed for one month at the government's request after the Pastors for Peace presented a motion requesting information about possible government wiretaps on the organization's phone.

"We have no intention of rolling over and playing dead when the government attempts to attack people who are seeking an end to an illegal and immoral policy toward the Cuban people," Walker asserted.

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