{"id":90997,"date":"2017-04-24T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=90997"},"modified":"2017-04-21T16:53:27","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T15:53:27","slug":"ending-the-u-s-embargo-on-cuba-at-the-grassroots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/04\/ending-the-u-s-embargo-on-cuba-at-the-grassroots\/","title":{"rendered":"Ending the U.S. Embargo on Cuba at the Grassroots"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Cuba policy under the Trump administration still uncertain, Cuba solidarity activists seek to turn the tide against the embargo at the local and state level. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Havana, Cuba (Max Nathan \/ Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

The length and breadth of the Cuba solidarity movement in the U.S. can be marked from the publication of C. Wright Mills Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba<\/em> (1960) through the late Tom Hayden\u2019s last work, Listen, Yankee! Why Cuba Matters<\/em> (2015), the latter noting some of the ups and downs of solidarity work over the decades. The Venceremos Brigade and Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization\u2019s (IFCO) Pastors for Peace Caravan have been long time and constant institutions in the Cuba solidarity movement and in their own ways emphasize the central solidarity focus on U.S. policy and practice: the embargo.\u00a0 More moderate and broad-based forces, led by the Engage Cuba Coalition<\/a>, and even conservative forces<\/a>, driven by the taste of commercial opportunities, have joined the anti-embargo movement in recent years.<\/p>\n

But at last November\u2019s annual Cuba Solidarity conference, sponsored by the National Network on Cuba<\/a> (NNOC), a new strategy for the Cuba solidarity movement was showcased: a push to pass local municipal resolutions calling for an end to the embargo. The idea of introducing and passing resolutions was inspired by a 2015 Bay Area visit<\/a> from the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) and discussions that followed with local solidarity groups, including NNOC co-chair Alicia Jrapko. Richmond, California, seemed a choice place to start. An official sister city of Regla, Cuba<\/a>, Richmond has an active Friendship Committee which provides educational, political, and cultural activities pertaining to Cuba and is supported by former Richmond mayor and current city council member Gayle McLaughlin<\/a>, who also advocated to free the Cuban Five<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The effort to pass local resolutions against the embargo has been championed by others in the Bay Area as well, specifically in Oakland and Berkeley. The initiative has since been endorsed by solidarity activists working with municipal officials and Town Meeting Committees in Brookline, Massachusetts. These successful campaigns were publicized across NNOC as well as through the International Committee<\/a>\u2019s network. Campaign organizers who attended the 2016 NNOC meeting gave enthusiastic reports of collaborating with supportive municipal government members to draft, introduce, and pass resolutions, and the campaign was endorsed by conference participants, marking a new strategy to change U.S.-Cuba policy from the bottom-up. In January of this year, NNOC listed \u201cencouraging local and state resolutions calling for an end to the blockade\u201d as one of nine priorities for 2017.<\/p>\n

And no wonder. The campaigns help reinforce the substantial majority support for ending the embargo, which has been clearly documented by polls<\/a>, statistically<\/a>, analytically<\/a>, and journalistically<\/a>. That sentiment extends to the influential south Florida Cuban community<\/a>, \u00a0a growing number of influential conservatives<\/a>, and even among many Republicans<\/a>, nearly half of whom want to end the failed U.S. policy. As Josefina Vidal, General Director for United States affairs at the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations, stated in a 2016 interview<\/a>, \u201cAfter Obama we hope that anyone who occupies the White House will adopt a policy that reflects the consensus of American public opinion, including the Cuban community residents in the U.S., which favors improving relations with Cuba by a wide margin.\u201d<\/p>\n

For several years now, the End-the-Embargo movement has not fit the typical left-right model. Along with the basic non-partisan argument against the embargo\u2014that it\u2019s a failed policy of more than 50 years that serves only to punish the Cuban people, has not led to a change in government as intended, and has only served to give the Cuban government a clear enemy to blame for its economic woes\u2014the momentum towards normalization is growing. During the strains of Cuba\u2019s \u201cSpecial Period\u201d in the 1990s\u2014a moment that was precipitated by the dissolution of Cuba\u2019s primary economic partner, the Soviet Union\u2014the U.S. government imposed tighter restrictions. The passage of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, specifically, extended key provisions of the embargo to foreign companies who traded with Cuba. This move outraged foreign countries, already generally unsupportive of the policy, and gave further impetus to anti-embargo sentiment and the solidarity movement. Such anger, and the growing movement that legislation like Helms-Burton emboldened, contributed to the historic simultaneous announcements by Presidents Obama and Castro on December 17, 2014, about the move towards normalization.<\/p>\n

But recent changes in U.S. policy toward the island cannot be taken for granted. With the death of Fidel Castro in late November 2016<\/a> and then President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s rant and promise to cut \u201ca better deal<\/a>,\u201d the future of normalization is unclear. Trump\u2019s threats to reverse course<\/a> on normalization mark the beginning of a timely and visible urgency for the anti-embargo movement. As the new administration\u2019s policies toward Latin America, and Cuba specifically, are revealed in the coming months, the voices of grassroots activists will be evermore necessary to demand a just U.S. Cuba policy.<\/p>\n

Local campaigns aimed at ending the embargo can play a key role in continuing to fortify public opinion in favor of a changed U.S. policy on Cuba. Along with the promising potential for victory and contribution of additional voices to the movement,\u00a0such campaigns have shown themselves capable of strengthening other local strategies. They can build alliances with related political struggles or accompany art and cultural events\u2014such as Cuban music concerts and festivals, book release parties, displays of Cuban posters at libraries, and presentations by local residents who\u2019ve come back from trips to the island.<\/p>\n

On the occasion of the visit of Cuba\u2019s First Secretary, Miguel Fraga, to San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors passed a unanimous proclamation, welcoming him and resolving \u201cThat we gladly express our friendship and solidarity with the Cuban people and look forward to the day when normal relations are established between our two countries.\u201d A similar proclamation has been declared in Pittsburgh. Such proclamations are useful way stations on the road to more formal resolutions.<\/p>\n

Local resolutions, developed with differing formats and through processes based on various forms of government, generally include two parts: a \u201cwhereas\u201d section identifying various arguments and contexts that support the resolution, and a \u201cbe it resolved\u201d section, with one or more actions to be taken. A sample resolution reads:<\/p>\n