Group prepares to embark on 16th mission to Cuba

[Judi Lynn]

July 21, 2005, 11:27PM

Group prepares to embark on 16th mission to Cuba
Pastors for Peace members want to see the U.S. trade embargo abolished
Associated Press

HIDALGO - A caravan of buses filled with aid reached the U.S.-Mexico border Thursday as the humanitarian group Pastors for Peace prepared for a 16th mission to Cuba.

The group draws international attention each year to the U.S. economic blockade on the communist country. Customs and Border Protection officials typically clear the group across the border, where they skirt U.S. travel restrictions to the impoverished island by flying from Mexico.

The Rev. Diane Baker, a participant from the First Community Church in Dallas, said the goal was seeing the embargo abolished. "I think it's an immoral act that we have, and it's increasingly severe," she said.

Group members include clergy from assorted religious faiths and volunteers from several countries.

Many are college students, but housewives, lawyers, nurses and teachers also participate. They squeeze themselves amid the 150 tons of aid — much of it wheelchairs, crutches and other bulky medical equipment — and embark on a sweaty journey to Mexico's airport at Tampico.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3277267
(Free registration required)

Previous trips




Packing the bus....

[Judi Lynn]

1. Okay. They've been nabbed at the border!

Just found this alert:

EMERGENCY ACTION ALERT Pastors Cuba Caravan Barred at US-Mexico Border

Posted: July 21, 2005

NYC, FRIDAY, JULY 22: EMERGENCY DEMONSTRATION TO DEMAND: HANDS OFF THE PASTORS FOR PEACE CARAVAN! LET MATERIAL AID GO THROUGH TO CUBA! LIFT THE TRAVEL BAN OF CUBA! 45 & 1ST AVE. 4-630 PM.

URGENT- PLEASE CONTACT THE COMMERCE DEPARTMENT AND YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES, EMERGENCY NETWORKS AND PRESS CONTACTS: SPREAD THE WORD FAR AND WIDE!

http://www.commerce.gov/ 202-482-2000 Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez [email protected]

As of 1:30 pm EDT, July 21, 2005, The Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba is being held up at the US-Mexico border by US Commerce Department officials. They are threatening to search every vehicle and every item of humanitarian aid. They are telling us that "only licensable goods will be allowed to cross into Mexico."

Pastors for Peace does not accept or apply for a license to deliver humanitarian aid to Cuba.

There are 130 US citizens traveling with the caravan. They and the humanitarian aid are traveling in eight busses, a box truck and two small cars. It will take days to inspect the 140 tons of aid. We are prepared to do whatever we need to do to deliver our humanitarian aid to Cuba. Stay posted... PLEASE TAKE ACTION NOW!
(snip/...)

http://www.iacenter.org/pastors-peace0705.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From last year:

A bombing attempt was made on one of the caravan’s medical aid warehouses in Miami and was only foiled at the last minute when police arrested three anti-Cuban terrorists attempting to break into the building. The men, armed with sub-machine guns, a 20-gallon fuel bomb and firing devices, were described by the FBI as carrying enough explosives ‘to level the entire block’.Ten days later the first national US demonstration against the blockade took place in Washington. It went unreported in the national US press.

But even the parochial US media were unable to completely ignore the attack made on the convoy by the US authorities a few days later.

Early in the morning the authorities set up road blocks and halted more than 60 of the convoy’s vehicles as they approached the Canadian border at Buffalo. Caravan participants, including people in wheelchairs, responded bravely by carrying hundreds of boxes of medicines and humanitarian aid over the border individually.

Customs officials, under instructions from Washington, seized typewriters, printers and small personal computers destined for Cuban hospitals, and attempted to seize a van — being donated by a worker-to-worker project in the US — on the basis that it ‘might be appropriated by the Cuban government’.
(snip/...)

http://www.healthmatters.org.uk/issue20/cubashealth

[Mika]

6. That is just so sick, Judi Lynn. "Culture of life" my ass.

Miami's culture of terror thrives under the _Bush regime.

[Pastiche423]

10. From Code Pink...

"I just got a call from Mark LaMalfa, who is on the Pastors for Peace
caravan to Cuba that has been held up at the U.S. Mexican border. Most of the caravan has gone through, with 130 caravanistas and 140 tons of humanitarian aid, including bicycles, computers, wheelchairs, crutches, medicines and school supplies, as well as some of the school buses from the caravan which will be taken to Cuba.

Mark is with a group of 7, including Rev. Lucius Walker the group's
leader, who stayed behind with the computers that the government is
threatening to impound. The feds have already impounded 17 computers,
which the group wants to recover, and they are threatening to impound
even more. Pastors for Peace are encouraging us to continue to call our representatives, and named especially Blumenauer and Hooley, asking them to put pressure on the Commerce Department and the State
Department to let the humanitarian aid go through to Cuba, especially
crucial in the wake of devastating Hurricane Dennis.

There is much more information on the caravan on the blog at
www.pastorsforpeace.org, including phone numbers for the U.S. State
Department and the Department of Commerce.It is our calls, letters,
emails and faxes that will help the caravan to overcome the Homeland
Security agents, who are enacting the holding action. . .

Mark asked me to put the word out to "those great ladies in pink!" who are "so effective." Let's show how effective we can be!!"

[Poppyseedman]

2. impoverished island ???

What bunk. Free health care, Free education, Equality for all.

Cuba is a socialist paradise. Fidel is wonderful. The cuban people are wonderful.

Lift the embargo. Great work by these people.

Check out this propaganda site.

http://therealcuba.com/index.htm

[Judi Lynn]

3. I've never heard a well-balanced person describe Cuba, or any other place

as being a "Paradise." That's usually the gibberish we hear from Miami Cuban-"exiles" and their progeny. They tend to use the same terms, and they tend to try to smear Americans who want to dump the travel ban and the embargo.

Speaking of Miami, I see Miami has managed to climb out of the "poorest city in the U.S. of its size" designation by the American Census Bureau in the last year or two. Good work. It was looking as if the corrupt politicians had stolen all the city's money so badly needed for infrastructure for so long.

9/25/02: Miami Herald

Miamians grapple with poverty, community leaders announce push for jobs, better salaries
By Elaine de Valle

Poverty isn't limited to the homeless and destitute. In Miami, recently rated as the poorest city of its size in the country, it often includes working parents, retirees and immigrants who were engineers or accountants in their homelands and can only find work as street vendors in South Florida.

It includes Marta Peña, who used to prepare airline food for Sky Chefs before the post-Sept. 11 travel slump led to her layoff. She now pays her water and electric bills with credit cards and doesn't know how she'll pay those.

''I'm applying everywhere,'' said Peña, 53, whose unemployment benefits end this week. ``I even passed a course as a security guard. But my age is a factor. People don't want to hire older workers.''

It includes Ecilda Mercado, 46, of Cutler Ridge. The nursing assistant can find only five hours of work a week. Her husband works day-labor jobs.

And it includes Francisco Mora, 56, who said he has gone a day -- sometimes two -- without eating because there is nothing left after he pays the rent and other bills and puts gas in his car.
(snip/...)

http://www.floridacdc.org/articles/020925-1.htm

[Judi Lynn]

4. More on Miami's conspicuous poverty....

Miami Herald - November 20, 2001

POVERTY RATE A DISTINCTIVE CHALLENGE FOR MIAMI
By Jason Grotto and William Yardley

The city of Miami, whose waterfront refuges for the prosperous and prominent have long shadowed asphalt flatlands filled with the poor and anonymous, now has the highest poverty rate of any large U.S. city, according to Census estimates released today.
Nearly one-third of the city's population -- 32 percent of residents -- lives in poverty, a greater percentage than in any other city of 250,000 or more, the Census survey indicates.

The new estimates rank Miami ranks above scores of other cities so often associated with urban struggles of poverty, crime and suburban flight, and they reveal a dramatic disparity between Miami and the rest of South Florida.

Miami-Dade County, with a poverty rate of about 20 percent, ranks 16th among large counties. Broward County, the destination of many former Miamians, has a 12 percent rate, just above the national 11 percent.

Although economic divisions within Miami itself are not documented in this census release, observers say they are crucial to explaining why the city's opulent image is not a fully accurate one.

``This is a city of extremes,'' said City Manager Carlos Gimenez. ``You have rich and very rich and you have a lot of poor people. What we don't have is the middle class. We need to find ways to get the middle class back into the city.''
(snip/...)

http://www.floridacdc.org/articles/011121

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There's been a horrendous drain on the city's resources, for some reason, and it's surely not the EMBARGO.

[Poppyseedman]

7. I'm not well balanced.

I was in a thread several months ago about Fidel and Cuba.

I mentioned the fact that the Cuban people were actually not free and maybe Fidel was not such a great guy being a dictator and all. After all, he gave everyone a free rice cooker!!!

I was roundly excoriated for believing such propaganda and several posters actually wished they could migrate to Cuba rather than live under the current bush living hell. They would rather live under Fidel rule than Bush's for the reasons listed in my post. They were not kidding.

I was even more heavily criticized when I pointed out the fact the reason they couldn't migrate to Cuban, if they wanted to, was because Cuba was in fact not an open country like the good ole USA.

Fidel is dictator for life, bush is gone in 2 years.

Go figure

[Vogon_Glory]

8. Some of Us Know That...

Most of us know that Cuba wasn't a paradise under the Batista dictatorship. Some of us realize that while life for the poorest Cubans improved under Fidel Castro, Cuba still remains a dictatorship with an economy hamstrung by Marxist Leninist-style state socialism.

Like others of us DU posters who choose not to be cheerleaders for the Castro regime, I believe that most of Cuba's current-day poverty is due to the ideology-inspired meddling by the CAstro regime and that the embargo is the fraying and alibi for Cuba's failure to flourish in the post-Soviet era.

If Cuba were to make even the limited private sector economic reforms that China made in the 1970's or which existed in Yugoslavia prior to Marshal Tito's death, the Cuban economy would flourish despite the fury and bombast of the most right-wing of the Cuban exiles and their allies in the Banana Republican Party.

[Mika]

11. The US gov is forbiding a mission to Cuba - bash DUers. Shame, shame

A mission of Pastors for Peace is banned by the US government (not Cuba). Under a failed 45+ year old policy that is not just Bush's policy, but the policy of ten previous administrations.

Even if one were to toe the anti Castro line as you seem to, this action by our own dictatorial government is unconscionable.

Response?: the bashing of DUers who have actual experience in Cuba, as well as a great understanding of the real (political/economic) situation in Cuba. Bashing DUers who call this US gov crackdown on Pastors for Peace unreasonable.

Pathetic. Disgusting. :puke:

[Mika]

5. Hurricane Castro. LOL

I agree with you on some of your points..

1) The Cuban people are wonderful. 2) Great work is done by the Cuban people (their h-c and ed stats bear that out). 3) Lift the embargo.


As for your paradise comment and the "free" crap.. WTF are you talking about?




click the pic to find out why

[sintax]

9. Pastors for Peace

Represent the sweetness and resolve of humanity.

The US border-commerce patrol represents the crass technocratic fascistic tendencies of humans.

put out an action alert.

Nominated

[Judi Lynn]

12. Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus is still in the saddle.....

He's not going to chicken out in this tussle he's got with the _Bush administration, on Cuba trade!

No resolution in row stalling US Treasury nominees

By Mark Felsenthal
Reuters
Wednesday, July 20, 2005; 6:58 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department and a key senator remained deadlocked on Wednesday over a Cuba trade dispute that is holding up Senate approval of officials to fill vacant senior jobs at the Treasury.

Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, told four Treasury nominees at a hearing that he continues to be upset at an export rule change that makes it harder for agricultural producers to ship goods to Cuba. Baucus has threatened to block Treasury nominees until the rule is reversed.

"How can I explain to American farmers and ranchers ... that their government is going to restrict their access to a promising new market?" he asked deputy secretary nominee Robert Kimmitt.
(snip)

Treasury in February ruled that Cuba must pay in cash for farm products before they are shipped there. Farmers said the change would choke off sales to an island that bought $392 million in U.S. farm exports in 2004.
(snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/20/AR2005072001872.html
(Free registration required)

[Judi Lynn]

13. Meanwhile, back at the border!

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Mainers in caravan taking humanitarian goods to Cuba


By KEVIN WACK Blethen Maine Newspapers

Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
E-mail this story to a friend

By KEVIN WACK Blethen Maine Newspapers

A caravan delayed at the U.S.-Mexico border on its way to deliver supplies to Cuba includes two people from Maine.

Todd Ricker of Portland and Jill Abernethy of Rockland are taking part in Pastors for Peace's 16th caravan to Cuba, an effort to bring humanitarian aid to the poor island nation.

The group refuses to apply for a federal license to transport goods to Cuba. Members believe the U.S. embargo -- or blockade, as they prefer to call it -- is illegal and immoral, said Steve Burke, a supporter in Maine.

When the caravan's school buses arrived at the border crossing in Hidalgo, Texas, on Thursday, U.S. officials took 43 items, the majority of them computers and two-way radios, said Customs spokesman Rick Pauza.

Most members of the caravan crossed the border early Friday, while a small number of people stayed in Texas with more cargo they believed would be seized if they tried to enter Mexico. Ricker, a union organizer, and Abernethy, a social worker, could not be reached by cell phone Friday as they traveled through Mexico.
(snip/...)

http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/1810427.shtml

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pastors for Peace caravan to Cuba crosses the border: a near-total victory?

July 24, 2005

The fight for computers for Cuban children continues at the Hidalgo/Reynosa border

Pastors for Peace claimed a huge victory today as a tired but excited group of 130 US citizens crossed the US/Mexico border just before daybreak with almost all of the 140 tons of humanitarian aid en route to Cuba and collected by the Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Cuba Caravan. Their struggle to send on the computers, which have been blocked by US authorities, is building momentum.

The caravan is composed of seven brightly painted yellow school buses, two box trucks, and several smaller vehicles, all of them loaded with humanitarian aid for Cuba. Yesterday, more than 40 US Customs officers, acting on the instructions of Commerce Department officials, detained the Caravan at the border and began to search their vehicle one item at a time. In an exhaustive 6-hour search of the first two yellow school buses. Officials confiscated all of the computers and computer equipment available­ - 11 computers, three monitors, two printers, two scanners, and a variety of computer parts and accessories. Officials then threatened to tow the remaining vehicles carrying the rest of the aid. Meanwhile, members of the Caravan walked aid across the border and demonstrated beside the marooned buses.

Our caravans have delivered nearly 2500 tons of aid to Cuba since 1992, all of it without asking permission of the US government. But this year something changed: We have heard that government officials at the highest level made a special determination that this year our Pastors for Peace caravan would not pass,? said Rev. Walker. ?We¹ve already proved them wrong: 95% of our caravan has already crossed into Mexico and is headed toward Cuba. Now we¹re determined to get our computers to Cuba as well.
(snip/...)

http://www.iacenter.org/cuba_pastorspeace0705.htm

To help: Call Capitol Hill and let your senators and rep know that the Pastors for Peace computers must be freed to go to Cuba. Ask them to call the Commerce Department to urge/demand that the computers be released. (Congressional switchboard: 202/225-3121).

Call Mr. Turner, Director of Enforcement at the Commerce Department (202/482-5036), and demand that the computers be allowed to go to Cuba.