Socialist Action /October 2000
Mumia's Greeting to Fidel
The following greetings were sent by Mumia Abu-Jamal
to the Sept. 8 address by Fidel Castro at Riverside Church in Harlem.
Ona Move! On behalf of the committee to welcome
the Cuban delegation to the Millennium Summit and their supporters in various
communities, we say bien venidos, mis amigos y amigas de Cuba. Bien venidos.
We welcome His Excellency el Presidente Fidel Castro,
members of the honored Cuban delegation, and the members of the welcoming
committee that organized this event and made it possible.
Bien venidos. We welcome you to the historic Riverside
Church of Harlem. This is an important moment in history. For as the late
revered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Nothing can stop an idea
whose time has come."
It is time for us all to recognize the futility
of the blockade that continues to stifle Cuban economic life. In a time
when the watchword on every major politician's lips is "free trade,"
how can such a thing as the blockade, a naked restraint of trade if ever
there was one, be maintained?
It is an anachronism, a rusty tool of the Cold
War era, due for storage in a dusty museum of another century. It should
be joined by the Cuban Adjustment Act, another Cold War relic of another
age, another time.
If lawmakers were honest, it would be called the
Cuban Destruction Act, for it lures poor and desperate people into the shark-infested,
treacherous waters of the Florida Keys.
Every empire in the world has acted like an economic
magnet for poor people on the periphery. but it is inhumane to set up a
system that treats their survival like a deadly obstacle course. Like the
blockade, the stalled Cuban Adjustment Act punishes free trade and also
forbids free travel by Americans to that island just 90 miles offshore.
It too is an idea whose time has past.
We gather today to join our voices to the swelling
chorus of millions calling for an end to the blockade, repeal of Helms-Burton,
and an end to the travel ban. The recent American media fever over Elian
has provided an invaluable opening for those like the late Philadelphia
activist Bob Simpson who want to bring some sanity to an American-born policy
that is muddled in madness.
Take heart, for madness cannot last forever. Even
the most raging fever will break. You are all the breath of fresh air that
is signaling the return of sanity to Cuban-U.S. relations. So again, bien
venidos, we welcome you.
We also want to thank you for your continuing resistance
to the empire, for four decades of remaining true to the revolution; for
building a system where education is a fundamental human right; for aiding
in the long and arduous fight to free South Africa from the obscenity called
apartheid; for providing a home for fugitives from the prison house of nations,
like Assata Shakur, like Mahanda, like the late Dr. Huey P. Newton, and
briefly, Eldridge Cleaver. We thank you and we welcome you to Riverside.
Ona Move! Viva Fidel! Viva la Revolucion!
Viva John Africa!
From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Socialist Action /October 2000 |