Pastors for Peace Cuba Caravan Hits Ashland
Ivend Holen, 11.07.2010 05:33
An audience of about 60 people attended a meeting and lecture about the Pastors for Peace Cuba Caravan at the Presbyterian Church in Ashland last Friday evening. Richard Becker, of the International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition, and Western Region co-Director of Ramsey Clark's International Action Center (IAC) spoke about US-Cuba relations and the Cuba Caravan.
Cuba Caravan
About 60 local citizens attended the annual Pastors for Peace Cuba Caravan stopover in Ashland on a hot Friday evening, July 9, 2010. An 88-passenger schoolbus packed with materials and supplies bound for Cuba was parked at the Methodist Church at Siskiyou and Walker Streets. Peace House and WILPF sponsored the event which included a potluck dinner, and was followed by the introduction of the passengers bound for CUBA, and a lecture by Richard Becker on the sad state of relations between Cuba and the US, and the efforts of activists in the US and Canada to challenge the US Cuba blockade.
Becker, a renowned Bay Area activist in the protest rallies against the first Gulf War, helped organize a January 19, 1991 San Francisco demonstration that drew 200,000 participants. Following the war, he helped coordinate the International War Crimes Tribunal, which investigated allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the United States before, during, and after the Gulf War.
In 1992 Becker helped initiate the international Peace for Cuba Appeal (IPCA), whose purpose was to end the American embargo of Fidel Castro's Cuba. Since that time he's been active in the U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment Caravans organized by Pastors for Peace.
He came up from San Francisco to address the meeting, relating the long sad history of US-Cuba relations since the Workers' Revolution. The US banned travel by its citizens to CUBA in 1961, and prosecuted an African American journalist, William Worthy who traveled there despite the ban, and had his passport seized when he returned, and charged with violating a federal statute. The case eventually wound up at the Fifth District Court of Appeals, and in 1964 declared the law unconstitutional, ruling against the government. Ordinary citizens cannot travel directly to Cuba from the US to this day, but can no longer be punished for traveling there from another country.
Becker related that Phil Ochs wrote a song during this period, entitled "The Ballad of William Worthy", with some the lyrics going:
"Well, it's of a bold reporter whose story I will tell.
He went down to the Cuban land, the nearest place to hell.
He'd been there many times before, but now the law does say:
The only way to Cuba is with the CIA
"So, come all you good travelers and fellow-travelers, too
Yes, and travel all around the world, see every country through
I'd surely like to come along and see what may be new
But my passport's disappearing as I sing these words to you
"Well, there really is no need to travel to these evil lands
Yes, and though the list grows larger you must try to understand
Try hard not to be surprised if someday you should hear
The whole world is off limits, visit Disneyland this year
"William Worthy isn't worthy to enter our door
Went down to Cuba, he's not American anymore.
But somehow it is strange to hear the State Department say,
You are living in the free world, and in the free world you must stay."
This year, 2010, about 100 people (including two from Ashland) are traveling to Cuba with Pastors for Peace, on 9 buses and one large truck, along with many tons of supplies. The bus that stopped in Ashland originated in Vancouver, BC (where there are no restrictions on travel to Cuba), and made stops in Portland and Corvallis earlier in the week, picking up supplies and passengers.
Becker related the findings of Laurie Garrett in an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine, entitled, "CastroCare in Crisis". She relates that although Cuba has a lower child mortality rate than the US, and a life expectancy about the same as the US, having defeated malaria and a host of tropical diseases that ravage much of the Caribbean, it pays too much for the good health Cubans enjoy, and far too much on education (higher than any other country in the Western Hemisphere). Although Cuba has 73,000 doctors total - twice as many doctors per capita as the US - Garrett says that Cubans are much too optimistic that an easing of the US trade blockade of their country will result in a reduction of this "burden".
Becker went on to relate a comment by Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners in Health fame and Haiti, asking ironically on a recent visit to Havana, why Cuba should be so much greener and verdant than Haiti though they share the same latitude, climate, and soils. "For me to admire Cuban medicine is a given," Farmer said. It was a poor country, and made that way at least in part by the United States' long embargo, yet when the Soviet Union had dissolved and Cuba had lost both its patron and most of its foreign trade, the regime had listened to the warnings of its epidemiologists and had actually increased expenditures on public health. By American standards Cuban doctors lacked equipment, and even by Cuban standards they were poorly paid, but they were generally well-trained, and Cuba had more of them per capita than any other country in the world-more than twice as many as the United States. Everyone, it appeared, had access to their services, and to procedures like open heart surgery. Indeed, according to a study by WHO, Cuba had the world's most equitably distributed medicine. Moreover, Cuba seemed to have mostly abandoned its campaign to change the world by exporting troops. Now they were sending doctors instead, to dozens of poor countries.
Becker said that the United States employs at least one diplomat in each embassy it maintains throughout the world whose sole job it is to prevent that country and its business community from trading with Cuba, in a continuing attempt to undermine Cuba and cause it to collapse, and that policy has not changed with President Obama. US pharmaceutical companies, such as Merck, are prohibited from selling any of their products to Cuba, which greatly restricts the availability of certain vital drugs to control childhood diseases, including leukemia, and greatly increases their costs, since they must be purchased indirectly.
Becker also related that every year the General Assembly of the United Nations votes on a measure asking the US to end the Cuban blockade, and the last vote was 187 to 3, with only the US, Israel, and the Marshall Islands voting against the measure.
People who might be interested in traveling to Cuba with the caravan next year can do so for a cost of about $1600, which includes a flight from Tampico, Mexico to Cuba, a 10 day stay, a flight back, and bus transportation in the US. Those interested in more information can find further details at: 
http://www.ifconews.org/
e-mail:: idholen@ccountry.net
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