Dr. Ron Daniels, president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, recently invited several U.S. leaders on a fact-finding mission to Cuba. Among those who went were Louis Romain, Julianne Malveaux, Rev. Robert Turner, Dr. James Early, reporters from The Final Call and Washington Informer, representatives of the World Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Black Social Workers.
I’ve been blessed to visit and work in many places in the world. I’ve seen people struggle in many of those places. Some have given up struggling to make their country better, but not Cubans. We saw them carrying on with the best they have, and they gave us the best of everything available to them.
There’s trash on many streets, not because Cubans don’t want to take the trash away, but because of the blockade of the United States against them. They have no fuel to send garbage trucks to pick it up.
All the nations I’ve visited taught me something, but in no place were we more welcomed to see anything we wanted to see than in Cuba, including visiting with Cuba’s president and elected leaders, community organizers and justice workers, hospitals and Cuba’s well-known medical school, where young people who might never have had the opportunity to become doctors are doing so due to the graciousness of the Cuban people.
Some of those students are from the U.S. and are studying in Cuba because they were not given a chance, for several reasons, to study in the U.S. No matter what, these students soldier on, studying under the most difficult of conditions now caused by the U.S., with frequent power outages, a lack of much-needed equipment and forms of treatment brought on by the U.S. with the cruel blockade of necessities. Yet they are willing to remain in Cuba because they know the value of becoming doctors and being willing to go into the most difficult and dangerous places in the world to provide health care.
Cuba has research programs going on with something plaguing the United States now. They have done some of the most advanced memory care studies that we in the U.S. are unable or unwilling to conquer. While visiting hospitals, we saw doctors with tears in their eyes because they were unable to provide their best-known treatment because of the U.S. blockade of goods, equipment, and medication.
We met people who are suffering from the inability to get vitamins for headaches, eye drops, and other health concerns because of the U.S. blockade. Yet the Cubans showed us no hatred. They just struggle for peace from threats of destruction from the U.S. government, for an opportunity to feed their families, have gasoline to travel to work, and for their children to go to school and have lights to study when it’s dark. We take these things for granted, but our government shows no regard for others needing the same things.
As an American, I’m hurt and embarrassed about what the U.S. is doing to Cuba — a country that has done nothing to us. Former President Barack Obama respectfully visited Cuba and began an effort to resolve differences now shut down by current U.S. leaders. Lastly, thank you to Congressman Jonathan Jackson, who is a major leader in the effort to free Cuba from U.S. cruelty.
E. Faye Williams is president of The Dick Gregory Society.