President Obama arrived in Havana Sunday as the first sitting U.S. President to visit the island nation in nearly a century. His visit comes on the heels of new regulatory changes liberalizing travel and business restrictions between the U.S. and Cuba announced by the White House last week. CODEPINK celebrates these changes and welcomes the improvements made to U.S.-Cuba policy since 2014, but much remains to be done. We urge the President and Congress to take action to fully end the failed and unnecessary embargo once and for all, to shut down the U.S. prison in Guantanamo and to return the military base to the Cuban people!
CODEPINK just returned from leading a delegation to Cuba in February and will go back to Cuba for May Day this Spring. We lead trips to Cuba so that American activists can see for themselves the impact of the embargo on the Cuban people. As CODEPINK trip leader Michaela Anang wrote after returning from Cuba in February:
“The embargo has restricted the Cuban people from so much potential for economic growth, exchanging of ideas and services and from having the most effective voice in our global narrative, among other things. Just by looking around the streets of Havana, one sees that the embargo has restricted development whether through the automobile industry (many cars are from the 1950s--and have the difficulty getting parts and the exhaust fumes to prove it) or the unnecessarily complicated currency system.”
Please join us in calling on Congress to lift the wholly unnecessary, inhumane and counterproductive Cuban embargo and to return the military base land to the Cuban people. Click here to contact your members of Congress today!
Towards Justice for All,
Alice, Alli, Ariel, Chelsea, Janet, Jodie, Marwa, Medea, Michaela, Michelle, Nancy, Rebecca, Sam and Tighe
