FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 8, 2026
Media Contact: Olivia DiNucci - [email protected]
“SANCTIONS KILL” - CODEPINK Disrupts Talk by Heritage Foundation Cuba Hardliner
WASHINGTON, D.C. - On Tuesday afternoon, CODEPINK D.C. organizer Olivia DiNucci disrupted a talk at the Institute of World Politics (IWP) titled “Cuba on the Brink.” At a time when the U.S. energy blockade on the island is causing a humanitarian crisis, speakers at the IWP represented the country of 11 million as an “ongoing threat” to the U.S. to justify even harsher measures against its people.
“They are suffering from U.S. sanctions that are killing children, that are starving people,” DiNucci told the room as IWP staff ripped away her sign and physically pushed her out. The sign read “SANCTIONS KILL IN CUBA.” The talk featured former Bush administration official Mike Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation and former SOUTHCOM advisor Christine Balling who teaches at the IWP.
Since the U.S. implemented a total blockade on all fuel entering Cuba in January, only one large oil tanker has successfully delivered fuel to the island. This has had devastating impacts across all sectors of Cuban society. Amid increasingly frequent blackouts, the island’s food supply, water systems, sanitation infrastructure, and healthcare system have all been placed under tremendous strain, inducing a massive humanitarian crisis across the country.
The fuel blockade was implemented after over 60 years of the U.S. unilaterally restricting Cuba’s access to trade with the rest of the world by imposing severe sanctions on any country or private entity that seeks to trade with Cuba. Under the longstanding blockade, Cuba has faced chronic shortages of food, medicine, and other essential goods imported from other countries, artificially producing scarcity and inflating prices for everyday people.
Under ever-tighter U.S. sanctions, Cuba’s infant mortality rate has more than doubled since 2018, child cancer survival rates have plummeted, and hospitals have struggled to procure the necessary medicines and machinery to keep patients alive. The U.S. blockade on Cuba has been nearly universally condemned by the U.N. General Assembly every year for over 30 years, with the U.S. and Israel being the sole countries consistently voting against the measure.
CODEPINK continues to stand in solidarity with the Cuban people, demanding an end to all sanctions, the lifting of the blockade, and the removal of Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list.
For more information or for unbranded video footage, please contact Olivia at [email protected].
