 all of you for showing up and joining us tonight. Great program ahead, Breaking the Blockade. Good news from the Biden White House. Tonight we have several guests. Our own Medea Benji is also co-host. She's been working for a long time on Breaking the Blockade. She'll be talking to Cole Harrison, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Peace Action. Will be with us. I see Jodi Evans in the background here. And we have young people who participated in a recent May Day Youth delegation, Kala Walsh. She's also a board member of Massachusetts Peace Action. And Mikayla Heizer, who's a student organizer from Washington. And then Carlos Laza will be our featured speaker. We've met him before. He's fabulous. He has led bike brigades and other actions with Puentes which means bridges of love to lift the sanctions on Cuba. So, let's get started. Who wants to give the first update? Let's do the non-Cuba update first. Okay. How about Ukraine? All right. Well, I haven't looked in the last five minutes, but we know that the supplemental for $40 billion, at least half of that for weapons passed without any democratic dissension from the Democratic Party. I think there were over 50 Republicans who voted against a Tea Party Republicans. And Rand Paul has tried to block it in the Senate. So, we are working at Code Pink on appealing to members of Congress allies, people who voted against these military budgets to sign on to a letter. We have a draft that we're circulating. If you want to help appeal to your member of Congress to sign on to this letter and to circulate it, that would be fantastic. The letter basically says we want negotiations, not bipartisan endless war funding to prolong this misery. Now, let's reach a deal. Let's make a deal. Code Pink Radio, I hope that you're all asking your local non-commercial radio station to air Code Pink Radio. I'll be interviewing for our next Code Pink Radio representative from Physicians for Social Responsibility in Finland, because as we know, Finland is now pursuing NATO membership. And she has some thoughts about organizing an insurgent block within NATO to challenge this nuclear proliferation and to support the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. So, that's part of my update on Ukraine. Also, there was a little bit of good news. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin held a conversation with his counterpart, the Defense Minister in Russia last week. Glad to hear that, right? So, that's Ukraine for right now. Cole, did you want to add anything about Ukraine or Palestine? Well, just that the Ukraine supplemental passed the Senate yesterday, so it is on Biden's desk now. And it's a real eye-opener that we didn't get any progressive votes at all, neither in the House nor in the Senate or any Democratic votes. The only no votes were Republicans. So, we have a long way to go. It feels to me like we're back at the beginning of the Afghanistan war when Barbara Lee was the only one, except we didn't even get Barbara Lee this time. But so, we're just really going to have to make a whole range of arguments to stop this war on the basis of the money, on the basis that this war isn't going to be good for the people of Ukraine, they need the war to end. The people in Eastern Ukraine that may be sympathetic to Russia, they have rights to. It's not good for the security of Europe. It's not good for anybody. It's not good for the climate. We've got to bring this war to an end. So, that's the message. But right now, Congress is... And also, if you're listening and you want to organize the delegation to meet with your Congressperson, to urge them to push for negotiations, not escalation, please contact Shay. I'll put her contact information in the chat. Thank you, Cole. Nadia, you're up. Well, I want to mention that the annual NATO meeting is happening in Madrid at the end of June. And we are organizing a peace summit there and calling for no expansion of NATO. And there will also be a 24-hour peace wave that the International Peace Bureau and World Beyond War are organizing to go all across the world and show people around the world who are saying no NATO expansion, negotiations. Let's end this war. So that will be exciting and we'll keep you up to date about how that's going. And maybe we can have Jodi mention the Poor People's Campaign. Oh, that'd be fantastic. Yes, Jodi, you're on. Sure. So, yes, please, now is the time to be in the streets and be engaged and you have an opportunity to do that. Join us to bring the anti-militarism message to the Poor People's Gathering Convergence on Washington D.C. on June 18th. You can come beforehand and help us build props and visuals and stay for the next day while we plan after this engagement in the streets what we're going to do for the next few months to actually cut the Pentagon in the face of war. So please join us in Washington D.C. I'll post it in the chat, codepink.org slash together. Thank you. And for those on the other side of the country in LA, you want to talk about the People Summit? Sure. So on June 10th through 12th, we have the People Summit, which is the alternative to the Summit of the Americas, where already Biden's getting a lot of pressure from leaders in Latin America for having not invited, like Cuba and Venezuela, and Guatemala, or no, Nicaragua. So he's getting a lot of pressure. President Amlo said he won't attend unless everyone's invited. It's about a Summit of the Americas, not a Summit of the United States of America. So please come join activists from across Latin America saying we should each be able to choose how we govern our countries and not have to have it dictated from the United States. We're going to have a lot of speakers, cultural events, concerts, Los Angeles. You can check it out at peoplesummit2022.org and I'll post that also. All right. Thank you, Jodi. Oh, sounds very exciting. So let's go forward with our program. We have more updates on Cuba. Good news out of the White House media. Why don't you share that with us? So there were just some new measures that were announced yesterday and we've been digesting them. It's kind of this glass half full, half empty issue. You can look at it and say all the things it doesn't do, which there are many, and you can say that finally some movement from the Biden administration in the right direction. So some of the things that are in that are that there will now be go back to the ability of family reunification. The Biden administration is supposed to fulfill an agreement that has existed now for a while to give at least 20,000 visas out to Cubans who want to come to the United States. They haven't been doing that. They say they're going to start doing that now. And they're going to make it more possible to get some of these from Havana, although they say that the majority you will still have to go to a third country like Guiana, which is very difficult, very expensive, very onerous on the Cubans. They have eased up a little on the travel before, believe it or not, the Trump administration said US airlines can only go to Havana. They can't go to any other city. And transportation in Cuba is really tough from one end of the island to another. So people who had family members on the other end of the island had a really hard time getting there. So now the Biden administration is allowing US airlines to go to different parts of the island. They've eased up a little bit on the travel restrictions for US citizens to go to Cuba. You still will be totally illegal if you want to go to Cuba and lie on a beach the way the Canadians or anybody else in the world is allowed to go. It's a little easier to go now for people to people ties, but we still need to lift all of the travel restrictions. The cruise ships that started landing in Cuba and some of us hate cruise ships, but boy, it was a boon to the Cuban economy. And now they still won't be able to go because they're tied up in litigation in courts. And what the real thing that the administration didn't call for, which we now have to really beef up our call, is to take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism because that ties up the financial system. It means banks don't want to do business with Cuba, all kinds of problems as a result of that. So that's one of our campaigns and an issue we're going to be focusing on tonight. And then there's all kinds of other restrictions that have that come with the embargo that haven't been lifted that we can talk later about some more of those. So half half full is better than an empty glass. Thank you very much for that overview, Medea. I know it's like so frustrating, right? Trump imposed these horrific sanctions and then Biden just, you know, maintained the status quo. I know that Barbara Lee and others met with President Biden about this not long ago. So I'm glad there's finally some movement here. Cole, what would you like to add to this? I know you have also been in Cuba not too long ago. So let us know your thoughts. Sure. Well, I was just going to give a little bit of a personal account. 10 of us from MAPPA visited Cuba. What's MAPPA? Oh, sorry, it's Massachusetts Peace Action. Visited Cuba for a week in early April for an exploratory trip to build relationships with Cuban activists. We were very busy. We're busy with meetings from morning till night. We met so many incredible people. I'm just going to give you one meeting that we went to one evening. We walked down the block for our accommodation to the Frank Payees Elementary School in the Nuevo, the Dada neighborhood of Havana, which is where we're staying. The local community activists held a meeting to show us how they work. The vibe was completely familiar. It was exactly like a school parent council meeting in Boston or community organization. Maria Caridad, who was elected as a delegate to the municipal assembly, she introduced herself. She's an Afro-Cuban 24-year-old psychology student. She admitted she did not expect to win because she didn't have experience and she was surprised when she won, but she was ready to do it. The regional organizers for the committees for the defense of the revolution, which is kind of the people's neighborhood organization and the Federation of Women, FMC, they spoke about their organization's work. Rankinfile activists sit on the sidelines or sat in the back. They were nodding, murmuring comments and standing up to make a point. Cuba's new family code was under discussion across the country at that time nationwide and it had been the subject of lots of community meetings. Among many other changes, it is on track to legalize gay marriage. The activists explained that all the thousands of suggestions made at all the meetings throughout Cuba are tabulated and brought up as the document is edited and finalized. There are right-wing evangelical groups in Cuba that want to keep the traditional family model and the activists expressed concern about them watering down their reforms, but I would say not too much concern. They thought they were going to win this, but they were aware that there was a debate. There's a lot of economic difficulties. We had meetings from morning till night, as I mentioned. Every single group we met with spoke about the impact of the US blockade. We promised to come back home and work to end the blockade. Cuba is the original case of US sanctions since 1961. Since then, the US has perfected its sanctions weapon, and it is ruthlessly sanctioning a lot of other countries, too, from Venezuela to Iran to Syria to Russia. Our sanctions on Cuba have developed into a complex web of hundreds of different laws and regulations, a few of which Biden modified yesterday, but most of which he did not modify yet. Cuba is right across the Florida states. It is so familiar, so much like the United States in so many ways. Ending the blockade on Cuba could start to unravel the whole sanction system. Cuba is an organized society where common goals and working together are emphasized. It's not an individualistic society like the United States. It is not perfect. They make mistakes. They try to learn and correct them. The analogy I could give you is if MAPA members and Code Pink members and the progressive activists we partner with were put in charge of a country, it's like us. Cuba is us. I don't speak Spanish very well, but Cuba felt like home. In some ways, more like home than home. Thank you, Cole, from the heart. I appreciate hearing you. Marcy, can I just say we have some people on the chat who disagree with some of the things we're saying, which is fine. We believe in dialogue, and if you just be respectful, I think Shay has been putting up the norms, respect our speakers and participants, debate. If you can stick to that, that would be great. We also encourage people to say hello on the chat where you're from. If you have questions, that's great. The way we run this is we take the questions from what you put in the chat or in the question part. Please feel free to do that. Thank you. Thank you, Medea. Now we're going to go to some of the young people who went to Cuba recently for the May Day Youth Delegation. Our first guest speaker is Mikayla Heizer. She is educated at Gonzaga University in Washington. She's an organizer around different issues. However, she did participate with May Day Youth Delegation, and she's going to speak as a representative of that tonight. Mikayla, welcome to Code Penn Congress. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great so far, and I'm so excited to hear what everyone has to say, but, yeah, as Marcy just introduced, my name is Mikayla from Gonzaga University, Washington State. Just graduated, and I was very fortunate to be able to attend the Break the Blockade Brigade with 100 other students, young people, not just students involved in about 26 other organizations that were there as well. In that time, we met with many different leaders in the community, LGBTQ leaders, Black activists, community organizers, labor and religious leaders, government officials, and just so many different people to talk about Cuba and the reality. Because in the U.S., we receive a lot of propaganda, we are not sure of what the truth is, so being able to have that firsthand experience was simply amazing, and as Paul said previously, mentioning how he did feel more at home there. I relate as well, I do not speak much Spanish, barely any at all, but there is definitely a bigger sense of community there and more care for the people instead of money. So, yeah, and then we also have our political declaration that is on the People's Forum, the link was dropped in the chat. Can you give us some of the highlights of that declaration, Mikayla, please? Yeah, one of the biggest things I would say is that we recognize the issues that are going on in Cuba and also the issues that are going on in the U.S., but one of the differences is Cuba is able to recognize those issues and actively, through democratic practices, work forward to change them. And the U.S. blockade is not contributing to the survival of Cuban people. It has only continued, especially in a pandemic, has only continued to worsen situations. And unfortunately, a lot of lives have been lost from the blockade more than the pandemic. And so what we talk about in our declaration is talking about understanding the social and economic structures of society are transformed to meet people's health care, human rights, where education is free, homelessness has been eradicated, and they Cuba cares about protecting their members, especially over COVID-19. Thank you, Mikayla Heiser. And we'll be asking you questions later on. Now let's go to Kala Walsh. And Cole, why don't you introduce Kala? I can't hear you. Go on. Sure. I'm trying to figure out how to spotlight Kala. Can somebody, oh, she's already been spotlighted. That's why. Kala is a, she's from my organization, Mass Peace Action, and she recently joined the board. She's a high school senior, and she went to Cuba on a different delegation than I did in May. So she's going to tell about her experience and impressions. Kala. Thank you. Yeah, I was part of the International May Day Brigade of Voluntary Work and Solidarity with Cuba. I was there for 18 days. We had about 30 U.S. delegates of all different ages and almost 200 delegates overall from 27 different countries. We were staying at the Julio Antonio Mea International Camp, which was built by Brigadistas in Artemisa. And I was also a delegate at the Seventh International Seminar on Peace and Abolishing Foreign Military Bases, which was in Guantanamo. And I think I definitely want to talk about that because I think I might be the only person who is in Guantanamo. And as much as we've talked about the blockade, I think the occupation of Cuban land there is also really important in talking about the impacts of U.S. imperialism on the island. And we really can't understand Cuba and Cuban socialism without understanding that Cuba has been under constant siege from the U.S. government since the very first day of the victory of the revolution. And that's through direct intervention, biological warfare, CIA campaigns, and also the economic blockade. But as for the occupation, we were at a conference that happens every two years in Guantanamo. And again, many, many different countries were represented. And we learned a lot about the history of the occupation, which started in 1898 and has continued ever since. And we learned about the devastating impacts of U.S. militarism on the community in Guantanamo. These are economic impacts. Fishermen can't fish in their own waters in their own bay, which is one of the most important ports in Cuba. There's environmental degradation from the military testing that occurs on the base, which is 116 square kilometers. So it's a really big amount of land that the U.S. is stealing from Cuba. And the officials that spoke to us from Guantanamo said that this situation is distinct because other countries have a lot of foreign military bases because their governments allow the U.S. to have military bases there. But the difference in Cuba is that the Cuban government has long been opposed to the occupation. And when the, before the revolution, the government used to receive and cash checks or I think it was in gold from the U.S. government as rent for the base. But the Cuban government has not cashed any of those payments since the revolution because they do not support the occupation and they aren't going to accept rent for it because they want the U.S. military to leave. We also learned that Guantanamo has the youngest population of any area in Cuba, which I thought was really interesting as we learned about the role that youth play there. And I met with one person. We met at the camp, but she had served in the anti-imperialist brigade at Guantanamo. Her name was Diana. She is part of the Young Communist League in Cuba. And she, as part of her military service, she was at literally the front lines of the U.S. occupation of Guantanamo. And I think hearing about the experience of these young soldiers just a year or two older than me who are serving at the very edge of the base was really powerful because you understand that these young people are ready to fight the world's biggest empire to defend the Cuban revolution. And that was really powerful. They also raised the question of whether the naval base is obsolete to U.S. empire and whether the U.S. empire will ever be willing to give it up. And what the officials who spoke to us in Guantanamo said is that, no, the base is not obsolete because it is strategically important to the U.S. strategy of full spectrum dominance in Latin America and the entire world. We see how the U.S. has brought their war on terror through torture camps to Guantanamo and also launched invasions of Puerto Rico and other countries in Latin America from the Guantanamo base. So these issues are all really, really interconnected. And at this conference, people from around the world, from Asia, from Africa, from Europe, from other parts of Latin America, all spoke about the impacts of U.S. militarism in their communities. And to me, that showed the power of Cuba in bringing together people from different countries and from different borders to unite in the same struggle against imperialism. I also just wanted to address quickly a lot of people calling Cuba a dictatorship in the chat. When we were in Cuba, we also found out the news about the U.S. Supreme Court decision that Roe v. Wade is likely to be overturned. And I just bring up that example because hearing about that while in Cuba, this was a completely undemocratic decision made by unelected, untermalvated Supreme Court justices, a decision that is wildly unpopular with most of the country. And we're taught that Cuba is a dictatorship. But in Cuba, as Cole mentioned, millions of people are participating in debates about the new family code that protects reproductive rights that ensures gender equality around the country. And it's literally unimaginable in the U.S. for us to have direct input into our constitution and have national referendums on our rights. So I just mentioned that because I think really traveling to Cuba and also hearing Cuba's perspectives on what's happening in the U.S. with events such as Roe v. Wade and processing that news while in such a different society and a different form of constructing people's democracy really showed me that just because Cuba is not a liberal capitalist, multi-party democracy does not make their system of grassroots people's democracy any less valid. And in fact, I would say Cuba is the real democracy and not the United States. So I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you, Kala. Thank you so much, Kala. So great to hear from you and I'm so glad you brought in the Roe v. Wade example and how Cubans around the entire island are discussing issues around women's rights and way beyond that. We just were joined by our special guest here, Carlos Lasso. And by way of intro, he would love to have heard our young people speaking because he is a teacher in high school and loves young people. And he has done so much to pressure the Biden administration to change the policy for the sake of Cuban Americans. And he does it all through love. And I know there's a couple of haters who are on the chat. It's hard to hate Carlos Lasso, even if you don't agree with his politics, because he's all about pointing to their mood, bridges of love. He's all about bringing people together. And his work has been around improving the relations between Cuban Americans, Cubans in the diaspora all over the world and Cubans on the island. So we're very delighted to have you here with us, Carlos. And we'd love to hear your reflections on the recent events. Thank you for joining us. Well, Emilia, thank you. Thank you, Cold Pink. Thank you, everyone, all the organizations that are here. First, you said that there were some haters in the chat and I welcome those brothers and sisters because I also hate long time ago. And I know that from hate, you can come back. People sometimes used to repeat rhetorics and go to ideological trenches. But when we talk, when we make human connections, those differences will create bridges. And that's what bridges of love is about. And this is what our organization, our movement is about. Bringing people from different creeds and ideologies and focusing in just one goal. Lifting the sanctions that wait on the Cuban families. Lifting the blockade. And in our movement, we have people from the right, from the left, from the center. It doesn't matter. If you want using the blockade, the embargo, whatever you want to call it, it's immoral and it's cruel and it's just hurting the Cuban people and you want to fight against that, you can join us. And we have a wide representation of the political spectrum in our caravans. First of all, I'm very happy with what happened yesterday. What the administration did is something positive. Medea, Cold Pink, Puente Amor, the People's Forum, all their organizations, many, sorry, other organizations in the United States have been asking for the United States to lift the sanctions that the Trump administration put in place. And after more than one year, the Biden administration started moving in that direction. That's a positive development between among the things that they announced that they will change are four of the petitions of bridges of love reopening the embassy, the reunification program, reinstate, the reunification program, remittances to Cuba and the traveling to provinces, the different airlines going to Cuban provinces. Also, there is some movement in the traveling rights of Americans. But still, Americans cannot freely go to Cuba because the sanctions because the blockade. But we are happy. We joined the people who are happy. And yesterday, we took a little victory lap because this is the effort, this is a result of so many people in the United States, outside of the United States, organizations, civil society organization, just people. And this is a result also of the resistance of the Cuban families. Two years or three years after the pandemic started, the Trump administration tried to obliterate the Cuban families. They used all the resources, all the measures that they could just to bend the needs just to for the Cuban family to surrender. And they didn't do it. Not just that. Our people were there to create five vaccines candidates. And Cuba is one of the people, the countries who have more people vaccinated. And that's something that made me feel proud as a Cuban and made me feel proud about the Cuban scientists, the Cuban doctors. And that's breaches of love, you know. Jose Mati used to say that admiring something that was admirable doesn't have to do with ideology. And in this case, I really admire the work that the Cuban doctors, the Cuban people have done to survive the pandemic in despite of the sanctions, in despite of the economical war crisis. And what is going to be our answer for this? We're happy, but we are not going to stop there. The policies that the United States have implemented over Cuba during the last 60 years are unhuman, are cruel, doesn't bring results. But more than all, they are cruel against the Cuban people. It's the opposite of what any people from the half common sense with us leave the sanctions, have a good relationship between the countries, discuss the difference in the table of negotiations. And the whole world knows that the President Biden knows that the Cuban people knows that. But Joseph, because the fraction of Cuban Americans in South Florida, the half of that power don't want that to be changed, the United States have been have been kidnapped by these policies, by this electoral movement that make American presidents to pay attention to what the South Florida community is saying. Well, I have news for you. The Cuban Americans in South Florida are marching in caravans, asking for the lifting of the sanctions, asking for a normal relationship between Cuba and the United States, asking for the end of this 60 more than 60 years of policies of blockade and more and more and more and more and more Cubans and Americans in Miami March. And this 29th of May, we are going to have a great caravan around the world and also in Miami. And I invite all the friends here, brothers, sisters, no matter what is your ideology. Before I used to say if you want the embassy be reopened, be in the caravan. If you want that you can send money to your family in Cuba, be in the caravan. If you want that the airplanes can go to different provinces, be in the caravan. If you want the reunification program to be reinstate, be in the caravan. Well, that's that's something that we have achieved now. We hopefully and sooner than later they are going to implement those measures. But now if you want for the embargo, for the blockade to be lifted, if you want to create breaches of love between the people of Cuba and the United States, be in the caravan. If you want that, in my case, I want that my country of origin, my mother Cuba and my country of adoption, my father, the United States, have a good relationship. They have been divorced for the last 60 years. I want that they become not just neighbors, but good friends. And if you want that those countries have a normal relationship and work for the best of their people, be in the caravan. If you are in the United States, in any place around the United States, we have brothers and sisters coming from LA, from Seattle, from Austin, Texas, from New York. I think that Ike is coming from New York. Many people are coming to our caravan and many Cuban-Americans too. Then if you want that the embargo, that the blockade ends, if you dream about the future where the United States and Cuba could have a better relationship in the same way that the United States having with all the countries with ideological difference like Vietnam or China, be in the caravan, be in the caravan on the 29th. That's what I want to say. I want to congratulate everyone, everybody who have worked for these results that we see today here. I want to congratulate Colping, who have done an amazing job helping the Cuban people, bringing donations to Cuba. And we are honored to be working together with Colping in the initiatives for bringing milk to the pediatric hospitals in Cuba, to bringing tuna cans, to bringing syringes for the campaign for vaccination for COVID. I want to thank you today. Thank you, Melea, for all what you do for the Cuban people and thanks everyone. Thank you, Carlos. We love you, Carlos, and thank you so much. I want to say that the people who are writing nasty things in the chat, this is important for you all to see because it's what Carlos deals with every single day. And he gets death threats constantly. It's very, very hard to do this work in an atmosphere where you are always being threatened. And those who live in Miami know that the threats are not verbal. There have been bombs in their offices. There have been attempts on their lives. And Carlos deals with this on a daily basis, and he just keeps going. Before I leave, I just want to send a hug and my best wishes to those haters, to those brothers and sisters who still are confused about what life is about, what love is about. I also hate, I used to hate when in 1994 I was like that. And I know that behind that, there is a human being that is good, that is a father, is a mother, and change is possible. I pray to God for every people who hate to end up loving. Thank you, Melea. Thank you, beautiful sentiment. Thank you so much for being with us. Send Carlos a kiss, everybody, who's into it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to move on to our capital emailing party, and Cole is going to introduce the action. We want you to stay with us after this action. Then we will go to the Q&A. But first, let's move on this and press the White House to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of the chair. That's ridiculous, crazy. Okay, Cole, take it away. Great. Okay, I'm just putting this link in the chat. So we have an action page for you today to... Oh, I have to share my screen. Let's see here. No, this isn't the right page. One minute. We'll get there. Oh, boy. All right. I'll get the right page any moment now. You just wait. Okay, here it is. So we just pulled this together today in response to the administration's actions yesterday in which it did make some changes to the policy of isolating Cuba. So we have six points. We have to take Cuba off the list of the state sponsors of terrorism. It was put on this list by... On the last day of the Trump administration, and Biden has not yet taken Cuba off. This list is used by other countries, and in the international system to prevent economic interchange with Cuba. It's preposterous to say that Cuba is a terrorist country. Cuba is the victim of terrorism. It's not a terrorist country. And it should be taken off the list. Second is remittances from Cubans abroad should be resumed in a viable manner. This was touched on by what the administration did yesterday, but the details are not clear. For now, if you have money in a U.S. bank, you can't transfer that to Cuba. That's prevented under the sanctions. So this has to be smoothly strained out so that remittances can be sent in an orderly manner. Third is the U.S. consulate should be open for visas. And it's been closed off during the COVID period as an excuse. And so it has to be fully staffed so Cubans can get visas. Right now a lot of Cubans have been traveling to third countries to try to enter the United States. Fourth is hotels and other entities for exchanges so that group and university travel can be resumed. Currently, Americans cannot stay in government-owned hotels in Cuba. So that has to be ended. And the question of the Summit of the Americas, Medea touched on it before. Actually, Obama let Cuba into the Summit for the Americas. This is an OAS meeting. But then Cuba was not allowed during the Trump administration to attend. And now this year the U.S. says that both Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela will not be able to attend. So now the President of Mexico, President Lopez Obrador says that he won't attend unless Cuba and the other, unless all the countries in the Americas can attend. So this is our ask to Congress and to the administration and last is an end to the overall U.S. embargo. So if you could, if everybody here was to send this message in the next few minutes, I think we are 150 people. We would be sending 150 messages to 150 representatives, 300 messages to senators because each of you have two senators if you're in the U.S. And you'd be sending a message to President Biden and to Secretary Blinken. So with just one click, you can change the details of the message if you want to. We've created a wording for you. I have to put it in the chat again. It's really important to let our representatives and our officials know that there's people in the United States that do want normalized relations with Cuba. And that's what we're here about tonight. And we're here both to get information, but also to take action. That's why this program is called Cogpink Congress. Because we're reaching out to Congress to let them know where we think. So please go ahead. Can we post that again in the chat? And I have a secret tool that allows me to tell how many people are taking action. So I'm going to tell you in a minute how we're doing. I'm going to give you your report card, people. Oh, we want the report card. Yeah, we see that there are 152 people. And I sure hope that we get close to that. Of course, we have a few disruptors. So we know what to expect from them. But the rest of us, let's take some action. We've got to lift this terrorist designation that's so uncalled for, so unfair. And we need to push the Biden White House. I mean, I think the whole thing is just completely political. You've got Bob Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who's an avid hater of Cuba. And he holds a lot of sway. He and Marco Rubio, unfortunately. So we need to push the White House on this. And it should be in the chat. And Cole's going to come back to us later with a report on how many of you clicked. So do so. And Shay will continue to post that link in the chat. And please share it with your social networks, with your friends. Let's amplify what we're doing here. And I also want to say the Code Pink radio this week, the Google Code Pink radio, you can find it. You can also download it as a podcast. And this features a conversation between Ariel Gold, who's a chair of our Middle East Campaign and one of our national co-directors with Danika Katowicz, who went to Cuba, who's also a national co-director, and went to Cuba with the youth delegation. It's a great conversation. All right. As soon as 70 action is taken, that's pretty good. 70. We have 150 people here. So that means nearly half of the people here have completed the action. That's Cole with the glass half-bowl. There we go. Nearly half. Well, let's get more and more and more and more. We can keep doing it. So it's very simple. It takes you about 10 seconds. Right. So Cole, maybe you'll come back in about 10 minutes with an update. Okay. So any of you have signed? Can we get to 90? Let's get to me. All right. So now you have an opportunity to post a question in the chat. I'm going to ask the question to start out with. And the question is, to what degree has Cuba been able to distribute the vaccines? I know that Cuba came up with its own vaccine. What role has the United States played the White House in trying to block the distribution of this vaccine? So who wants to take that? Well, I can say that public health is a top priority in Cuba. Several of the groups we met with were talking about this. Practically every Cuban has been vaccinated. In fact, they were joking. We went to a like the neighborhood housing project and they were saying that when a kid turns two, they, you know, they're all over this kid to get to stick them with its shot because they want to maintain their 100% average. So Cuba developed its own vaccines. You can't send vaccines from the US to Cuba. And so they've developed their own vaccines and they've vaccinated everybody. And it's like a peer pressure system where everyone supports. And they also have local doctors. We visit a local doctor's office. She has a list of every family in her area that she's responsible for. She knows them personally. She will go visit them to give them the shots and other medical care. It's like a super proactive health system. Thank you, Medea. Anything you want to add? Well, I wonder if any of the other speakers wanted to add something. Yeah, I also visited one of the biotech centers and we learned that Cuba has the highest vaccine rate in the world because they've been vaccinating everyone to plus. Right now they're starting to explore options for vaccinating everyone over six months, which I don't think any other country is doing. And we also learned about how during the pandemic, the US blockade prevented Cuba from accessing syringes, which delayed the vaccine rollout. But there was a big campaign in the solidarity movement in the US to get syringes. The blockade also prevented Cuba from getting literal oxygen and respirators. So that was detrimental too. But the Cuban health system is so strong that they've had a much lower case rate and much lower death rates than we have had in the US. Makayla, I know you're having trouble with your video, but did you want to add anything? Yeah, really quick. I just wanted to mention how speaking about the quote unquote humanitarian side of the US, it wasn't until 90% of the population of Cubans were vaccinated that the US even offered to provide vaccines to the Cuban people, which I thought was very interesting to learn coming from this humanitarian side that we project. And then once the offer was made to, if the US were to provide the vaccines, then Cuba would provide the doctors. That offer was given to the US from Cuba and there was no follow-up on it. So I thought that was an interesting point that I learned as well with talking to some doctors and officials over there. Thank you, Makayla. I just wanted to add in there, Marcy, that we are talking to Congresswoman Ayanna Presley, thanks to Cole and the others from Massachusetts, about a letter that would be a sign on from Congress to Biden asking him to lift obstacles for Cuba to be distributing their vaccine around the world. Because as Kala said, there are many things in that have been done by the administration to block Cuba, not only for vaccinating its own people, but for distributing its vaccine. So hopefully we'll have some good news by the end of this week. And that will be then a letter that we can all work on to get our Congress people to sign on to that. And I also wanted to answer a question that came in that was about Cuban doctors and their work overseas. I think this is a really important one to talk about because it shows the insidious nature of the US policy and especially under Trump. Because there was a whole campaign paid for with our tax dollars to try to find Cuban doctors overseas who would defect, find Cuban doctors overseas who would speak badly about the program. And they defined this wonderful, incredible solidarity program in the US government was defined as a form of human trafficking. Why? Because the doctors don't get the full pay that a large percentage of the pay they get from the countries where they're going or the UN goes back to Cuba for the free healthcare system. And so the US has said that that is a form of modern day slavery. It is disgusting. And what the US has done is go to country after country to twist their arms and say, don't invite the Cuban doctors, get rid of the ones that you have. And this was a very important form of income for the Cuban government and their free healthcare system. And there are thousands and thousands of Cuban doctors that were sent home that then countries like Brazil when they got hit with COVID said, oh my God, where are the Cuban doctors? We need them. And the president of Mexico who is just in Cuba announced that he is inviting 500 Cuban doctors to come to Mexico to work in the parts of Mexico that don't have doctors and how proud he is of being able to invite those Cubans to come and provide such an important service for the people of Mexico. Thank you for sharing that, Medhi. I didn't know that. I imagine most of us don't know that. We don't get much news about this, but it's very inspiring to know that. Question. Now, a while ago, I remember that the business community in the United States, I try to avoid saying in America because America includes Central America, South America. Whenever I hear somebody referred in the United States as America, I take exception. I try not to do that myself. So the business community in the United States was advocating normalization or at least lifting some of these sanctions against Cuba. What role is the business community playing more recently? The business community in the United States has been trying to get a lot of these sanctions lifted. There was a delegation that recently went of people in the agricultural field, many of them from the Midwest, who have been selling products to Cuba because one of the things you can do with this blockade is the sale of food. But the problem is that Cuba does not get credit like other countries do. And so they have to pay in cash, which makes it very difficult. And of course, all the bank transactions are extremely difficult to do. So this agricultural delegation is lobbying so that Cuba would be able to pay for its agricultural imports the way that every other country pays for them. And there are also other U.S. businesses who would like to invest in Cuba. There is the first, for the first time, the U.S. government has allowed for an investment in Cuba, but in general it is illegal. And so one of the things that the business community is doing is trying to lift those restrictions so that they can have investments in Cuba. And there are restrictions from the Cuban side as well that the U.S. businesses are trying to lift. And one more thing, Marcy, I mentioned that the cruise ships can't go to Cuba because they're tied up in legislation. Well, this is something called the Helms Burton Act called Title III of the Helms Burton Act, and it allows people who claim that they lost their businesses 60 years ago or a piece of land that now the Cuban port is using. And so the cruise ships, the dock in that port, are being sued by families that say they owned this 60 years ago. I mean, those kind of lawsuits that would be thrown out anywhere else as frivolous are tying up all kinds of business opportunities. Thank you. It's illuminating to hear the details about these sanctions and the impact, the harassment. It's nothing less than harassment, really. I would hope that if anyone is in New Jersey that you would be organizing some protests, some delegations to march on Senator Bob Menendez's office since he is in the forefront of the hate campaign against Cuba, and he holds a very powerful position in the Senate. I'd love to hear more from our young people, Kala and Makayla, about your visit to Cuba, perhaps the highlights, what it was like on May Day and anything that may have surprised you. So, Makayla, do you want to go first and then, Kala? That was, for me, participating in the May Day celebration and parade was amazing. It was honestly nothing I had ever seen before here in the US, especially seeing 700,000 people show up at 3 a.m. to line and fill the streets with music and dancing and celebration. It was something I had just never seen here before. And instead of parades here where people line the streets and watch and observe, it was everyone was in the parade themselves and there was a lot of joyfulness and celebration. And instead of seeing that, we saw a lot of propaganda where it was these people were forced to come in March or they would lose their jobs, but people didn't even have work that day. The only places we really saw where the hotel we were staying at, those were the only workers that were working that we ran into because we were staying there. But that was probably my highlight of the trip was getting to celebrate in the streets with everyone and see the joyfulness and the people. And one of the things I was really surprised about was, honestly, the kind of mention this earlier from what Cole said is just how safe I felt there. There was a lot of propaganda about me going there in the first place. And so then getting there and feeling secure and safe was just something I was super thankful for. And going back to the healthcare system there, while we were there, unfortunately, a few of us did contract COVID-19 and we had doctors come and visit us every day for the people who were sick and make sure that they were okay and check up on them of no charge to us. And that was just something that I thought was amazing as well as with the blockade. Cars is a big thing that people don't have access to. And so people have moved these neighborhoods, have made them more community centers where there's doctors in every neighborhood that are seeing these people on the daily, making sure they're okay and checking on them. So it was a lot of people caring for people, which is not something we have here in the US. Great. Thank you so much for sharing that, Micaiah. What about you, Kala? Highlights? Anything that surprised you? A lot surprised me. One thing that a lot of people have been asking me about is the food. So maybe I'll talk about the food since that's an important thing, you know, when you're visiting a new country. Food is very limited by the blockade, too. And so there's not as many options as we have in the US. And so coming back, it really hit me like what an insane luxury it is that we can have whatever food we want at the press of a button through a delivery app. Just go to any store and have whatever food we want. But food in Cuba is also incredible. It was so delicious. And the blockade has forced them to make a lot of adaptations in terms of sustainability, in terms of not wasting as much as we do in capitalist systems of food production. And so at the camp, we were staying at almost everything that we ate as like fresh produce was grown at the camp. Almost nowhere in Cuba uses pesticides. And especially during the special period, a lot of really innovative forms of urban and community farming develops, which is totally worth people looking more into. But I think experiencing what it's like to genuinely like be growing your own food and eating food that is produced within your community that isn't produced thousands of miles away and brought on all these different supply chains. Although those are adaptations that have been forced by the blockade, I also think it is a really positive aspect of the community development in Cuba. Thank you so much. At this point, we're going to draw this program to a close. We've been here for an hour. We've heard a lot of information that's illuminating. We're going to thank our guests. Well, perhaps we won't unmute because we know we have some disruptors with us tonight. But if you want to post your thank yous in the chat, that would be appreciated or just give a thumbs up. That would also be appreciated. So I'm going to give a final report. Sure. Yes. So we're up to 107. So we've made quite a bit of progress. There is one person in the chat who admitted that he filled the form three times. So I have to subtract two extra submissions are not we don't know, Jack, but if we're trying to figure out how many people have done it, it's actually 105. So I'm just going to put that link in the chat once more so that the shy out there have had a chance to fill it in and can go ahead and do that. And it will send six messages. I'm sorry, five messages for one button click for you. Wait, and I'm going to ask that everybody on this call on this Zoom ask at least five friends, even get five more people so we can at least have five or 600 people signing and sending messages to the White House tonight. I wanted to mention that we are working with a local restaurant business called Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC. Some of you might have heard of it to organize a fabulous cultural exchange to Cuba in July. Some of you might know Langston Hughes, the great poet. Well, he has a connection to Cuba and the wonderful now deceased poet of Cuba. And we're going to do a plaque to Langston Hughes in Cuba and going to do exchanges between Cuban and US cultural workers, artists, poets, singers, all kinds of things. If you're interested at this point, because we're just getting the information out, I'm going to put my email in here. You can write to me and I will get you the info. So it's just media at code pink.org. Thank you, Medea. If you want a video recording of this, a copy of it, we do post it to YouTube. Shay, if you have that link, perhaps you can post it in the chat. Great. We also send it out to our Google group. If you want to join that, you can also contact Shay. We have a form for that. And then you'll be notified about all of our upcoming programs. When you do go to YouTube link, you'll see our archive of Code Pink Congress Zoom. So please do us a favor and click like, okay? And share. Share the Zoom that you think your friends, your allies, your social networks would appreciate as well. With that, any other announcements? Medea or Cole? Well, you know that our next Code Pink Congress is two weeks away. That's going to be coming up to the time of the Summit of the Americas. So we're going to see what happens around that. Will Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela be invited? And it be a real Summit of the Americas? Will they not be invited? And it will be a flop, a dead end. So we'll update you on where that stands. And we're also going to have some really incredible people who will talk to us about the changing face of Latin America. There's some really important elections that have been going on, a very important one coming up in Colombia, and a very important one coming up in Brazil. So we're going to give you a panorama of the region. So stay tuned for that in two weeks. Sounds inspirational. Yes, and we can talk about Chile and excitement there as well. I'd like to say Bernie Sanders was elected in Chile, their own version, of course. And I heard an interview with him, fantastic. Cole, and also May 24th, which is next week. We, Code Pink, will host a program with the Poor People's Campaign. So we'll send information out about that as well. Cole, anything you want to announce for messages? So we actually have a webinar with Noam Chomsky next week. I think it's Thursday. I actually have to check. I'm sorry. Ukraine and beyond is going to be his topic. So he's got a new presentation that he's working on for next week. MassPeaceAction.org. Sorry, I can get the link in a minute. Thank you. Yeah, we'll give him a minute. And Jodi, if you're still with us, anything else you want to say to remind people about what's coming up with the Poor People's Campaign? She might have gone, but just to reiterate to join us at the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C., and that will be on the 18th, this Saturday of June and the Sunday. So come to D.C. if you can. It's going to be a great time. Poor People's Campaign brings together all of these incredible issues of racism and poverty and militarism and climate crisis and how we can turn it all around to live in the kind of world that we want to live in. Well said. With that, we're going to say good night. You can save the chat by going