 Hi and welcome to People's Dispatch. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuba has been at the forefront of initiatives of international solidarity. It has sent medical brigades to 22 countries to assist in the fight against the coronavirus. And all this time it has also been receiving threats and harassment from the U.S. and its allies. So in this context, a group of human rights organizations and social movements across the world have launched a campaign to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Cuba's Henry Reeve Medical Brigade. So to learn more about this campaign, we're joined today by Midia Benjamin. She's the co-founder of the U.S. Peace Organization Code Pink and the co-chair of the U.S. Campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize for Cuban Doctors. So hi, Midia. Thank you so much for joining us. Hey, thanks so much for having me on. Awesome. So first, we're wondering if you can kind of talk about the campaign itself. Why is it being organized and who's organizing it? Well, I first came to this wanting to be part of the campaign when I saw, not on U.S. TV, but on, I think it might have been on Al Jazeera, a picture of the Cuban doctors arriving in Lombardi, Italy, which was the most infected part of Italy from the coronavirus, and seeing this wave of these healthcare workers getting off a plane, arriving in Italy, being applauded by the Italians waiting for them, and then the interviews that were being done with them when they talked to the doctors about why they were putting their lives at risk and weren't they scared? And I remember one doctor saying, yes, of course we're scared, but this is our debt to humanity. We are supposed to be helping people when they're in need, and the Italians are in need, and so we are here to support them. And it was just so beautiful and brought tears to my eyes, and I thought, wow. And then I read that there was a small solidarity group based out of France called Cuba Linda that had proposed that they get the Nobel Prize Prize, and I thought, wow, what a great idea. And reached out to the National Network on Cuba, where one of the co-chairs, Alicia Ojeco, is already involved in this because it had been proposed by some other groups like in Greece, and said, yes, great idea, let's be the U.S. committee for this campaign. And so we started out gathering lots and lots of endorsements from all kinds of individuals with like from Nobel Peace Prize winners in the past, from writers, artists, people in the academic world, and we have gathered together, now there's over 10,000 people who have signed up on this. We have a new website called Cuba Nobel, like Nobel Peace Prize cubanobel.org, where people can join, and we have a very extensive social media plan on all the different platforms to get people talking about this, to make them understand just how beautiful this program is, and also to counter the kind of sabotage that the U.S. has been doing against this particular program now, and against Cuba's healthcare system in general, and of course Cuba as an island since the revolution in 1959. Yeah, of course. And just in terms of what has this brigade done in term, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, you mentioned they went to Lombardi, Italy. We've, you know, we've seen reports of over 20 countries that they visited. So what has been the impact of this medical brigade? What has happened because they've been able to travel there? What wouldn't have happened? I don't know if you can talk a little about that. Well, it's amazing the lives that have been saved. We're hearing testimonies from people on the ground in these countries about how thankful they are to have the Cubans there, not only to treat them on an individual basis, but to help them in trying to stop the spread, because Cuba is very experienced at this kind of thing. I remember being in Cuba when there was the Dengue fever, and they went around to every single house, including where I was living, to look, was there any stagnant water that could be a vector for mosquitoes? They know how to do this kind of thing. And so having the Cubans there to help them with a program to encourage them to not be waiting for people who are sick to come to the hospitals, but to actually go out house by house and take people's temperatures, see how they're doing, explain to them the importance of washing their hands, of going to the healthcare clinic if they have any signs of a fever. And so stopping to spread the disease is something they're doing. And just for people to understand how, what parts of the world they've gone in, they've gone into many parts of the Caribbean itself, places like Belize, Antigua, Barbados, but they've also gone to places far away, like in Africa, to Angola, to Cape Verde. We already talked about them being in Italy, but they've gone to just really all over the world. And it's remarkable that the first team has already come home, one brigade that was in Italy, and they've been interviewed extensively by the Latin America press, and telling their stories about how they work day and night, how they are so committed to the local people and the local health professionals, trying to leave them in a better state than when they arrived in terms of passing on their knowledge about how to deal with this. And I forgot to say that Cubans were, this brigade particularly, was so knowledgeable because they spent time in West Africa during the Ebola outbreak. They were, I think, the largest foreign contingent that was in West Africa, and this was at a time when the world knew nothing about Ebola, except that it was a really deadly disease. And the Cubans spent time there, were the first in and the last to leave, and they are doing the same thing now around coronavirus. That's really amazing. And despite all of this very heroic work that they're doing, all of this really life-saving solidarity work, they've continually received attacks from the United States, from its allies, really vicious character attacks. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. Well, first I want to explain that there is this Henry Reeves brigade, which by the way, was named, formed in 2005, and was named after an American, Henry Reeves, who went to help the Cubans in their independence fight in the late 1800s. And the first thing that it tried to do was come to help in the United States after the Hurricane Katrina, but Bush would let them in. So there is this contingent of thousands of doctors that are part of the Henry Reeves brigade that goes in during emergency times and disasters. But then on top of that, there is a large contingent of tens of thousands of Cuban health professionals that go to work overseas, particularly in places that do not have access to doctors in rural, poor areas of many different countries. And so you take in both of those together, the Cubans are serving millions of people around the world. And some of those teams of doctors go for free when they're going to countries that can't afford it. And some of them are paid either by the country itself or by UN entities that help to cover the costs. And this over the years has become an important source of income for Cubans. It's a real win-win situation where people are getting good health care by trained professionals. And the Cuban government gets to keep a portion of the salaries and put that back in to the Cuban health care system, which by the way trains these doctors for nothing and also provides health care to not only their families, but all of the Cuban people for nothing. And in addition, it's a voluntary program where the Cuban doctors want to go, in large part because they want the experience, they want to help, but also because they make a lot more money than they would in Cuba, even with the Cuban government taking a portion of that salary. So the US has seized on this and said, aha, we want to cut the income coming to Cuba in whatever ways we can. Cut the tourism income by making it harder for Americans to travel to Cuba. Cut the income coming from remittances by making it harder for Americans to send money and putting a cap on how much they could send. And then the Cuban doctor program was attacked by the Trump administration. And so what they have done is called this program a form of human trafficking, that these doctors are like modern day slaves because they don't get their full salaries, which is absolutely ridiculous. And they've gone so far as to introduce legislation in Congress. As you can imagine, some of these attacks are coming from right wing Congress people and senators in Florida because a lot of this is about votes in Florida in the upcoming election, where the Republicans want to ensure that they're going to get the votes from the right wing Cuban American and Venezuelan American communities. So there is now legislation that says that countries that accept the aid from Cuban doctors should be sanctioned. And we see that the US strong armed three countries in Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador to expel the thousands of Cuban doctors who had been there before coronavirus supplying the country with much needed medical assistance. And when they turn to more right wing governments in those countries, one of the first things they did was expel thousands and thousands of Cuban doctors. So this really cuts into the income for Cuba and of course makes it harder for people to receive medical treatment. If you could talk about the history behind the Henry Reed medical brigade, you mentioned it's named after American doctor. Where else has this brigade been operating? Any sort of stories you can tell about this really heroic brigade? Well, this brigade has been traveling all over the world when there are earthquakes. For example, one of the first things it did back in 2005 was go to Pakistan when there was a devastating earthquake. I mentioned that they went to Haiti after the earthquake there. And while some teams of doctors from other countries did fly in as well to help the Haitians, they left immediately where the Cuban doctors stayed. And they stayed when the UN team that was in Haiti spread, unfortunately, a cholera epidemic and the Cubans stayed there to treat the Haitians during that time. And they have been going to countries where the US doesn't even have, I mean where the Cuban government doesn't even have good relations, for example in Honduras. And right now they're in Honduras helping around coronavirus when there's a government that is very hostile to the Cuban government. So it's an example of how for the Cubans it's not about who is in power, it's about helping the people. And that's why time and again when there have been disasters in the United States, the Cubans have volunteered to send in health brigades that have been rejected by the US. In fact, in the Native American reservations in the US, they have asked for Cuban doctors to come. And we also should say that the Cubans have the largest medical training school for internationalists in the world. And again, this is a tiny country of 11 million people. But their medical training school has trained, I think, about 35,000 doctors coming from over a hundred countries, many of these countries, poor countries. But they also trained doctors from wealthy countries like the United States where students coming from poor communities are not able to get into medical schools. And this training school in Cuba is absolutely free, the entire thing, room and board, everything. The only commitment is to go back to your country and work in underserved communities. And so you find during this coronavirus, American doctors who were trained in Cuba, who were working in hospitals in some of the worst-hit areas like the Bronx. So it's amazing how the spread of this tiny little country of helping to train and send health professionals has saved millions of lives around the world. And instead of attacking it like the US has done, and I mentioned the program to try to strong on governments not to take the aid from Cuba, but it's also programs trying to get Cuban doctors to defect when they are working in those countries and offer them all kinds of amenities to come and live in the United States. And it's also a program with our US tax dollars to pay for journalists to seek out dirt on these doctors to be able to put out stories saying how bad these programs are. So instead of looking at this as the marvelous program it is and emulating this and sending American doctors around the world, I think we would be much more loved in the world if instead of sending bombs and heavily armed soldiers, we would send doctors. But unfortunately, instead of learning from the Cubans and modeling something after that program, the US has continued to attack them. And just finally, if you could talk about some of the next steps in this campaign, how can people support this initiative? Yeah, it's a very exciting campaign. The website again is cubanobel.org, but it's also we have are launching it on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, with the handle Cuba Nobel. We hope people will sign the petition, tell their friends to do so, help us in all kinds of other ways we have in terms of educating people on social media about the campaign, in terms of countering the sabotage attempts from the US government, countering the kind of legislation that is being introduced in Congress, and all kinds of ways like concerts that we're helping out to thank the Cuban doctors when they return home. So there's all kinds of creativity that is coming forth in this campaign, and we encourage people to join us. And in this time when folks are so depressed about the future of the world, and where we see so many horrible things happening in our countries, on our streets, to be able to work on a positive campaign that's inspiring and uplifting is something that is good for all of us at this moment of difficult times. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us, Medina. I think that's all we have time for. Keep watching People's Dispatch.