 Executive Director of Massachusetts Peace Action, otherwise known as MAPA. And tonight it's Viva Cuba y Venezuela. And we have wonderful guests. We have Leonardo Flores, who used to work with Code Pink, and he's a political analyst, always has a lot to say, as well as a journalist on Cuba. And we'll be coming to her, we'll be going to her very soon. But first, we have news updates. And Medea, why don't you lead off? Yes, hi everybody. Well, we just came off of a wonderful two days of advocacy in Congress, and then a conference called America's Policy Forum, and Maha is gonna put that in the chat. The theme was bearing 200 years of the Monroe Doctrine, which has been a cover for U.S. intervention, militarism, corporate takeover of resources, and all kinds of shenanigans. And we highlighted how much Latin America is changing, and we spent the day on Friday going from office to office, different teams focusing on different issues. Some of them about taking Cuba off the terrorist list, some about Venezuela, returned the $3 billion, some about Haiti and stop interfering, the militarization the U.S. is supporting to the military forces in Peru after a coup, and then also about Mexico, the need to stop the mostly right-wing Republican attacks on Mexico. So we had a great two days, and if you wanna go in and listen to some of the interventions, they were really good. I particularly recommend one that looked at what is the organization of American states and why we should oppose it. And another one by our friend Nick Estes, connecting the issues of the indigenous struggles in the United States with the struggles of the people throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. So that's my update, thank you. Thank you. And for those of you who do wanna listen to the speeches, we had a live stream on our CodePink Facebook page, and it's also, we also are including some of the speeches from Juan Gonzalez, who gave the keynote and Nick Estes in CodePink radio, which airs on Pacifica radio stations and can air on your college or community radio station. If you wanna promote it, if you wanna bring it to your hometown, please do email me, Marci, M-A-R-C-Y, at codepink.org. Cole, you're on with your update. Okay, I wanna share the update on the Peace in Ukraine petition. We've been running this petition for several weeks, CodePink MAPPA and others in the Peace in Ukraine coalition. I'm gonna put this in the chat and ask you to sign it if you haven't already, one second. Uh-oh. That's okay. I can, yeah. I think she may allow me to... Anyway, we have 7,800 signatures so far. We need at least 10,000 so we need more signatures so that's why we're asking you to sign tonight and also to share it with your own lists, your own groups. We're also raising money to put this petition as a signature ad in Washington Publications, possibly the Hill or something along that line. We have raised $13,000 so that is good and we'd like to continue raising money to spread the word. Thank you, Your Honor. We are concerned that the Ukraine peace position is still being marginalized in American politics, the push for ceasefire and negotiated settlement and we wanna make sure decision makers in Capitol Hill and in Washington hear about this issue. So please join in. House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy is in Israel this week and one of his comments is that he would invite Netanyahu to Washington if Biden doesn't. So there is continued tension over relations with Israel. Of course, we know that the... There's a standoff among the Zionist regime in Israel over the judicial overhaul but meanwhile, nobody in mainstream Israeli politics is lifting up Palestinian rights so we have to do that. So let's continue to focus in on that. What else do we have, Narcissia? Oh, I have a few things to share. Thanks, Cole. So in just a minute, we'll be hearing from Liz Oliva-Fernandez, a Cuban journalist and also Leonardo Flores, a political analyst on Latin America. He'll talk about Venezuela but first I'm gonna share a little bit about what's going on with Biden and the Philippines, China, Taiwan, all of that. Biden hosted Philippines president, Fernando Marcos Jr. this week. He told him the US commitment, wherever you heard this before, is ironclad to defend the Philippines and the South China Sea, which China considers its waters, its territory. Marcos' visit comes after Washington and Manila signed an agreement to pump up US militarization of the region and to give the United States access to four bases in the Philippines. The United States and the Philippines just completed the largest ever joint military exercises with live fire exercises in the South China Sea. All right, I also bought a hearing that was held a few days ago, the House Armed Services Committee and this hearing focused on Ukraine with some of the representatives of the Defense Department testifying. And I told Madia earlier, it was really strange. It was almost like the military was more contemplative than these lawmakers who just can't wait for the next war. Adam Smith started out, he's the ranking member, he used to chair before the House was taken by the Republicans. And he was bemoaning the fact that people are restating Russian propaganda when they call for oversight of the weapons shipments. He said the US and the Ukrainians are winning in Ukraine and there's no doubt. Meanwhile, others tried to get the Defense Department officials to say that Russia's conventional forces had been devastated, but they wouldn't say that. They actually said sort of the opposite. These hawkish members of Congress, they kept wringing their hands saying that, gee, how do we convince the US public that we need to continue sending billions, tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine for more weapons and so forth. They just don't know what to do. And they were asking military for suggestions, some like Matt Gatz, the Republican who has introduced legislation to remove troops. US troops from Syria and Somalia was advocating for moving a lot more troops into the Baltics. He feels that's where our troops should be. There was concern over Russia's suspension of participation in the START treaty. There were a few who echoed this theme that the real threat is the PRC, the People's Republic of China. Does Russia realize this? Does Russia realize that they'll be taking orders from the Chinese? There was no one in on the House Armed Services Committee who mentioned the word diplomacy. I didn't hear it once. And I think that we need to raise this when we are on Capitol Hill, when we're in our district offices. Do we hear our representatives talking about diplomacy? Will they vote against future weapons that will only escalate this war? So that's my update. Now let's get on with the program. Actually, I have one more, Marcy. I should have thought of before Korea. The president of South Korea was in President Yoon, who's very conservative, was in the US last week. He met with Biden. They made a deal that the US will send nuclear weapons submarines to South Korea to further challenge North Korea. He also came up to Cambridge where he spoke at the Harvard Kennedy School. He was greeted by a protest with MAPPA and the New England Korea Peace Campaign and DSA. And our protest was covered in South Korean media and got 280,000 views. So we were kind of tickled by that. There's intense interest in South Korea. South Korea is pretty polarized right now. The conservative president has a lot of opponents and they were very cheered to see America's protesting President Yoon. Well, congratulations on that coverage. That's fantastic. You go, Cole. All right, Medea, she will introduce our first guest. Yes, and one other thing, it was May Day, of course. And while there were probably a million people out on the streets in France, there were people out in the streets in much smaller numbers in the United States. And in some of the places like in Washington, DC, it was a call by the immigrant community to grant temporary protective status to the people from the countries of Central America and Nicaragua. So I just wanted to mention that as well. And now we're going to hear from one of our guest speakers who is coming to us from Cuba. She is an amazing woman. She's a journalist. She might have seen her as a presenter for Belly of the Beast and the War on Cuba for which she won a Gracie Award. Apart from her journalism and filmmaking with Belly of the Beast, she is a dedicated anti-racist and feminist activist. She lives in Havana and it was a real treat to see her in the State Department today asking, yeah. So sorry to interrupt, but I think Liz hasn't arrived yet. Oh. I think if we could do Leo first, I'll give you some. Oh, okay, sorry about that. That was just a tease. We'll go to Leo first. Leonardo Flores is a Venezuelan political analyst. He holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Maryland. And he left a master's program at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy to work at the Venezuelan embassy in the United States. He was working there as a political and media analyst following his nearly a decade at the embassy. He was on staff actually when a Code Pink three years ago occupied those offices. He was born in Venezuela. He maintains close ties to social movements there that have transformed the country over the past 20 years. Welcome, Leonardo Flores. Thank you so much, Marci, and thank you everyone at Code Pink. It's really nice to see so many familiar faces on here tonight. I really love Code Pink Congress. I think it's such a great initiative to get people not just informed about what's going on all over the world, but also directly into action as we do every time to finish off the night on Code Pink Congress. So I thought I would just give an update on Venezuela. I know I'm filling in kind of at the last minute for Alex Mayn who couldn't be here tonight. And hopefully I can fill his shoes. But, you know, and I hope we have time for some questions as well because I'm very happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have. But I thought I would start a little bit by just talking about, you know, the state of the dialogue between the Venezuelan government and opposition. And this is dialogue really, it's been taking place for off and on for about five years now. And let me just give you like a short recap because I think it's important to know the context, right? In 2018, it was early 2018, I think January 2018, the Venezuelan government and opposition were meeting in the Dominican Republic. And they came up with this really comprehensive agreement to, you know, everything from elections to the economy to social and political rights that would really stabilize the country and put it back on track. And they left the Dominican Republic, went back to Venezuela for one week. The idea was that they were gonna return in one week to the DR and they were just in final consultations with all the parties in Venezuela for one week. But in that interim week, you know, the Trump administration did some really nasty things. And they, for one, they threatened an oil embargo on the country and they said that they would welcome a coup. This is, you know, the agreement, draft agreement was emitted, issued on Sunday. And then in those six days between, you know, the parties returning to the Dominican Republic, the US did just enough to crater the political dialogue. And that was the first time the Trump administration, you know, sabotaged the dialogue. They would do it again in 2019. So a year and a half later, the parties met again. Once again, they were close to coming to an agreement, but that wasn't good enough for the Trump administration because that's when they posed with what the Wall Street Journal called a full economic embargo right in the middle of the talks. So it was very clear that the United States government had no interest in peace in Venezuela, had no interest in bringing stability to the country. And, you know, when Biden came into office, there were high hopes, well, maybe not high hopes, that they would take a different approach towards Venezuela, but that's not what we've seen at all. Unfortunately, they kind of have taken the same approach as the Trump administration because again, the parties, and when I say parties in this dialogue, I'm really talking about a specific sector of the Venezuelan opposition. The opposition is very divided in Venezuela. And, you know, the more moderate folks have been in constant dialogue with the Venezuelan government since 2020, the more hard winger, the hard right wingers have really just taken their cues from the US government. And so in 2021, once again, the government and opposition were in talks. They, in Mexico City this time, you may have heard of those Mexico negotiations. They came up with like a draft agreement on an agenda and on principles for further discussions. But what happened was the next month, the US extradited Alex Saab to extradited Alex Saab and held them in detention. For those of you who might not know, Alex Saab is a Venezuelan diplomat. He's a businessman and, you know, his detention, his arrest by the United States is a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. But beyond that, it was also known that his arrest would sabotage the talks because the Venezuelan government made it very clear that they meant to have Alex Saab in those negotiations. And the fact that he was being held by the United States basically would make those talks impossible. So despite that, over the next year, between August 2021 and August 2022, there were increasing kind of talks, not quite one-to-one talks between the United States and Venezuela, but there was increasing back-channel action. We saw some actions taken by the Maduro government to kind of as like an offering to the Biden administration to engage in further talks. And as part of that, the Venezuelan government decided to go back to the negotiating table despite having this red line crossed about Alex Saab and then the government and an opposition met again in November of 2022. And that was really actually promising because these talks, as a result of these talks in November 2022, the government and opposition came up with this wide-ranging plan to take $3.2 billion in funds that those of the funds that Medea mentioned at the beginning, to take those $3.2 billion that funds frozen by the United States and some European countries to release those funds and under the auspices of the UN, these funds would therefore be managed and dispersed by the UN, the money would go to improving the social situation in Venezuela, specifically to improving, refurbishing and upgrading over 2,300 schools. There would be a billion dollars towards vaccine procurement and payments to the Pan-American Health Organization Revolving Fund, a provision of treatment to cancer patients to over 60,000 patients, treatment for HIV patients, refurbishing of 21 hospitals in the National Hospital Network and upgrades to 10 maternity and children's hospitals and another billion dollars to upgrade and bolster the country's electric grid because as we've seen in the news, Venezuelans often have a lose power. Though I see the question that 3.2 billion does not include the gold that the UK is currently holding. We can get into the gold a little bit later. But all that money and the opposition, the hard-right opposition and the government agreed on how to disperse these funds and who was gonna manage it. This was back in November and it was assumed that the Biden administration would accept this agreement and would take immediate steps to alleviate the social conditions that humanitarian situation in Venezuela by releasing these funds. Instead, we're now six months later, six months have passed and these funds haven't been released. Not only that, there's no explanation from the Biden administration on why it hasn't been released. There's only speculation in the media. What we've seen in the Washington Post just had a really ugly editorial the other day. I think it was two days ago, two or three days ago. And they claim that the funds haven't been released because of unavoidable procedural and legal considerations which strikes false because what we know from the past is that the Biden administration could very easily issue an executive order directing these funds to the UN because they've done similar things in the past but it hasn't happened and then this has led to a stalling of the negotiations between the government and opposition. And what we see the analysis that you hear in the mainstream media constantly about Maduro is that, oh, he's just buying time but there's really never an explanation for what exactly he's buying time for. And in this case, it really is the other way around. It's the US government. It's the hard right opposition who are buying time because Venezuela is scheduled to have elections in 2024, presumably December 2024. And so the last thing that the opponents of the Maduro government want to see is an improvement in the lives of Venezuelans between now and December 2024 because then that's gonna prove the point that it's been the sanctions holding back the Venezuelan economy for so long. And so the US and the hard right opposition are both like they're trying to delay the disbursement of these funds as long as they can so that there's no electoral impacts. And that's really a shame because once again, it's the United States using Venezuela's civilians as kind of pawns in these games and these geopolitical games that we're playing. Instead of treating them like people who deserve money, they're really it's done as well as money. This isn't like charity that's being given to them. This is money that's been frozen overseas by the United States and by the European Union, well not the European Union, excuse me, several countries in Europe as a result of the regime change plans imposed by the Trump administration. So I think really what we're, one of the things we asked for on the advocacy day that Medea mentioned as part of the America's Policy Forum is that we went around to looking for someone to really lead in Congress on this issue and to pressure the Biden administration on this issue of the $3.2 billion. In fact, Congressman McGovern in from Massachusetts in January, he sent this really scathing letter to the Biden administration. It was an excellent letter in which he talked about these $3.2 billion but we haven't seen anything since then. So that was almost four months ago from this letter and we haven't seen any follow-up from the govern or any response from the administration. And one of the things we'd personally like to see is for someone else in Congress to really kind of take the lead on the issue of Venezuelan sanctions because the sanctions, and I've been on code in Congress before to talk about them, maybe, but I'll just briefly recap. The sanctions have caused enormous economic and social damage to the Venezuelan people, to the country of Venezuela. We're talking about a government that lost 99% of its revenues from one year to almost basically the next. And a government that used to spend something like 80% of its revenues on social spending, social investment was suddenly broke and didn't have the money to continue the levels of investment that they had achieved during the over the past 20, 15, 20 years. And that has led to a total deterioration of the healthcare system in Venezuela, lack of medicines in hospitals, lack of replacements and spare parts for medical tools, whether it's like a CAT scan or MRI machines or what have you, and the Venezuelan people are feeling it. According to a study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in just the first year of the Trump sanctions alone, 2017 to 2018, an extra 40,000 Venezuelans died. Since that time, we've had other updates saying it's been 100,000 Venezuelans. I think over the last couple of years, the situation in Venezuela has stabilized a little bit. So maybe the sanctions aren't killing as many people as they have in the past, but it's still very clear that Venezuela's healthcare system has not recovered. And even with these $3.2 billion, that would be a tremendous benefit, but it's not gonna be enough until all of the sanctions are lifted. And then I don't know how much time I have left, but I'd really like to go very briefly because some of you may have seen some news regarding Venezuela and Sitgo. So Sitgo is an oil company based here in the United States that's owned by Venezuela's national oil company, which is Beredesa PDVSA. And a judge just ruled back in March that the Guaido government, the so-called interim government of Fung Guaido in power since 2019, supposedly, obviously they actually never had actual power, but the judge ruled that the Guaido interim government exercised inappropriate and direct control over Sitgo. And that was a big, big mistake because it means that Venezuela's creditors can now go after Sitgo. And just a couple of days ago, OFAC, which is the Office for Foreign Asset Control of the Treasury Department, which is this agency that really kind of imposes and directs and controls the sanctions, it's the bureaucracy over the sanctions regime against Venezuela, they gave the go-ahead for a judge to hold an auction on Sitgo so Venezuela's creditors could recover their losses. This is really a horrible thing because Sitgo's company, that's worth billions of dollars and Venezuela has been unable to restructure loans or take on new loans, restructured debts, excuse me, or take on new loans because of the US sanctions. So basically what's happened is the United States imposed sanctions on Venezuela to such a degree that they were unable to refinance loans, restructure debts. As a result, creditors could not get paid and now they're going after Venezuela and assets in the United States and the Biden administration, then the Trump administration before that had protected Sitgo from these creditors, but now it's refusing to do so for reasons that are unknown. And now it seems like Venezuela is about to lose a huge asset, which billions of dollars more. Frankly, if this happens, it's gonna take generations for the Venezuelan economy to recover because it's just way too much money, too many assets, too many funds to be taken out of Venezuela and it's gonna take them a long time to recover. And in terms of Juan Guaido, there's another case very similar to this Sitgo case where they really messed up and that's Canoco Phillips. They had this case against Venezuela, seeking damages because Canoco Phillips was asked to leave Venezuela because they weren't really complying with the law. Unfortunately, they won a huge arbitration case at the International Center for Settlement and Investing Dispute. And I say huge, I'm talking about $8.7 billion. And one of the reasons they won such a huge award was because the Juan Guaido government, the so-called interim government, never sent lawyers to contest the case. They just refused to do so because at the heart of it, what we've seen with this Juan Guaido interim government has been an excuse really to loot Venezuela. And there's an example after example, it's not just Sitgo, Canoco Phillips, there's another company called Monomeros, which is a petro-clinical company in Venezuela, which where there was massive embezzlement as soon as the Guaido government took over. And so it's really an act of looting on a scale that's unimaginable almost. And one of the most vast acts of looting in history, perhaps. And I think I'll leave it there so that we have more time for Liz and more time for questions. Well, thank you so much, Leo. It's always such a pleasure to hear your reports because they're so thorough. And I think you cut to the chase. This is looting on a grand scale. So we'll explore that more. I don't know if Liz was able to join us from Cuba. If not, I know somebody else. She'll be on in just another a few minutes. So maybe we could take a couple of questions for Leo. Sure, sure. Medea, you have a question or Cole or I have one. I had a question about that, the gold, the money that the UK had, the two billion I think, is that part of this other money that you're talking about or is that separate and what's happening with that? From my understanding, it's that it's separate. So among the funds that were frozen, Venezuelan funds that were frozen during this Guaido kind of coup attempt were $1.2 billion in gold bullion that Venezuela had held in the UK that it had actually been in the process of returning to that as well as just in case something like this might happen. But unfortunately, there's been a court case in the UK. It's still ongoing. The last legal finding was that the gold belongs to the Guaido interim government, but it no longer exists. So these are funds that are still in limbo. As far as I understand, this is not money that it would be included in the $3.2 billion funds. Leo, what's happened to the Venezuelan embassy? The Venezuelan embassy, after Code Pink and other groups defended it, it really hasn't been used in Washington DC. And I think at one point I went there along with a journalist friend to try to get consular services and it was funny because I think someone's phones was tapped because for the first time in a long time there was a secret service outside of the embassy the day I decided to go and a secret service guy came up to me and said, well, what are you doing here? And I said, well, I wanna get my passport renewed. And he said, oh no, this isn't a real embassy. And that was caught on tape and that was just, I mean, that basically gets to the root of it, right? It's not a real embassy. It hasn't been since 2019. It's just sitting there. It was taken away from Guaido's people and given to another faction of the opposition. And beyond the fact of what an embassy does, which is really handle relations between the two governments, that also is another role, which is that of consular affairs. And right now you have hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the United States who don't have a consulate. And this is actually really serious because if you're deported, if you have any sort of legal problem, you can generally appeal to your embassy for aid, but in the case of Venezuelans they have nobody to appeal to. And that's something else that we're really trying to push on. And we're actually trying to organize the Venezuelan diaspora around this because it's something that harms us on a day-to-day basis. The scandal is really. So my question is what's happening regionally in terms of relations with Venezuela? What's going on with Brazil, with Colombia, with some of the more progressive leaning countries in Latin America right now, Mexico. So Brazil and Colombia, prior to their recent elections, we have Lula who won the elections in Brazil, Gustavo Petro who won in Colombia. They were really at the forefront of these cool attempts against Venezuela, really trying to undermine them a little government any way they could. This is the Bolsonaro and the Bolsonaro government in Brazil and then the Colombian government as well. But since the election of Lula and Petro, we've seen a total 180. Venezuela, I think Gustavo Petro, the Colombian president has been in Venezuela, I think four or five times now, just since being inaugurated in January, ties are deepening and that's really a good thing because we're talking about millions of Venezuelans who live in Colombia and also millions of Colombians who live in Venezuela. This is a border that gets crossed on a daily basis by some folks because you might have family on the other side of the border, you might go to school on the other side of the border and the clash between the two governments really made all of that difficult. Right now we're seeing such a deepening of relationships, a deepening of the business, the commerce as well. And in fact, Brazil is saying now, within the last week or two, that they want to see Venezuela rejoin Mercosur. Mercosur is kind of like a commerce and trade union. It's really almost like what the European Union was before it became a really political body. And that's really kind of the idea behind Mercosur is that they would grow beyond trade and become a political body. That is all was kicked out of Mercosur during the Spiloh era and now is being asked to rejoin. So the fact that we have progressives in Brazil and Columbia has been huge for the Maduro government. It's really been helpful. And you mentioned Mexico as well. Mexico never went along with the Guaido thing. And that was huge for Venezuela. Mexico has been a great ally. Amba has been a great ally to the Venezuelan people because it's understood from the start that the Guaido thing was a total farce. So the change, this kind of new progressive tide that we're seeing in Latin America is really, really benefiting the Venezuelan people. Thank you so much. And we'll have more questions for you in a little bit. Leonardo Flores, political analyst on Latin America. We are now going to go to our guests from Cuba and Medea. The floor is yours for the introduction. Yes, thank you so much, Liz, for joining us. I know you've had a very, very long day, just like you've had a very, very long week since you've been here. Liz is coming to us from her home in Havana. She is a Cuban journalist and presenter of the War on Cuba, for which she won a Gracie Award, apart from her journalism and filmmaking with Belly of the Beast. And if you haven't seen Belly of the Beast, maybe Maha, you can put the link there because they are fantastic pieces that they produce. She is also a dedicated anti-racist and feminist. And Liz, I think you and I will be in conversation for about 10 minutes if that's okay with you. Yeah, of course. To one, welcome you. We've got over 100 people who are on this and we then use it for radio so it'll get out far and wide. And we just had Leonardo Flores, who you know, who gave us an update on what's happening around Venezuela. And I wanted to start by asking you, was it today that you were in the State Department and what did you ask the spokesperson and how did he react? Yeah, we get there in the afternoon today trying to ask some questions about why Cuba is in the terrorist list, in the state-sponsored terrorism list from the United States. Because nobody in the Biden administration wants to give us interviews to talk about nothing. So we try to figure out and we get there and we ask about these recent talks that U.S. officials have been having with Cuban officials about terrorism and how they are cooperating each other against the terrorism. And I asked him the hypocrisy to, well, if you say that U.S. sponsored terrorism list is a state-sponsored terrorism, why are you working with them against terrorism? That's not have many sayings. So he obeyed the questions, he didn't respond. So I'm trying to do a follow-up question, trying to, they give me an examples about how Cuba is sponsored terrorism. And he say, basically, that is because Cuba has a record about human rights abuse. But the human rights abuse is in terrorism. But I want to ask more, but he chilled me out. Well, you did a great job. You did a great job. I need to be more persistent. Well, he didn't know how to answer because the question was so clearly showing the hypocrisy that if the U.S. puts Cuba on a state-sponsored terrorism list, which is only four countries in the world, it's Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria, then how is it that the U.S. has these, quote, nice talks with the U.S. about how they can both work together to combat terrorism? In any case, it's great to have you here, Liz, because we went with you on Friday through the halls of Congress, and it was wonderful to go into some of the offices where people know nothing about Cuba and yet they're making Cuba policy and they would say things about what is like in Cuba and you would look at them and saying, have you been to Cuba? It's nothing like that. And it turns out that some of these high-level staff people in key offices that do make Cuba policy have never been there, and yet they think they know what Cuba is like and Liz really put them in their place. And one of the issues, oh, I'm sorry, did you want to say something about that? No, because I was talking with the Iran there about these issues, these- The Iran, this is an expert on Cuba, yeah. I was speaking with him today. We talk about there is a Cuba that exists in the heads of these policymakers. And the other hand, that's the real Cuba that I live since ever since I was born. So it's very difficult to have a real conversation about Cuba and policy, Cuba policy, US policy towards Cuba because they can get it because number one, they have never been there. Number two, they don't speak the language of the people, the most of them. Number three, they have this so strong idea in their heads about what is Cuba and what is not. And they get so lost because they are repeating the same spiritual sins ever. Then it's because I'm also that it's really that shocked me, that surprised me a lot that they think that when you asked about Obama era with Cuba, they said, no, no, no, no, the Obama era was a fail. And the Obama era just was like, the normalization process just take like two years. And you're calling the normalization process a fail of two years and you're not calling the fail your policy towards here during 60 years. That's crazy. And they say they always want to move forward to another topic because they don't want to talk about Obama era because in their head is a failure, but they don't want to talk. They don't want to move forward. They want to move backward to the things that exist in Cuba before all these things. And that's crazy because they don't have any idea how impacts the policy, the US policy towards Cuba and Cuban people. And also because it's pretty hard for them they always talk about how we can like help the private sector entrepreneurs in Cuba. But that's a lie. They are not supporting nobody. They just supporting the entrepreneurs in Cuba just when they talk in words, but they don't have like they are not coming with real action that really helps the entrepreneur. They also mentioned these human rights abuses, but that's hypocritical because they have reintroduced with other countries that have worse human rights problems than Cuba, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Colombia and so on. That is the biggest allies of the United States that countries has really problems with the human rights abuses. United States itself have real problems with human rights abuses here. So everything is alive. Well, yes. And for anybody who doesn't know the background when Obama came in towards the end of his second term, he began the process of normalization of relations with Cuba. And there was a flowering of private enterprise small, private enterprise in Cuba. The economy was flourishing and many US businesses and Cuban-Americans who supported their relatives in Cuba were extremely happy with the possibilities of investing and the tourism was tremendous, even cruise ships that were stopping in Cuba. And when Trump came in and put a stop to all of that, there was a great belief that Biden would go back to the Obama policies. But now we see that it is really the Trump-Biden policies because he has continued what Trump started and made life very, very difficult for the Cuban people. And Liz, the only thing the US seems to care about is the problem of migration. This is a problem for the Biden administration because what is it about 300,000 Cubans in the last two years have come to the United States? A huge number. Can you talk about the migration and why these people are coming here and what the US could do if they wanted to stem the migration? Yeah, at the end, the migration is like a boomerang effect because as I said in democracy now, we are talking about economical refugees, no political refugees because United States have been weighing economic war against Cubans in the 60s. So as you see, the people that you see in the borders right now are Cuban are trying, they are living in their countries in order to pursue the American dream because the situation in Cuba is so bad, it's a crisis after crisis. This has been my entire life. So but the situation around is really critical. And this is a funny thing because democratist fans that they care about migration but because the migration is when you have this crisis that's like a huge problem for the United States because you have to do something with these people. That's why they are sitting with the Cuban governments to talk about migrations because they want to stop the migration but for that the best thing that they can do is to lift the sanctions against Cuba because when the Obama era, the migrations were so low that nobody wants to come to the United States. You have to have like a life project in your own country. Nobody wants to live their homes, their families, their friends in order to get a country that they don't know nobody or they don't have family. They want to start for a scratch. So also they want to talk about migration now but they have been closed the embassy for almost eight years now. And there is a lot of people that waiting for a reunification process. There are people that are get tired to wait because they get any solution for that people in eight years. So they get tired and they go through Central America and the United States in an illegal way to enter to the country. So now our crisis, the crisis that have been provoked for so many years that have been worse since the Trump administration came to the power and by then doesn't do anything to change the situation have been impacting in U.S. policy because they have so much people coming all the time that they need to stop them. So we are trying to explain that the best things of the best you can do in order to stop the migration, to stop the people coming, is lifting the sanctions and don't do nothing because Cuba doesn't want money from the United States. Cuba doesn't want help. Cuba just want the United States leave us alone in order to build a better country when Joe people or the most of them can build a life-threatening. Magie, that was a good question. I just want to ask a follow-up question for Leo, which is can you mention an initiative in Congress that's linking Venezuela and Cuba and the migration issue? Yeah, so right now representatives Escobar and Grahalva are in the process of, they've drafted a dear colleague letter and they're sending it around Congress, calling on the Biden administration to lift the Trump-imposed sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela and reassess all broad-based sanctions regimes due to their roles as key drivers of the current migration surge. So it's very clear that there has been a link between migration from Venezuela, from Cuba, from Nicaragua as well because of the sanctions. And finally, we're seeing Congress take note because this is something, an issue that's really hurting Biden politically and it's an internal issue, right? This issue of migration. And instead of taking the very easy step of offering sanctions relief, which would have almost an immediate impact on the situations in Cuba and Venezuela, he's doubling down on the sanctions and on the state's departure of terror designation. It's really a shame. I think at this point, maybe we could take a few questions from the chat, Magie and Cole, you can pose them. And then in a few minutes, we will conduct our capital calling party. There is a bill introduced by Senator Klobuchar, the Freedom to Export to Cuba Act, which we wanna support tonight and call our Congress members, our senators rather, and ask them to co-sponsor this legislation. And then later, we have Vincent de Stefano from the Julian Assange Defense Committee who wants to make an announcement about World Press Day. So please do stay with us. We'll take a few more questions and then go to the rest of our agenda. So, Magie and Cole, if you can take a few questions. Yeah, I'll start one first and then Cole. Somebody is asking about the impact of COVID and how it led to a shutdown of tourism where Cuba was getting a lot of its foreign income. Has there been a, what is the recovery of tourism like these days? Well, the recovery is just below. And you have to know that before COVID hit the country, Trump have been hitting the country and the tourism in the island. Trump was the first one to cut the tourism to come to Cuba where he cuts the cruise ships coming to Cuba. He cuts these autorizations like steps or special visas on their US citizens can travel to Cuba because it's not legal for US citizens come to Cuba as a tourist just like that. So the first things that hit Cuba tourism business was Trump and after that was of course, as everybody knows the COVID-19 situation. So the most of them right now, Cuba start to recover themselves but it's a process that is really slow because the COVID-19 just didn't just cut the tourism in Cuba was around the world and provoked like economical crisis in many countries because many enterprise have to shorten down. So people are no financial in a situation that they can travel whatever they can imagine if we receive travel around the world. Maybe people goes to travel but it's like a quinear that nobody is going to travel to the other side to the world like Cuba for open for go on vacations in terms that maybe is quite expensive in this situation. So we're starting to receive in tourist of course from Canada and Europe as our countries but now it's not only COVID and Trump when this by the administration putting and they're talking about Esther is there's a regulation that punish European citizens who travel to Cuba? If you don't travel to Cuba, if you are a European citizen, you can travel freely to the United States, you don't need a visa because you have Esther. Well, now if you are a European citizen and you travel to Cuba, you are not able to go to US freely. So you need to pay a visa, ask for a visa and this is a process that takes long. So if you are a European citizen, maybe you think twice if you want to go to Cuba. So it's something that is continually attacking the sectors that Cuba receives their biggest incomes. I have a question for Liz. What kind of reception did you get? I mean, when people talk to a staff or members of Congress, what was the reaction to hearing like your personal approach? Well, I don't know because I'm, I started to understand how the staffers in the Congress works. So it's new for me. They seems nice, but also they seems like lost. Because like, what are you talking about? What is this process that I didn't know? I haven't hear about that. So I think that the most sad thing for me and most frustrating is I realized that Cuba is not a prior topic for them. It's not a priority for any of them. The people that supposedly will be able to help to Cuba is not a priority. I'm not so curious to risky. Maybe they have like a private conversations with me but if I ask an interview, then most of them are going to say no. Because half a political position about or a critical position about Cuba policy that makes you look not so good in the Congress because they have this mentality that they have been explaining to me that if you support, leave the sanctions against Cuba, you are supporting Cuban government and nobody wants to be linked with the Cuban government because it's linked with the Communism and they seem that they look bad and whatever that's the mentality, US mentality that works in the Congress. So the most of the time they just talk, they just get me in. Of course, they are choking because all Cuban Americans, they're watching, talking about Cuba and their wife and I'm so black. So it's confusing. I'm female, I'm black. So I'm not quite similar to Marco Rubio Menendez or whatever Cuban Americans speak about Cuba. So it's new, I don't know, it's a new one. They're trying to figure out how to do with all this information. Senator, you mentioned Senator Menendez, you had a conversation with one staffer in the Progressive Caucus who said, it really comes down to Biden not wanting to upset him. Senator Menendez from New Jersey who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. So he's very powerful. We need a lot of pressure on him. I don't know, let's see, it's 5.51 my time. Maybe we should move on to the Capitol calling party. I think Cole had a question. For Cole, one more question and then we'll take it back. It's okay with me to go to the calling party but if you wanna ask a question, I would like to know more about the secondary sanctions. The one of the most serious sanctions on Cuba is the state sponsor of terrorism list. And that, I guess it prevents other countries, companies and other countries from trading with Cuba if they also wanna trade with the United States. Liz, what is your understanding of this and its impact on the Cuban people, the Cuban economy? It's huge, it's the centers. I always say that because nobody wants to do business with terrorism and that's the reality. Nobody, if you are or not, if the United States say that, yes, I'm doing business with you and going to receive punish for the United States because I'm doing business with terrorism. And it's really difficult because in fact, the U.S. terrorism list do the same things that the sanctions with the Cuba. But the thing is that you have this for, you have the sanctions like in a double way, like there's reinforcing the sanctions. The terrorist list, the things that they do at the end is reinforcing the sanctions. And that makes our life even more difficult than I am. And now there is a congresswoman that want to become the, they want to take away from the presidents the way they take away a country from this terrorism. They want to make a law like hands bottom law. And that will be really bad for Cuba because it wasn't so easy like presidents say, okay, you're out of the list and that's all. So I don't know about the future, but it seems like quite difficult that in the near future, Cuba and the United States have their relationships than the sanctions have been lifting. So the thing that I recommend everybody, if you like Medea does, if you have, if you know what is your congressperson or your senator, please knock the door and say, okay, I'm a border. So I need to write, you don't have to write to know that I have this concern about Cuba and this is my position. Because it's a thing that Cuba and America have been doing since always. I know that you have United States have a lot of problems and you have a lot of things to do activism, but if you have time, that will be great. We will make time. Thank you so much. Let's unmute and thank our guests. Liz, Olivia, Oliva Fernandez and Leonardo Flores. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. Gracias. Thank you. We're going to go to our polling party in just a minute. I want to give Vincent a minute to share what's going on with World Press Day. Thank you so much, Marcy. Tomorrow, May 3rd is World Press Freedom Day. This was something that was put together by the UN back in 1948. And although we focus primarily on Julian Assange, it's sad to note that every four days a journalist is killed for doing their job. So we have actions that are happening across the country that you can take part of where you are. I would encourage anybody here in Los Angeles to join us tomorrow at 4 p.m. at Hollywood and Highland. Well, we will be showcasing those journalists who have paid the ultimate price for the simple act of telling the truth to the people. They paid for it with their lives. And it is important as Joe Biden said at the Correspondents' Dinner. With utter hypocrisy, journalism is not a crime. And yet they continue to prosecute Julian Assange. But this is for all journalists. So I will post in the website the event page for Assange Defense. And you can find actions. My good friend Ann Wilcox is in here. She has one that is taking place in D.C. We have them in Chicago. We have them in Boston. We have them in New York. So please find a place and stand up and speak out for journalism before it's too darn late. Thank you, Marcy. And by the way, I really like your haircut. That's very nice. All right, let's move on to our capital calling party. That was Vincent de Stefano of the Julian Assange Defense Committee. We are gonna be calling about a bill that has been introduced by Senator Klobuchar. It is S, period 653. And I think Ma'a is putting the script or has already put the script in the chat. We know the number. Well, hopefully you have the number in your phone for your senator or your senators, I should say. If not, you know, the general switchboard number is 202-224-3121. The bill is S, what is the bill? S.653 and you know, the script is high. My name is so-and-so. I'm a constituent in your area. My zip code is please co-sponsor and vote for S.653, the freedom to export to Cuba Act because it would eliminate legal barriers preventing the United States from doing business in Cuba. It would also boost U.S. exports in our Cubans greater access to U.S. goods. So let's go. Ma'a, maybe you can put some music, some of John Douglas's terrific music on and we'll make some calls. The next five to 10 minutes. Thanks so much for making those calls. It's so important. And when Ma'a, thank you Ma'a Khan who does all the tech for us and is so fabulous. She'll be sending out some notes about the call tonight with the link to the recording. And then maybe by that time we can get a link from Leo to that letter or how we can best support urging our house members to sign on to this letter to lift the sanctions on Venezuela and give them back their money. We also want you to continue to urge your senators to co-sponsor the Freedom to Export to Cuba Act. With that, I just wanna invite you all to join us tomorrow for our general coalition meeting, the Peace and Ukraine Coalition. We're meeting at 1230 Pacific, 330 Eastern and we'll be organizing into working groups to really get down to business to challenge and defund this war on Ukraine that is so very dangerous and presents a grave nuclear risk. So if you're interested and you're available, please do join us tomorrow for the Peace and Ukraine Coalition. If you have any questions about anything I've said, you can email me at marci, M-A-R-C-Y, at codepink.org. At this point, I wanna thank everybody involved who came who showed up. Thank you for showing up. And I wanna thank the Dia Benjamin Cole Harrison, Mahakan, CodePink for bringing us this program and ask, I almost forgot, ask that you consider donating to CodePink because we do have expenses. It does cost money for us to do this, the first and third Tuesday of the month. And we would really appreciate it if you appreciate it, if you would contribute whatever you can. Okay, so Maha has put the donation link in the chat. There we go. With that, I just ask that you join us again for the third Tuesday of the month. We'll let you know what's happening before it happens. And to let others know about CodePink Congress and one other ask, and that is if CodePink radio is not broadcasting in your community, please ask your college or community radio station to air it. Again, they can email me, Marci M-A-R-C-Y at codepink.org. It's a great program. And this program today brings you all the voices or some of the key voices from the Latin America and Caribbean Policy Forum that was held last weekend, DC, last weekend. Okay, with that, I wanna say good night and thank you again. Take care.