 Alright, I got once again, welcome everyone. My name is Leonardo de Flores. So let's talk about this designation of Cuba on the state sponsors of terrorism list. So basically, this list is something that the United States applies to countries that quote unquote repeatedly provide support for acts of international terrorism. And what it amounts to is a set of sanctions that restrict us foreign assistance that impose a ban on defense and exports and sales. Restrictions on control on controls over experts of what they call dual use items. And then kind of in, right at the end they add miscellaneous and financial and other restrictions and it's under that category of miscellaneous that we see most of the negative impacts applied towards Cuba because of course, there's nothing else that designation. The other sanctions that come come about with this designation already kind of covered among the embargo and the 243 sanctions applied by Trump during his administration. So Cuba was and if I'm generally speak too quickly during these things don't worry about it if you're trying to take notes because a lot of this information isn't one pager that we're going to share with you in a little bit. And as we all know, Cuba's addition to the SSOT list came about in the waning days of the Trump administration, it was politically motivated and has no national security justification. And it's actually having a really negative impact on the Cuban people. And it's been a bit difficult actually to tease away those impacts from, say the embargo itself or other type from sanctions but it's been three years now and now we kind of have a better idea of what the SST designation is doing to Cuba. And really, when we look at the pretext given by the United States government for including Cuba on the list it's it's absurd, because they included Cuba because of what they said was a refusal to Columbia's request to extradite 10 members of the ELN, the National Liberation Army, who were living in Havana, and because quote unquote, Cuba harbors US fugitive. Well, when we pick apart this claim it's it's really actually easy to pick apart because first of all, the only reason that these members of the ELN were in Havana was because of Pete's talks that Cuba was hosting between the Colombian government and the and the ELN negotiators were granted safe haven as part of the peace process in fact Cuba and other countries that took part in Norway was one of the other grantor countries. They signed an agreement prior to the peace process taking place, where they would they specifically said that they would grant safe haven to the negotiators to ensure the sanctity of the peace process. And because of this kind of willingness to create a help in this process of peace for Colombia one of the longest standing if not the longest standing civil conflict in the hemisphere. Cuba was punished by the Trump administration. And the State Department under Biden. Well, first of all, we thought that Biden would immediately remove Cuba from this list when he came into when he came into office but that hasn't been the case. And in November of last year the State Department in its country reports on terrorism. They had this little blurb about Cuba, and they themselves admitted that Cuba's extradition refusal was due to peace negotiation protocols exactly what I've explained, and also they admitted that Colombia had subsequently dropped the extradition requests. In fact, Colombian President Gustavo Petro characterized this request as a betrayal of previous agreements signed in the form of protocols with Colombia, Cuba and Norway. So there it goes the major justification for this Cuba's placement on the SSOT list, because Cuba no longer wants these ELN leaders extradited and because they themselves have said that there's, you know, it wasn't justified in the first place. And then regarding this issue of US Cuba fugitives well one of the things that we've seen is in this letter to President Biden written by over 100 lawyers and equal scholars. They note that failing to extradite US citizens on criminal charges has never been used as a justification for placing Cuba, or excuse me for placing a country on the SSOT list, aside from Cuba. And furthermore they say that Cuba's issuance of asylum to these US fugitives does not meet the statutory definition for sponsoring terror laid out by the three laws that define international terror. So by no means within the law within the facts. Is there any sort of rational explanation justification for Cuba on this being on this list of state sponsors of terror it was purely political and vindictive move, mood, move, excuse me. Furthermore, you know when we're talking about this with people I think one of the things we have to emphasize is that the Cuban government throughout 2023 engaged in all sorts of cooperation with the United States. They cooperated on law enforcement there was a there were talks with us on law enforcement in January 2023 of Cuban border guard delegation came to visit the United States in March 2023. And Cuba in the United States held anti terror measure discussions in April 2023. So, would the United States really do all of this with a real sponsor of terror. Clearly the answer is no, and clearly you know there's no justification for keeping Cuba on the list. And when we're talking about doing advocacy around SSOT. I think we can break down the impacts of Cuba's design, designation to kind of three broad categories. One is the national security argument. And, you know, I think some of us might say you know that this list is illegitimate illegitimate in the first place but I don't know that that's an argument that's going to go very far with the Democrats and Congress that we're trying to convince. But what might go far is quoting former deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes he was he served under the Obama administration. And right after Trump placed Cuba back on the SSOT list. He said that Cuba's inclusion and I quote risks delegitimizing what should be a tool that is used to punish actual state sponsors of terrorism. The second category, broadly defined is the impact that it's having on Cubans. You know, the Cuban deputy foreign minister was in town I think it was in either in September of or October of last year and he held a meeting at the Institute for Policy Studies here in DC. And he said that 30 financial institutions pocket banks lenders that sort of thing. They left Cuba within weeks of the SSOT listing. And that has basically severely limited the banking options for Cubans and organizations working in Cuba. And on top of that, one of the impacts of this SSOT list is that citizens from more than 40 countries traveling to Cuba are then become ineligible for us visa waivers. So this means that say if you're a citizen of the European Union and you want to go to Cuba and afterwards you want to say go to Disneyland. Well, before it used to be pretty easy because you could just go to Cuba and then have your visa waiver and fly and get to the United States but now rather than having a visa waiver you have to go through this very long process through the US consulate in your country and where your visa may or may not get denied. And so, if you're faced with that prospect, the really the easiest thing if you want to visit the United States is to just not visit Cuba. And we're seeing a very direct impact on Cuban tourism, tourism, which is a major employer in the private sector. Other impacts are that Cubans living abroad have had their bank accounts frozen and transfers blocked including remittances. You've had companies refuse to sell medical supplies to Cuba. You have you've had entrepreneurs and the private sector in Cuba, facing obstacles to financing and reduced demand and we've had e-commerce platforms having stopped offering offering services. So widespread impacts mostly revolving around financial issues or the tourism issue. Finally, the third kind of broad impact category we can talk about is the impact on the United States itself. Well, one of the things we've seen in the last couple of years and we've seen it a lot on my news is that the number of Cubans coming from the number of people coming from Cuba to the United States migrants has increased significantly. Well, in the first year after the SSOT designation, CBP encounters of Cubans at the US-Mexico border increased by 274%. That was just in the first year alone. And then on another impact on the United States is that US NGOs that are doing work in Cuba have had their funds frozen and shipments of humanitarian supplies blocked. So this is work that has already kind of cleared a lot of hurdles regarding the embargo and then this extra sanction that's slapped on them makes their jobs more difficult. And finally, you know, it's not just us here in the United States that are talking about removing Cuba from the list and pressuring the Biden administration to remove Cuba from the list. There's massive international support for this, starting with 18 former Latin American and Caribbean presidents and prime ministers who wrote to President Biden about removing Cuba from the list. As I mentioned before, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, he's repeatedly insisted on removing Cuba from the list, as has AMLO, the president of Mexico, Brazilian president Nulada Silva, Chilean president Gabriel Boric, the EU foreign policy chief, José Borrell. Even the British ambassador to Cuba called the designation deeply unfair. In fact, Buddy of the Beast came out with a new video about this very issue about the international support for removing Cuba from the list. I'll post the link in the chat in case you all haven't seen it. So what are we asking for Congress? Well, we want them to do more. And to do more, we really should first recognize what they've already done on this issue. Because there's been four congressional letters at least that have mentioned removing Cuba from the SOT list. The first one came December 2021. About two years ago, a little bit more, when 114 members of Congress, basically the majority of the Democrats in the House called for lifting sanctions on Cuba called for a better, more humane policy towards Cuba and for engagement and for removing Cuba from the SOT list. And then in May 2023, there was a letter about the impact of sanctions on migration that called the designation, the designation being Cuba's inclusion on the SOT list as quote unquote baseless. And then finally, just in this past couple of weeks, we've had two more letters one, a letter in January congratulations to all the folks in Massachusetts who worked so hard on this, because the majority of the Massachusetts congressional delegation wrote to President Biden specifically on this issue, and among the other things they called it a very vindictive policy. And we'll have we have links to that letter on our website so you can take a look because it has really excellent arguments for removing Cuba from the list. And then finally, I think it was last week, Steve Cohen, a representative Democrat from Tennessee, also wrote to President Biden calling for Cuba to be removed from the list. So for these folks who have already kind of done something, we're going to ask them to do more. We're going to thank them, of course, and we're going to ask them to do more. And then for the rest of the Democrats, we really want them to pressure President Biden in a significant way to remove Cuba from the list, because basically it all comes down to a broken promise from him. He promised he would go back to the Obama policy of engagement when he was running in 2020. And then his incoming administration pledged to Congress that it would start the process of removing Cuba from the list, even telling members that the review was already ongoing. But last month the intercept reported that all these promises weren't kept, and that the process of removing Cuba from the list hadn't even begun. And I mentioned this intercept article, but it actually had a very significant error because it said that there was some sort of six month process for removing Cuba from the list. That's actually not true. President Biden could remove Cuba from the list in as little as 45 days. And that comes from Congressional Research Service and what's actually written into law. He basically would have to inform Congress today that in 45 days he's removing Cuba from the list because over the last six months Cuba has not supported terrorism in any way, which is obviously patently true, of course, that Cuba has not supported terrorism. So the White House is dragging its feet, the State Department is dragging its feet, and we're really trying to push for Cuba to be removed as quickly as possible because as we know as we get closer and closer to the elections, this is going to become a taller and taller task. I think I'll end there with an issue of the impacts of the SOTI designation. If you have questions about that in particular, please say that for the end, because I want to switch it over now to Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, co-founder of Asedda, and she's going to talk about some of the best practices for contacting your member of Congress. Hi. Thank you, Leo. I'm really sorry I'm quite rushed. I thought you were going to be shorter, Leo, and I was going to be able to leave for another webinar that I have to speak at. So I'm sorry to be quick here, but we have so many people on who are so good at this. I see Lisa Vellante, I see Marilyn McKenna, and many others who do lots and lots of lobbying. And in fact, what I have to say is, do as I say, not as I do, because I think a key thing for lobbying is to try to have a good relationship with your representatives. I certainly don't have that when it comes to mine. In Frederica Wilson in Florida, who is my representative, I finally had to run after her down the hall to try to get her to talk. She was more interested in what hat she was going to wear than the people suffering in Cuba. And Rick Scott, who is my senator in Florida, I just got approached by the police today in Washington that I'm going to be banned from his office for an entire year. So this is, it's not easy to be lobbying, especially when you have people like Marco Rubio and Rick Scott as your representatives, who are absolutely terrible, but assuming that you have somebody in Congress who is not that bad, or you can claim other people because you're important too. Do you have kids that live somewhere? Do you have parents that live somewhere? Were you born somewhere else? You could claim other representatives as your representative. I live part time in Washington DC, so I have no senator. So all of those senators are my senators. So let's not be too restrictive about who represent us. But it is important to try to have a relationship with your representative and your senators. Most of the time when we do lobbying, we're not able to see them directly. We see them more at town halls or public events. But to actually get a meeting with your senator or representative, you either have to have a very influential group of people in your community or be a big donor. If you've cultivated a relationship, then you're doing it right. Meetings I find with Congress people, oftentimes you have to go with representatives of various organizations and be a coalition that they think is a significant voting group for them to agree to meet with you. Otherwise, you're meeting with the staff. If you're in the home district, nowadays you can meet by Zoom with the staff in DC if you want the foreign policy person how to get the meeting. Oftentimes there's a form on the website. I find they rarely answer the forms on the website. Then you have to go to the next thing which is to call their office. You can go to house.gov or senate.gov to find information about your senator. But you can also just call the switchboard 20224 4131 to be connected with anybody in Congress and call their office and say, if you don't know who you want to speak to who is the person that works on foreign policy issues. I find going through the scheduler. I usually don't get a meeting going directly to the person who does the foreign policy work. It's easier to get that meeting. As I said, some could be on Zoom and some could be in person in their, in their home district and some can be in person in Washington DC. And I hope there will be people coming to DC more often to do this advocacy work. Once you do get that meeting, it's important to be prepared to do your homework to know what they have said on this issue to be ready to make your case in a very concise way. Always good to have a personal story to tell, but don't go on too long. What I have found in these meetings is that our people want to talk and talk and talk and not give time to ask questions of the person we're meeting with. Oftentimes the person we're meeting with doesn't want to talk. They just want to represent their boss and not compromise themselves by saying very much. But you want to push them to actually be the one to talk to give you some information. Stay on the agenda. Have your main talking points. Make sure you know who is going to speak to what issue. And, and have a clear ask what is it that you're calling for now Leo gave us some of the asks. So obviously we will have those. And then the issue also really important is the follow up. Who did you meet with thanking them what were the issues raised that maybe they didn't know about that you could send them new information about. And those are the basic things I would say is the relationship building. If you are able to do that and stomach. Some of these people who have such a horrible position when it comes to Cuba. Thank you. Thanks so much for the I know you have to run. But thank you so much for your time. I think that was helpful. Let me pass it on over to Natasha co founder of a city. I'm hoping everyone can hear me okay. And then my connection holds up. Saludos from from Havana. If for some reason my connection goes out they will hop and say you all know so I'm just going to follow up a little bit to what both. Yeah and Leo went over which is the background and what to do with that background now and we are channeling that on January 24th into an advocacy day. For Congress and and for the White House but specifically we're really trying to get our members educated informed and activated around this issue. But the White House know that they're expecting that President Biden will be either informing them or acting on his own to remove Cuba from this list. Certainly, by the end of his first term. We recognize this an election year but this is something that's often been done kind of in the shadows and there's no reason that this couldn't couldn't be done now despite Senator. Secretary of State Blinken's statement to. Congress of a few months ago to the contrary that. They weren't reviewing I had any intentions of removing Cuba from the list which is precisely why it's really important that we raise our voices on this and so I'm going to share my screen with you all to show. What the asset is kind of digital and in person advocacy day. Looks like I'm hoping everyone can see my screen here. So on the 24th what we want is just a wave of phone calls and emails to members of Congress. First as a constituent because we know that that's the voice that congressional offices most listen to as a constituent you notifying your member that this is an issue that's important to you. That you want them to be educated about and that you expect them to take action on even if they're not on a key committee. They're likely a member of a caucus that's important whether it's the democratic caucus or. Farm or agricultural caucus or trade or banking or any of these have. Some type of jurisdictional authority over issues related to Cuba and some of the sanctions and or legal restrictions. So on our website this is just or the link has been shared in the chat as well. There's a couple of ways to get to our SSOT kind of landing page. But right at the top you'll see here our digital toolkit space. So on the 24th. If you are in DC or you can make it to DC. We really encourage in person meetings for the reasons that Medea spoke about. It's really important to be able to build those kind of relationships with your congressional offices with the member directly person preferably but if not certainly with key legislative staffers. And then while you're on the hill you can also just take a moment to go visit other offices even if they're not your representatives. To let them know how you feel about this issue. We really also want members senators to be. Brought into this conversation we've seen historically. A lot of our activism and advocacy work being focused on the house for various reasons but we also know that the Senate plays a significant role. A number of senators have reached out to the White House specifically on this issue. Their senators and key states whose constituencies are really interested in shifting our policy around Cuba whether it's for trade purposes and for expert purposes. What travel tourists for. For tourism purposes whatever it may be. And so looking at kind of a statewide statewide representatives as senators is really important to also get them educated and engaged on this on a landing page here you'll see your SS OT toolkit. There's a few buttons advocacy education communications. These are different resources for you so if you are education page will take you to where we'll have like a background. A one page backgrounder. And I believe it's up here here's the one pager so this is you can print this you can leave this with the staffer if you're doing an in person visit you can download it and email it as an attachment. If you're sending staffers a direct message just as something that you leave with them around SS OT and so that they have kind of a reference sheet. You can just also use it as a reference point for yourself if you just feel like you need some additional talking points. You'll also notice on the website here that there is some just background information as well on our education page on our advocacy page. This is where you'll find all of the take action button so sending a message to the White House directly sending a message to your member of Congress when you click on here. Like you right here you'll be able to find your member of Congress once you fill out this form it'll automatically tell you who your member of Congress and your two senators are and it'll send them an automatic message. The same with the White House. There is a little exception here for the. I think Natasha is breaking up. I don't know if it's just for me but reason I mentioned earlier about the recent letter that was sent by a number of members of the Massachusetts delegation. This is. Sorry, you're okay. You were just logging for a second. I thought you had got disconnected, but you're good. Sorry about that. Do you want to email? Oh, sure. Why not? Yeah, I can take over if you let me see your screen. Sorry. Sorry about that. Oh, no problem. One second. Let me just pull up the asset a website so you can go through it. Okay. Can you see my screen? I think so. All right. So we were on the take action toolkit. Natasha went through the advocacy button or the education button. And then when we were on the advocacy button, if I'm not mistaken, right? So here we have several ways we can take action. I think Natasha went through this first one, sending a message to your members of Congress. Of course, we have a way to send the message to President Biden. The content of these letters is similar, but not exactly the same. I think we're kind of, you know, tailoring our message to our audiences, of course, and you can. Personalize the message and change it. You don't have to use our standard of that language we've already set out, but you're welcome to. Of course, this is the. The action contacting President Biden right there. There's also when we were doing force act, but we're not doing that at this moment. We have sample emails to your state legislature and to the government governor courtesy of the NNOC. These are just Google docs. We have a list of your representatives and senators foreign policy staffers. I'm going to click on that briefly just so you can take a look. It's organized alphabetically by state. You'll see the members title and their last name. So Senator Tuberville happens to be 1st. And then as you scroll, you can see the foreign policy staffer according to be gov. And this was updated last week, we're going to be continually updating this every couple of months so that you have the latest information. So this is the way as media was talking about when you're building those relationships. These are the folks you want to build them with the staffers that are dealing with foreign policy. And you'll find the phone numbers are for the offices. The staff for emails are here. And for those of you who ever come to DC. The Capitol Hill address on all the way to the right hand side. If you happen to notice an error, please just contact us at a set it and we'll fix it. And I'd say errors because we're using service called be gov to create this list. But sometimes it's not exactly right. And you'll see some staffers listed who aren't the foreign policy people and will suggest someone else. And so we'll take care of those areas and fix them on this spreadsheet as soon as we hear about them. Go back. And then let me go back to the toolkit because actually, we, I just realized there's the wrong link on the education page. If you go to a set it.org and this is you'll be able to find it in, you know, by tomorrow we'll fix this link. But if you go to a set it.org slash sot, you'll get this page, which is basically my presentation from earlier tonight. And it's got all the links for all our sources. Feel free to share this page it's got some of the videos. This is the belly of the beast video that's embedded here. We have some quotes from some of the presidents, and a way to download and print the PDF or download and share it. And this is what it looks like. This is the actual document that we're going to be leaving behind at the office that we go to on the 24th. And please feel free to share this with people that you might think are interested and of course with any staffers that you build relationships with. I think we have one more interesting feature. The zoom menu overlaps with the browser menu making it hard to navigate at times, but communications. You'll see a couple of buttons that say it's coming soon, but we do have a phone script. Under the advocacy page we had the list of the phone numbers for for your members of Congress and the staffers names. And here is a phone script just to make it a lot easier to call it so you feel comfortable calling. You know, basically, the people they have on taking the calls are the lowest of low on the total poll, but they do take copious notes, and they record every call and it and they record every email. This is much more important and makes a bigger impact than email, but please try to do both. And if you can be in DC on on January 24. Please let me know we're going to be setting up a Google forum for those of you who are coming to DC, and we'll send it out to the list and let me know because we're going to be meeting at the Rayburn cafeteria at roughly 10am and then from there we might depending on how big the we'll split up and we'll go to different offices and then if we have meetings we'll go to those meetings of course. Let me stop share I think this is a good time for questions. So I see one in the chat already are there local coordinators or do you recommend individual actions. I think at this point it's better to do individual actions if you're talking about at the, at your own district level, because that way you personally get a sense of who you're the people who work for your representative are. If you do have a local organization, I'm thinking, you know, the great work done by say Massachusetts peace action in pushing for this letter that was just sent by that with by their delegation by their congressional delegation. Yeah, please invite any sort of organization that you organize with locally to take part in this advocacy day and work together to, and if you're inclined visit their district office if it's not too far. I want to see another question, would the Cuban border guards be working on the border at one time. You know, I don't know that that's the board, I mean, possibly but it mostly refers to the maritime border so it's basically the equivalent of kind of the coast guard. Also feel free to just ask the question raise your hand and ask the question rather than type it out to staffers and local congressional offices usually just refer to foreign policy staffers in DC. That's a really good question David. If they do, you know, tell them that you live where you live and that you like them to take an interest in foreign policy as well. But either way, it's good. If they recommend you directly to a foreign policy staffer, because then you can say well so and so from the district office told me to call you. And that way the person feels kind of more of a sense of responsibility and taking care of you as a constituent, because it's passed, been passed on to them. Are there US senators in support of overturning the SSO T who are reaching out to the undecided or uncommitted senators. You know, I don't know that they're reaching out but that's one of our ass so if we go back to I'm not going to send it I'll put post the link rather than share screen again. It's a little complicated to share screen and switch between windows. But if you go to this, send a message to your members of Congress action, and I'll just post the link here. You will see on it a list of the seven, or no excuse me other eight representatives and senators who have recently sent a letter. And one of the things we're asking them to do is to reach out to their other colleagues to be more vocal about removing Cuba from the SSO T issue. Laurie asks, is there a form we need to fill out to join you in DC. If you have something we could share to others and DC that's them to join us without being the toolkit. It isn't toolkit right now but it will hopefully be on there by Thursday. There's, you know, the formal just make it easier for us to organize but if you can't find if you can't, you know, fill it out for any reason. I think that we're going to be meeting in the Rayburn cafeteria at 10am on the 24th and leaving from there. You know, we'll have some signs to make it clear who we are if you can't tell who we are already. And then. All right, are there any other questions. If not, we, we did have set aside some time for announcements for other organizations that are doing Cuba work I know that I don't see has a big campaign. Very soon. I don't know if John or Cheryl would like to talk about that briefly. Yeah, I, I, I come in. I wasn't sure I could make this, but I can now. Oh, thanks for. So, um, basically. We're building on what a series already doing. We are calling up with calling a meeting tomorrow, which will be talking about various ways in which. People can be involved in his advocacy campaign. Partly what a series already recommending letters, the emails, the in person visits to the members of Congress. And we've got an imaginative bingo card campaign cards that will introduce tomorrow. But we're also going to be talking about. Working with medium term members of Congress state senators. Governors, try and get them to actively lobby the White House to take your off the list. So, um, I'm going to put in the chat the link. That link will take you to register for our meeting. We've already got something like 90 people registered. It's taking place tomorrow night at 8pm Eastern 5pm Pacific. So this is in tandem with a series. So if you're able, please join that meeting. And for those of you who already registered, I'll be sending out more information about the bingo card later tonight. But I don't know if anybody else from the campaign wants to add to that. Could you explain how this is how this campaign ties into what the effort next Thursday, or next Wednesday is? Well, it's a series. This is a training, which many members of our NFC have joined as well. A series focuses on 24th to try and get the maximum action on the 24th. We support that. But we know that not everybody can do things on the 24th. So we're really saying to people, if you can't do the 24th, do it within the next two weeks from the 22nd, 23rd through to the 3rd of February. So they're working together and we'll be directing people to a series website for a series, wonderful tools for them to use. So this is a, yeah, this is two wings of the same bird. Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I'd add is that, you know, NFC has been doing a really excellent job in terms of work at the state level. And that's something that is said, it doesn't take on. So, so the campaigns overlap, but also in NFC's goes a bit further in that regard. Rita, I saw that you had your hand up first. Yeah, hi. Thank you for all this. I'm one of the people that developed the bus, the blockade bingo initiative. And I really want to encourage people to check it out. It's the purpose of course is motivation and to make this a little more fun. And I think that it, the card is going to be useful because it includes the flow of 1 column is about is all the steps about making phone calls. Another column relates to letters and other column relates to scheduling visits with things we're talking about tonight. So the card is also an advocacy guide, I hope. And the, and just to say that we really encourage people to engage with it to play it with a couple of others, perhaps in your area. Do it as teams because a lot of times working with a couple of other people motivates each other to actually take the steps so you can, you know, talk afterwards about how it went. Or do some of these things together on 1 computer or whatever. There's lots of ways to do it. But, but I think that camaraderie is important. And really build spirit and it doesn't hurt for these staffers to see that there's multiple people engaged from the same area. So, I'll leave it at that, but I really hope it tomorrow night is not a duplicate of tonight. So they're really complimentary and I really encourage as many of you as can please come join us tomorrow at 5, 5 to 6. Thanks. Thank you, Rita. Lisa, I saw you're up next. Go ahead, please. Okay. Don't forget the local offices. One of the best ways to, to get respect out of Washington is to when you really have developed some camaraderie with the people that are right in your community, and they have established that you are a friendly constituent. Then they can also help make appointments for you and your chances of getting in in front of your representative or actually greater because the local office is vouching for you. But that's one thing I want to say the other thing is NNOC that I was very impressed with the toolkit you're showing and I have to admit that I haven't actually looked at it yet yours as as much as I should. And I want to say that the NNOC also has a toolkit, and part of that is a group of that we have been working very hard to get resolutions all over the United States and sometimes if you're going to go into an office to have a piece of paper and say look there's other cities have done so that people because because there's nothing Congress is full of cowards. And so it's really when you give them and show them that other people have taken a first step. What you, I think it was Medea when she was saying that they don't like to speak because they don't like to, you know, they would they want to hide in the wall there. And I see that everybody else is out there, it gives them more courage to think about it and to follow through because nobody wants to be the last one either. So, those are just two things the NNOC to to that or that maybe a series should also connect to and make as part of their toolkit we can have one or two or whatever but it's a useful thing to have also. Thank you. So, we do have a lot of some on these on this take action page from my set of.org, we do have a button that says pass a resolution locally and that has information that was provided by the NNOC. I thank you for that because those are really such useful tools, you know, I know in DC it wasn't this past year that we passed the local resolution against the embargo to that we don't have senators but if we did I think that would be something very useful to bring up to them. Is there anyone else that would like to share any sort of tips or have any questions. Now is the time. I don't know how to raise the hand. Okay, go ahead on. I was talking to my delegate Jerry Colony, Colony Connelly, the other day, and he's he's basically in fact I'd send the letter prior to that he I told him that he'd forgotten it, but this was an informal event. And his comment was well you know what's in it for us, lifting of sanctions are more broadly lowering the, you know, reducing the embargo. What can I work, you know what, what will Cuba give up in return for this action. And that was good question, I didn't have a good answer but I think we needed that's the kind of, it does represent the thought process that a lot of these delegates are engaged in. Yeah, I think that's a good point on I think one of the things we can say to that, rather than saying what will Cuba have to give up, it's more about what the United States will have to gain. What they will have to gain is that they will be in sync with the rest of the hemisphere which is denounces the blockade denounces less so he listening every year. I think it would go very far towards improving relations with Latin America, not just with Cuba with every country in Latin America as the United States were to stop this. And internationally is where well it would generate goodwill I think when when you face it that argument I think pointing out the UN vote every year is very important. That's how isolated the United States is. I don't know if others have a better answers to that question or that point I think it's a good point, you know, what to do when when faced with this sort of question thanks Cheryl please go ahead. There's a question from friends in Europe who want to support our current campaign. What's the, is there a direct way that they can email or contact representatives or congressional committees so that they can, they can be part of it. You know, today we're trying to figure out a way to have a button to send a message just to members of the House for an affairs and Senate for our affairs and the related subcommittees. But many of these systems that we use we use one called every action and there's a bunch of systems that different organizations use on limited to constituents only, because that's what members of Congress really push for and they have basically marked things as spam or in mark even entire systems like what we use a spam if they get messages from people like four messages that are not from constituents. So it's difficult in that regard Cheryl for folks in Europe I would suggest two things one, the send a letter to Biden works because you don't have to be a constituent. And two, to contact your embassy in that country in the United States, you know say that you and to push them to bring up the issue with the State Department. Okay, thank you I'll get back to them on this. Let's go ahead please. My question goes to, of course we've seen all of this on TV about all of the people coming across the border in humans are in that number two so it's not just limited human. But my thinking is lifting or taking you go off of the list. Wouldn't that go to help people from leaving. Because I'm, you know, the whole reason people are leaving is because they can't see themselves. There's no economic basis for them. So, you know, the question came up. One of our participants said that the senator asked him what are we gaining. What is Cuba going to give up. Well, we're going to gain less people at the border. And Cuba, what are they giving up they're giving up starvation. They're giving up having to keep their people under pressure. I'm just so alarmed at not seeing our representatives and collectively. Everyone not seeing that the reason people are leaving home is because of the economic conditions and then the violence, but the violence comes from the economic condition. So, if we improve those economic conditions, it will begin to deter and mitigate some of these other issues that we are having with people leaving home. I just wanted to put that out there and I welcome anyone comment. Help me out on this because I'm just really not seeing and I need to help in processing this. Thank you. Thank you, Ross. Yeah, that's a really important point that we included in our one pager is the impact on migration. You know, it's really when we're talking about the S of T designation in particular it's really hard to tease out the effects of. Well, is this related to so T or is it related to one of the Trump sanctions or is it related to the blockade. Well, I don't know. And we don't know for the most part, but these are all very symptoms of the same disease right which is the US policy towards Cuba. And so, so when we're faced with that question that that Hunter that brought us, we have to talk about everything we talk to talk about, you know, international relations which I mentioned before but your point migration and that's a big issue for Democrats because they're getting trounced on that. You know, US policies towards Cuba and Minnesota and I were one of the drivers in migration of those countries. And of course, you know, I think there was a very important comment in the chat about trade and how, you know, people are representative senators very interesting trade, and that's a market that will open up for Cuba. Oh, a question about Senator Menendez and then I'll take your question Nancy. Senator Menendez. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think a lot of us remember, I can't remember what year it was but when he was under it before and he beat the charges. So we'll see if he happens to not beat the charges and he doesn't win his reelection that I think that's going to open up some opportunities. There's a lot of opportunities actually but it's we shouldn't take it for a given that just because Senator Menendez might not be in the Senate anymore that things are going to change because the State Department really likes to drag its feet. And for the most part they use Menendez as like, like a scapegoat, they'll just say oh we can't do anything about Cuba because of Menendez and they just have him as an excuse and there's a fear that they're just going to find a different excuse if Menendez leaves. If he does leave though I think that's going to be great for the people who love Cuba because he's very much a sticking point in terms of improving Cuba policy. Go ahead Nancy. Hi, just a couple of comments and an announcement the comment in regard to, you know, what can Cuba do for us and I think everything that was mentioned so far is good on a foreign policy standpoint, but you can also do to, you know, practical and tangible things like when we were working on, you know, the syringe campaign and saving lives campaign, you know, we could, we were asking also that we could collaborate with Cuba that we can get their technology and their medical know how and so, you know, and other things like agriculture and imports and all types of things and I think whoever you're lobbying to you'll just have to make a bullet list on what you think would be the priority for whoever you are lobbying. So, just want to add that also in an announcement that in addition, I'm with building relations with Cuban labor as is Ross and I don't know who else on the call, but we are also joining in the NNOC campaign, but we are also continuing to get relations passed by labor bodies unions and Central Labor councils as pressure, especially in Democratic swing states and where they're, you know, during the primary seasons for certain representatives who would be pressured if they did not have labor support. So, if you're interested in doing that if you're a union member and you know a new union member or have union labor contacts, please join us on the 23rd we're having a zoom strategy meeting. Thanks. Thanks, Nancy. That was two great points. The first one. Yeah, there's a lot of reasons, you know, and I mentioned a couple and I'm glad you mentioned the medical cooperation and the Cuba's biotech industry, which would be so could be so helpful to us. And then the other point about finding out what your representatives interests are what your senator's interests are, you can go to their websites. It's usually like, I don't know, my govern.house.gov. That's generally the pattern for the website of your representative, and just see what sort of committees that they're on. Many of them, you know, if they're on agriculture, you can talk about the importance of Cuban of Cuba for the agriculture markets. They're on some sort of health committee you can talk about Cuban health, you know, so tailor your message to your representative I think that is a good strategy as well for kind of building these relations. I don't know. Oh, so another question from Mike Goodman, how do we respond to those bring up the issues of pain hijackers and Assad's core with respect to SOT. Well, the SOT is meant to talk about a state's sponsoring terror right now, and to remove that Cuba from the SOT list, all of the Biden has administration has to do is point back to the last six months and say Cuba hasn't supported terror in the last six months. You know, Assad is a core and the other US fugitives in Cuba. They're not participating in any sort of terrorist activity so that's one of the arguments we can use. The other is that those, according to the actual laws that underpin this designation. The fact that Cuba has given asylum to US fugitives is not, you know, should not come into play because it's not related to international terror as defined by the US code of law. I don't know if there, I mean, if there's someone has a better answer for that please feel free to chime in. And if not, then I think we can call it an evening and I want to thank everyone so much for being here tonight and encourage you to participate on January 24 and to invite others to participate. Check again on the asset a website where we're going to be updating it over the next couple of days, making a little, making it easier to navigate and also adding some more tools including the form if you're going to be in DC. That way we can keep in touch easier and please, if you are going to be in DC, try to set up a meeting with the foreign policy staffer of your representative's office so that we can go and chat with them about SOT. Thank you so much everyone for being here tonight. Have a good night. Thank you.