LASC "educating" Sen. Barack Obama
One thing our movement has known for over twenty years is how difficult it is to educate the US public and our representatives in Washington about Latin America: particularly hard because of government policy and the lack of full information in the media. The need to convey truth extends also to presidential candidates – even Senator Obama.
The Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) has sent the following memo to Senator Obama and the Obama campaign staff:
We are writing as the Coordinating Committee for the US-based Latin America Solidarity Coalition. We represent over 2000 local and national groups of US residents working in solidarity with the people of many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. These groups are in all 50 states. Thousands of our members have been exchanging visits with and working closely with different parts of the Region. We have combined their rich experiences at four national LASC conferences and developed analyses and plans for many crisis areas, past, present and potential future crises. (You may see our website at www.lasolidarity.org).
We have studied Senator Obama’s wide-ranging speech to the Cuban American National Foundation, Miami, May 23, on US-Latin American relations. We were disappointed in many of the positions he expressed as well as the fact that he chose to make them before an extreme right-wing group whose influence on US policy toward that region is responsible for much of the deterioration in the US image in Latin America. We would like to request a meeting with Sen. Obama to provide him with our ideas for a more positive US policy toward our neighbors to the South. Our hope would be to (1) help him to keep his discussions as accurate as he would like, and (2) help him develop a moral and sustainable US foreign policy in the region as soon as he becomes President.
As you well know, the nations, their cultures, their political-economic situations are complex. As you also know, over the years the US has made mistakes, many of which have threatened our own goals of helping to develop good feelings about our country among the people themselves, helping true democracies to develop, eliminating human rights abuses by the militaries that the US supports and trains, and encouraging strong economies and trade.
The positions of the LASC are:
Close the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, also known as the School of the Americas.
Close the InternationalLawEnforcementAcademy in San Salvador.
Stop funding Plan Colombia and cut off all military aid to that country.
Stop funding the Merida Initiative and the militarization of the US/Mexico border.
Close the National Endowment for Democracy and return USAID to its original foreign aid mission.
Return President Aristide to Haiti, advocate freedom for all political prisoners and support the end of the UN occupation.
End belligerence toward Venezuela and other Latin American countries whose citizens have elected left-leaning governments over the past decade.
End the embargo against Cuba and normalize relations with our island neighbor.
Stop initiating “Free Trade“agreements that benefit only corporations while destroying local agriculture and forcing Latin Americans to leave their homeland to work in the US.
Publicly state support for the legitimate elected government of Bolivia, condemn the separatist violence and take no actions to further inflame the crisis there.
Extradite the terrorist Luis Posada Carrilles to Venezuela, as required by extradition treaty, to stand trial for the fatal bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight that killed 73 people. Free the five Cuban anti-terrorist agents falsely convicted of espionage for infiltrating Cuban exile terrorist groups in Miami whose repeated terrorist attacks have killed over 3,000 Cubans and foreigners in Cuba.
One thing our movement has known for over twenty years is how difficult it is to educate the US public and our representatives in Washington about Latin America: particularly hard because of government policy and the lack of full information in the media. The need to convey truth extends also to presidential candidates – even Senator Obama.
The Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) has sent the following memo to Senator Obama and the Obama campaign staff:
We are writing as the Coordinating Committee for the US-based Latin America Solidarity Coalition. We represent over 2000 local and national groups of US residents working in solidarity with the people of many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. These groups are in all 50 states. Thousands of our members have been exchanging visits with and working closely with different parts of the Region. We have combined their rich experiences at four national LASC conferences and developed analyses and plans for many crisis areas, past, present and potential future crises. (You may see our website at www.lasolidarity.org).
We have studied Senator Obama’s wide-ranging speech to the Cuban American National Foundation, Miami, May 23, on US-Latin American relations. We were disappointed in many of the positions he expressed as well as the fact that he chose to make them before an extreme right-wing group whose influence on US policy toward that region is responsible for much of the deterioration in the US image in Latin America. We would like to request a meeting with Sen. Obama to provide him with our ideas for a more positive US policy toward our neighbors to the South. Our hope would be to (1) help him to keep his discussions as accurate as he would like, and (2) help him develop a moral and sustainable US foreign policy in the region as soon as he becomes President.
As you well know, the nations, their cultures, their political-economic situations are complex. As you also know, over the years the US has made mistakes, many of which have threatened our own goals of helping to develop good feelings about our country among the people themselves, helping true democracies to develop, eliminating human rights abuses by the militaries that the US supports and trains, and encouraging strong economies and trade.
The positions of the LASC are:
Close the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, also known as the School of the Americas.
Close the InternationalLawEnforcementAcademy in San Salvador.
Stop funding Plan Colombia and cut off all military aid to that country.
Stop funding the Merida Initiative and the militarization of the US/Mexico border.
Close the National Endowment for Democracy and return USAID to its original foreign aid mission.
Return President Aristide to Haiti, advocate freedom for all political prisoners and support the end of the UN occupation.
End belligerence toward Venezuela and other Latin American countries whose citizens have elected left-leaning governments over the past decade.
End the embargo against Cuba and normalize relations with our island neighbor.
Stop initiating “Free Trade“agreements that benefit only corporations while destroying local agriculture and forcing Latin Americans to leave their homeland to work in the US.
Publicly state support for the legitimate elected government of Bolivia, condemn the separatist violence and take no actions to further inflame the crisis there.
Extradite the terrorist Luis Posada Carrilles to Venezuela, as required by extradition treaty, to stand trial for the fatal bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight that killed 73 people. Free the five Cuban anti-terrorist agents falsely convicted of espionage for infiltrating Cuban exile terrorist groups in Miami whose repeated terrorist attacks have killed over 3,000 Cubans and foreigners in Cuba.
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— Peter Mott
— Peter Mott
Educating public, Congress
All of us in the Latin America Solidarity Movement—-and that’s probably over 4000 groups in the US (INTERCONNECT’s mailing list has been over 2000 separate groups in all 50 states, all working in solidarity with the people of some part of Latin America)…We all know that one of our most important functions is education of the public and of Congress. My question is…How do we do it better? We do pretty well with crises: particularly in the Central America solidarity days we could amass 300,000 marchers in DC over and over…against the war in El Salvador, and to prevent a US invasion of Nicaragua during our Contra War. And one can make the case that we won both of those.
We also do well with other crises: eg, closing the SOA (getting close to victory), getting 5 nations to stop sending troops to the SOA.
A delegation here in Rochester NY changed our Congressperson’s views of ending the US Embargo of Cuba.
But we don’t ever seem to get the public or Representatives in Congress to understand the situation more deeply. We activists don’t need to be reeducated about the deeper thinking about US-Latin American affairs —especially the economics but also about the poverty, indigenous people’s rights, how our colleagues in the South feel about “democracy”, religion, ownership of a country’s natural resources (not US corporations!). But I’m not aware that many of us can more deeply educate others.
What works with you? Taking an official along on a delegation for a week in Latin America? Regular visits with updates for your Congressperson about Latin Amer. affairs? Educating the staffs?
Please share your successes. —-Peter
— Peter Mott