PUT YOUR FREEDOM TO WORK (Updated)
Update: Video uploaded. Will be on The Ed Morrisey Show today at 3:30 along with Joe Cardona, who along with Luis Guardia, produced the following video:
I’m not going to sugarcoat or editorialize or plead or try to tug at your heartstrings today. Enough has been said and written about the the Black Spring Crackdown of 2003 and there is plenty of evidence out there to serve as absolute proof of what I am about to shove down your throat:
THERE ARE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN CUBA.
THERE ARE NO CIVIL LIBERTIES IN CUBA.
THERE ARE POLITICAL PRISONERS IN CUBA.
THERE ARE PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE IN CUBA.
THESE PRISONERS, AND THOSE WHO SUPPORT THEIR CAUSE, ARE SUBJECTED TO UNIMAGINABLE BRUTALITY AND INHUMANITY AND REPRESSION.
And you know what? You are an accomplice to the above. Yeah, that’s right. I said you are complicit in the violations of human rights and the torture of human beings.
Because you are.
You may not be swinging the club yourself and the epithets may not be coming from your mouth, but you are definitely a party to it. You are allowing it to happen. Turning a blind eye. Ignoring it. You are the three “no evil monkeys” all wrapped up into one.
And you shouldn’t just be ashamed, you should be disgusted. Nauseated. Unable to sleep.
What does it feel like to torture another human being? What does it feel like to stand idly by while a man’s dignity and humanity are ripped away from him, piece by piece, blow by blow?
Right now you’re thinking to yourself that I am ridiculous. Convincing yourself that I am being extreme. Exaggerating. “This guy is nuts,” your saying to yourself. “It’s ludicrous to suggest that I - I! - am somehow responsible for this inhumanity.”
But just let me ask you one thing while you’re busy convincing yourself you aren’t part of the problem:
HAVE YOU DONE ANYTHING TO STOP IT?
Yeah. I thought so. Not a damned thing.
Of course, right about now you’re trying to assuage your conscience because you have so many other things to worry about in your own backyard and really, this is something happening in a whole other country and besides, what do you have that you could possibly use to help?
Let me put it to you this way: If you do nothing, if you stand idly by and allow the blatant abrogation of the human rights of your fellow human beings and the abject subjugation of their dignity, what the hell makes you think you deserve your own? Can you honestly say that you deserve that which you allow be denied to others?
You have the one thing – THE ONE THING – those men and women need. The one thing they have given their lives for.
You have FREEDOM.
USE IT TO GIVE IT TO OTHERS.
Cuba's political prisoners need your SOLIDARITY NOW.
Do something today to help Cuba's political prisoners. Post the image above on your blog or webpages. Link to this post and others listed below. Tweet it. Facebook it. Do whatever you can to help.
This post will be continuously updated today with more links to information on the human rights violations in Cuba.
Pajamas Media: Cuba's Unknown Dissidents
The Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White)
This post will remain at the top all day. For newer posts and more coverage of the Black Spring Crackdown, please scroll down.
Preach it, brother!!
Amen brother.
For what it is worth, I attended a Columbia University discussion filled with lefty professors speaking of how disillusioned Eastern Europeans are today 20 years after Communism with various polls and statistic proving that fact. I pointed out that none of them cared about Eastern Europeans thirty years ago except right-wing hawkish neo-cons like myself. However, I said, they have a chance to redeem themselves by focusing on the oppression in Cuba TODAY.
Of course, none of them will.
I am afraid what cuba needs most is the blood of patriots to water the tree of liberty. How many of us are willing to shed the blood if we are not even willing to make phone calls?
[...] Picket joins us to give us the inside scoop on doings in the nation’s capital. Val Prieto of BabaluBlog will challenge us to put our freedom to work for Cuba. John Randall joins us for a Code Red update [...]
[...] Prieto’s got an excellent post today, Put your freedom to work, and this is why, THERE ARE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN [...]
"Esto no se aguanta más"
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1218961243792&ref=mf
Good work on the radio and the video. gracias
Here's a post I placed on the Bi-Weekly, a historic document and translated into English also:
http://cubanology.com/cubareport/?p=4599
Sorry I did not see this earlier today, but I am responding as quickly as I can.
I have just posted a blog entry to express my own solidarity and I will return to it in a couple of hours to update it with a few relevant links I am about to collect from around the blogosphere.
http://stjacquesonline.blogspot.com/2010/03/solidarity-with-cuban-political.html
StJacques
[...] SOLIDARITY NOW! HAVE YOU PUT YOUR FREEDOM TO WORK TODAY? [...]
[...] Val Prieto says it perfectly, so I am proud to repost: I’m not going to sugarcoat or editorialize or plead or try to tug at your heartstrings today. Enough has been said and written about the the Black Spring Crackdown of 2003 and there is plenty of evidence out there to serve as absolute proof of what I am about to shove down your throat: [...]
[...] For a short video on Orlando Zapata Tamayo and fellow hunger striker Guillermo Fariñas, go here. [...]