José Julián Martí Pérez at 172: The heirs of José Martí and those who repress them now

 "I think they kill my child every time they deprive a person of their right to think." - José Martí

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and José Martí

José Martí was a poet, journalist, and Cuban independence leader. He had also endured prison for writings critical of the Spanish government. He organized a war of independence, but did so without resorting to dehumanizing his adversary or appealing to hatred. He was also a fierce advocate for civil liberties and especially freedom of thought and expression. Today, January 28 marks 172 years since the day José Julián Martí Pérez was born.

Four horseman: Ventura, Valdés, Castro, and Díaz-Canel

On the evening of January 27th the Cuban dictatorship held its torch march on the eve of  José Martí's birth anniversary. Leading the march were José Ramón Machado Ventura, Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, Raúl  Castro Ruz, and Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez.

The communist dictatorship in Cuba claims José Martí as its own, but their ideology and actions are in stark contrast to his values.

Over a thousand sons and daughters of Cuba are arbitrarily and unjustly imprisoned today for exercising their right to free thought and expression in calling for freedom. Eleven thousand are jailed for pre-crime in Cuba. The regime jails them for what they might potentially do in the future.  

Millions of Cubans have gone into exile, and many are barred from returning home by the Castro regime. 

The dictatorship continues to kill Cubans for standing up for liberty or attempting to flee Cuba to live in freedom.  It has criminalized free speech, and jailed artists and independent journalists for exercising their profession.

José Martí with shirt of stars by Camila Ramírez Lobón

Ideas cited below by José Martí are in conflict with Castroism, but are in accord with the democratic Cuba that helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and struggled for a more just and democratic order, but was damaged by Fulgencio Batista after 1952, then systematically destroyed by the Castro brothers after 1959. 

"Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist."

"Freedoms, like privileges, prevail or are imperiled together You cannot harm or strive to achieve one without harming or furthering all."

"Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy."

"It is the duty of man to raise up man. One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve. Only those who spread treachery, fire, and death out of hatred for the prosperity of others are undeserving of pity."  

 Martí also criticized the writings of Karl Marx, observing they were antithetical to his own values. If one considers that he wrote, "It is the duty of man to raise up man. One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve. Only those who spread treachery, fire, and death out of hatred for the prosperity of others are undeserving of pity." He was a contemporary of Marx who had written in 1849, "We are ruthless and ask no quarter from you. When our turn comes we shall not disguise our terrorism." Martí recognized the dangers of Socialism and its doctrine of envy, observing: 

"Socialist ideology, like so many others, has two main dangers. One stems from confused and incomplete readings of foreign texts, and the other from the arrogance and hidden rage of those who, in order to climb up in the world, pretend to be frantic defenders of the helpless so as to have shoulders on which to stand." 

The observation of José Martí that “A revolution is still necessary: the one that does not make its caudillo president, the revolution against revolutions, the uprising of all peaceful men, once soldiers, so that neither they nor anyone will ever be so again,” is a damning indictment of the 64 year dictatorship of the Castro brothers, but also relevant to free Cubans.  

Martí wrote this before nonviolence was recognized as a powerful force to be used to achieve change. He led the effort to initiate Cuba's second war of independence and was killed in action during an early skirmish in that war in 1895. 

However, the idea of an uprising of nonviolent men and women to carry out a "revolution against revolutions"  that will usher in a democracy, and not another dictator, is precisely what many Cubans want. 

Today also marks seven years since nonviolence scholar Gene Sharp died. He taught generations that there was an alternative to bloody conflict and that it was non-violent armed conflict. Professor Sharp practiced nonviolence as a conscientious objector during the Korean War, and studied the examples of Mohandas Gandhi, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and many other nonviolent practitioners. He demonstrated that nonviolent resistance was anything but passive, and that success in a struggle required strategy as well.

Gene Sharp: January 21, 1928 – January 28, 2018

 Gene Sharp presented his case succinctly at the National Conference on Nonviolent Sanctions and Defense in Boston in 1990. 

"I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle. And we have to take back that term from those advocates of violence who seek to justify with pretty words that kind of combat. Only with this type of struggle one fights with psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and political weapons. And that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence."

Cubans of all ideological stripes claim him as their own, but objectively who has maintained the spirit of his words and ideals? 

 Castroism is the antithesis of all that José Martí represented. 

There is a movement that seeks to restore human rights and liberties using nonviolent means that uphold his values. These are courageous men and women who risk all standing up to the Cuban dictatorship. Many have been jailed, some have been killed, and their families targeted for reprisals in this struggle for freedom.

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas addresses the EU parliament (2002)

Looking for these values leads one to Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, who in a speech to the European Parliament on December 17, 2002 stated:

 "The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.’"

This founder of the Christian Liberation Movement was murdered by agents of the Cuban government on July 11, 2012 together with the movement's youth leader Harold Cepero. Like  José Martí they too are martyrs for Cuba's freedom.

 

Rejection of request to protest by Castro regime is yet another example of intolerance of freedom of expression. Protest leader say N15 civic march continues.

"Using violence is a stupid decision." - Dr. Gene Sharp, January 30, 2012

Source: CubaBrief

104 days ago today on July 11, 2021 tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets across Cuba declaring that they were no longer afraid, and calling for an end to the dictatorship. The dictatorship's response was public, swift, brutal, and sustained. The regime's repression has not ended, but nor has the civic defiance and courage of Cubans.

Reuters reported on October 21st that Cuban prosecutors had summoned protest leaders (organized in a Facebook group called Archipelago, from across Cuba who are calling for protests on November 15th over curbs to civil rights in Cuba, and demanding an amnesty for jailed regime opponents) warning them against convening civic marches "under penalty of the law."

Lexi Lonas reported in The Hill, on the same day that "a Cuban protest leader said Thursday his group will gather for a demonstration in November despite warnings from a prosecutor that doing so could have legal ramifications." Lonas cited a quote by Yunior Garcia, leader of the Archipelago group, taken from Reuters stating, "we are not mercenaries, nor are we receiving orders from anyone." ... "We are openly demonstrating a difference of opinion.”

Expressing a difference of opinion with the Castro regime is a dangerous proposition in Cuba. 

Expressing a difference of opinion in Cuba is a criminal offense under the dictatorship's legal code, and in practice. Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, with regards to the upcoming November 15th Civic March said:

“Groups of people from various provinces around the country have been submitting requests in recent weeks to different local governments asking for authorization to carry out peaceful marches, organized in a clearly defined way in a legitimate exercise of their right to freedom of expression. Instead of guaranteeing these rights, President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s government has declared these civil society marches ‘illegal’ and ‘unconstitutional’, once again violating the right to peaceful protest in Cuba.”

The spontaneous nonviolent protests that took place in Cuba in mid-July were met with deadly force and hundreds, if not thousands of Cubans jailed. Cuban human rights defenders addressed this matter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) audience titled "Human rights situation in the context of protest in Cuba". However Black human rights defender Manuel Cuesta Morua was blocked by Havana from speaking.

President Miguel Diaz Canel, handpicked by Raul Castro, told Cubans in a televised national public address on July 11th: "They [protesters] would have to pass over our dead bodies if they want to confront the revolution, and we are willing to resort to anything.” Diaz-Canel made explicit his demand for violent confrontation stating: "We are calling on all the revolutionaries of the country, all the communists, to take to the streets and go to the places where these provocations are going to take place today from now on, and in all these days and face it decisively, firmly, with courage." He concluded his address to the country declaring: "The order of combat is given, revolutionaries take to the streets."

Regime agents dressed in black, and police officers fired their weapons on unarmed protesters, and some of the Cubans, who survived these encounters, showed where some of the rounds had passed through them. Not all survived these encounters with the dictatorship's security forces. On July 12th, the second day of the uprising, Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, (age 36) was shot in the back by police. NGOs initially placed the number of extrajudicial killings at five during the protests, but the total number remains unknown. Video emerged on July 15th of the aftermath of Diubis being shot in the back and posted over Twitter.

Human Rights Watch in their October 19, 2021 report "Cuba: Peaceful Protesters Systematically Detained, Abused" describes in detail how the regime is still using arbitrary detention, ill-treatment (including gender-based violence), and summary trials that fall far short of international standards to directly impact hundreds of Cubans. According to Human Rights Watch there are 1,000 Cubans detained and 500 current political prisoners, but these are partial numbers painstakingly gathered by human rights observers such as CubaLex that have also been threatened for their work documenting human rights violations.

Cuban dissidents responding to this violent and ongoing crackdown have asked for help and solidarity.

Eileen Kinsella reported in ArtNet News, on October 19, 2021 in her article "Havana Biennial Boycott Gathers Support, With Hundreds Signing Open Letter Against Government Crackdown" that a long "list of Cuban and international artists and experts have signed an open letter that was posted on e-flux" that include artists Tania Bruguera and Coco Fusco, as well as Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, a British/Venezuelan art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art, calling for a boycott of the 14th Havana Biennial to protest "injustices committed by the Cuban government against its citizens, including harassment and wrongful imprisonment." High profile names have already withdrawn from the event, including Swiss artist Ursula Biemann, French critic Nicolas Bourriaud, artists Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro and Aimee Joaristi Argüelles, and curator Maria Belén Saez de Ibarra, according to Hyperallergic.

 Thus far, this example of solidarity has not been replicated in the Paris Club. Marc Frank reported for Reuters on October 20th that the Castro regime "reached a deal with the Paris Club of creditor nations to postpone an annual debt payment due in November until next year, according to diplomats from five of the governments involved, the latest sign the Communist-run country is suffering a grave foreign exchange crisis. The historic 2015 Paris Club agreement with Havana forgave $8.5 billion of $11.1 billion in sovereign debt Cuba defaulted on in 1986, plus charges. Cuba agreed to repay the remainder in annual installments through 2033, but only partially met its obligations in 2019 and defaulted last year." The Economic Eye on Cuba, the blog of the New York based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, Inc. reported on this deal with an important note reproduced below.

NOTE: Individuals participating in the negotiations shared on background that the group of creditor countries have no expectation that the Republic of Cuba will maintain the terms of a newly-termed debt repayment agreement. The altering of debt repayment terms was pro forma as the Republic of Cuba continues to be in arrears for hundreds of millions of dollars of private sector commercial debt including to joint venture partners, and continues to seek debt forgiveness and debt restructuring of private sector commercial debt. There is an expectation that long-term government-to-government financing programs for infrastructure and durable products will become donations.

These "donations" to the dictatorship in Cuba are assisting in the repression of the Cubans. The Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, a coalition of pro-democracy and human rights groups inside and outside Cuba, issued a press release condemning the deal reached by the Paris Club and the Castro regime and explained how "this concession to the Cuban regime will serve to subsidize repression in Cuba, as the regime continues to buy military equipment to crack down on civil society and peaceful demonstrations. On June 10, 2021, 240 Cuban leaders and activists signed a letter, asking the Paris Club to not collaborate with repression in Cuba. Their fears were confirmed on July 11, 2021, and unfortunately Cubans expect to see the same levels of violence and military and police deployment on November 15, 2021, as the Cuban Prosecutor’s Office has threatened the organizers of the upcoming peaceful demonstration."

The Christian Liberation Movement, based in Cuba that led the Varela Project which over 35,000 Cubans in the island signed, called for the isolation of the Castro dictatorship with the following proposal that contains eleven measures that includes the ongoing and successful boycott of the 14th Havana Biennial, but also not granting the Cuban regime lines of credit, and placing an arms embargo on the dictatorship.

We propose that until the dictatorship unconditionally releases all those arrested for the peaceful demonstrations and all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, and holds free and plural elections:

– The Cuban regime should be excluded from participating in any international forum, Summit and event.

– Cuba should be investigated and condemned for its human rights violations by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

– All economic and military cooperation agreements with the Cuban dictatorship, like the EU-Cuba cooperation agreement, should be suspended.

– Lines of credit should not be granted to the Cuban regime.

– Foreign investments and tourism to Cuba should be discouraged.

– All products exported from Cuba, either directly by the regime or through foreign companies associated with Cuban tyranny, should be boycotted.

– An international arms and repression equipment embargo on Cuba should be imposed

– Cuba should be banned from all international sporting, cultural and academic events.

– Visas to military junta officials and relatives, and to members of Cuba's Communist Party and all organizations and institutions who take part in repressive actions or support the repression, should not be granted or should be revoked.

– Channels to send humanitarian aid should be facilitated as part of this campaign to isolate the regime and in solidarity with the Cuban people.

– An international commission to support democracy in Cuba should be created. It should promote that these and other measures are executed, and should watch over its implementation.

Dictatorship's like the one in Havana understand only one thing, force, but it can impact them in many ways and the list above demonstrates the power of nonviolent, civic action.

 

 

#11July: One week later and nonviolent resistance continues in Cuba

For freedom and justice.

On the streets of Cuba on July 11, 2021

One week later and the protests continue, despite the most brutal efforts of the Castro regime to silence Cubans on the island. It began on July 11, 2021 in San Antonio de los Baños, just South East of Havana when Cubans took to the streets in protest. Others saw it streaming live, and also took to the street in cities and towns across the country chanting "Freedom" and "Down with the dictatorship." 

President Miguel Diaz-Canel appeared on official television threatening: "They [protesters] would have to pass over our dead bodies if they want to confront the revolution, and we are willing to resort to anything."

Cuban protesters were met with extreme violence by the dictatorship, but they have continued to take to the streets to the present day. Cubans in the diaspora around the world have taken to the street in solidarity with their counterparts in the island. On July 11th,  I was outside of the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC protesting the repression of the dictatorship, and in solidarity with Cubans on the island demanding freedom.

On July 14, 2021 the Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero appeared on television and announced that the dictatorship would "temporarily lift restrictions on the quantity of food and medicine incoming travelers could bring into Cuba."

On Saturday, July 17 the regime held their official rally, and even there they could not obtain unanimity and violently dragged out an unknown protester who screamed "Freedom."

The opposition movement to the Castro regime since the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976 has been a nonviolent one, and regime brutality is an attempt to shock and outrage Cubans to embrace violence, and in turn give the regime the pretext to escalate their violence and terror against the populace.

Gene Sharp was the theoretician of nonviolent action, that thanks to Jose Basulto, in June of 1996 I was able to meet and learn from him over a series of lectures and conversations at Florida International University. This encounter marked a before and after in my life. This blog has cited him time and time again and promoted the South Florida premiere of the documentary about his life, How to Start a Revolution, back in 2011. Professor Sharp passed away on January 28, 2018 at age 90.

In 1990 at the National Conference on Nonviolent Sanctions and Defense in Boston, Gene Sharp succinctly outlined his argument.

"I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle. And we have to take back that term from those advocates of violence who seek to justify with pretty words that kind of combat. Only with this type of struggle one fights with psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and political weapons. And that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence."

These weapons can be wielded by the average citizen to great effect, but also requires strategy and tactics to be successful.

Now is the time to double down on nonviolence. The Castro regime came into existence with the secret backing of the Soviet Union, the public backing of the United States, a U.S. arms embargo on Batista, then lies, terror, and mass murder to consolidate its rule. They have used violence and terrorism as state policy for 62 years. They are experts in the application of violence. 

To abandon the strategy and tactics of nonviolence that have put the regime on the defensive is the equivalent of deciding to abandon a chess match with a boxer when you have him checked on the board to decide the battle in the boxing ring.

This happened in Syria with Assad and on February 5, 2012 Professor Sharp summed it up succinctly: "using violence is a stupid decision."

University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 and there study finds “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”

The usual counter argument is that nonviolence would not have worked against the Nazis but history says otherwise with the successful nonviolent action of the Rosenstrasse protest carried out by German wives who successfully got their Jewish husbands back from the concentration camps in 1943. Nor does one consider the scores of violent actions that failed to dislodge the Nazi regime but only consolidated their rule despite two close calls that nearly got Adolph Hitler in 1939 and 1944.

This dictatorship, I believe, has killed many this last week, and is continuing to kill Cubans and we may never have a full accounting. Thousands have been jailed or disappeared, and the oppressors responsible need to be identified and sanctioned by the international community. The Global Magnitsky Act holds torturers and kleptocrats accountable nonviolently through targeted sanctions, and needs to be applied now in Cuba. This is one of the weapons in the nonviolent arsenal described by Professor Sharp above.

Gene Sharp provides below a holistic look at how nonviolence works:

In a great variety of situations, across centuries and cultural barriers, another technique of struggle has at times been applied.  This other technique has not been based on turning the other cheek, but on the ability to be stubborn and to resist powerful opponents powerfully. Throughout human history, in a multitude of conflicts one side has fought - not by violence, but - by psychological, social, economic, or political methods, or a combination of these.  This type of conflict has been waged not only when the issues were relatively limited and the opponents relatively decent.  Many times this alter- native form of struggle has been applied when fundamental  issues have been at stake and when ruthless opponents have been willing and able to apply extreme repression.  That repression has included executions, beatings, arrests, imprisonments, and mass slaughters. Despite such repression, when the resisters have persisted in fighting with only their chosen nonviolent weapons, they have some- times triumphed. This technique is called nonviolent action or nonviolent struggle.  This is “the other ultimate sanction.”  In acute conflicts it potentially can serve as an alternative to war and other violence.

We have witnessed it in Cuba over the years with a number if initiatives. The Cuban Committee for Human Rights and its ability to document human rights abuses in the island to expose the brutality of the regime in the 1980s and 1990s to the international community. The Christian Liberation Movement in the 1990s and 2000s that through the Varela Project non-violently petitioned the Cuban government to reform and respect international human rights standards, and gathered over 25,000 signatures of Cuban citizens in the island who knew what the cost would be to say they wanted change. The San Isidro Movement formed in 2018 by artists protesting Decree 349, a further tightening of restrictions on artistic freedom in Cuba, has carried out nonviolent campaigns that on November 27, 2020 shook the dictatorship when hundreds of artists and intellectuals engaged in a non-violent intervention outside the Ministry of Culture in Havana, Cuba.

Violent resistance to the regime was tried early on by courageous Cuban men and women, but was crushed by the Castro regime with the aid of Soviet counter-insurgency forces. Today, not only the Russians are there, but so are the Chinese. 

Non-violent resistance remains the most effective option to achieve a democratic transition in Cuba, and restore Cuba's positive human rights legacy.

The documentary "A Force More Powerful" is about non-violence, and its power to change the world over the past century. It is worth noticing that faith and belief played a major role in these movements that achieved positive and lasting change. We will need a lot of both in the days, weeks, and months to come.

Reject mob violence and lies across the board: An appeal to the center

Reflection on the present crisis

Pro-Trump protesters storm into the US Capitol during clashes with police

The United States is in the midst of a dangerous period. We are in the midst of a global pandemic, economic dislocation, and political crisis. American cities have been burning since May 26, 2020 caused by rioters following the death of George Floyd leading to the deaths of at least twenty five, and on January 6, 2021 the Capitol of the United States was attacked by rioters, who believed that the November 2020 presidential election had been stolen causing the deaths of five.

There are profound divisions and great numbers don't know their history and are being indoctrinated with one that is politicized. News and social media platforms have developed models that exacerbate divisions. 

Watching all this reminds one of another difficult time 1968, a year of riots, assassinations, and war.  Robert Kennedy speaking one day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered by an assassins bullet, and two months before his own assassination gave an analysis of the time relevant for today at the Cleveland City Club.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people. Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

Some of the individuals involved in the insurrection on January 6, 2020 at the Capitol identify as Christians. Jesus commands us to love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us. When one says the Lord's prayer there is a call to reconciliation to obtain pardon from the creator:  "If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions."

There are profound injustices and problems that require remedy, but violence is not the answer. But unfortunately, in the American political context born out of a revolutionary war of independence and a Civil War there is a cult of violence that is shared by many, but is not at the core of American strength. The vast improvements in American life did not arise out of war but out of commerce, politics, and civic nonviolent struggle. Long time peace scholar Michael Nagler  presents the theorem as follows: Nonviolence sometimes “works” and always works, while by contrast, Violence sometimes “works” and never works.  Nagler offers a more detailed explanation.

The exercise of violence always has a destructive effect on human relationships even when, as sometimes happens, it accomplishes some short-term goal. The exercise of nonviolence, or Satyagraha, always brings people closer. This explains why Gandhi, after fifty years of experimentation in every walk of life, could declare that he “knew of no single case in which it had failed.” Where it seemed to fail he concluded that he or the other satyagrahis had in some way failed to live up to its steep challenge.  Taking the long view, he was able to declare that “There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence. The end of violence is surest defeat.”

The monsters are more exciting than the saints. Popular culture focuses on the destroyers: Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot and their defenders and critics debate their merits, despite the societies they led being destroyed on every level: moral, material, spiritual and the rest. This is a mistake of the first order, and dangerous at a time of great economic dislocation and political polarization. But violence is visual, and "exciting" to the eye. Whereas an economic boycott, or a sit-in are often much more effective but not as visually captivating.

It would be better to focus on those who preserved the peace and made things better such as Konrad Adeneur, Alcide De Gasperi, Winston Churchill and others who founded a European order that prevented the outbreak of a major war for over seventy years as Metterneich and another generation did from 1815 to 1914. In Latin America Luis Alberto Monge, Romulo Betancourt, Patricio Aylwin, and others oversaw democratic consolidation in their respective countries along with rising living standards for their respective peoples for generations.

It is important to understand the power of nonviolent action and the pursuit of truth. Dr. Gene Sharp, a theoretician of nonviolent action, who passed away in 2018 understood that there was nothing passive about nonviolent resistance and that it also required strategy to increase the odds of success in a struggle. In 1990 at the National Conference on Nonviolent Sanctions and Defense in Boston, Gene Sharp succinctly outlined his argument.

"I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle. And we have to take back that term from those advocates of violence who seek to justify with pretty words that kind of combat. Only with this type of struggle one fights with psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and political weapons. And that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence."

The alternative to Gandhian and Kingian nonviolence, currently popular in some quarters is the Frankfurt school and Critical Theory which is a dead end in identity politics and repressive tolerance that will lead to more polarization and violence. Practitioners have justified the destruction of property and looting which in practice leads to anarchy and mass killings.  

 

Michael Nagler, already mentioned above, explained why property destruction is not nonviolent in 2008 in the above video. Nonviolence is the way, but the critical theory people, who despised Gandhi, now seek to compromise satyagraha by continuing to promote violence as an alternative. 

Satyagraha is the way of truth and nonviolence and that is the path back to the center and democratic consensus.

Positive change is possible but it requires study, reflection and moral action. Below is the first part of an online course on nonviolence that I highly recommend that people seeking to make the world a better place take.

Fight for Freedom in Venezuela: Time to Double Down on Non-violent Resistance

Beware the temptation to embrace violence as a short cut.

The power of nonviolence

 Exposing the terrible reality that Venezuela is in the midst of a famine, and the illegitimate and criminal Maduro regime refuses to recognize it. Worse yet, the regime sends valuable tons of humanitarian equipment to Cuba while Venezuelans are dying of hunger and lack of basic medicines.  If that was not the last straw, this same regime denies the entry of needed humanitarian assistance, and gives order to shoot those trying to bring it in to the country.

The logical result of this immoral policy is that it is creating dissension in the ranks. Defecting members of the military is a good sign. Nonviolent resistance strategy is the way to go to bring change to Venezuela and end the manufactured famine of the Maduro regime.

Revisiting the writings of Gene Sharp, the scholar of non-violent civic resistance, will lead one to a pluralistic concept of power and how regime's depend on different pillars to maintain power. One of the most important pillars is the military, another is the police, the business community, etc.

Source: Thoughtful Campaigner

The fact that there are scores of military personnel refusing to shoot their fellow citizens and abandoning their ranks is an excellent sign. 

Now is not the time to embrace violence (or violent flanks) but to double down on nonviolence and an effective strategy to bring yourself out of the crisis by speeding up the collapse of the remaining pillars of the Maduro regime. This also means expanding and maximizing your number of allies.

Source: Thoughtful Campainger

The example of Syria, where a nonviolent movement made incredible gains only to have a violent flank emerge out of defecting army units, ostensibly to defend nonviolent activists from the violent Assad regime, should serve as a warning. The belief, in some quarters, was that this was inevitable and would speed up the victory over the Syrian dictatorship. The result was just the opposite. Assad's regime was able to consolidate itself and the body count of the conflict exploded and radically violent elements overtook the violent resistance.

"Violent flanks" and the use of the so-called "diversity of tactics" reduces mobilization and decreases the probability of success for a resistance movement. Strategic thinker Gene Sharp put it succinctly when he said: "using violence is a stupid decision."
 
This does not mean entering into a pointless negotiation with the regime that buys it time to renew itself. Gene Sharp on the BBC program HardTalk in 2015 said it plainly: "Dictator's will not negotiate themselves out of power."  The only thing to negotiate is their exit once their pillars of power have imploded.

However it does mean identifying other effective elements of the opposition and strengthening your relationship with them operationally while trying to peel off neutral elements of the population to join your cause.

This does not signify stopping or slowing down your mobilization and activism but finding commonalities to speed up and perfect campaigns and tactics to take power away from the Maduro regime while growing your spectrum of allies. 

The friends of the Maduro dictatorship are doing everything they can to discredit Gene Sharp and his writings because they know how effective they are and how they empower the citizenry. Below is the complete 2015 Hard Talk program with Gene Sharp. Please share it widely.

 

#MarchForHumanity: A Reflection on MLK and Cuban dissidents

Marching for Humanity and to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent legacy

Marching to Atlanta's state capital from Ebeneezer Baptist Church on April 9th

I took part in the March For Humanity on April 9, 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia on the fiftieth anniversary of the funeral procession for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Over the past week numerous events have been held to mark the 50 years since a sniper's bullet took his life. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., like Mohandas Gandhi before him twenty years earlier, was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis Tennessee at 6:01pm.


 
Dr. King's example inspired the dissident movements in Poland, Cuba and elsewhere in the 1970s, 1980s and today. On April 4, 2018 outside of the Lorraine Hotel, author Taylor Branch reported on how a former Polish Ambassador speaking there told the crowd how MLK's movement inspired the Polish Solidarity movement.

Former Polish Ambassador tells #MLK50 in Memphis that MLK's movement inspired the Solidarity campaign that ended the Cold War without violence. pic.twitter.com/5i80Cpuc7z

— Taylor Branch (@taylorbranch) April 4, 2018

Cubans, despite efforts of Cuban communists to distort the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr with an official center in Havana, have learned of his true legacy and the type of nonviolent action he advocated. In a speech he gave in St. Augustine in 1964 Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described both the kind of love referred to in the Sermon on the Mount and the impracticability of violence:

"Its difficult advice and in some quarters it isn't too popular to say it...Let us recognize that violence is not the answer. I must say to you tonight that violence is impractical...We have another method that is much more powerful and much more effective than the weapon of violence...Hate isn't our weapon either...I am not talking now about a weak love it would be nonsense for an oppressed people to love their oppressor in an affectionate sense I'm not talking about that too many people confuse the meaning of love when they go to criticizing the love ethic. ...I am talking about a love that is so strong that it becomes a demanding love. A love that is so strong that it organizes itself into a mass movement and says somehow I am my brothers keeper and he is so wrong that I am willing to suffer and die to get him right and to see that he is on the wrong road."

Former Cuban prisoner of conscience Roberto de Miranda in a 2015 interview spoke of how human rights defenders in Cuba teach young people about Martin Luther King Jr. and Lech Walesa today.

"We have been inspired by many figures who have carried out struggles through civil disobedience, especially people who have fought for human rights, like Dr. Martin Luther King (Jr.). In our libraries, we teach young people how his struggle was carried out, as well as teaching them about (Lech) Walesa and many others who struggled in Eastern Europe and who are great examples for the Cuban people and the dissidents."

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas was one of the founders of the Christian Liberation Movement in Cuba that came into existence on September 8, 1988, and had it become a national movement despite all the obstacles presented by the dictatorship. Oswaldo Payá explained the methods of this movement in December of 2002 while receiving the European Union's Sakharov Prize that echo the values of both Gandhi and King:

We have not chosen the path of peace as a tactic, but because it is inseparable from the goal for which our people are striving. Experience teaches us that violence begets more violence and that when political change is brought about by such means, new forms of oppression and injustice arise. It is our wish that violence and force should never be used as ways of overcoming crises or toppling unjust governments. This time we shall bring about change by means of this civic movement which is already opening a new chapter in Cuba’s history, in which dialogue, democratic involvement, and solidarity will prevail. In such a way we shall foster genuine peace.

This is not a coincidence. Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas's widow, Ofelia Acevedo, in 2014 spoke of King's nonviolent legacy and how it inspired her and her husband to also dream and work for Cubans to enjoy a better tomorrow. Following the brief interview she pulled out a copy of the 1990 Christmas Message of the Christian Liberation movement written by Oswaldo Payá where he put on paper his dream:

"The rifles will be buried face down, the words of hatred will vanish in the heart without reaching the lips, we'll go out into the street and all of us will see in the other a brother, let us look to the future with the peace of he that knows that he forgave and he that has been forgiven. Let there be no blood to clean or dead to bury, the shadow of fear and of catastrophe will give way to the reconciliatory light, and Cuba will be reborn in every heart, in a miracle of love made by God and us."

Sadly, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero, a youth leader from his movement who had been a seminarian were martyred on July 22, 2012 for advocating nonviolent change in Cuba. Oswaldo had managed to obtain more than 25,000 signatures in a Stalinist dictatorship demanding a vote to change the system and recognize the rights and dignity of Cubans. Like Martin Luther King Jr. he was killed but his ideas and example live on to inspire others.

In the struggle against dictatorship in Cuba it was the internal opposition that first took up nonviolence as a method to resist injustice without becoming unjust. It was the nonviolent opposition that confronted a regime rooted in hatred without hating but were followed by other organizations, including one that engaged with The King Center. 

 Coretta Scott King and Jose Basulto of Brothers to the Rescue

Brothers to the Rescue is a grassroots movement founded in May 1991 in response to the death of a fifteen year old named Gregorio Pérez Ricardo who had died fleeing Cuba on a raft only to die of exposure and dehydration. The movement was funded by the community through donations in order to carry out a nonviolent constructive program saving the lives of Cuban rafters before they died of dehydration or starvation on the high seas in small rafts. Brothers to the Rescue actively collaborated with both The King Center in Atlanta, Georgia and Gene Sharp of the Albert Einstein Institution. Brothers to the Rescue conducted more than  2,400 aerial search missions.  These resulted in the rescue of more than 4,200 men, women and children ranging in age from a five day old infant to a man 79 years of age. Sadly, Brothers to the Rescue was dealt a crippling blow on February 24, 1996 when two of its planes were blow to bits in the Florida Straits by Cuban MiGs while searching for rafters killing four humanitarians.

The dream survives in others even when the dreamer has been cut down by the forces of repression and hatred. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. never set foot in Cuba but his example inspired generations of activists who continue to work for a better tomorrow on the island. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 in his famous I have a Dream Speech explained in powerful terms the importance of the now and the dangers of gradualism:

"This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."

Rev. King  was born 89 years ago on January 15, 1929 and lived a life of service for his fellow man and woman while resisting racism, poverty and war. He sought to make real the beloved community viewing it as an obtainable and realistic goal. At the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia they say that Dr. King was "a 20th century prophet" and "a 21st century architect." 

Both Martin and Oswaldo gave their lives in the cause of justice, dignity and peace becoming martyrs of nonviolence in the same way that Mohandas Gandhi did. Their good works live beyond them and have positive repercussions today and will continue to in the future. Michael Nagler, a long time peace scholar, presents the theorem as follows: Nonviolence sometimes “works” and always works, while by contrast, Violence sometimes “works” and never works.  Nagler offers a more detailed explanation.

The exercise of violence always has a destructive effect on human relationships even when, as sometimes happens, it accomplishes some short-term goal. The exercise of nonviolence, or Satyagraha, always brings people closer. This explains why Gandhi, after fifty years of experimentation in every walk of life, could declare that he “knew of no single case in which it had failed.” Where it seemed to fail he concluded that he or the other satyagrahis had in some way failed to live up to its steep challenge.  Taking the long view, he was able to declare that “There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence. The end of violence is surest defeat.”

Cuban opposition activist Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, who spent over a decade in prison in Cuba for his nonviolent activism and defense of human rights would refer to and quote both Mohandas Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. On June 1, 2003 from his prison cell in a letter he wrote:

"My inspiration is alive: God and the great teachers of nonviolence, present today now more than ever. As Martin Luther King said: "If a people can find among their ranks a 5% of men willing to voluntarily go to prison for a cause they consider just then there is no obstacle that can stop them."

Six years later into his prison sentence in 2009 Dr. Biscet wrote about spreading the word about nonviolent icons and how some reacted with skepticism. 

 "I remember when I started preaching about Gandhi and Thoreau some said I would walk through the streets of Havana with a loin cloth like Gandhi. When I learned of these words spoken about me in a derogatory manner I just smiled because I knew I would be in these conditions but not in the streets of Havana. Rather in the infinite captivity that I would have through suffering. They had not been mistaken those who had made the joke to humiliate me. Because from the humiliation of a man in loincloth highlights the reflection of human dignity over barbarism."

 The legacy of Dr. King fifty years after his assassination continues to impact not only in the United  States, but around the world, including in Cuba among those seeking a democratic transition and an end to 59 years of totalitarian rule.