Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream: 57 Years Later Black Lives Matter in Cuba and the United States

"We're taking a step forward on America's rocky but righteous journey towards justice." - Martin Luther King III, August 28, 2020
  


Fifty years ago on August 28, 1963 much of the United States was in the midst of a struggle to do away with segregation and civil rights activists were struggling to pass voting rights legislation. The march on Washington D.C. that culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.'s I have a dream speech sought to pressure legislators into voting for the legislation, and they succeeded.
This was a nonviolent revolution that sought justice, and changed the United States of America and in 2009 an African American president sat in the White House evidence that part of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream had been achieved.
Today at a moment of national crisis Martin Luther King III, son of the martyred civil rights leader, together with his daughter returned to the Lincoln Memorial to address questions of racism and injustice in the United States in 2020 and share their message of love and the legacy of their dad and grandad respectively. This event began last night and will continue into this evening and is live streaming.

“We stand and march for love, and we will fulfill my grandfather's dream,” Yolanda Renee King, granddaughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., says during the March on Washington. https://t.co/S58qRg2xjv pic.twitter.com/9HKWOrmKk8

— CNN (@CNN) August 28, 2020

This is part of a national conversation on racism and violence in the United States, and there were calls to refund and dismantle the police, but there were other views included in the conversation. It has the potential to be another nonviolent moment.
Sadly, despite the successes of the civil rights movement in the United States by 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. found his nonviolent posture challenged by a black power movement that instead of accelerating change in areas of social and economic justice brought it to a halt. Reverend King warned black activists not to take the way of the Castros and Che Guevara:

“Riots just don’t pay off,” said King. He pronounced them an objective failure beyond morals or faith. “For if we say that power is the ability to effect change, or the ability to achieve purpose,” he said, “then it is not powerful to engage in an act that does not do that–no matter how loud you are, and no matter how much you burn.” Likewise, he exhorted the staff to combat the “romantic illusion” of guerrilla warfare in the style of Che Guevara. No “black” version of the Cuban revolution could succeed without widespread political sympathy, he asserted, and only a handful of the black minority itself favored insurrection. King extolled the discipline of civil disobedience instead, which he defined not as a right but a personal homage to untapped democratic energy. The staff must “bring to bear all of the power of nonviolence on the economic problem,” he urged, even though nothing in the Constitution promised a roof or a meal. “I say all of these things because I want us to know the hardness of the task,” King concluded, breaking off with his most basic plea: “We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at nonviolence now.”

Critics of nonviolence like to point out that Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in 1968, but fail to mention that he succeeded in transforming the United States into a better country by successfully and nonviolently addressing historic injustices.

What did Reverend King accomplish? He led the successful Montgomery bus boycott that ended segregation on buses in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956. He led the Birmingham campaign in 1963 that faced off with the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene “Bull” Connor, who used high-pressure water jets and police attack dogs on children. The campaign ended with Connor losing his job and the city’s discriminatory laws were changed. 

Martin Luther King Jr on August 28, 1963

Reverend King played an instrumental role in the August 28, 1963 march on Washington, D.C. with over 250,000 participants. It was done to pressure for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 in Alabama demonstrated African Americans desire to vote. The violence by local authorities, racists, and the Klu Klux Klan and the nonviolent resistance of the civil rights activists were key to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. These laws gave African Americans political power that had been denied them.

Contrast this with the fires and riots across the country over the past several weeks. Smaller in number than non-violent protests they have too often drowned out those advocating reform and a revolution in values to a person centered society. Today there was light and a conversation while in places like Portland and Seattle, where revolutionaries gunned down young black men, and the police were absent, having been driven out, painfully demonstrated that violence begets violence and does not bring our country closer to the Beloved Community and black lives continue to be unjustly killed. The way of Stokely Carmichael leads to a sterile dead end of bloodshed and violence with the seductive call of revolutionary violence that he embraced in Havana in the 1960s ended with end of this period of civil rights reforms.
Let us also not forget that many who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the 1950s took up arms again against him in the 1960s in an armed struggle that failed wiping out all opposition: violent and nonviolent for years.
A nonviolent movement began to emerge out of Cuba's prisons in the mid 1970s and onto the streets in the mid 1980s yet there are voices that claim that nonviolence hasn't worked and counsel either collaboration with the dictatorship or violent resistance.
Let us compare Reverend King's nonviolent legacy with the violent revolution that sought to end a dictatorship ninety miles away from U.S. shores in Cuba that in 1963 was just four years old. Sixty years later and the Castro dictatorship that replaced the Batista dictatorship is still in power killing and repressing. Despite fraudulent statistics in areas of health care and education the reality of an ongoing cholera epidemic and the mass exodus of millions of Cubans demonstrates the nightmare that exists in Cuba today. Today, Cubans are unjustly imprisoned for exercising their human rights and are prisoners of conscience.

Prisoner of Conscience Silverio Portal Contreras beaten and going blind

Silverio Portal Contreras,a former activist with the Ladies in White, is serving a 4-year sentence for "contempt" and "public disorder." According to a court document, he was arrested on the June 20, 2016 in Old Havana after shouting “Down Fidel Castro, down Raúl...” The document states that "the behavior of the accused is particularly offensive because it took place in a touristic area." The document further describes the accused as having “bad social and moral behavior” and mentions that he fails to participate in pro-government activities. According to Silverio’s wife, before his arrest he had campaigned against the collapse of dilapidated buildings in Havana.

Silverio was recognized as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International on August 26, 2019. He was beaten by prison officials in mid-May 2020 and lost sight in one eye.

Lucinda Gonzalez Gomez, wife of the activist, has put out a desperate plea for help after receiving a call from her husband on June 10, 2020. “Silverio called me and put an official on the phone to explain the situation,” said Gonzalez Gomez to CubaNet. The official told her that “he was taken to the ophthalmologist and because of temporary loss of blood flow, he was losing sight in both eyes.” We fear for Silverio and his life today imprisoned for speaking what he thought.

Hatred and the appeal of revolutionary violence leads to strange bedfellows. The Progressive, a publication founded in 1909 in Madison, Wisconsin on June 18, 2020 published an article titled "Foreign Correspondent: Police Lessons From Cuba" by Reese Erlich that claims "Contrary to the image of brutal and repressive communists, police in Cuba offer an instructive example for activists in the United States."   If the United States adopted the Cuban approach recommended by  Mr. Erlich any person recording a police officer, then sharing that image on a digital platform would be violating their right to privacy, and if what they record the police officer doing, whether his or her actions were right or wrong, they would be fined and if they did not pay the fine would be subject to prison.

A law, patterned after Cuba's, would require those who record police on or off the job to get the approval of the police officer recorded before sharing the video with any digital platforms. Thankfully, the First Amendment prohibits such restrictions in the United States, and also runs afoul of international human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Cuba is a signatory, even though the document is censored in the island.

Six days after The Progressive published its essay celebrating Cuban policing in Castro's Cuba, a 27 year old Cuban was shot in the back by a Cuban police man.

Hansel E. Hernández (age 27) killed on June 24, 2020.

 On June 24, 2020 in Havana, Cuba Hansel E. Hernández (age 27) was shot in the back and killed by the police while allegedly trying to flee.  It took three days for the authorities to report the killing, despite repeated requests for clarity on what had happened.

This would normally have ended silently with no one being the wiser, but Facebook and the courage of a traumatized family member prevented that outcome. On June 25,  a woman posted on Facebook a photo of the dead Black youth who, she said, had been the victim of the national revolutionary police a day earlier.  

"I feel deep pain for the murder of my nephew Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano committed yesterday morning in La Lima, Guanabacoa (in eastern Havana), by two patrolmen (police)," she wrote. "We, the family members, ask for mercy that this cruel act at the hands of our supposed national security does not go unpunished in any way. Because a police officer, a uniform, does not give the right to murder anyone in such a way. If we know very well that they are trained with personal defense, they must carry spray, tonfas, etc. Why then did they have to resort to their firearm and take a son from a mother, a father, a nephew from their aunt, a brother from their younger sister ... Noting that he was NEVER armed, please, justice. 

Facebook post by Hansel's aunt calling for justice.

Hours later, the authorities of the Castro regime released an official statement claiming that the 27-year-old had been caught by a National Revolutionary Police patrol when, according to the Cuban Ministry of the Interior (MININT), "he was stealing pieces and accessories from a bus stop", then fleeing.  During the chase "on the run for almost two kilometers, over uneven terrain", the young man, to avoid being arrested, "attacked one of the policemen throwing several stones, one of which hit the policeman in the crotch, another in the side of the torso and a third dislocated his shoulder and threw him to the floor," indicates the statement posted on social networks on June 27th. In response to Hansel Hernández's throwing stones, “the soldier fired two warning shots. Immediately afterwards and due to the danger to his life due to the magnitude of the aggression, the policeman riposted from the ground, firing a shot with his regulation weapon that impacts the individual and causes him to die," continues the official version. 

Jorge Enrique Rodríguez arrested for reporting on youth shot by police

"Over social media demonstrations were announced for June 30 to protest the killing of Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano. The secret police began shutting off internet connections, cell phones and started arbitrarily detaining those who they suspected would take part in the non-violent protests. A number of activists recorded or expressed over social media their intention to take part in the protest action and some were able to message out when they were taken, or had their homes surrounded and laid siege to by state security and were placed under house arrest. This crackdown in which seventy Cubans were targeted successfully "prevented" the non-violent action.  

On June 28, 2020 independent Jorge Enrique Rodríguez was arrested and is now being charged with "Fake news" for his reporting on this police killing of a black youth.  Other journalists in the lead up to the June 30th planned protests have been detained or laid siege to their homes in order to stop them reporting on the killing of Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano and reactions to his death. The Committee to Protect Journalists called for Jorge Enrique's immediate release.

Meanwhile, the Castro regime launched the equivalent of a #BlueLivesMatter campaign that it calls Heroes of the Blue ( #HeroesDeAzul ), but instead of something spontaneous from civil society or a police association this is a systematic campaign of the dictatorship. While at the same time shutting down independent actions as previously mentioned. The tweet above is an example from this campaign.

No video to contradict the version of the dictatorship. Peaceful protests preempted. This is the reality of life under a dictatorship where freedom of speech and assembly do not exist. Is this what progressives want for the United States?

Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros: Died on hungerstrike

Cuban dissident Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros died on August 7, 2020 in Cuba while in police custody following a 40 day hunger strike. He had been jailed on false charges in the Kilo 8 prison of Camagüey. His body was quickly cremated by the dictatorship without his families consent. Yale professor and author Carlos Eire writing in Babalu Blog highlighted Yosvany's untimely passing and placed it in context:

It’s happened again. Another Cuban dissident has died in prison. Strangely, unlike previous hunger-striking political prisoners who received international attention, Yosvany Arostegui was barely noticed in social media and totally ignored by the world’s news outlets. He joins a long list of hunger-strikers who have been pushed to their deaths by the Castro regime. May his self-immolation in prison be the last, and may he rest in peace and eternal freedom.

Exiled Cuban lawyer and human rights defender Laritza Diversent over Facebook wrote:

I feel deep sadness and pain. I imagine how lonely he felt and how convinced he was that he preferred to exhaust his body until it was turned off. His death reminds me of the thousands of people who, in Cuban prisons, use their body to protest against unjust criminal proceedings. It makes me more aware of all the activists who, like Silverio Portal, are locked up as punishment for exercising their rights to free expression, criticize, protest, meet and associate.

On Friday, August 7, State Security contacted the family of prisoner Yosvany Aróstegui Armenteros to inform them that he had died during a hunger strike that he had carried out for 40 days.

Aróstegui Armenteros had been arrested a year earlier and prosecuted for two common crimes for which he pleaded not guilty from the beginning. Before this last strike he had carried out others with the same objective: to demand his freedom. He is not the first, and I fear while people of good will celebrate a white minority dictatorship in Havana while ignoring its black victims, there will be others. Black Lives Matter and that should include Black Cuban Lives too.

Yosvany Aróstegui Armenteros died on hunger strike on August 7, 2020

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," said Martin Luther King Jr., and he was right.

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., like Gandhi before him, was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Another courageous man of Christian faith, inspired by Reverend King's nonviolent legacy, 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.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

Meanwhile, Raul Castro survived to the present day hanging on to power and prepares to turn it over to a new generation of Castros, as his brother had passed it on to him before, as the island of Cuba sinks into misery and despair, and humanitarian aid gathered in Miami and delivered to Havana by Oswaldo's daughter, Rosa María Payá Acevedo is blocked from being delivered to Cubans in need by the Castro dictatorship.

Rosa María Payá Acevedo carries on her dad's legacy

A dictatorship that claims to advocate for social justice but silences those who wished to nonviolently protest the shooting in the back of a young unarmed black man by the Revolutionary National Police.  A regime that in the midst of hunger rejects aid sitting at a port in Havana.

The dream survives in others even when the dreamer has been cut down by the forces of repression and hatred. Love and nonviolence still find a way.