"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 IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Let me begin by making an admission of bias. I am a free speech absolutist, and was recently interviewed on the topic, and it is available online. Earlier today on Face the Nation, CBS news correspondent Margaret Brennan made a disturbing claim, that although correctly challenged and rebutted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, needs closer examination. Below is the transcript that begins at 12 minutes and 12 seconds into the interview.
CBS News senior foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan: "Well, he [ Vice President J.D. Vance ] was standing in a country where free
speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide, and he met with the head
of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to
extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you
know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio: "Well,
I have to disagree with you. No, no, I have to disagree with you. Free
speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by
an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal,
because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those
that they – they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the
Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There
was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party
that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of
history.
I also think it’s wrong –
again, I go back to the point of his speech. The point of his speech was
basically that there is an erosion in free speech and in tolerance for
opposing points of view within Europe, and that’s of concern because
that is eroding – it’s not an erosion of your military capabilities.
That’s not an erosion of your economic standing. That’s an erosion of
the actual values that bind us together in this transatlantic union that
everybody talks about. And I think allies and friends and partners that
have worked together now for 80 years should be able to speak frankly
to one another in open forums without being offended, insulted, or
upset. And I spoke to foreign ministers from multiple countries
throughout Europe. Many of them probably didn’t like the speech or
didn’t agree with it, but they were continuing to engage with us on all
sorts of issues that unite us.
So
again, at the end of the day, I think that people give all – that is a
forum in which you’re supposed to be inviting people to give speeches,
not basically a chorus where everyone is saying the exact same thing.
That’s not always going to be the case when it’s a collection of
democracies where leaders have the right and the privilege to speak
their minds in forums such as these."
First, Weimar Germany had modern-like hate speech laws and vigorously
enforced them but it did not have the desired effect. Making the Nazis
hate speech illegal and outlawing their publications raised their
profile and helped them gather more support. The New Yorker on February 14, 2015
in the article "Copenhagen, Speech and Violence" interviewed Flemming
Rose, the foreign editor of the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten who set the record straight:
"Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite
frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role
in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to
claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic
speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality.
Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius
Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served
two prison sentences."
The outcome of silencing hate speech is not what those who advocate for it would expect as Rose continued to explain:
"Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering
anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations
machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never
have found in a climate of a free and open debate. In the years from
1923 to 1933, Der Stürmer [Streicher's
newspaper] was either confiscated or editors taken to court on no fewer
than thirty-six occasions. The more charges Streicher faced, the greater
became the admiration of his supporters. The courts became an important
platform for Streicher's campaign against the Jews. In the words of a
present-day civil-rights campaigner, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very
much like the anti-hate laws of today, and they were enforced with some
vigor."
When
violence erupts in a society where the rule of law exists, it must not
be tolerated, but dealt with an expeditious manner through the judicial
system. However, where the poisonous tropes of anti-Semitism, and hatred
against the Jewish people arise, it must not be censored by the
government, but challenged by people of good will in the battle of ideas
to expose both its intellectual and moral bankruptcy.
Hate speech has Marxist origins
that are in opposition to free expression. Perversely, it claims that
language can be violence to censor speech while at the same time defending physical violence as justified. When you outlaw speech and drive it underground you imbue it with power and credibility it does not deserve.
This approach in Wiemar Germany weaponized hate speech laws against the Nazis that created a backlash that helped them take power, and once in power free speech was completely eliminated in Germany.
Ms. Brennan's claim on Face the Nation was not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to what actually happened, and a disservice to her audience.
"Welcome to today’s episode of the Free Speech Forward podcast, a conversation between Joia, Chris, and John Suarez, Executive Director at the Center for a Free Cuba. John shares his journey as a human rights advocate, discussing the importance of free speech particularly in the context of Cuba. He describes his early experiences with censorship, the historical repression in Cuba, and the need for regime change to restore free speech. The conversation also touches on the cultural decline of free speech in the U.S. and the courage required to speak out against oppression."
Writers around the globe stood in solidarity with Salman Rushdie today and
celebrated his tireless advocacy for the freedom of expression and the
plight of imperiled writers around the globe. It is important to hear Salman's bold defense of free expression.
PEN America, The New York Public Library, and Penguin Random House gathered in front of the New York Public Library in Manhattan at 11:00am with friends, supporters, readers, and members of the
literary community read from selected texts from Rushdie’s body of
work. Readers included: Paul Auster, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Tina
Brown, Kiran Desai, Andrea Elliott, Amanda Foreman, Roya Hakakian, A.M.
Homes, Siri Hustvedt, Hari Kunzru, Aasif Mandvi, Colum McCann, Andrew Solomon, and Gay Talese.
I was unable to be present in New York City, but followed live coverage, and posted a home video reading an excerpt from a speech Salman Rushdie gave at Columbia University on December 11, 1991 titled "One Thousand Days in a Balloon" used the hashtag #StandWithSalman and tagged @penamerica.
"Our lives teach us who we are." I have
learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of
reality to supplant your own -- and such descriptions have been raining
down on me, from security advisers, governments, journalists,
Archbishops, friends, enemies, mullahs
-- then you might as well be dead. Obviously, a rigid, blinkered,
absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid,
uncertain, metamorphic picture I've
always carried about is rather more
vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might to . . . my own soul;
must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step
clown-instincts, no matter how great the storm. And if
that plunges me into contradiction and
paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've
fished in it for my art. This turbulent sea was the sea outside my
bedroom window in Bombay. It is the
sea by which I was born, and which I
carry within me wherever I go." ... "Free speech is a non-starter," says one
of my Islamic extremist opponents. No, sir, it is not. Free speech is
the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
"Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of communism… As Fascism sprang
from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism. Thus were set on foot
those kindred movements which were destined soon to plunge the world
into more hideous strife, which none can say has ended with their
destruction." - Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Volume 1, The Gathering Storm (1948)
Sir Winston Churchill died 55 years ago on 24 January 1965 at 90 years of age. He was given a state funeral that lasted four days.
Sir Churchill was the man who twice saved democracy from Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism. In 1940, the Battle of Britain's most decisive clash saw the Royal Air Force
repel the largest Luftwaffe air strike against the United Kingdom.
Months earlier on June 18, 1940 in a speech in The House of Commons
titled "Their Finest Hour" Prime Minister Churchill explained the stakes of World War II and the start of the existential clash for Great Britain:
I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle
depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own
British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our
Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned
on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose
the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life
of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we
fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all
that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark
Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of
perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and
so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last
for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”
The apologists for international communism like to extol their
so-called "antifascist"credentials while remaining silent or finding
bizarre revisionist explanations to downplay or ignore the connections between fascism and
communism. Sir. Churchill succinctly outlined this relationship in the quote at the top
of the page.
Of even greater concern is the attempt to deny the fact
that Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin signed a pact in August of 1939, that secretly included the division of Central and Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, that started World War II.
Sir Winston Churchill died on this day in 1965.
The great wartime Prime Minister is remembered in the Abbey with a marble memorial stone near the Grave of the Unknown Warrior.
"Poland has been again overrun by two of the great Powers which held
her in bondage for 150 years, but were unable to quench the spirit of
the Polish nation. The heroic defense of Warsaw shows that the soul of
Poland is indestructible, and that she will rise again like a rock,
which may for a spell be submerged by a tidal wave, but which remains a
rock."
Britain and France were convinced that Russia and Germany were allies
and plans were drawn up to attack Russian oil fields in order to deny
them to the Nazis in what became known in the planning stages as Operation Pike. Months later the reversals continued for Christendom. The Fall of France
to the Nazi war machine took place between May 10 and June 25, 1940
over the span of 46 days ending in the evacuation of Dunkirk. This
disaster is what led to Operation Pike being scrapped.
Britain stood alone, while the United States remained neutral, and the Soviet Union actively aided the Nazi war machine.
The British Empire was alone for almost a year between June 25, 1940
through June 22, 1941 as the sole main resistance to Nazi Germany. The
United States would remain neutral until Pearl Harbor on December 7,
1941 and the Soviet Union was a de facto ally of Nazi Germany
until Hitler invaded communist Russia on June 22, 1941 in Operation
Barbarossa. The United Kingdom was all that stood between the survival
of Christian civilization and a new Dark Age that Adolf Hitler called
the Thousand Year Reich. If one is truly Anti-Nazi then one must
celebrate and honor the legacy of Winston Churchill, who early on
identified the Nazi threat and issued calls to to resistance with one of the most important in a radio address to London and the United States on October 16, 1938.
"Dictatorship – the fetish worship of one man – is a passing phase. A
state of society where men may not speak their minds, where children
denounce their parents to the police, where a business man or small
shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private
opinions; such a state of society cannot long endure if brought into
contact with the healthy outside world. The light of civilised progress
with its tolerances and co-operation, with its dignities and joys, has
often in the past been blotted out. But I hold the belief that we have
now at last got far enough ahead of barbarism to control it, and to
avert it, if only we realise what is afoot and make up our minds in
time. We shall do it in the end. But how much harder our toil for every
day’s delay! Is this a call to war? Does anyone pretend that
preparation for resistance to aggression is unleashing war? I declare it
to be the sole guarantee of peace. We need the swift gathering of
forces to confront not only military but moral aggression; the resolute
and sober acceptance of their duty by the English-speaking peoples and
by all the nations, great and small, who wish to walk with them."
There is a nation which has abandoned all its liberties in order to
augment its collective strength. There is a nation which, with all its
strength and virtue, is in the grip of a group of ruthless men,
preaching a gospel of intolerance and racial pride, unrestrained by law,
by parliament, or by public opinion. In that country all pacifist
speeches, all morbid war books are forbidden or suppressed, and their
authors rigorously imprisoned. From their new table of commandments they
have omitted “thou shall not kill.”
Sadly the world did not listen to Churchill until it was too late to
avoid a major conflict, but at least it was not too late to stop the
Nazi war machine although it came at great cost and suffering. Churchill
understood that to defeat Hitler the Soviet Union would have to change
sides and when the Nazis invaded Russia the British Prime Minister joked,
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference
to the Devil in the House of Commons.” The price of ending Hitler was
cozying up to Josef Stalin, another genocidal totalitarian monster.
Sir Winston Churchill, the war time prime minister, was voted
out of office within weeks of the victory in Europe in 1945. The Labour
Party left the national unity government and snap elections were held on July 5, 1945 and they won by a landslide.
When King George VI offered Churchill "the country’s highest honor, The Order of the Garter, Churchill declined, saying that he couldn’t possibly accept such an honor, as the British voters had given him the 'order of the boot.'"
But in opposition he continued to speak out on matters of great importance.
Churchill was not blind to the nature of his Russian wartime ally and understood
the threat of Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union and thankfully his
warnings on March 5, 1946 at Westminster College in Fulton Missouri were listened to this time and may have avoided World War III, albeit with a cold peace.
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain
has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the
capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw,
Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all
these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must
call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not
only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases,
increasing measure of control from Moscow."
He then went on to make a remarkable statement about the circumstances that led to World War II and how it was completely avoidable:
Last time I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my own
fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention. Up
till the year 1933 or even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the
awful fate which has overtaken her and we might all have been spared the
miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind. There never was a war in all
history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just
desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in
my belief without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be
powerful, prosperous and honoured to-day; but no one would listen and
one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool. We surely must
not let that happen again.
Churchill was not only an Anti-Nazi but also an Anti-Communist and a conservative who on May 24, 1948 observed:
"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the
gospel of envy." He also understood and celebrated the importance of
free speech. In the midst of the war in 1943 he observed:
"Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its
being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to
say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an
outrage." Today let us remember this great statesman, democrat, and
conservative and call on all people of good will to learn form this
greatest of Britons.
Six years after his 1945 defeat, in 1951, Sir Winston Churchill and the Conservatives would win a snap election and return to Downing Street as Prime Minister. He had a close relationship with Queen Elisabeth II, and resigned from the Prime Ministership due to health issues in 1955 and retired from public life.
Attempts to cancel him posthumously need to be resisted, and this greatest of Britons remembered and honored for his service to country and the world.
Bad night for Castro followed up with an opportunity to debate tactics and strategy.
On Friday, October 11th the CONCACAF Nations League held a Team USA vs Team Cuba soccer match at the Audi Field in Washington, DC. Cuban diplomats attended the game and large Cuban flags were seen in the stadium. There was also a heavy showing of American flags, and fans dressed in Revolutionary era garb.
In the midst of all this ten of us stood together with a banner and flag from CubaDecide calling on Castro to leave power.
Tonight @AudiField in Washington DC, despite being surrounded by Cuban & US flags at the Team Cuba Men 🇨🇺 v Team USA Men 🇺🇸 (@ussoccer/@USMNT) #USAvCUB game was told by security that political banners were prohibited & that we’d be asked to leave if we kept holding it up. pic.twitter.com/dXww74SzSU
Approximately a half hour into the game we were approached by stadium officials and told that political banners were prohibited and that we’d be asked to leave if we kept holding it up. At the time I posted what had taken place on twitter.
Four day later on October 15th Nizmy Liberty responded to the tweet raising a number of issues related to the protest and also to CubaDecide's position on the 2019 Constitutional referendum and the "No" campaign.
I responded, but twitter is a platform that does not allow much nuance, and decided to blog on the issues raised.
First, Nizmy is right. I have lived many years in the United States, and have also worked on political campaigns. However that "rule" was non-existent during much of my life here. We engaged in distributing political propaganda in both football games and baseball games in Iowa and Nebraska in the 1990s for state and federal races.
In the above tweet Nizmy makes reference to a law that bars "any kind of political propaganda in games." There is no law that I know of, but policies by sports leagues, and stadiums, but they are considered controversial. If there is such a law please share it.
Court decisions have been all over the place on this issue, especially with public stadiums on first amendment grounds. Private stadiums have more latitude on restricting free speech, but again their policies vary.
"What leagues can do is insist that expressions of political allegiance are maintained within consistent parameters that insure they don’t interfere with fans watching the event they paid to enjoy. By consistent, I mean that if a stadium allows American flags or team banners to be waved or displayed, then they should allow political flags and banners of the same size to be waved by fans, as long as they don’t promote symbols of hate and violence, such as swastikas.
The rule banning political banners at Major League Soccer (MLS) is a relatively new policy, and has been controversial on first amendment grounds.
The problems is that some of these policies do not ban all political speech, but leave it up to the discretion of the stadium owners, the league, or other entity.
For example, on August 1, 2019 four fans at the Baltimore Oriole's Camden Yards were booted out for unveiling a "Trump 2020" banner during the Orioles-Blue Jays game. According to a USA Today article the following day:
Camden Yards' stadium policy states that no banners can be hung anywhere in a way that would obstruct other fans' views of the game, according to the Orioles' website. Based on the organization's policy, political banners are subject to confiscation and based on the "Orioles' discretion."
In the same tweet Nizmy also argued that if one wanted to free Communist Cuba then one should "ask for arms", not for an "electoral" agenda that has proven a failure in Venezuela.
My response on twitter was inadequate due to space limitations, and focused more broadly on an approach that "ask for arms" which means a violent resistance and not an "electoral agenda" that falls within the category of nonviolence and responded as follows.
Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. “They found that major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just under half that at 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns.” Finally there study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”
Also added as a post script that I have not been a supporter of the “electoral agenda” in Venezuela and have called them fake elections for some time. This also holds true for Cuba. Now my definition of the "electoral agenda" as presented in Venezuela is one that viewed elections as the means to defeat Chavez and Maduro without doing anything else.
My argument with Venezuelans over a decade ago was that elections were an opportunity to challenge the legitimacy of the regime and to mobilize large numbers to assert political power, but it depended on challenging the results that had been rigged by the regime. A non-violent approach is much more than agreeing to the results of an election that falls far short of international standards and in which the vote has been rigged. Venezuelan opposition leaderMaría Corina Machado, over twitter on December 22, 2015 stated: "We knew that they were elections in a dictatorship; that is why we fought in the streets and tables. Today, it is the same dictatorship, defeated politically and electorally." The opposition National Assembly was a battle won, but it was not a final victory over Maduro and his Cuban handlers. Nizmy's response in Spanish said: "Breifly. In a tweet I told you everything. You confuse "civil resistance" with "electoral path "under Communist tyranny to get it out. Do not support it for Venezuela but for #Cuba it is a double standard. I reminded you of that law from the stadium. Something else, I see you stopped following me."
Brevedad, eso. En un tuit te dije todo. Confundes "resistencia civil" con "vía "electorera" bajo tiranía Comunista para sacarla. No apoyarlo para Vzla pero sí para #Cuba es doble estándar. Del stadium te recordé esa ley. Algo más, veo me dejaste de seguir. https://t.co/P4SwwyPS7o
My position with regards to Cuba is that dividing the opposition over a tactical issue was a mistake. In the debate over the “No” campaign in Cuba believed back then and still do today that either position was not going to end the dictatorship. The “electoral agenda” without placing it within a broader civic resistance strategy as described above would never succeed. The claim that this was a double standard, with one position for Cuba and another for Venezuela, is not true.
This is the reason that on February 24, 2019 when many were focused on the sham constitutional referendum in Cuba was with a group outside of the Cuban Embassy in a silent vigil demanding justice for the four victims of the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down.
Returning to the topic of protests, and new restrictions on free speech. This is not a law but an apartment in Washington DC decided to ban tenant's hanging political banners in 2017 from their own balconies due to political content.
Communist China is having an impact on free speech due to its economic might and has led to Tibetan flags and the defense of Hong Kong becoming controversial, and fans being expelled for their t-shirts, banners and flags. It is not a stretch to imagine that Cuban diplomats, who were attending the game, protested the presence of the banner.
"Means and ends are central. If your means are corroded, your ends will be corroded. And if you're fighting to preserve liberty and you use means that eviscerate our liberties, the end will be corroded, too." - Nat Hentoff
Nat Hentoff: June 10, 1925 - January 7, 2017
Nat Hentoff has passed away at ninety one surrounded by his family listening to Billy Holiday. Friends of freedom feel his loss already. He was a freethinker and steadfast defender of free speech who defied being pigeonholed to a particular party line. He was also an author, music critic, and columnist. As a columnist for the Village Voice the automatic assumption was that he was a radical. This led to Mr. Hentoff being invited to interview Che Guevara when he was at the United Nations at the Cuban mission.
Over the decades Nat Hentoff would speak out for Cuban dissidents in his column and challenged those who remained silent, like the American Library Association, when they should have spoken up. He also recognized when those on the Left spoke out for Cuban dissidents as well. When Cubans in the island and in the diaspora despair and claim that no one cares about Cuba they are wrong and Mr. Hentoff is one of those friends of free Cubans that needs to be remembered and honored.
Castro was asked about Cuba’s political prisoners by CNN’s Jim Acosta during a joint news conference with President Obama. Castro’s response raised belligerent sarcasm to an art form: “What political prisoners? Give me a name or names, or when, after this meeting is over, you can give me a list of political prisoners and if we have those political prisoners, they will be released before tonight ends.” Obama stood mute. It would have sent a powerful message to Castro if the president had ticked off a list of Cuba’s remaining political prisoners by name – such as Carlos Manuel Figueroa Alvarez – and demanded that they be released. But sending powerful messages to dictators is not one of Obama’s talents.
The Guardian newspaper reported that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, while attending the official flag raising ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Havana on Aug. 14, “insisted that Cubans should be reassured that a return to diplomatic relations with Washington would result in the country’s leaders being held to account over their human rights record.” Meanwhile, Cuban dissidents were barred from attending the public ceremony at the insistence of Cuban authoritiesOn Sept. 30, Carlos Manuel Figueroa Alvarez — who was arrested at a Human Rights Day protest in 2013 and was one of the 53 prisoners released — shouted, “Down with Raul!” as he climbed over the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Havana. His efforts to seek the protection of U.S. authorities were rebuffed as he was forced off the embassy grounds by U.S. security personnel and turned over to Cuba’s security police. His current whereabouts are unknown.
Throughout the course of these columns on the Castro dictatorship, I have cited the chronic racial discrimination against black Cubans throughout Fidel's Revolution, a "revolution" that gladdens such visitors as celebrity documentarian Michael Moore, who never mentions Jim Crow on the island. The extensive marginalization of blacks in Cuba has failed to break through into general American consciousness; but as of the Nov. 30 release of "Statement of Conscience by African Americans" (miamiherald.com, Dec. 1), the big dirty secret of the Castro brothers has been exposed. According to the resounding news release -- which had the authoritative ring of Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" -- "60 prominent black American scholars, artists, and professionals have condemned the Cuban regime's stepped-up harassment and apparent crackdown on the country's budding civil rights movement. This statement is the first public condemnation of racial conditions in Cuba made by black Americans."
But in Cuba, 51-year-old Victor Rolando Arroyo-who directed an independent, private library before being sentenced to 26 years in prison after Castro's crackdown on dissenters (as reported in last week's column)-is now also in solitary confinement after protesting the treatment of another prisoner. Arroyo also belongs to the Independent Cuban Journalists and Writers Union. At his trial for "undermining national independence and territorial integrity," Arroyo refused a government-appointed defense lawyer because, he said, the verdict had been decided in advance. Arroyo also knew that a lawyer employed by the state is continually aware that his fealty to Castro will be judged by his performance for the defendant.
There is much more to the legacy of Nat Hentoff and his defense of freedom, but free Cubans are mourning his passing because we have lost a friend who spoke for us when nobody listened.
Test results are coming in for #YoTambienExijo performance art piece and Castro regime's performance is a massive fail for free speech in Cuba.
Tale of Two Cities: Freedom Tower (Miami) & Revolutionary Plaza (Havana)
The totalitarian apparatus of the Castro regime on occasion reveals more than it would like. The past four days may have been such an example. Dissidents who were thought to want to take part in an artistic happening where participants would freely speak for one minute were either effectively
placed under house arrest or picked up and arbitrarily detained.
According to the Yo Tambien Exijotwitter account Tania was last seen by her sister around 4:22pm on December 29, 2014. On December 30 over Yoani Sanchez's twitter account news arrived at around 10:48pm that her husband, Reinaldo Escobar, had returned home and in the publication 14 y Medio he was quoted saying that he saw Tania Bruguera dressed in "a prisoner's grey uniform."
With Sunday's post announcing that Tania Bruguera, a daughter of the nomenklatura, who is also an internationally recognized performance artist, was going to conduct an artistic happening in the Plaza of the Revolution. Interviewed by Reuters Ms. Bruguera was crystal clear about how she views herself: "I'm not doing this as a dissident, I'm doing it as a normal person," ... "I'm not a counter-revolutionary, like they say. I'm from a
revolutionary family. ... I'm going to continue the project."
Age old strategy: divide and conquer
Nevertheless, voices emerged through social media questioning her motives. State security knows how to play the game of manipulation sowing distrust and
division within movements but a nonviolent strategic vision can prevent and minimize it by focusing on what is important. Castro regime demonstrates its profound weakness
For example, December 30th demonstrated that the Castro regime did not want to permit the simulacrum of an exercise in free speech in an open space. The dictatorship could have set up a militarized cordon busing in state security agents and militias to take over the square while at the same time rounding up or surrounding the home of dissidents so that they could not attend the event. This would have left the artist to conduct her free speech happening with only regime agents. The New York Times and Associated Press would report on the "spontaneous support" for the Castro regime.
This would have been a less damaging international public relations option but the dictatorship did not exercise it and this leads to the question: Why not? The answer is that it did not because it apparently does not trust elements within its own state security and militia. If just one state security agent or militia member takes to the stage and breaks ranks that could begin a chain reaction that could spell the end of the regime. In Eastern Europe it was shown that if an autonomous space is carved out in the public sphere, freed from totalitarian control, it could subvert the entire system.
Graphic by Rolando Pulido
Instead they grabbed up Tania Bruguera the day before the event (December 29th) holding her incommunicado and released her on December 31st only to grab her up again a short time later when she tried to organize the performance art piece at another location. Official Cuban television on Cuba Hoy showed a normal and tranquil plaza without mentioning the detentions of the artist or others that wanted to hold the event there. The latest news is that she was detained a third time while trying to ascertain the plight of others detained because of the event she had planned.
Fortunately, principled and strategic nonviolence offer insights on how to operate in such a difficult and complicated environment. Here are four principles that I hold:
I. What is not negotiable
There are things that within a nonviolent context can never be surrendered or denied others such as dignity and things that must never accepted such as humiliation or attempting to humiliate others. Respecting all parties and how they wish to identify or not identify themselves while accurately describing their actions is legitimate.
II.Not forgetting those unfairly imprisoned or extrajudicially executed
Another general principle should be that when one has been detained or disappeared that the rights of that person be respected and that they be immediately freed. Over the past week it is known that the following Cuban artists, journalists and activists were detained by State Security:
1. Tania Bruguera 2. Antonio G Rodiles 3. Ailer Gonzalez 4. Claudio Fuentes 5. Boris González Arenas 6. Luis Trápaga 7. Camilo Ernesto Olivera 8. Andrés Pérez Suárez 9. Carlos Manuel Hernández Jiménez 10. Vicente Coll Campagnioli 11. Joisis García 12. Nelson Rodríguez. 13. Agustín López Canino 14. Ernesto Santana 15. Delio Rodríguez Díaz 16. Pablo Pascual Méndez Piña 17. Waldo Fernández Cuenca 18. Raúl Borges, 19. Yaneisi Herrera Cabrales 20. Ariovel Castillo Villalba 21. Carlos Manuel Hernández 22. Miguel Daniel Borroto 23. Raisel Rodríguez Rivero 24. Lázaro Montesino Hernández. 25. Oscar Casanella Saint Blancard 26. Dayron Moisés Torres 27. Danilo Maldonado Machado, el Sexto.
III. A mass based grassroots and participatory opposition Furthermore that the opposition should not be limited to a small elite but open to the grassroots and be participatory and inclusive within an operational framework. Once again this type of approach works best in a nonviolent context.
IV. 'As the means so the end' At the same time it is important to try and discern what are the most effective strategies to achieve real and lasting change in Cuba versus those strategies that may unknowingly facilitate a fraudulent change that maintains the old regime in power. In the New Testament their is a passage that states: by their fruits you shall know them. The purpose of this approach is to seek out through a public and transparent conversation the best strategy to achieve change in an open and democratic manner. This is an anti-Machiavellian approach that Mohandas Gandhi described as follows: "They say, 'means are, after all, means'. I would say, 'means are, after all, everything'. As the means so the end..." A tale of two cities
In Miami at the Freedom Tower there was a successful gathering in solidarity with Tania Bruguera and the #YoTambienExigo that reproduced what had been attempted in Havana with Cubans speaking for one minute about their desires for a free Cuba. It provided a marked contrast with the repression in Havana. If Cuba is to have a democratic future and not just another round of authoritarian or continuing totalitarian dictatorship then the freedom of speech of all political parties must be respected even those one violently disagrees with. The rules set out by Ms. Bruguera and followed to the letter in Miami are found in the graphic below in Spanish states: "#ITooDemand - a microphone open to all - One Minute of Time - Don't Interrupt - Speak in a personal capacity - No Bad Words or Violence 12.30.2014 3:00PM We'll See Each Other in The Plaza"
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