Our lived experience is with the American regime." Thandiwe Abdullah, a Black Lives Matter activist who wrote the first draft of the Cuba statement, told Newsweek a widely held belief within the organization, regardless of race, is that "As Americans, our job is not to talk about the Cuban government, we don't live in Cuba, we don't know the intricacies and nuances. Elmo's Village on Jin Los Angeles, California. After the BLM statement, a Miami Herald op-ed declared "Afro-Cuban lives don't matter to the shameful leaders of Black Lives Matter."Ĭo-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles Youth Vanguard Thandiwe Abdullah attends 'Women's March Los Angeles hosts March For Our Lives LA: Road to Change & the Parkland survivors & activists' at St. Many Cuban-Americans who spoke with Newsweek reiterated their support for the group's central tenet that Black lives matter, while denouncing and distancing themselves from leaders of the organization who support socialism. embargo, which began in 1962, is "unethical," "insensitive," "tone-deaf" and "willfully ignorant." In it he states bluntly that to reduce Cuba's problems to simply the U.S. In the wake of the BLM statement, Laz Alonso, a Black actor of Cuban descent, released an Instagram video that has received more than 750,000 views. "What happened to George Floyd is happening to hundreds of people on the island," he told Newsweek. "But when it comes to Cuban suffering we see Black Lives Matter take the side of the oppressor, rather than the side of the oppressed." "My daughters and I, we believe wholeheartedly that Black Lives Matter and you shouldn't get the sh** kicked out of you by cops, and a 12-year-old shouldn't be shot because he has a toy gun," he said. "So many of us have marched at Black Lives Matter rallies," said filmmaker Tony Hernandez, whose parents fled Cuba on freedom flights in 1967, and who has made ads for Democrats. Today…we ask that people take a moment to uplift our sister Assata Shakur by posting on social media how Assata has inspired them and why she is important to the current Black Lives Matter movement.People hold Cuban flags and placards during a protest showing support for Cubans demonstrating against their government, in Miami, Florida on July 16, 2021. “Over the past year we have seen the movement and people at large elevating Assata worldwide chanting the excerpt from her letter and proudly wearing Assata Taught Me sweatshirts. Shakur later escaped prison and fled to Cuba, where former Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro granted her asylum,” Fox News noted in a report Wednesday.īLM co-founder Cullors has spoken out regularly in praise of Shakur and has credited Shakur with inspiring the Black Lives Matter movement. “Shakur, also known as JoAnne Chesimard, was convicted of being an accomplice in the 1973 slaying of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, who left behind a wife and 3-year-old son. The post also heaped praise on Castro for offering safe harbor to Assata Shakur, who remains in exile in Cuba because she is one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals. The group hoped Castro would “Rest in Power,” according to a tweet issued shortly after Castro’s death - a tweet that remains up. The post, however, brought renewed scrutiny to the group’s former missives praising erstwhile Cuban dictator Fidel Castro on the occasion of his death in 2016. Since 1962, the United States has forced pain and suffering on the people of Cuba by cutting off food, medicine, and supplies, costing the tiny island nation an estimated $130 billion.” “This cruel and inhumane policy, instituted with the explicit intention of destabilizing the country and undermining Cubans’ right to choose their own government, is at the heart of Cuba’s current crisis. federal government’s inhumane treatment of Cubans, and urges it to immediately lift the economic embargo,” BLM said, in part. The group, which was co-founded by a self-described Marxist, Patrisse Cullors, is already facing a backlash from both the left and the right over its statement on Cuban pro-democracy protests, which blamed the ongoing demonstrations on an American embargo and called on President Joe Biden to lift the “forced pain and suffering” that they claimed was “cutting off” food and medicine. Black Lives Matter’s support for dictator Fidel Castro and convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur has re-emerged in the wake of a “deplorable” statement blaming the suffering of the Cuban people on the American embargo and not the island’s brutal communist regime.
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