My peace activist friend has just returned to the US from Cuba

Hello everyone,

I am a member of a peace group in my town and a friend of mine just got back from Cuba. She went with a non profit organizationt o build playgrounds for children. It was supposed to be a non-political trip. Here are the observations she brought back to our group.

She said that the people were extremely friendly and seemed more relaxed than people here in the states. She said this was due to the fact that it wasn't a high speed rat race to work and everywhere else. There also aren't billboard adertisements and constant consumerism so people aren't stressed by feeling that they dont have this product or that product. She said that everyone has housing. Everyone also has healthcare but it is limited due to lack of supplies. For example, their dialisis machines need a certain part and only American comanies make it but because of the embargo they can't aquire this part. This seems like state sanctioned murder on the part of the US. She said the people freely admit they are poor but housing, healthcare, and education thru college are all free. Food is a minimal price.

She said that no one looked like they were in need of food in fact she said they looked healthy, however peoples pets such as dogs did not look healthy. She said the housing was old and minimal but most had electricity and every house she was in had tile floors. Every day a Cuban neighborhood would cook their group a big meal. The cubans put them up in a 5 star hotel despite the groups protests. They placed a cuban flag along side an american flag for all of the gorups memebrs in their rooms as a sign of solidarity.

The flag in Cuba flies at half staff and will remain that way until the US military base at Guananamo Bay is closed. She said there is definately freedom of religion. She saw a fully operational Baptists and Catholic Church with paritioners and you could hear singing and praising coming from the churches. She was able to visit a school and was told all schools in Havana were given full internet access two years ago. Each class room has 15 students to one teacher. If you drop out of highschool you must join the military for 2 years. After your two years are up you have the option of taking a test to see what skill you are best at and the governemnt will send you back to school to major in that subject.

People were very surprised and suspcisious to see Americans in their country and many were weary of letting their children around capitalists in the begginging but soon became very friendly with the group. At the end of their trip a band played the Cuban and American national anthems back to back for the group.

My friend said it seemed as though debate is very much alive in Cuba and the big debate now is over what will happen when Castro is gone. She said most of the people that she met absolutely hate Raul Castro and hope he does not succeed his brother. They view him as stupid, lazy and resting on Fidel's popularity.

Their cab driver said all tips made by private workers must be taken back to their place of employment and evenly distributed with workers for the company who dont recieve tips. Also, it is taxed and distributed in the country. My friend aske dwhy he doesnt just pocket the money and he said " I believe it is wrong to make a profit and leave my co-workers behind."

The lone Republican in the group was amazed at the level of racial integration. Everyone in the group said they had never seen so many interacial couples and so many different ethnicities having fun and socializing and living together. My friend said they are far more racially integrated than the US. Also, she said that many in Cuba told her being gay is no big deal, and She staye dnear a gay club that was open at all hours of the night. So all of the capitlaist fear mongering about Cuba hating gays appears to be trash.

Also, she said that condoms and birth control are completely free of charge and freely available to eveyrone. Also, she said she never saw any large gap between classes in Cuba. She said that therre were some Cubans that had a little more money than other but she wouldnt say they were rich. She said the Cubans with the most money were hotel and taxi workers, and musicians. She said it seemed to be a problem because doctors and teachers were going to work in the hotels because it pays more. Cuba will have to work on this. So there are the things I was told about Cuba. Oh, and she also brought back an english translation of Granma news...the communist newspaper.

what your friend is saying. Cuba is a very safe and relaxing place to visit, Cubans there like Americans.

The country is beautiful, from the the historic architecture of Havana, to the Sierra Maestra mountains of Santiago de Cuba, to the white sand beaches of Varadero.

It's disgusting that our government tries to hide this peaceful Caribbean island from Americans, but how else can they propandagize against Cuba and get by with it??

Hopefully your friend will help dispel the lies that are told by Miami Cubans and allowed to go undisputed, thanks to US media.

she loved it.

The people, the sites, the food was wonderful.

I'd love to go there one day.

Hell the ways things keep going here I'm thinking an immersion course in Spanish might be wise.

Rush might even read your post on the air and say that all DU'rs are reds. Doncha' know that Fidel is a major threat to 'Murka? Those commies are revvin' the engines on their '56 Buicks to invade Miami.

There has been alot of Cuba bashing here (mainly by one particular poster) and so much of what they have written is based on anti-communist propaganda.

Kick for a little truth.

:kick:

by being tolerant of these stinking commies, like the cubans and HUGO CHAVEZ.. HUGOOOOOOO CHAAAAAVEZ
you are going to get the united states annhilated by fiery commie destruction. how dare you!!!"

-signed "librul commie-hater"

there im just filling in for the "poster" i think i got it about right.

:eyes:

I saw a lot of Castro and Che bashing, no one bashing the Cuban people. I saw a lot of bashing of Cuban-Americans though...... might make it tougher to win a battleground state like Florida next time with those attitudes, but hey it wouldn't be the first time people who claim they have a monopoly on "progressiveness" helped a good candidate like Al Gore lose an election, Naderites did a good job of that in 2000.


Thank you ahead of time all of you for going out the way to protect my minority opinion (mainly by one particular poster - Hmm, I thought there was more - I wonder who she ment - hehehehe) around here and not going down that same old road of calling me a redbaiter, blaah. blaah, blaahh, etc. and all those other nasty things.

I speak Spanish and I would love to go there on a peace trip.

Some US churches and charitable groups are going to Cuba for specific reasons. Also some artistic groups go there to perform and exchange ideas. If you can find a way, I highly recommend the trip!!

Of course people from countries other than US go there on their own as often as they wish. It's called FREEDOM, something we're lacking with the idiot * as pResident.

full of godless communists...

:sarcasm:


THANKS for the report! I hope to make it there some day...

2 summers ago on a Intensive Latin Percussion Studies trip. He loved it there and said much the same as your friend. He felt totally safe there and made a lot of friends. They have shut down these trips now, I think they are allowing one more this next summer and he has his name on the list to go back. Now that he knows what they lack and desire he will be taking a lot of equipment for them.

He said it was a bit rustic, a few funny stories, but he loved every second of the two weeks they were there and can't wait to go back.

We have a hard time maintaining double that.

In my limited experience in the classroom, one kid in ten is simply an asshole, plain and simple. One asshole in a classroom is fine. Two is the same classroom is still manageable if you can keep them separated and away from easily-distracted students or those the assholes like to bully. At a 15:1 ratio, you've got an excellent change of being in one of these two situations. Anything above 25:1 and you've got a really good chance of having three assholes in the same classroom, which is very difficult to manage as they keep double-teaming you.

I really want to send this summary to them if it is ok with the poster.

Maybe it will get some people here to see that communism is not the most evil thing on Earth. Especially compared to the BFEE's corporatism.

Castro's biggest accomplishment was probably to reverse that impulse.

Interestingly, Castro is the child of (20th century) Spanish immigrants to Cuba and Batista was partly Afro-Cuban and/or Indian (can't remember exactly). But racism was a big part of Batista's government nonetheless. They needed the cheap labor for the sugar plantations and they needed the internal conflict over race to distract poor Spanish immigrants that they were also getting the short end of the stick.

Richard Gott writes about this in his history of Cuba.

Being in the taxi business for almost two decades, my first reaction to learning that drivers have to turn in their tips to be pooled was, "WHAT?!?"

Then, after thinking about it a little bit, I realized that something similar happens at many US taxi companies. There's no formal arrangement, but drivers often 'tip' the dispatchers after a shift. Okay, maybe 'bribe' would be a better word, since there is a direct relationship between how much you tip and what sort of business comes your way. But in any case, you end up with the same result, just accomplished via graft instead of policy.

Where I've been working the last 13 years, we have several policies against 'tipping' dispatchers, and just pay our dispatchers more to keep them. That extra dispatcher pay ultimately comes out of the revenue the drivers bring in, so even that isn't so different in the end result.

Also, many, many restaurants require their wait staff to pool their tips, where they are shared with the cooks and kitchen staff at the end of the night. So that's even more similar. BTW, all tips are supposed to be reported and taxed in the US, too. In fact, the government generally assumes that you make at least 15% of revenue in tips, whether or not you actually do.

It seems like many aspects of life in Cuba appear to work very differently, but in the end the results don't seem to be so different for working people -- except for having health care, housing, decent education and adequate food. That must be nice.

how did they get dialysis machines without one part? why not buy the machines from Europe or make that part themselves?