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As protests continue in Baltimore and around the country over the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, we are joined by one of the leading longtime activists in the country, Tom Hayden, who is no stranger to police and protest. In 1968, Hayden was a major organizer of demonstrations against the Vietnam War during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He became one of the Chicago 8 and was convicted of crossing state lines to start a riot. The judge ordered Bobby Seale, one of his fellow defendants and the only African American, to be bound and gagged and chained to his chair. Later Hayden would organize in Newark, New Jersey, and go on to write the book, "Rebellion in Newark: Official Violence and Ghetto Response." "The country came to near collapse. Baltimore today was everywhere in 1967, 1968," Hayden says. "So we have to remember that these issues of going abroad to fight enemies leaves our internal problems festering, and they can blow at any time. So, history repeats, I’m sorry to say."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: As protests continue in Baltimore and around the country over the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, we’re joined today by one of the leading longtime activists in the country, Tom Hayden, who’s no stranger to police and protest. In 1968, Hayden was a major organizer of protests against the Vietnam War during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
AMY GOODMAN: He became one of the Chicago 8, was convicted of crossing state lines to start a riot. The judge ordered one of his fellow defendants, Bobby Seale, the only African American, to be bound and gagged and chained to his chair. Later, Tom Hayden would organize in Newark. Among his books, Rebellion in Newark: Official Violence and Ghetto Response.
Well, Tom Hayden joins us for the hour today in our New York studio. We’ll talk about protest movements and their effect. We’ll also talk about Cuba. Today also is the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, and more.
But first to these protests, protests around the country around the death of Freddie Gray. And, Juan, you were in Baltimore at a labor conference, but it certainly passed through the halls of your assembly.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, and it was a big topic of discussion among labor leaders who had come from around the country, and especially from Baltimore itself. Everyone was talking about the curfew and the police presence, and, of course, critical of the mayor of Baltimore for some of her remarks calling some of the protesters "thugs." And it showed a class division that exists in Baltimore between the elite leadership there, even African-American leaders, and the masses of people who are sick and tired of the divide and the—not only economic divide in Baltimore, but also of the continued police repression of the black community.
AMY GOODMAN: And as the officials advise people to wait, to remain calm, they’re saying tomorrow—interestingly, May Day—that information will be coming out, reports will be coming out. A report was, quote, "leaked" to The Washington Post of the prisoner who was picked up in the police van about five minutes at the end of Freddie Gray’s journey in that van, after he was arrested. And according to this leaked report, the prisoner said that Freddie Gray was thrashing about, maybe trying to injure himself. Now, again, he couldn’t see him. There was a partition in the van. And the family and the lawyer saying, "Are they saying that Freddie Gray actually fractured his own spine?" And how would that explain also his crushed voice box, his crushed larynx?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I men, clearly, those who have seen video of him being taken into the van wonder what kind of ability he had to do anything, because he was clearly limp when he was brought into the van. But the other aspect—
AMY GOODMAN: They’ve also pointed out he wasn’t seat-belted in the van.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: So he was just—yes, definitely, his body was probably moving about.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But also, those of us who are familiar with police reports know that when you’re having a police investigator supposedly transcribing the testimony of someone else, there’s all kinds of room for manipulation of what’s actually been said. And it is amazing that so much time has passed, and we still don’t know—really have any official report on what happened to Freddie Gray and why he was injured, to begin with. So, I think the length of time it’s taken to have any kind of official report has also added to the frustrations in the community.
AMY GOODMAN: Although the number of investigations—you’ve got the police investigation. You’ve got the Department of Justice investigating. And it also just leads to the whole issue of when there is an incident with police where someone is injured, why doesn’t it immediately go to an outside body, an outside investigator, to look at what’s going on inside? Right now we’re waiting for the police report on themselves.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right. And, of course, those reports are filled out immediately, so that there are reports, it’s just that they’re not being released to the public. And certainly, when the public has such intense interest, it behooves the authorities to get that information out as quickly as possible.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re joined right now by Tom Hayden, one of leading activists in this country for decades, also happens to be a former California state senator. He was one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society.
Tom, as you look at what’s happening in Baltimore—and, you know, I just flew in from The Hague last night as protesters are marching down 7th Avenue. More than a hundred of them have been arrested just here in New York. You and Juan were in a conversation about your book at Barnes & Noble in Union Square, and there were hundreds of people outside protesting the death of Freddie Gray, but overall police action. You know police action. Go back to Chicago.
TOM HAYDEN: Well, I’m sick of what I’ve seen. It goes back so far. And there is a racial divide in terms of the filters through which we see things. There’s no question about that. Whites and blacks see things differently. But there’s at least a third or more whites who understand, including myself, the black perspective on this. And, for instance, the—
AMY GOODMAN: And certainly, the protests have been multiracial all over the country, including Baltimore.
TOM HAYDEN: Sure, sure. I was going to say, the thing that stands out here, my reaction that stands out, is there’s a subtext. Nobody will say "lynching." But when you have a black man whose neck has been broken, they speak of the larynx or the upper neck, but he had his neck broken. And it’s so outrageous and disturbing that people don’t understand that that’s what they’re talking about, when a police spokesman asserts on national television that Freddie Gray choked himself to death, lynched himself, did it to himself, according to somebody who didn’t see it in the next cell over in this wagon.
AMY GOODMAN: Or refer to the protesters as a lynch mob.
TOM HAYDEN: That was in the—
AMY GOODMAN: The attorney for the Fraternal Order of Police.
TOM HAYDEN: —overt rhetoric. And I was in Newark as a community organizer in 1967. And this can go back to the '40s or the ’20s, but in 1967 it was alleged that there was a sniper. They never found the sniper. Twenty-six people died—two were white, a firefighter—I think, due to ricochet and friendly fire, but it was alleged—Time magazine ran huge photos of black hands on a gun. But no gun was found. No sniper was found. And I had the task of interviewing people who were the victims' families and reconstructing what happened for The New York Review of Books and Random House. And it was this guy was shot in the back while running from police, this one was shot while drinking a beer on his porch, this woman happened to be shot in a window, and on and on and on. And what happened is, the grand jury was convened to bring me in to tell them who really was to blame. They were blaming the eyewitnesses and not the police.
No good will come of this, because we’ve seen this is the missing gap—this is the gap in the '60s: many social achievements, cultural achievements, environmental achievements, but no change in inner-city poverty levels, little change, if any, in policing. This whole neoliberal policy, which is what they call it abroad, of divesting from the inner city to reinvest in Mexico or Central America and replace the jobs in the inner city, that used to be working-class industrial jobs, with service jobs or no jobs at all, and then mass incarceration—doesn't that explain the remaining battle ahead? And we need all hands on deck to confront this issue, because I’m not sure the political will is there.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Tom, I wanted to ask you—this issue of the rioting that occurs in the aftermath of a police confrontation, this is almost endemic in American history. You go back—you were mentioning Newark in 1967. Chicago in 1919—the major race riot in Chicago that occurred in 1919 was touched off when a young black youth was swimming in an all-black section along Lake Michigan, and he happened to move over into the white section. He was attacked and drowned. The police come, and instead of arresting his killers, they end up arresting some of the African Americans who were demanding that the white killers be arrested. That touches off a riot. Dozens of people were killed. Time and again throughout American history, generation after generation, it’s a police confrontation in the African-American and Latino community that touches off widespread violence. And yet we don’t seem to learn from it or reform it, or every generation seems doomed to repeat the same—the same problem.
TOM HAYDEN: It makes you worry if you’re in the business of trying to evaluate the facts of the matter, because people don’t see it factually. Some white people see it as a necessary way to subdue and control the savage impulses of the inner city. People on the receiving end see it as harassment, plain and simple. Newark started because a cabdriver was pulled over by police. He got into an argument with them. They beat him up. Five days later, the city had been completely devastated. So, you’re right: It’s a pattern.
AMY GOODMAN: And speaking of subduing, if you can briefly, before we go on to our next segment and talk about your latest book on Cuba, talk about being one of the Chicago 8 and what happened to Bobby Seale? Explain, especially to young people who weren’t even born then, why you were charged and convicted of conspiracy to riot.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Although it was eventually overturned, right?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
TOM HAYDEN: There was a law passed in the wake of some of these events that made it possible to prosecute for crossing state lines on a mission to commit a felony, and therefore eight of us were indicted in Chicago for having crossed state lines to conspire, which doesn’t require any tangible evidence, to riot—whatever that means—against the—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the eight included you, Abbie Hoffman, Dave Dellinger—
TOM HAYDEN: The late departed, and Bobby Seale. So, we were charged with conspiracy to riot. And a commission later found that it was actually a police riot. The facts came later. In the case of defendant Bobby Seale, who I spoke to the other day—he’s in Oakland—
AMY GOODMAN: Explain who he was.
TOM HAYDEN: He was the chairman—I was going to—he was the chairman of the Black Panther Party at the time. And he was already in jail for conspiracy to murder. Those charges were also dropped. But in the Chicago case, he asserted a right to defend himself, which is a right that black people got after the Civil War. And so, when his name was mentioned, he would stand and say, "I wish to call a witness." And the judge thought his standing was not only an insult to order, but a threat to order. When he would talk from a yellow pad, that was a threat. So the judge just one fine day said, "Deal with that man." And they took him out, and the next minute he’s back in, chained and gagged to a chair. And when I’ve said this to young people and they’ve seen it in movies, they always say afterwards, "Well, that was creative license, wasn’t it? That didn’t really—you’re exaggerating. It’s dramatic fiction." I said, "No, no, this actually happened not once, but day after day, until it was finally brought to an end." That happened in our lifetime.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the judge eventually severed him from the case and sentenced him to four years for contempt of court?
TOM HAYDEN: Yes, and none of that happened, either. None of the charges held. He never came back to trial. But it inflamed and polarized opinion, one side thinking it reminded them of slavery—clank, clank, clank—when the chains going, and the other side thinking, "Well, he deserved it. I mean, he’s a completely uncontrollable black man. Of course the police must have seen a threat, and they should have tied him up." It’s amazing how people see things in utterly different, polarizing ways. Amazing.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking with Tom Hayden, longtime activist and former California state senator, one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society. One last question before we go to break, around this 50th anniversary of the first anti-Vietnam War teach-in at your alma mater, University of Michigan—you were there in Ann Arbor—and today, the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.
TOM HAYDEN: And the 50th anniversary of the first march against the war. So we’re having a gathering in Washington—and we appreciate your participating—for the first time the old antiwar movement reuniting in one place. And it couldn’t be a more appropriate time to learn the lessons, because you will remember, the last time tanks were in the streets, really, was during the Vietnam War, when the effort to end poverty and create jobs—the slogan "jobs and justice," 1963 march—was forgotten by the escalation of the war in Vietnam. And what followed were probably 700 incidents. We were tongue-tied whether to call these riots, rebellions, insurrections, thuggery. It all depends on perspective. But the country came to near collapse. Baltimore today was everywhere in 1967, 1968. So we have to remember that these issues of going abroad to fight enemies leaves our internal problems festering, and they can blow at any time. So, history repeats, I’m sorry to say.
AMY GOODMAN: And some people are calling "thugs" the new N-word. We are talking with Tom Hayden, one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society. Yes, 40 years ago, the fall of Saigon; 50 years ago, the first anti-Vietnam War march; 50 years ago, the first anti-Vietnam War teach-in; and also, it’s been a half a century of an embargo and sanctions against Cuba. We’re going to talk about that, as well. Stay with us.
In a wide-ranging discussion, Tom Hayden, author of the new book, "Listen, Yankee!: Why Cuba Matters," argues the United States and Cuba have much more in common than a 55-year disagreement. This comes as Republicans have launched an attempt to block President Obama’s efforts to restore U.S.-Cuba diplomatic relations for the first time in half a century with proposed legislation to stop new travel to Cuba from the United States. The bill would block the licensing of new flights and cruise ship routes to Cuba if the landing strip or dock is located on land confiscated by the Cuban government. Despite such efforts, Hayden says, "Travel is being expanded. You will be able to use your credit cards. The beaches will be open to tourists instead of tanks. History is finally moving on." He recalls his interviews with former senior U.S. officials on why the Obama administration is trying to end the embargo and remove Cuba from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, and also discusses the Cuban missile crisis, the Cuban 5 and how the U.S. has sheltered Cuban exiles who were at virtual war with Cuba. Hayden’s book is based in part on conversations with Ricardo Alarcón, the former foreign minister of Cuba and past president of the Cuban National Assembly.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to what could be the first roadblock in President Obama’s efforts to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time in half a century. Earlier this month, Republicans said they would not mount a challenge to Obama’s plan to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, a move that could come as soon as next month. But then on Tuesday, Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban American who represents South Florida, proposed legislation to stop new travel to Cuba from the United States. The bill would block the licensing of new flights and cruise ships’ routes to Cuba if the landing strip or dock is located on land confiscated by the Cuban government.
AMY GOODMAN: The measure is attached to the transportation appropriations bill and could prompt a veto by President Obama. This comes as another group of lawmakers has introduced a bill that would end all restrictions to Cuba.
Well, for more, we’re joined in our New York studio by Tom Hayden, longtime activist, former California state senator, just published his new book called Listen, Yankee!: Why Cuba Matters. It’s based in part on conversations with Ricardo Alarcón, the former foreign minister of Cuba, past president of the Cuban National Assembly. You can read the introduction to the book on our website at democracynow.org.
Why Listen, Yankee! now? I mean, you were writing this and coming out with this before this very surprise announcement. Were you surprised?
TOM HAYDEN: No, I was—I had an intuition that this was going to happen in 2013. I had visited Cuba several times, and I had met Ricardo Alarcón. And he had actually interviewed me in 2006 about participatory democracy and the history of the New Left and the history of the many North Americans, like myself, who had opposed the embargo and supported better relations with Cuba. And I went back in 2013 because I thought that there was a legacy factor, that Raúl Castro and Fidel Castro, on the one side, and Barack Obama had reasons for wanting to resolve this endless dispute within the framework of their presidencies, to leave a legacy, that it was time. There was no more explanation based on Cuba being an agent of the Soviet Union. The Obama administration really needed to improve relations with Central and Latin America. Our country had become isolated from the region. Cuba had become fully integrated into the region. And the way to better relations with Latin America was through Havana. And Obama saw that in meetings that he had with people.
So, I thought it was going to happen. And I started interviewing people on both sides, including very high-level members of the Obama administration, former Clinton officials, Kennedy officials, Carter officials. And the clues were there, but it was a tightly kept secret. So I started writing the book as if this was going to happen. And then I finished, and it hadn’t happened. And then it did happen as the book was to go to press, so I rewrote the first 50 pages to describe how it actually had come about. And—
AMY GOODMAN: How had it?
TOM HAYDEN: Well, the good thing about this is you can read the book, take it to Cuba and decide for yourself. Despite Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, travel is being expanded. You will be able to use your credit cards. The beaches will be open to tourists instead of tanks. History, I think, is finally moving on. It shows you how painfully, agonizingly slow, and at what cost, any significant gains are. I know progressives don’t declare victory, because they always have the gloomiest possible twist on everything. Juan thinks that they’re going to snatch this away with this amendment to a bill. Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think this is going forward. There will be bumps. And history has a lot of parents. I don’t know the exact reason everybody decided to do this, except the political will to overcome the obsolete comes to mind.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Tom, the amazing thing in your book, you go through this really detailed history of Cuban-U.S. relations in modern times. And you put at the center of it, as the main protagonist of the book, Ricardo Alarcón. And in our conversation last night at Barnes & Noble’s, you talked about what a tragedy it is that most Americans really don’t know who Ricardo Alarcón is, even though he’s perhaps one of the most important diplomats in terms of the 20th century. Could you talk about him and his role?
TOM HAYDEN: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: How you first got to meet him?
TOM HAYDEN: Yeah. No, it’s a tragedy for us, because we’re actually embargoed from reality by this policy. Ricardo Alarcón has been one of the top diplomats in the world for 50 years. And Amy described his credentials. And the fact that people don’t know him here is partly due to the fact that he’s virtually banned from coming here, except when he was at the U.N. People don’t interview him. I think you have. But he doesn’t come in to—
AMY GOODMAN: A number of times.
TOM HAYDEN: He doesn’t come in to meet with the editorial board of The Washington Post or New York Times. That’s why no one knows him. And I think he’s an interesting person to interview, and we’ve had about 60 hours of interviews. And I transcribe some of them in the book to create his voice as a companion to my voice, to look over many episodes in our twisted history.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Ricardo Alarcón. This is from 2013, when we spoke to him—
TOM HAYDEN: Good.
AMY GOODMAN: —the foreign foreign minister of Cuba and past president of the Cuban National Assembly. I asked him to talk about meetings Cuban authorities had with the FBI in Havana, to talk about the threat posed by the militant Cuban exile groups here in the United States.
RICARDO ALARCÓN: Well, there were several meetings, in fact. René was referring specifically to one that took place in Havana in July 1998, after some private exchanges between the two countries, the two governments, including President Clinton and a very well-known writer, García Márquez, who served as a go-between between us and them. They came down here, and they got a lot of information—recordings, videos, details of terrorist plots, and the addresses, the phone numbers, everything—so much that at the end of the meeting, the FBI officials thanked Cuba and said that they will need some time to process, though, that information, and they will go back to us. They never went back to us. They did act against the five, clearly to help to protect the terrorists. That is the substance of this process, of this trial.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Ricardo Alarcón in 2013 on Democracy Now! He was joining us by Democracy Now! video stream from Havana, Cuba, sitting next to one of the Cuba 5—or, he was talking about the Cuba 5, who actually have now been released. And maybe you can talk about that. He made that his mission, to get these men freed from U.S. prisons. Talk about who they are.
TOM HAYDEN: Well, nobody thought that was possible. So, everything turns out to be sometimes possible. The five who were arrested for being Cuban spies, sent to the United States to monitor the activities of other Cubans who were armed and who flew out of Opa Locka base in Florida to attack Cuba. In other words, our country—we’ll take this slowly—our country was sheltering Cuban exiles who were at virtual war with Cuba, and the Cuban 5 were arrested for monitoring those flights. And they got double life, in one case, long, long prison sentences.
So they were the subject of tough bargaining, in which it took about a year, but the Obama administration finally was convinced that Cuba was serious about the need to get these five back. They let two go, and there were three remaining. And the trade, so to speak—it couldn’t be—you couldn’t use the word "trade," but it was to get back Alan Gross, who was in a Cuban jail for having taken, I think, five trips to Cuba, smuggling high-tech communications devices and equipment to the Jewish community there and, I think, to a Masonic lodge—all supposedly innocent. But not many people carry luggage filled with high-tech communications equipment in their bag. And so, Gross was returned here at the same moment that the three remaining of the Cuban 5 were returned there. That was crucial to the deal, because that was something that the United States wanted really badly.
And you notice the issue has kind of gone away. I don’t hear the Cuban right in Congress screaming about that, because they would have to deal with Alan Gross. You got back your man. Cuba got back their three. So, it’s kind of magical how sometimes these issues that could be blown sky high just fade away when the parties want the issue to go away.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to continue this conversation with longtime activist Tom Hayden, former California state senator, one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society. His new book is Listen, Yankee!: Why Cuba Matters. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a moment.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Our guest for the hour is Tom Hayden, longtime activist, protesting the Vietnam War, being—participating in antiwar teach-ins, becoming a California state legislator, then one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society, now an environmental adviser to Governor Jerry Brown. His latest book, though, is called Listen, Yankee!: Why Cuba Matters. And last night, Juan, you and Tom had a conversation, a public conversation, at Barnes & Noble about this book.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah. Tom, one of the things I wanted to ask you about, which I think, again, for a younger generation that knows nothing about this—
TOM HAYDEN: So, almost everyone in America.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: One of the—one of the key aspects of why Cuba matters that people should know about is the enormous role that Cuba played once in the closest the United States has ever been to nuclear Armageddon, the Cuban missile crisis—
TOM HAYDEN: Exactly.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —of 1962. The impact of that crisis on you and on an older generation, and what exactly happened there?
TOM HAYDEN: Well, I think we were inspired by Cuba, coming at the same time as the civil rights movement and the student movement here. Ricardo Alarcón was a philosophy student at the University of Havana when I was the same at the University of Michigan. Then the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was quite shocking, then the Cuban missile crisis, where—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: This is 1962.
TOM HAYDEN: '62. And I have to tell you, to go through the experience of being told that a nuclear war or an atomic war is about to begin is something I wish on no one, and it's traumatizing, and it leaves a scar. So, Cuba was apparently so important to some people that they considered a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, with Cuba as collateral damage. And it had a shaping effect. It taught us about how frightening the Cold War concept was, that you had to go to the brink and even threaten to use nuclear weapons if a country like Cuba was thought to be acting in the interests of the Soviet Union in our hemisphere, Latin America, our backyard, our Imperial domain. And I think it had a big effect on the feeling of the student movement at the time, that we had to attack the idea of the Cold War, not simply fight for civil rights, because we wouldn’t get very far on the issues of civil rights and justice and jobs if the Cold War was always looming and threatening. We had to somehow do away with the Cold War’s mentality, as we called it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how close were we to a nuclear war? I mean, the Russians had how many missiles already?
TOM HAYDEN: Hours, an hour, I don’t know, minutes, an hour. I.F. Stone, who we all looked up to, a great journalist in the Amy Goodman and Juan González tradition, told us at a church in D.C. that the missiles were coming. So I went into complete numbness, and everybody around me, for thousands of us. It didn’t happen, which also—
AMY GOODMAN: And it didn’t happen because?
TOM HAYDEN: A deal was reached behind the scenes between Robert Kennedy and the Soviet ambassador in discussions that have not been completely declassified.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Dobrynin, right, was it?
TOM HAYDEN: Dobrynin.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes.
TOM HAYDEN: But most of that record has been made clear. Even people in the Kennedy White House—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the deal was that the Russians would take their missiles out and the United States would take their missiles out of Turkey? Or—
TOM HAYDEN: Well, that had to be kept secret. We would separate that. It’s kind of like the current U.S.-Cuba—the deal for the five and Alan Gross. The Americans would withdraw their obsolete missiles from Turkey, but they would never say that they were doing it, and it would be one year later. But that was done. And there would be an agreement, which apparently had some force, that the U.S. would never again overtly attack Cuba.
AMY GOODMAN: Two Republican presidential candidates, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, are taking Cuba on big time. Earlier this month, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, possible Republican presidential contender, was asked if the next president should put Cuba back on the list of countries that sponsor terrorism. This was his response.
JEB BUSH: ... this negotiation, he’s going to ease travel restrictions, ease currency flows, all of which prop up the Castro regime. He’s made these concessions and got nothing in return. And it’s disappointing because—look, I live in Miami, and there are a lot of people that want to see liberty and freedom in their former country. And that aspiration hasn’t died. That sentiment isn’t—it hasn’t died. But a lot of people are really saddened by this, because there’s not—we’re not a step closer to freedom in Cuba because of the actions the president has taken.
AMY GOODMAN: Quick comment, before we go to Marco Rubio?
TOM HAYDEN: He better get another platform. Even the Cuban Americans who live in Cuba [sic] are in favor of normalization. They’re anti-Castro, but—
AMY GOODMAN: Cuban Americans who live in Florida.
TOM HAYDEN: Yes, Cuban Americans in Florida have changed. That’s one reason that this deal is viable. They believe in normalization, but they’re anti-Castro. He doesn’t want them to have a normal life. He doesn’t want them to travel to Cuba. That’s not going to fly as a platform.
AMY GOODMAN: And this is Republican presidential candidate, Senator Marco Rubio, after the Obama administration announced plans to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO: Well, the decision made by the White House today is a terrible one, but not surprising, unfortunately. Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism. They harbor fugitives of American justice, including someone who killed a police officer in New Jersey over 30 years ago. It’s also the country that’s helping North Korea evade weapons sanctions by the United Nations. They should have remained on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. And I think it sends a chilling message to our enemies abroad that this White House is no longer seriously—serious about calling terrorism by its proper name.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s presidential candidate, Republican presidential candidate, Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Tom Hayden?
TOM HAYDEN: Well, he’s talking about individuals who have fled to Cuba after being charged with crimes here. And whatever we think of those individuals—you’ve interviewed some of them—they’re not state entities. And Cuba is not a state sponsor of terrorism. And they’re not going to be returned to the United States, in any event. They were left out of the negotiations. And Rubio is trying to put them back in. I don’t think that’s a good presidential platform, either.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think will happen to Assata Shakur, Assata Shakur who was convicted of killing police officer—Trooper Werner Foerster, after being pulled over on the New Jersey Turnpike? But this is something she absolutely denies. The encounter left both the officer and Black Panther Zayd Malik Shakur dead. Assata Shakur said she was shot by police, with both arms in the air, and then again from the back, sentenced to life in prison but managed able to escape to Cuba, where she’s lived since 1984. And there have been discussions. Will this be put back on the table?
TOM HAYDEN: I think it will be discussed. I don’t think anything will come of it. I’ve interviewed her. I know her. Her body was completely—I don’t even know how she lived. She was shot at close range. I can’t imagine how she shot anyone. Charges have been brought against her before. Nothing has come of them. But the New Jersey law enforcement lobby is very insistent that that issue be put on the table. Menendez, who is perhaps going to jail on federal charges, is still the senator there, and he’s been one of the most staunch enemies of this rapprochement with Cuba, and he wants that issue put on the table.
AMY GOODMAN: The indicted senator.
TOM HAYDEN: He’s indicted. I don’t think anything will come of it. I don’t know. I think the next issue is whether the U.S. continues to fund secret democracy programs. It’s kind of an odd idea, but there’s $20 million in the budget for secret programs in Cuba to foment an open society. How you do that secretly, I don’t know. But Congress will have to tangle over that. The U.S. continues to want to sponsor these so-called democracy programs. Cuba doesn’t want them to be covert programs. Senator Leahy’s subcommittee is going to have to deal with that. There’s a succession of issues. And I don’t think this issue of the fugitives in Cuba is going to be a big deal. I hope it’s not. I can’t say for sure.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tom, in the few minutes we have left, why does Cuba matter? What has been the impact of Cuba on progressive thought and movements here in the United States and around the world?
TOM HAYDEN: Well, on the negative side, you know, the Cuban exiles have intimidated a lot of people, but they’ve actually been quite cancerous in our society. They’ve created a kind of a mafia clique in Florida. They gave rise to the Jeb Bush dynasty. The Cuban exiles were directly involved in the killing of a Chilean diplomat and his assistant, Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt. They blew their car up in Washington, D.C.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the Watergate burglary.
TOM HAYDEN: They broke into the Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate. They were part of Nixon’s plumbers. They made good use of their time here in the United States of America, mainly in very dubious and sometimes horrific activities, including attacks on Cuba from bases in the United States.
On the positive side, I think Cuba sent a wake-up call to the world that small countries could indeed rebel against the United States and could indeed be self-determining and autonomous. And even with the alliance with the Soviet Union, when the Soviet Union went away, Cuba proved that it didn’t fall like eastern Europe. It had a sovereign nature. It had a self-sustaining quality. They get the best baseball players, some of the best food, best music, free education, free healthcare. They’re trying to create a model. And I think that they do matter, especially now that immigrant rights is so important in this country. We’re becoming more Latino-ized, as I think you, yourself, have written, and we’re changing. And Cuba can be very, very central to making us understand ourselves as living in the Americas. And this is our home region, and we should be welcoming of honest, open relations with Cuba and other countries in the hemisphere.
AMY GOODMAN: Tom Hayden, I want to thank you for being with us. We’re going to talk about the 50th anniversary of the first anti-Vietnam War teach-in, 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, and put it online at democracynow.org. Tom Hayden is the author of—well, his latest book is Listen, Yankee!: Why Cuba Matters, part of—based on conversations with Ricardo Alarcón, the foreign Cuban foreign minister. Tom will be speaking at a major conference in Washington, D.C., this Friday and Saturday at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, not to be confused with New York. It’s in D.C. I’m there. Juan González will be there. Love to see you there.
Headlines:
Baltimore Releases 100 Jailed Protesters amid Legal Challenges
In Baltimore, Maryland, thousands of people have continued to protest peacefully over the police custody death of Freddie Gray. Gray died of spinal injuries a week after he was arrested for looking a police lieutenant in the eye, then running away. His family said his spine was 80 percent severed at the neck. Overnight, thousands of police and National Guard troops continued to enforce a 10 p.m. curfew. Newly confirmed Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the Justice Department would provide whatever resources are needed to control the protests.
Loretta Lynch: "I have been in direct contact with officials in Maryland, including the governor, and I’ve directed this department to provide any assistance that might be helpful in restoring calm and resolving the unrest that broke out across the city."
After arresting more than 200 people overnight on Monday, Baltimore was forced to release about half of them Wednesday, amid a spate of legal challenges. Some of the prisoners said they were held without food for 18 hours. An 18-year-old shown in a picture smashing a police car with a traffic cone is being held on half a million dollars bail, after his stepfather convinced him to turn himself in. Schools reopened in Baltimore after they were closed following Monday night’s uprising, which saw cars and buildings torched. But the public was barred from attending a Baltimore Orioles baseball game at Camden Yards, meaning the teams played for an empty stadium. The Associated Press called it "one of the weirdest spectacles in major-league history."
From New York to Ferguson, Thousands Rally in Solidarity with Baltimore
Thousands of people marched in cities from Boston to Chicago to Ferguson, Missouri, to show solidarity with Baltimore and connect the case of Freddie Gray with police killings of unarmed African Americans across the country. In Boston, protesters gathered in front of police headquarters, chanting "Being black is not a crime, same story every time." In Minneapolis, protesters marched across town carrying a coffin. Here in New York City, at least 120 people were reportedly arrested as protesters shut down parts of the Holland Tunnel, West Side Highway and Times Square. Protester Al Patron said attention has focused too heavily on the tactics used during Monday night’s uprising in Baltimore and not enough on the underlying problems.
Al Patron: "And it’s getting lost. It’s getting lost. And instead of looking at the root, we’re looking at the riot, when the root is more important. They murdered somebody, you know? And a life was taken. So I think we need to, like, start paying attention to that instead of like — and put more on preservation of life than preservation of buildings or whatever and property. I don’t care about that. I care about people that look like me’s lives."
Freddie Gray Family Attorney Rejects Police Claim Gray Tried to Injure Himself
It remains unclear exactly how Freddie Gray received the spinal injuries which killed him. Bystander video shows police dragging him to a van, as he screams in pain, his body apparently limp. According to a police timeline, Gray asked for an inhaler as he was going into the van, but a medic wasn’t called for more than 40 minutes. Now, The Washington Post has obtained a police document which contains an affidavit by a fellow prisoner who was in the van with Gray, but who couldn’t see him because they were separated by a metal partition. The document, written by a police investigator, says the fellow prisoner told police he could hear Gray "banging against the walls" of the vehicle and believed that Gray "was intentionally trying to injure himself." Jason Downs, an attorney for Gray’s family, questioned the police account, saying, "We disagree with any implication that Freddie Gray severed his own spinal cord." Downs continued: "We question the accuracy of the police reports we’ve seen thus far, including the police report that says Mr. Gray was arrested without force or incident."
Clinton Criticizes Mass Incarceration, Calls for Police Body Cameras
Hillary Clinton addressed the issue of police violence and criticized the U.S. system of mass incarceration in her first major policy speech since announcing her presidential bid. Speaking at Columbia University in New York, Clinton called for all police to wear body cameras, and said harsh sentences for drug offenses should be reformed.
Hillary Clinton: "We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America. There is something profoundly wrong when African-American men are still far more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than are meted out to their white counterparts. There is something wrong when a third of all black men face the prospect of prison during their lifetimes."
Clinton’s remarks contrast sharply with statements she made as first lady, when she supported the so-called "tough-on-crime" agenda of her husband, President Bill Clinton, including a 1994 law which led to harsher sentences for drug offenses and expanded the number of prisons and police.
Nepal: Quake Toll Rises to 5,500 as 2 Rescued from Rubble
In Nepal, a 15-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl have been rescued from piles of rubble where they were trapped for five days following a devastating earthquake. The girl was reportedly rescued in the devastated town of Bhaktapur. In the capital Kathmandu, rescuers worked for hours to save the teenage boy. The death toll from the 7.8-magnitude earthquake has continued to rise and now stands at 5,500. Bad weather has stalled the arrival of aid to remote villages.
Report: U.S. Strikes in Afghanistan Extend Far Beyond White House Claims
A new report says the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan extends far beyond the terms described publicly by the White House. While the Obama administration has declared an end to the war in Afghanistan, The New York Times reports the U.S. military has actually transformed the war into an ongoing campaign of drone strikes and special operations raids. Publicly, officials have said the U.S. role is confined to counterterrorism against groups like al-Qaeda and protection of U.S. troops —- not continuing to fight the Taliban. But last month, U.S. and NATO forces conducted 52 airstrikes in Afghanistan, many against low— to mid-level Taliban fighters. One unnamed official alleged the United States is putting troops on the ground in Afghanistan to justify strikes under the guise of protecting them.
Report: FBI Helped Facilitate Ransom for U.S. Hostage Killed in Drone Strike
The Wall Street Journal has revealed the FBI helped facilitate a ransom payment from the family of U.S. hostage Warren Weinstein to al-Qaeda in 2012, in apparent contradiction of its own policy against paying ransoms for hostages. Weinstein, a U.S. government contractor, was killed by a U.S. drone strike in January. The family of James Foley, a U.S. journalist executed by ISIL, has said U.S. officials threatened them with criminal charges if they attempted to raise ransom money to free their son.
Japanese PM Calls for Congress to Back TPP
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivered a speech to Congress Wednesday pressing lawmakers to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Abe said the implications of the TPP go far beyond the economy.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe: "Furthermore, the TPP goes far beyond just economic benefit. It is also about our security. Long-term, its strategic value is awesome."
The TPP would encompass 40 percent of the global economy. It has faced a tidal wave of opposition from groups across the political spectrum who say it would undermine environmental and health regulations, hurt U.S. workers and grant special rights to corporations. Lawmakers are considering whether to grant Obama fast-track authority to push the deal through Congress without any amendments allowed.
Brazil: 200 Injured as Protesting Teachers Clash with Police
In Brazil, more than 200 people have reportedly been injured in clashes between police and protesting teachers in the city of Curitiba. The teachers are protesting over changes to their state pensions. Police fired tear gas and stun grenades, while the mayor tweeted that the city "looks like a war zone."
Report: Obama’s Record-Setting Deportations Decrease
The Obama administration appears to have curbed its deportations of undocumented immigrants following public protests denouncing him as the "deporter-in-chief." Obama has deported more people than any other president, including a record of well over 400,000 in 2012. But according to the Associated Press, the pace has been slowing, with 127,000 deportations over the first six months of this fiscal year. If the slowdown continues, this year could see the lowest number of deportations since 2006, under President George W. Bush.
California Governor Issues Landmark Plan to Curb Greenhouse Gases
California Governor Jerry Brown has issued an executive order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2030. His target marks the most ambitious benchmark set by any government in North America to reduce dangerous carbon emissions over the next 15 years. This comes as one of the worst droughts in decades continues to ravage California, with 98 percent of the state now suffering from a water crisis.
Supreme Court Backs Restrictions on Judicial Campaign Donations
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the right of states to ban judicial candidates from personally requesting campaign contributions. The ruling allows 30 states where state and local judges are elected to keep their restrictions on donations. Chief Justice John Roberts, who supported the court’s previous decision in Citizens United to allow unlimited corporate political spending, backed the restrictions on judicial candidates, writing, "Judges are not politicians."
Judge Rejects Anti-Mumia Law on Prisoner Speech as "Manifestly Unconstitutional"
A federal judge has struck down a Pennsylvania law restricting the speech of prisoners, calling it "manifestly unconstitutional." The law was enacted after journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is imprisoned in Pennsylvania, gave a pre-taped commencement address at Goddard College in Vermont. The law authorized the censoring of prisoners’ public addresses if judges agree letting them speak would cause "mental anguish" to people impacted by their crimes. Judge Christopher Conner called the law "unlawfully proposed" and "patently over-broad." Supporters of the law plan to appeal.
Pope Francis Calls for Gender Wage Equality
Pope Francis has taken on the gender pay gap. Speaking in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis called wage inequality a "pure scandal."
Pope Francis: "As Christians, we must become more demanding about these issues. For instance, we must support decisively the right to equal pay for equal work. Why is it taken for granted that women must earn less than men? No! They have the same rights. The discrepancy is a pure scandal."
Pope Francis has rejected the possibility of equal work for women within the Catholic Church, saying the "door is closed" to women becoming priests.
Mexico: Human Rights Activists Say Femicides a "National Emergency"
In Mexico, human rights activists have called for urgent action to address violence against women. As the rule of law has collapsed in many areas of Mexico amid corruption and cartel violence during the ongoing U.S.-backed drug war, thousands of women have been killed or disappeared. The violence is particularly intense in the north, along the U.S.-Mexico border. In the northern state of Chihuahua, there were 23 murders for every 100,000 women in 2012. María de la Luz Estrada, director of the National Citizen Observatory on Femicide, said the government has failed to address the crisis.
María de la Luz Estrada: "We are talking about a national emergency of femicides, because women are being brutally murdered more often, and now there’s the pattern of them going missing. This happens because the government has not generated the mechanisms, the protocols, the search required to immediately find them and to prevent more crimes from being committed."
Report: FAA Questioned Mental Fitness of Germanwings Pilot
Newly released documents show U.S. officials had raised concerns about the Germanwings pilot who crashed a plane into the French Alps, killing all 150 on board. The Federal Aviation Administration questioned whether Andreas Lubitz was fit to fly based on his history of depression. After his doctors said Lubitz had recovered, the FAA allowed him to travel to the United States to continue his pilot training with Lufthansa airlines.
Studies Show U.S. Insurance Companies Failing to Cover Birth Control
And new research has found U.S. insurance companies are failing to provide adequate coverage to women and transgender people in violation of the Affordable Care Act. The National Women’s Law Center reviewed 100 insurance companies in 15 states, revealing more than half were violating the law. When it came to birth control, the center found, insurance companies are still not covering all methods or are imposing out-of-pocket costs.
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SPEAKING EVENTS
5/2 Washington, D.C.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
COLUMN
THE HAGUE, Netherlands—One hundred years ago, more than 1,000 women gathered here in The Hague during World War I, demanding peace. Britain denied passports to more than 120 women, forbidding them from making the trip to suppress their peaceful dissent. Now, a century later, in these very violent times, nearly 1,000 women have gathered here again, this time from Africa, Asia and Latin America, as well as Europe and North America, saying “No” to wars from Iraq to Afghanistan to Yemen to Syria, not to mention the wars in our streets at home. They were marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of WILPF, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Dr. Aletta Jacobs, a Dutch suffragist who co-founded the group a century ago, said the purpose of the original gathering in 1915 was to empower women “to protest against war and to suggest steps which may lead to warfare being an impossibility.”
Among the women here were four Nobel Peace Prize winners. Shirin Ebadi was awarded the prize in 2003 for advocating for human rights for Iranian women, children and political prisoners. She was the first Muslim woman, and the first Iranian, to receive a Nobel. Nevertheless, she has lived in exile since 2009, and has only seen her husband once since then. “Had books been thrown at people, at the Taliban, instead of bombs, and had schools been built in Afghanistan,” Ebadi said in her keynote address to the WILPF conference this week, “3,000 schools could have been built in memory of the 3,000 people who died on 9/11—at this time, we wouldn’t have had ISIS. Let’s not forget that the roots of the ISIS rest in the Taliban.” She was joined by her sister laureates Leymah Gbowee, who helped achieve a negotiated peace during the civil wars in Liberia; Mairead Maguire, who won the peace prize in 1976 at the age of 32 for advancing an end to the conflict in her native Northern Ireland; and Jody Williams, a Vermonter who led the global campaign to ban land mines, and who now is organizing to ban “killer robots,” weapons that kill automatically, without the active participation of a human controller.
These four world-renowned Nobel laureates were joined by nearly a thousand deeply committed peace activists from around the globe. Madeleine Rees, the secretary-general of WILPF, recalled the history of the first gathering in 1915, and how it was organized: “It wouldn’t have happened, but for the suffrage movement,” she told me, “because you don’t just start a mass movement. You actually have to have anorganizational structure to make that happen. That had started with the suffragette movement. ... Every single one of those women who went to The Hague ... were demanding the right to vote. They saw, quite rightly, that the absence of women inmaking decisions in government meant a greater likelihood of war.”
Kozue Akibayashi is WILPF’s new president. After World War II, the U.S. required that Japan’s Constitution explicitly forbid it from pursuing war to settle disputes with foreign states. “The majority of people in Japan support the peace constitution,” Akibayashi explained. President Barack Obama, however, like George W. Bush before him, is pressuring Japan to eliminate the pacifistic Article Nine from the Japanese Constitution. He hosted Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in Washington this week, celebrating Abe as he works to restore Japan’s military to its former offensive capacity. Akibayashi and thousands of others also are protesting the planned expansion of the U.S. military presence on Okinawa.
Africa activist Hakima Abbas was also in The Hague. I interviewed her hours after mass graves were reported in Nigeria, containing victims of the militant group Boko Haram. The story of Boko Haram, she told me, “is an intersection with violent Islamist fundamentalisms, with global capitalism and with militarization ... fundamentalisms, though, don’t start and end with Islamic fundamentalisms in Africa. We’ve seen Christian fundamentalisms in Uganda, and the persecution of LGBTQI people.” She then made a connection to the street protests in Baltimore this week: “In your own country,” she told me, “the white supremacist and Christian right fundamentalisms are exacerbated by the gun culture and the promotion of an armed police force, which is killing black women, men, trans people and children. ... So fundamentalisms is really something that we have to address globally.”
I asked Shirin Ebadi if she had advice for the people of the world. She replied with a simple yet powerful prescription for peace, laying out the work for WILPF as it enters its second century: “Treat the people of Afghanistan the same as you treat your own people. Look at Iraqi children the same as you look at your own children. Then you will see that the solution is there.”
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller. (c) 2015 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
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