UPDATE: "Diplomats should engage in dialogue" - USIS Deputy Chief Conrad Tribble joins #TwittHab in Havana!

UPDATE - May 21: Peter Orsi and Andrea Rodríguez of the AP in Havana just put out a really good article summarizing Tribble's trailblazing in Havana's Twittosphere and some of its interesting repercussions.  It is entitled: 

"US envoy in Cuba engages critics on and offline."  

Besides El Yuma, who got in a pair of quotes, they include comments from a wide variety of other players in this on-going drama, including Elaine Díaz, Carlos Alzugaray, Carlos Alberto "La Chiringa" Pérez, Miguel Díaz-Canel, Alejandro Cruz, and of course Yohandry Fontana.  

* * *

Last Friday, May 10, at 4:00 p.m. in the Vedado district of Havana, a group of about 20-30 Cuban Twitter users held an open meet-up called #Twitthab.  This was the second such gathering under that name coming almost two years after the first one in the summer of 2011.

One unique element to Friday's gathering was the surprise presence of the Deputy Chief of the US Interest Section, Conrad Tribble (@ConradTribble).  Below is a video of his brief and to my mind very positive intervention.

A short summary of his comments at #TwittHab in Havana:

"Diplomats should engage in dialogue."

Well said, well done, & keep it up!



You can go here, here, and here for some of the interesting back and forth between him and a number of Cuban bloggers that followed his visit.

(Here's another brief video of him speaking [in German] at his previous post in Munich about the relationship between diplomacy and social media. So his interest in digital technology and US diplomacy is not something new.  There's even a great video of him here singing "Jack the Knife" - so Jazz and diplomacy go well together too it seems)!

Quotable: Díaz Canel on "the impossible chimera" of information control

"Today, with the development of information technologies; today, with the development of social networks; today, with the development of computers and the Internet, to prohibit something is nearly an impossible chimera.

It makes no sense.

Today, news from all sources, from good ones and from bad ones, those that are manipulated, and those that are true, and those that are half-truths, all circulate on the web and reach people and those people are aware of them.

The worst response then, what is it?

Silence."

-First Vice-President of Cuba,
Miguel Díaz-Canel, May 5, 2013

Welcome Eliécer Ávila: Meet & Greet @ Baruch College, NYC 4-6 p.m., Thurs. May 2 - RSVP now!

We've been having quite a different kind of "Cuban spring" here in NYC this year!

Following April's historic visits of Yoani Sánchez and OLPL to the Big Apple, this week I have the honor of hosting the 27-year Cuban old computer engineer and activist Eliécer Ávila.

He arrives to JFK on Tuesday afternoon, April 30.

We have set up an informal "meet & greet" for him at Baruch College, this coming Thursday, May 2, from 4-6 p.m. just following his visit to my "Sociology of the Internet" class.

If you'd like to come and welcome him, or even ask him some impertinent questions like the ones he posed 5 years ago to Ricardo Alarcón, launching him on his still-unfolding odyssey, you can RSVP by sending me an e-mail at yumated@gmail.com.

My Week with Yoani: Another reader responds...

Dear Ted,

I have been meaning to email you to say thank you. I appreciate the time that you took and the interest you showed in helping me to get a ticket for the Yoani Sánchez event at the Freedom Tower.  As you may recall, I ended up getting two tickets.

I really liked the way it started – with Yoani reading “Cubanos y punto.” I also saw her at the Coral Gables Country Club. That was a Q & A format and I got to ask a question:

"Had she read Vaclav Havel’s El Poder de Los Sin Poder?" I asked.

"Yes, . . . of course," she responded.

I thought she was absolutely, incredibly, 110% terrific.

She is extremely well-spoken, poised and composed.

She’s determined and focused, warm and genuine.

She won us over!!! Big time!

She did not have to say much to win me over, but for those (few) who had their doubts about whatever, she was impressive.

I really liked her spirit of reconciliation.

Sincerely,

Laura María

The City that Care Remembered: My Students Reflect on New Orleans

My students working at a Habitat for Humanity site, 

Central City, New Orleans, March, 2013. 

For the sixth time since 2007, during Spring Break I led a group of 14 of my students on a 10-day service-learning adventure in New Orleans, Louisiana. As part of my honors class at CUNY entitled, “The City that Care Forgot: The Roots, Ruin, and Rebirth of New Orleans," we all visited the “Big Easy” from Friday, March 22, through Tuesday, April 2, working on rebuilding projects with Habitat for Humanity and harvesting vegetables at Grow Dat Urban Youth Farm.

My students and I also took levee and "human geography" tours of the city, visited the swamps at Barataria Preserve, rode the St. Charles Street Car, evaluated the progress of Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation in the Lower Ninth Ward, and even learned how to Zydeco at the famed Mid City Lanes Rock 'n' Bowl!

Click here to see a quick 30-second YouTube video of us each saying our favorite N'Awlins word: Creole, Gumbo, Y'all, Jazz, Crawfish, 9th Ward, Lagniappe...

What follows are a series of reflections on the trip written by the students themselves.

City College student Leanne demonstrates that New Orleans’ levees are still inadequate by standing in a remaining gap, which is almost as tall as she is! 

Astou:
     “It angered and frustrated me to see that these kids did not even have an adequate school building to learn in because they came from the Ninth Ward, were Black, and poor. They were not only abandoned by their board of education but by their state and by their government. In this way, my previous war zone description is especially fitting because on top of neighborhoods still being in ruins, an entire school system is in ruins and is unable to meet the needs and supply the resources that its children need in order to learn, grow, and flourish.”

Geoffrey:
     “This is how I breakdown New Orleans in the end: Festivals, bars, and parties lie in the center of New Orleans. Take a step back from the center of the city and notice the broken education system, the environmental racism, and the lingering socioeconomic disparities that have existed for a long period of time. Take a step further back and watch the swamplands (that have been housing alligators, deer, cypress trees, and other wildlife) erode slowly as saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico pours in. Overall, New Orleans is a dying city in the making—a city that parties all day long while neglecting the problems around it. Hurricane Katrina afflicted significant damage to many parts of the city, but what it really did was highlight the environmental, the socioeconomic, and the political diseases that existed before the hurricane.”
     “…as we entered the area surrounding the George Washington Carver High School, there was the presence of an aura of fear and violence—streets deserted, houses damaged, the story of a student shot nearby, and the struggle to provide the best quality of education to an area full of low-income, colored families. Looking at both areas, how can such a level of inequality between whites and blacks still exist in modern American cities? It was as if history still remained intact in the city.”

Linda:
     “To be honest, I thought volunteering would be satisfying but I felt mostly inadequate. There was so much more to be done for the city of New Orleans. All the work I did felt marginal, but I know I am just being a little cynical. It did give me a brand new respect for day laborers and farmers. My mom thought it was hilarious that I was farming since she grew up on a farm. I am pretty sure she did not come to this country so her children could spend another generation farming in the hot sun.”

Rachel:
     “Upon arriving in New Orleans, I was immediately enchanted by this fun, uninhibited lifestyle that cloaks the city in a shroud of seemingly impenetrable recklessness and dissent. This uninhibited care-free nature is what deems New Orleans to be ‘The Big Easy,’ an attribute that is truly unique and remarkable to experience. Despite the extreme racial and class tensions that exist and intersect with the impoverished state of New Orleans, the city has managed to maintain this easy going lifestyle. While I found the uninhibited, easy lifestyle of New Orleans to be magical and entertaining, I could not help but wonder: at what point does the magic end? From a sociological frame of reference, without the shroud of music, festivals, and alcohol New Orleans would cease to exist as we know it, revealing a broken skeletal structure built upon inflated inequalities and unstable terrain.”

José:
     “Lawrence Powell’s The Accidental City and Richard Campanella’s Bienville’s Dilemma [see here for the intro in PDF] put the city of New Orleans in its rich historical context. Many think of New Orleans as the ‘true melting pot’ of America. This conflicted with my established notion of what a melting pot was as a native New Yorker. I knew that New Orleans’ diversity was far different from that of New York’s. Powell and Campanella’s respective analyses of the word ‘Creole’ and its evolution harped on this. The word serves, at any given point in history as a racial divide between peoples of New Orleans. I found it difficult to picture a city with distinct Spanish, French, and African influences that was both divided and amalgamated at the same time.”

Students stand along the top of the London Avenue Canal after a levee tour with Dr. Stephen Nelson of Tulane University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. 

Vanessa:
     “I was around thirteen years old when Hurricane Katrina hit. Even though I knew what happened was terrible, I was still unable to fathom how much damage had been done. In class, we read all about the numbers, how the hurricane claimed over 1,800 lives, some parts of the city had flooded to over fifteen feet, the city had remained flooded for about four weeks, over 50 levees had breached. All of those numbers seemed abstract. All those situations, even as they played over and over on the news did not seem real, and did not feel as though they could have happened in the United States.
     I definitely had trouble comprehending how the government had failed its people. After taking this class, and after hearing many stories of different people, both natives of New Orleans and not, a clearer picture had been painted. Kanye West’s infamous outburst that ‘George Bush doesn’t care about Black people’ no longer seems that unsound or unjustified. While the Lower Ninth Ward is about 20 minutes out of the French Quarter, it looks like an entirely different city. Even while watching and walking through it in real life, it was difficult understanding how any government would allow its own city to quickly spiral down into complete ruin.”

Students enjoy a tour of New Orleans’ unique urban geography with Dr. Richard Campanella of Tulane University.

Ryssel:
     "The French Quarter is the heart of New Orleans, the popular must-see tourist destination. However, while touring the French Quarter I did not feel like a tourist. The French Quarter felt oddly familiar to me. As I learned in class, after the fires of 1788 and 1794, the Spanish rebuilt the French Quarter, making it as much a “Spanish” as a French settlement. It was no wonder that I was reminded of the Dominican Republic, the native country of my parents, which was also been colonized by the Spanish. This allowed me to instantly feel familiar with New Orleans. I felt as if I had been there before. The music on the streets was intoxicating. On one occasion while touring the French Quarter I heard drums in the distance and in an uninhibited moment I started to dance to the distant music. The brass bands playing in the streets are the most captivating. The trip to New Orleans did not really begin for me until the class danced spontaneously as a group on the street to the music of an amateur brass band.
     As I travelled throughout the city, I had a constant feeling of awe and amazement at its beauty and magic and at the resilience of the people, however I also felt a gnawing feeling of trauma, unfairness, inequality, and inevitable doom. The city of New Orleans has always been and is constantly in battle. Throughout history there has been culture clashes between new migrants who challenge the traditions and culture of the old, long-time residents - the so-called 'Creoles.' There has also been a battle between the inhabitants of New Orleans and its government (whether the French or Spanish crown or US local, state, and federal politicians). And of course there is the never ending battle between the city and mother nature herself."

My Week with Yoani: Day 1 - Columbia's J-School (Thursday, March 14)

Josh Freedman and Mirta Ojito of the Columbia University School of Journalism.

What I have begun below and will continue in a series of subsequent posts is to create a digital archive of the heady and historic week of March 14-21 when I played host to Yoani Sánchez and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo in New York City and Washington, DC.

Given that we covered so much ground visiting a half-dozen universities (Columbia, New School, NYU, Cardozo, Georgetown, and CUNY), did scores of interviews (CNN, CNBC, PBS, NPR, NYT, NY1, NTN, etc.) and sit downs with editorial boards (Bloomberg, WSJ, and WaPo), made various presentations at assorted think-tanks (Americas' Society, Cato, and Brookings) and human rights organizations (Committee to Protect Journalists), and paid visits to a hand-full of government institutions such as the Czech Embassy, the US Congress, the OAS, and the UN, I think it valuable to provide a detailed listing of our day-by-day activities, with embedded videos and photos of public events with links to key articles from the many interviews.  That way, there will be a one-stop place to get a day-by-day summary of all the events from that week.

Let's begin with the conversation Sánchez had (via LiveStream) with Mirta Ojito of the Columbia University School of Journalism followed by a Q&A with Columbia students.  Ojito is a former Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter and the author of Finding Mañana, a memoir of the Mariel Boatlift.  She previously interviewed Yoani via phone in December 2011 for the episode, "Tweeting Under Castro," as part of Columbia's J-School BlogTalkRadio series.

 

Other interviews done by Yoani either just prior to or immediately following the J-School event include:

*Andres Correa of the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal interviewed Sánchez (audio on SoundCloud). In the interview she discusses the challenges facing Venezuela and the Venezuelan opposition. She also acknowledges that Venezuela is heading down the road that Cuba is now walking away from.

  *Part I: Yoani Sánchez: "Venezuela está entrando donde Cuba va de salida."

  *Part II: Yoani Sánchez: Una espina clavada en el pie.

*An exclusive international Telemundo Interview, with other good coverage from Miami Telemundo reporter Maria Montoya here, here (also with Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo), and here.

*A report for CNBC by their chief international correspondent Michelle Caruso-Cabrera.

Yoani Sánchez and Juan Manuel Benítez.

*New York 1 - Noticias - Pura Política: Entrevista Exclusiva con Juan Manuel Benítez (but you need Time Warner Cable to view it).  If you do have TWC you can see some of Benítez's past coverage and interviews with Sánchez via telephone from Havana here.

Sánchez and Josh Freedman.

*Huffington Post - Roque Planas, "Yoani Sanchez, Cuban Blogger, Plans Independent Newspaper Online." After Yoani herself, Planas is my go-to Twitter feed (@RoqPlanas) - over 3,800 Tweets and counting - for a wide variety of news related to Latinos in the US.  His updates are smart, constant, comprehensive, and full of wit and wisdom.

*The Guardian - Gizelle Lugo, "Yoani Sánchez: dissident Cuban blogger hopeful of digital change." Lugo is a stand-out former student of mine who now works for both the Guardian and the Nation.  I reached out to her for what turned out to be her first solo-authored exclusive interview - a very good one at that!

*Florida Center for Investigative Reporting - Tracey Eaton, "Cuban Dissident Blogger Tours the US" - article and video in English and Spanish).  Eaton is a good friend, former Dallas Marning News correspondent in Havana, and fellow blogger who was also kind enough to post 152 of is photos (many of them very good like the one to the left) from Sánchez's visit to New York.


Interview with Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez from Tracey Eaton on Vimeo.

My Week with Yoani: So you say you're against the embargo...

As an addendum to my previous post, I want briefly to share part of a long, heated conversation I had this afternoon with two very good friends of mine.

Both are Cuban, both immigrated to the US as adults, both are quite critical of the lack of fundamental freedoms in Cuba, and both are also very critical of the US embargo - considering it not only a convenient "excusa" for the failures of the Cuban government but also an "illegal" and morally reprehensible policy that has inflicted real harm on the Cuban people.

In fact, while they expressed admiration for Yoani's valiant struggle and eloquent voice in Cuba, they were quite disappointed in what they saw as her evasions whenever asked about the reasons behind her own opposition to the embargo.  They said that whenever asked about her rejection of the US embargo, she would repeat the mantra that she opposed it mainly because the government used it as a pretext, diverting attention from the real embargo that the Cuban government holds against the Cuban people.

I wrote as much in my previous post.

They said that such reasoning was fine as far as it went, but that they expected that she would also have given a more full throated condemnation of the embargo as a violation of Cuban sovereignty and independence, and as an violation of human rights and international law - especially while visiting the United States.

I pointed out that she has indeed used some of this very same language in the past in her repeated and consistent critique of US policy, even using the word "injerencista" (meddling) when asked about the embargo while visiting the Brazilian Congress.  They shot back that while she may have used such a word in Brazil, the fact that she never used such categorical language in the US -where it most needs to be said and heard- only shows that she was being "political" and trying not to alienate the US government and the Cuban-American hard right.

I responded that her record against the embargo is both clear and well-known and that she was likely using her public exposure in the US to shine a bright light on what she sees as the more crucial issue of the lack of fundamental freedoms in Cuba.  She has also said repeatedly that the "US embargo question" is often used as a litmus test and to cynically distract attention from what she sees as the primordial issue: that the Cuban government is the main obstacle to freedom on the island.

(Photo Credit: Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo)

They responded that perhaps it was she who was being cynical, opportunistic, or at least overly "strategic" in refusing to use direct, accusatory language (the same language she is adept at using against the Cuban government) when discussing the US embargo while in Washington and Miami.  They contended that her failure to "hablar de la soga en la casa del ahorcado" (speak of the rope in the house of the condemned) - or perhaps - "del verdugo" (of the executioner), indicated a weakness and inconsistency in her otherwise powerful and even-handed message.

I responded that I too wished that she had been more direct in her condemnation of the embargo, but that there's nothing wrong with her being strategic and nuanced about her message, especially when she's attempting to build a broad-based movement of social change. Moreover, I think the main cause of her reluctance to go into greater detail about the reasons that she is against the embargo is not a "strategic" or "political" one, but because she actually believes that the bulk (perhaps 80%) of the responsibility for the Cuban "problem" lies with the Cuban government and state socialism.

Moreover, she often would say that too much focus on the US embargo is both needlessly divisive and serves as a distraction from the main issue of Cuban state repression and denial of fundamental freedoms on the island.

They insisted that the US embargo and the US's historically imperialistic approach to Cuba is equally responsible for the lack of fundamental freedoms in Cuba. For them, her not admitting and addressing that "undeniable fact" directly was a failure of both nerve and intelligence.

I said that honest people can disagree about where to lay the proper measure of blame for the lack of fundamental freedoms in Cuba and the antagonistic Cuba-US relationship.

I also said that they would be hard pressed to find another Cuban -especially one still residing on the island itself- with more demonstrated nerve and intelligence that she has shown over the past 6 years on her blog - including the two of them when they still lived in Cuba and were quite "strategic" themselves in their avoidance of anything too "political."

That last comment almost got me kicked out of their apartment.  However, we finished lunch on good terms and they even offered me dessert!

(Photo credits: Cuban 5 and March with Flags photos by OLPL, all others by El Yuma)

My Week with Yoani: The Takeaway

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Yoani Sánchez, & MJ Porter. 
(Photo by Ted Henken).

Just over a month ago at 5:15 p.m. on Thursday, March 14 Hurricane Yoani Sánchez blew into New York and Washington, D.C. from Mexico.  Since I had the distinct honor of helping to set up her itinerary, accompanying her, and interpreting for her during that week (Mar. 14 - Mar. 21), I was unable to update the blog with any of my own observations of the various events we undertook together.  However, I did try to catalogue things as they happened with fairly constant Twitter updates and links to photos, videos, and some of the many articles that came out about her visit.

On an emotional, human level, the most powerful thing for me (as someone who had met with and interviewed her in Havana before) was witnessing her meet many close friends and long-time collaborators on her blogging adventure for the very first time in New York.  These emotional encounters really brought home to me the power of social media to convene like-minded people with different talents, from different places, with different amounts of free time to work on projects of creative collaboration (Net guru Clay Shirky has called this "cognitive surplus" or "crowd-sourcing") that would be impossible without the Internet.

The best examples of this in Yoani's case are her translator MJ Porter who lives in Washington State, the administrator of the Voces Cubanas site Aurora Morera who lives in Montreal (pictured with Yoani to the right), and the graphic designer Rolando Pulido who lives in Queens, New York!  None of these people had ever met Yoani nor even one another prior to March 2013 - even though they had been working in voluntary solidarity (and near poverty!) for almost 5 years by then.

Hearing Sánchez speak at places as diverse as Google, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS, and the UN; the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNN, and the Washington Post; the Cato and Brookings Institutes; and Columbia, NYU, CUNY, Cardozo Law School, and Georgetown Universities, for me there are five takeaways in terms of the message of her trip:

Arturo Villar, Yoani Sánchez, and El Yuma.

1. Raul's Reforms: Don't believe the hype! (to quote a hip-hop guru other than Jay-Z) - that is, while the economic reforms so far enacted under Raul Castro are positive and go in the right direction, their lack of depth and glacial slowness is exasperating, especially since they include almost nothing in the realm of civil and political reforms.  (At one point, Yoani even half-joked to me that Obama's efforts at updating US policy could be described similarly: while they are positive and move in the right direction - toward openness and engagement -, they also lack depth and are frustratingly slow).  In other words, we should not expect the important and necessary changes in Cuba to come from either the Cuban or the US government.

2. The Birdcage: La cage aux folles - in appearance after appearance Yoani has matched the witty and incisive written words we all knew her for, with a poised vocal eloquence, stamina, and don de palabra that caught many of her listeners by surprise.  Where does she get the confidence, energy, and strength?, many people wondered.

She also impressed her listeners with a clarity and quiet femininity as she delivered one devastating criticism of the Cuban regime after another, and in a way - often seated in conversation with a female interlocutor - that put many of the traditionally intransigent and bombastic Castro critics to shame - as noted by Carlos Alberto Montaner when he wrote, "In more than half a century of tyranny, nobody has been more effective in the task of dismantling the regime’s myths and exposing Cubans’ miserable living conditions. [...] Yoani’s weapons have been sincerity, a crushing logic, an innate ability to communicate, and her own attractive personality."  (Photo courtesy of David Garten).

All this was often combined with her expert use of incisive vignettes, powerful stories, and apt metaphors to make her convincing points.  Her favorite metaphor of all was the birdcage: when asked about Revolutionary Cuba's free and universal health care and education, she wold invoke the image of a bird imprisoned in a gilded cage - always expected to be grateful for the free feed and water but never allowed to escape through the bars of the cage and fly free.  And by the way, the alpiste y agua ain't what they used to be!  

3. Hope and Change: The kind you have to believe in to see - Though we should not expect major changes from on-high, Cuba IS changing in significant ways because Cubans themselves are changing (from the inside out) - losing their fear and beginning to make new demands and form civil society movements.  As a response, Cubans on the outside should not waste their energy looking back to the past in anger, but forward to the future with optimism.  However, such optimism should not be an escape or illusion from the very hard work and road ahead of helping the emergent Cuban civil society in concrete ways.

4. New Times: Call for New Policies - Prior to her visit to Washington, D.C., Sánchez was often asked what demands she would make to the US government.  "I'm not going there to ask for anything," she repeatedly responded.  "Because the necessary changes in Cuba must come from within Cuba."

At the same time, however, she often insisted when pressed that the embargo hasn't worked and it was time to try something new.  For her, it only serves as a convenient scapegoat for the Castro regime to blame everything on - "from the lack of tomatoes and potatoes on our dinner tables, to the lack of the right of assembly and association, to the absence of Internet... I'd love to see how they explain these problems when they no longer have the embargo as a whipping boy."

She would also often add that the internal changes in Cuba call for a fundamental re-examination of US policy, that would double-down on the Obama administration's principled engagement, expand people-to-people contacts, and promote new and innovative ways of reaching out to the Cuban people highlighting the liberating power of technology.  "It's time to update many policies," she told Telemundo (in the main interview linked below) when asked what she would tell President Barack Obama if she had the chance.  "It is also time to strengthen and help empower Cuban society technologically, materially, and in all senses."  Such help could come from US policy-makers, but Sánchez more often emphasized the role US citizens and Cuban-Americans should have in lending a hand of "citizen solidarity" to Cubans on the island. (Photo of Yoani Sánchez supporter taken at NYU by Tracey Eaton).

She also suggested that the Obama administration surprise Cuba by offering to sit down and discuss their differences, but that any such discussion should rightly include the voices of Cuban civil society and the Cuban diaspora.

Just before she met with US Senator Marco Rubio, I reminded her of his criticism of US visitors to the island who - in his words - "visit Cuba as if it were a zoo."  When she met with him, she told him that she actually liked his metaphor but that he should imagine himself inside the cage with the other animals.  Wouldn't he prefer that someone on the outside come and help unlock the cage, instead of abandoning him inside?

5. The Bridge: Cubans, period - Finally, in her pair of well timed and perfectly pitched blog entries posted on Saturday, March 30, "Flan de coco" - just after arriving in South Florida - and Monday, April 1, "Cubanos y punto" - just before taking the stage at Miami Dade College's Freedom Tower - Sánchez delivered a powerful and heartfelt message of reconciliation to Miami's Cuban-American community. Without any pandering or bombast, she told them that she had discovered "Cuba outside of Cuba," thanked them for preserving many traditions that had long since been lost on the island, and asked them to come together, work together, and never again allow a government, an ideology, or a single man to divide them or decide who is and who is not worthy of being called a Cuban.

"There is no 'you' and 'us'," she declared.

"There is only an 'us'."

Jay-Z, Marco Rubio, Cuba, & Me: Rights and Responsibilities

This morning I had the pleasure of appearing on "Good Day New York" (Fox 5 in Manhattan) with Alexis Romay (@ARomay) and Kim Osorio (@KimOsorio1) along with hosts Greg Kelly (@GregKellyFox5) and Rosanna Scotto (@RosannaScotto) to discuss Jay-Z (@S_C_) and Beyoncé's (@Beyonce) recent trip to Cuba.

My two cents was that all Americans should have the right to travel anywhere that they can get a visa and that we should not demand rights for Cubans by taking them away from Americans.  I also pushed back against claims by Senator Marco Rubio that Obama's people-to-people programs needed to be put under the microscope or scaled back. Instead, I advocated for the continuance and even deepening of such academic, religious, and cultural programs as a great way to reach out to and connect with the Cuban people.

Still, I believe that when Americans travel anywhere, the exercise of that right also implies certain ethical responsibilities about the social, political, and economic reality of the country that we travel to. I also indicated that it was wrong for the Cuban government to continue to require that Cubans in the diaspora get permission before traveling back to their homeland.

Rights and responsibilities.

Here's the video:

New York News | NYC Breaking News

I also recommend the following incisive essays on the Jay-Z/Beyoncé trip by Achy Obejas, Phil Lord, and Isabel Kaplan.

Then there are the comments of two very different GOP US Senators, Jeff Flake and Marco Rubio.

Finally, here is a link to Jay-Z's "Open Letter," which had 1,357,331 listens as of tonight!

Coco Fusco asks and answers a good question...

Who's Afraid of Yoani Sánchez? 

By Coco Fusco

(originally published in the Huffington Post)

Yoani Sánchez's historic visit to New York last week thrust political debates about Cuba into the public arena, exposing their invariably polemical character. During the famed Cuban blogger's visits to university campuses, the only venues that offered public access to Sánchez, she encountered fans who read her blog Generation Y, Cuban exiles who admire her temerity, and a small but ardent band of protestors. As one of the organizers of the conference featuring Sánchez at The New School and New York University, the institutions that sponsored her visit to New York, I was privy to the challenges involved in bringing her to the U.S. as well as those of managing a volatile crowd. Although the disruptive tactics used by the protestors suggested that they were intent on shutting public debate down rather than engaging with Sánchez, I'd like to take a moment to consider the content of their statements, as well as their form of address.

As a moderator, I reviewed all the questions from the audience. Those coming from Sánchez's detractors were fairly consistent in content and limited in scope. Her critics asked about money they assumed she receives from the U.S. State Department; they doubted the political effectiveness of blogging; and they demanded to know why Sanchez's writings did not highlight positive aspects of the Cuban Revolution. They also drew attention to the unjust treatment of immigrant workers in the U.S., as if to suggest either that Sanchez's calls for democratization in Cuba were tantamount to an embrace of all American policies and practices, or that political change in Cuba would necessarily result in neoliberal style labor exploitation. Although Sanchez was invited to speak about digital cultures emerging in Cuba, the protestors sought repeatedly to sidetrack the discussion by exhorting Sánchez to defend the Revolution and by trying to impugn her credibility.

Sánchez described these protests in Cuban terms as "actos de repudio" -- the collective acts of public excoriation aimed at dissidents that are orchestrated by the Cuban government. To her credit, she also responded calmly to many of her opponents' questions, explaining that she recognizes the limits as well as the benefits of the internet-based movement that she leads; that she visits the U.S. Interests Section to obtain visas just as Cuban officials seeking to travel do; that the translations of her writings into multiple languages are produced by volunteers; that she makes a living from her publications and does not receive funding from the U.S. government; and that she understands her role as an independent journalist to be that of a critical conscience, rather than a promoter of official Cuban policy. Even though the conference organizers explained that Sánchez's trip to New York was paid for by The New School and NYU, and even though her English translator MJ Porter detailed how the international team of translators had been formed, the protestors continued to accuse her of being a mercenary financed by the CIA, as if repeating unsubstantiated accusations would somehow make them true.

While it is not possible to prove that Sánchez's protestors in New York took orders from Havana, it does appear that they do not perceive the contradiction involved in exercising their right to express alternative views in order to discredit Sánchez's attempts to do the same in her own country. The protestors' raucous behavior was somewhat comic, but sadly, their questions bespeak commonly held assumptions among American progressives about Cuba, Cuban dissidents and Cuban exiles. All too often, progressive Americans maintain their unflinching support of Cuba as an expression of their critical views of U.S. policy, not because of their understanding of Cuban society. Rather than renouncing their political ideals, they seek to silence the messengers who deliver a very different picture of life in Cuba as it is lived, not prescribed by a political apparatus. Unfortunately, the Cuban government makes matters worse through its hegemonic control over academic organizations that support Cuban studies abroad, and by instilling fear in Cuban studies scholars outside Cuba that public criticism of the Revolution will result in their being denied entry to the island. Recent posts from Cuba on government-sponsored blogs raised the issue of whether the presence of Sanchez and fellow blogger Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo on American campuses might have an adverse effect on academic exchange projects between Cuban and U.S. institutions; the very act of releasing such questions can have a chilling effect on public debate about Cuba beyond its borders.

Ardent Cuba-supporters' tirades against Cubans who publicly expresses criticism of the Cuban Revolution not only mirror the repressive tactics the Cuban government uses to discredit its internal opposition, but also deny Cubans agency as thinking subjects. As Sanchez herself put it, how could it be possible for Cuba to be the only country in the world with a citizenry that agrees with everything that its government does? Might it not be reasonable for Cuban exiles, who send billions of dollars to their island relatives and who function as de facto wholesale suppliers for Cuban small businesses, to have their views be treated with respect too? Don't Americans deserve access to the diversity of views that exist among Cubans inside and outside Cuba?

As a Cuban-American who has conducted research on Cuban culture for three decades, I have had to contend with intimidation from extreme right Cuban exiles, pro-Cuba leftists in the U.S. and Cuban state security because I refuse to stay inside the ideological sandbox created by the Cold War. I find it quite heartening now to witness how Cubans from across the political spectrum are beginning to open themselves to peaceful dialogue with each other thanks largely to the work of writers such as Yoani Sánchez who are creating virtual forums for a plurality of views about Cuba to be shared with the world.