Aprilbaby's California Life

"Oscar's Cuba": Documentary on Dr. Biscet's Struggle for Cuba's Freedom

 

Cuban prisoner of Conscience, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, wrote from prison:

"I am convinced of my ethical principles, the suffering of another human

being is also mine, I cannot accept evil, because if I did my bones will erode

and my soul will never be at peace.”  (From Oscarscuba.com)

 

 

In an earlier post, I mentioned my older Cuban friend who grew up in Havana, Cuba, before Castro’s revolution .  My friend showed me photos and told me his memories of Cuba’s turquoise waters, palm trees, balmy air, the wonderful Cuban folk music… But it all came to an end when three of Castro’s thugs entered his home. They took his belongings, took his business and put him in prison. He escaped imprisonment only by a fluke of timing and some sort of mistake. He then fled to the United States and hasn’t been back to Havana since.  He now has only memories and photos to share with his children.

My friend’s story made me appreciate, with passion, the freedom I have – freedom to speak  without fear of neighbors reporting me and without fear of my home being bugged by the government. So last night, after Joe Lima posted about the documentary, I attended a pre-screening of “Oscar’s Cuba.” The documentary's about Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet’s imprisonment in Cuba and the Communist government’s treatment of the Cuban people. Filmmaker Jordan Allott became passionate about Dr. Biscet’s story, went undercover into Cuba and secretly filmed about Dr. Biscet’s and the Cuban peoples’ plight.

Born shortly after Cuba’s Communist revolution, Dr. Biscet had been indoctrinated with government propaganda his entire life; he was told since he was small that individual rights were evil and other ideas to make the government more powerful and the individual  weaker. Even with a lifetime of Communist-attempted brainwashing, Dr. Biscet grew up to speak out against the totalitarian government. And for that he’s in prison - in a dark, isolated, filthy and miserable cell - for 25 years.

But there’s hope.

In "Oscar's Cuba", Cuban punk rocker Gorki Aguila, of the band Porno Para Ricardo, tells how he was imprisoned for being “socially dangerous,” for crimes he may commit in the future (twisted government, huh?). But, thanks to social media and the outcry of the International community, the Cuban government didn’t want the negative publicity and so released Aguila.

Like all involved in the making and promoting “Oscar’s Cuba”, I want to believe that if more people around the world become informed about the Cuban people’s struggle for freedom and if more speak out for them, they may have a chance to live in freedom once again.

Until then, this is the rot that is today's Cuba.

About the screening and pre-show:

The screening for “Oscar’s Cuba” was at the Barnsdall Theater, up on a hill with a view of the Hollywood sign and the Griffith Park Observatory. During the cocktail hour, I sipped wine and ate many, many delicious Cuban pastries from Porto's Bakery (a sponsor for the film) and met some really nice people. We then went inside the theater where the host Maria Conchita Alonso spoke. I’d tell you what she said, but it was in Spanish. Next, the filmmaker Jordan Allott spoke about how he was so moved learning about Dr. Biscet’s fight for Cuba's freedom, he wanted to let the world know about Dr. Biscet’s and the Cuban people’s story.

Before the film, photos streamed above on the movie screen: paint-worn Havana, despondent looking Cubans, and the Damas de Blanco, the Ladies in White: wives, sisters and mothers of men imprisoned in Cuba for opposing the government. When these women appeared on screen, the audience erupted in applause.

 

The Ladies in White are often beaten by government-led mobs for standing up for freedom. Mobs also gather in front of prisoners' homes, as shown in the film, and yell with total vitriol: “Down with human rights!” and “Long live Castro!”

Angry mobs, a brutal government – it doesn’t matter to the independent thinkers of Cuba, they refuse to be silenced. And for that they are beaten and put in prison.

What can we do?

Please spread the word and write to political leaders about Dr. Biscet and other Cuban prisoners.

If enough people speak out for the Cubans who have been silenced, they may one day get to speak and live in freedom. One day soon, I hope.

Four-time Grammy winning musician, Arturo Sandoval, created the musical score for "Oscar's Cuba". Here, in the video, he explains well the struggle in Cuba.

 

For more info: Dr. Biscet's site.

In Support of Iranian People Risking Their Lives for Freedom

In honor of protesters in Iran and those who risk it all for an important cause: my slideshow of a recent protest in Los Angeles.

 

Why I Get Up on My Soapbox

 

(Photo: 1969, London, England. I'm spouting my mouth off on a soapbox at the Anarchist Forum at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. My parents said I even gathered a small crowd.)

 

Demure? Without opinions? Someone who doesn't question? That's not me.

Born only months after JFK’s assassination, at the beginning of the civil rights movement, my brain was formed on the cusp of an era of transformation. And while big things were taking place around the world, my own little world transformed too.

Almost everything that my curious and questioning four-year-old mind could absorb changed before my eyes when my parents sold our San Franciscan suburban home to buy a trailer in England. From there, our entire family – mom, dad, my little sister and I – would travel the world. Every day, every moment there after was something new to take in, something to question.

As we traveled the world from Turkey to Morocco, we saw true poverty, children begging in the streets and gypsies wanting our clothes. We’d made day-trips into the institutional bleakness and war-pocked Communist East Berlin, to emerge into the colorful and shining outside world upon leaving. Only later would I learn, while we visitors were able to come and go, the East Berliners would be shot if they tried to leave.

These experiences, whether I knew it or not at the time, became etched into my brain.

 

Upon returning to San Francisco in the early 1970s, we bounced around from my grandparents house in the Sunset District to a rental cottage in the Richmond and finally landed in Gatorville: San Francisco State University’s Family Student Housing. It was only a small community of sagging, dingy-white army barrack-style apartments, which surrounded a playground of tarnished metal swings and slides stuck into dirty sand, sand that served as a litter box for stray cats. The place didn't look like much. But it was. 

It was a slice of pure 1970’s counterculture – a commune feel without the annoying rules and with the ability to live and let live. We kids dealt with things other generations might not have had to deal with.

The reason the place was so special to me: I wasn't alone. 

Until Gatorville, many of us moved around, didn’t really have a chance to make friends, and might not have had patterns to our days. We kids of all races and ages - from kindergartners to teens - seemed to have the community to ourselves during the day. We'd come home, let ourselves in with the keys we kept on silver-beaded chains around our necks, and then we'd run off, totally free from adults. By the time the street lights came on, the apartments were turned over to the parents.

Most of us seemed savvy beyond our years. Maybe it was because the parents acted childlike. Maybe it was from seeing so much change in so little time - our surroundings, the culture, the way adults dressed and spoke - everything was far-out, groovy, out of sight or a bummer, which I always thought was so odd because none of them dressed and spoke that way when I was younger. It was all a little unsettling. Question was: what could I depend on if styles of living came and went?

Early on, I looked at the world around me with a sideways glance, always a little skeptical.

Many of us were kids of divorce, most (if not all) were latchkey kids, kids who worried about parents pot smoking (and having one kid announce this parental pot-smoking in class to the third grade teacher in front of the entire room of children!); kids fending off the neighborhood child-molester and being savvy enough to call him a “pervert!” but not savvy enough to avoid going with him to a porn theater with him; kids so free we took the Muni (city bus), roamed the city, seemed to build our own society,  all with the backdrop of great music – funk, soul, great rock and roll (now called “classic”). The experience was yin and yang, making the sun-filled long summer days only brighter when it all came to dark and abrupt end.

We were told by San Francisco State we’d have to leave Gatorville, because the university wanted the area for some other use. But we fought, and kids led the way. We protested “Hell no, we won’t go!”. “My dad put a huge sign above my apartment porch:“We Stand Together”.  I called local news stations and asked to speak with my favorite (I was a news junky even back then) anchorman: Van Amburg. Once he came to the phone, I told him how we were being forced from our home, would have to move from our friends and our school. We refused to leave because we had rights, I said. Intrigued (or more likely humored), Van Amburg told me he would send a news crew out to interview me. I took a shower, put on my best dress and waited on my porch at 97 Campus Circle. But no news crew ever showed up.

In 1976, we left Gatorville behind. But it’s always been with me - just as my experiences of having traveled the world have never left.

Throughout my life, the people I meet and the experiences I have continue to create new grooves in my brain - raising my child, running a business, and meeting people who’ve left repressive regimes, for instance, have made an impact.

I edited film for a business associate who grew up in Havana, Cuba. He wanted me to edit his photos of 1930s through 1950s Havana along to his favorite Cuban folk songs; the film was going to be a Christmas present for his adult children. My friend had wonderful memories of growing up surrounded by the turquoise waters and balmy air of Havana, something his children would only know through his stories. After the Communist Revolution in Cuba, three of Fidel Castro’s thugs came into my friend's home, removed him, his wife and two sons, then confiscated all of their belongings and his business. They put my friend in prison. He and his family escaped by a mere fluke in timing and paperwork. They fled to America.

Another friend fled Iran with his life. His story is similar to my Cuban friend’s experiences - all of his money, his business, his home and belongings were taken just after the Islamic revolution. He, too, fled to the United States with only his family and his life.

Having looked into the eyes of these men who've had their hopes and freedom taken by dictators is something I'll never forget. The emotional impact of their stories, along with my own memories of seeing the world as a child, have made me all the more certain of my own fortune in life, a life of freedom I will never take for granted.

Because of what I've learned in my life I don't have the luxury of ignorance or apathy.

There are now many, even those oh-so rebellious flower children who constantly yelled "Question the man!" when I was a kid, who now compliantly believe whatever the media or political groups tell them without questioning. They vote for candidates based on cool icons and snappy bumper stickers.

And there are many younger people who are coming out of universities, degrees in hand, without the ability of critical thinking and lacking wisdom. A huge portion of society no longer questions what they're told and they don't go looking for answers.

I recently met a thirty-year-old college grad who, after someone flippantly used the word communist, said: "What's so bad about communism? Isn't it like the Israeli Kibbutz?" Oy! How does an adult get a college degree and yet think communism is merely a large commune (i.e., you bake the bread and I'll grow the tomatoes and we'll get along just fine.) No, communism throughout history always requires repression of humans under violence - firing squads, genocide, gulags, interment camps. It's not peace, love and happiness.

There are a plethora of books he could read and plenty Information just a click away about what really goes on in Cuba if he were at all curious. But that seemed to be his problem, his lack of curiosity and (from what I could tell from the rest of our conversation) an amazing ability to parrot professors, the media and politicians without question. The man spoke in prepackaged phrases, even calling me a racist for questioning Obama on a few specific issues, ie Card Check and his meddling in Honduras. This dude nonchalantly calling me a racist was so ridiculous and thoughtless, I didn't even get angry. I actually felt sorry for this guy who spent years in college but seemed to have no ability to think for himself.

Because so many are misinformed and indoctrinated rather than truly educated, I find it even more necessary to watch, to learn, to educate myself and to always question. And when I see things that get me angry and that are obviously wrong, I stand up on my soapbox, like I did as a five-year-old in Hyde Park at Speakers’ Corner, and I shout out.

No one can tell me the: "The debate is closed!". I don't go silent and cower when told to shut up and stop questioning. I never have and never will.

 

The Valley: Home of the Oppressed

Talk about hyperbolic whining...

Greg Palast, ex-San Fernando Valley resident and so-called "muckraking journalist," has said of his time in the Valley:                 

"For me, the class war began in the Valley. ... We had this sense that there was a bright city over the hill. Cross Laurel Canyon and you entered the city of the winners. We were in the planet of the losers, below sea level, economically and socially."

A statement so ridiculous I nearly snorted coffee out of my nose as I read his op-ed in which that unbelievable quote appeared.

About the same time Palast experienced his "class war" in the "loser" Valley, I explored the world with my family from '68-'70. 

During our travels I saw how people lived around the world, which is why I find Palast's sniveling so ridiculous.  He has the nerve to claim insight into world politics because of his Valley days... Please!   That's like me saying I once made Jello instant pudding so I'm now an aficionado of all gourmet foods.  Yes, let me tell you all about the history of the souffle...because, you see, I've had the arduos experience of preparing boxed gelatin.

Even the Valley's most impoverished citizens during the '60s had opportunities to rise above their meager beginnings.  The Valley wasn't the concentration camps of World War II.  It was the San - Freaking - Fernando Valley!

(photo on right:my sister & me in East Berlin -July, 1969)

Now, maybe if he'd grown up in Cuba, as did an acquaintance of mine, I'd take Palast's background seriously.  This man had everything taken by Castro in the post-revolution.  Only by a fluke of circumstances - after being imprisoned - did he escape.  I have another friend from Iran who had everything taken from him, too.  He fled because he was threatened with death.   

Though my family traveled extensivley, we weren't rich.  My parents sold everything and bought a trailer for us to live in as we roamed the world.  And because of those experiences I learned early how fortunate I have always been.  I would be highly embarrassed to complain about my up-bringing since I've seen children begging and doing hard labor.    We met gypsies elated to have our hand-me-down clothes.  And we spent time in East Berlin, where everything was dour in color and carcasses of bombed buildings remained from WWII.  But while we (as visitors) were able to leave, the people in East Berlin could not.   They were confined by a little thing called the Berlin Wall.  And if they tried to escape, the  guards were instructed to shoot upon sight.

Yet there was Palast - a bus ride away from the world's major film studios (where people the world over dream of arriving), over the hill from beaches, with no walls confining him...and he has the nerve to snivel. 

Until that Daily News article, I'd never heard of Greg Palast so I know nothing more about him.  But I'd have a really hard time taking much of what he says seriously after hearing his statements about the Valley. 

(the photo above is NOT the San Fernando Valley)

I live in the Valley.  I know people who've grown up in the Valley.  I know people who arrived in the U.S by raft from North Vietnam and eventually bought homes in the Valley.  Mr. Palast, the Valley is not - and never was - North Korea, Iran, North Vietnam, Cuba or any other impoverished and/or dictator run state. 

Too bad Palast couldn't use his amazing muckraking skills to uncover the obvious, like working at Bob's Big Boy while living in Sun Valley isn't equivalent to life in the gulag!

(All photos were taken during my family's travels from '68-'70)

*I have a piece that was published about my own Valley experiences, prompted by all the Valley whines, rants and stereotypes from people like Palast.  The piece is titled "Valley State of Mind".