Donors protest policy on Cuba
Rhode Island residents donate medical supplies and other items for residents of Cuba.
01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, June 23, 2004
BY TATIANA PINA
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Let Cuba live. Lift the blockade.
That's what the sign said on the school bus that rolled into Providence yesterday afternoon to pick up goods that Rhode Island residents donated for people in Cuba.The bus was filled with medical supplies, bikes, sewing machines and other items. It is one of about 100 vehicles that are traveling through the United States collecting items that will be shipped to Cuba as part of the 15th Pastors for Peace/Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization Caravan for Peace.
The bus stopped at the Cuban Revolution Restaurant on Washington Street, owned by Mary and Ed Morabito, who plans to run as an independent for the 2nd Congressional District seat held by James Langevin. At the restaurant, organizers, participants and supporters ate Cuban sandwiches, rice and bean rollups and yuca while they talked about the trip and the reasons they were going to Cuba.
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At a time when the Bush administration has clamped down on U.S. travel to Cuba, the group was defiant and determined to deliver the donations to people they said had been squeezed economically for decades by the United States' embargo on the Communist island nation.
Jeanne DiPretoro, who lives in the Mount Pleasant section of Providence, will drive a donated van that will take donations from Rhode Island to Tampico, Mexico. From there, the goods will be shipped to Cuba.DiPretoro's eyes welled with tears as she talked about the trip and the donations.The owner of a mattress factory in Fall River gave an industrial-strength sewing machine for making mattresses and remnants, she said.
Then there was the donor in Chepachet, DiPretoro said. "Here is a woman on Social Security who took out the little money she had because she wanted to give us a sewing machine to bring," she said. A surgeon gave her $100,000 worth of surgical tools, she said."I knew if the American people knew what was going on, they would not abide it," she said. "Viva Cuba, but thank you Rhode Island."
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"It's a gesture of defiance. Rather than using economic strangulation, we think a dialogue is better. As we learn more about the people, we learn more about their indomitable spirit," she said.Bernstein described Bush's policy toward Cuba as a "regime change." She said that the administration is about to start implementing the recommendations of a report called the Presidential Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, which entails spending $36 million to try to organize an opposition movement inside Cuba with special attention to dissident groups, women, youth, the religious sector and Afro- Cubans.
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