Glover received an award from the Institute for Policy Studies (Cold War Soviet/East German/Cuban front) a couple weeks after his participation in the 2012 Venezuela election, mentioning he was advocating for five arrested Cuban intelligence officers (the Cuban Five) at the time.
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https://ips-dc.org/danny_glovers_letelier-moffitt_award_speech/
October 17, 2012
Danny Glover’s Letelier-Moffitt Award Speech
When the Great Recession struck, City Life/Vida Urbana was there, confronting bank power with people power.
By Danny Glover
I’m so sorry I can’t be with you in person tonight. I would love to be there with my dear IPS friend Saul Landau, with whom I’ve been fighting hard for the freedom of the Cuban 5. I was honored when IPS asked me to present the LM HRA to another group of freedom fighters: City Life/Vida Urban. Here’s why.
City Life/Vida Urbana is a grassroots community organization, led by low-income and working class people fighting for social, economic, racial justice and gender equality. Their struggle is focused on the right to decent housing for all of us. They fight slumlords, neglect, segregation, environmental hazards, gentrification. This is a group at the front lines of the fight not just against foreclosure, but against the entire economic model that started with Reagan and that deregulated Wall Street
You name it, they fight it. And they win.
With the Recession, came a big spike in foreclosures and evictions, hitting communities of color and low-income communities the hardest.
City Life/Vida Urbana was there, confronting bank power with people power.
City Life/Vida Urbana was there with their Shield and Sword.
The Shield they bring is their Legal Defense support for families facing evictions and foreclosure.
The Sword they bring is Direct Action. Using People Power, CityLife brings people together to create human blockades to obstruct and prevent home repossessions and evictions. Man, talk about courage. And guess what, when people have used their “sword and shield” strategy, 95% of the time they’ve been successful.
Here are two of their stories I found particularly moving:
Tenants Reggie Fuller and Louanna Hall were faithfully paying rent on their apartment when they heard rumors their landlord was in foreclosure. Now, after two years living in limbo as the only remaining tenants in the building, they’ve become leaders in the movement to support others facing displacement after foreclosure.
When Marshall Cooper couldn’t qualify for a traditional mortgage, the bank referred him to an alternative lender who offered him a loan with twice the interest rate. As the expense of caring for his aging parents made it harder and harder to meet his increasing mortgage payments, he fell behind. After two bankruptcies and a failed modification, the house went into foreclosure. Now Marshall, 75, is fighting eviction by the bank and doing everything he can to hold on to his home.
Now CityLife/Vida Urbana is taking their successful strategy beyond Boston to help keep more and more families in their homes. They provide community education, organize vigils, marches, meetings, empower affected people to become the very leaders of this growing movement.
And they expose the banks, the very financial systems which use predatory lending practices, high interest rates, unethical eviction and foreclosure practices to increase profits even as families are stripped of homes that under fair terms, they could afford to keep. They partner with alternative non-profit financial institutions such as Boston Community Capital to ensure real and affordable valuations of homes, so people can stay in them. They use the court system to “slow down” the eviction process till the financial situation can be made manageable. These folks work hard to keep roofs over people’s heads.
As A. Philip Randolph said, “Freedom is never given. It is won.” And, City Life/Vida Urbana is fighting, and winning.
For their courage in doing what so many say cannot be done, for standing up to corrupt institutions and speaking truth to power, it is my distinct pleasure to welcome to the stage City Life/Vida Urbana’s Executive Director Curdina Hill and Organizing Coordinator Steve Meacham, who will be accepting the Institute for Policy Studies’ 2012 Letelier-Moffit Human Rights Award on behalf of their organization and members.
Danny Glover — the actor, director, producer, and fearless activist — presented Curdina Hill and Steve Meacham of City Life/Vida Urbana with a 2012 Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award from the Institute for Policy Studies.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Five
The Cuban Five, also known as the Miami Five,[1] are five Cuban intelligence officers (Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González) who were arrested in September 1998 and later convicted in Miami, Florida of conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, acting as an agent of a foreign government, and other illegal activities in the United States.[2] The Five were in the U.S. to observe and infiltrate the Cuban-American groups Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue.[3] They were part of La Red Avispa (lit. ‘The Wasp Network’) composed of at least 27 Cuban spies.[2]. . .
In May 2012, it was reported that the U.S. had declined an exchange of prisoners proposed by the Cuban government, that would have seen the Cuban Five returned to Cuba in exchange for USAID contractor Alan Gross, imprisoned in Cuba for illegally distributing communications equipment.[45] American officials did not consider Gross, whom they viewed as unjustly detained for a comparatively minor offense, equivalent to spies, one of whom had been convicted of murder.[46]
Fernando González was released on February 27, 2014.[47] He returned to Cuba and campaigned for the release of the remaining three. . .
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/saul-landau-told-truth-about-cuba/
Saul Landau told truth about Cuba
September 13, 2013 2:31 PM CDT By W. T. Whitney, Jr.
Saul Landau – reporter, author of 14 books, filmmaker (45 of them), poet, college professor, and determined foe of U.S. assaults on Cuba – died Sept. 9 in Alameda, Calif., at the age of 77.
Landau served as senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. At one time or another, he taught at California Polytechnic University in Pomona, the University of California-Santa Cruz, and American University in Washington. But his main vocation was that of agitator and political educator.
That bent emerged in Madison, Wis., where, as a student, Landau organized a “Joe Must Go” group aimed at the red-baiting Wisconsin senator, Joseph McCarthy. Later, Landau was a researcher for anti-imperialist sociologist C. Wright Mills and helped found Ramparts and Mother Jones magazines in San Francisco. He was a public television reporter there and also joined a mime troupe.
The breadth of Saul Landau’s interests shows in themes he pursued in books and especially films. Often in collaboration with others, he wrote about “The New Radicals” (1966), “National Security and U.S. Foreign Policy” (1988), guerrilla insurgencies in Central America (1993), George W. Bush’s “Preemptive Empire (2003), and U.S. culture (“Bush and the Botox World” – 2007).
Landau’s documentary films explored Syria (2004), Iraq (2002), the U.S.-Mexican border (1999), Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico (1966), Iraq (1999), Nicaragua (1983), Beirut, Lebanon (1982), Jamaican President Michael Manley in 1976 and 1980 – and much more. Landau’s highly regarded film “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang” (1980) documented the cover-up of terrible health effects from U.S. atomic bomb testing in the 1950s.
Notably, Landau produced films covering the rise of Chilean President Salvador Allende, later overthrown in the U.S.-assisted military coup in 1973. Orlando Letelier, foreign minister in the Allende government, was one of thousands who ended up being tortured and incarcerated. Landau helped spearhead a worldwide campaign for his release. Yet Chilean agents killed Letelier in 1976 in Washington. Landau and co-author John Dinges’ book on the case, “Assassination on Embassy Row,” alleged FBI involvement. Declassified U.S. intelligence material subsequently released by Washington’s National Security Archives provided confirmation.
Ultimately, Saul Landau’s signal contribution may have been that he told the truth about Cuba and 50 years of U.S. siege. He made six Cuba-related films. The most remarkable were “Fidel,” a report of Landau’s week-long jeep trip across the island with the Cuban leader in 1968, and his 2012 film “Will Real Terrorist Please Stand Up.” There, Landau documented the falsehoods and violence marking the notorious anti-Cuban terror campaign emanating from the United States. He showed how the Cubans Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, René Gonzalez, and Fernando Gonzalez came to Florida to defend against the terror and why four of them remain in U.S. prisons after 15 years. Through that film and in other ways Saul Landau contributed mightily to the cause of the Cuban Five.
During the last three years of Saul Landau’s life, he and actor Danny Glover visited and became friends with prisoner Gerardo Hernandez, who is serving two life terms. Landau issued down-to-earth, intimate reports after each visit. They circulated widely.
A month before Landau’s expected death, Hernandez wrote him: “It is just a journey, Saul, the other is not true … How could it be true, with so many people who admire you and love you? A trip where? …You’ll be here whenever Danny visits me, and in Cuba when the Five are reunited.” In August, Saul Landau received Cuba’s Medal of Friendship, issued by the Cuban Council of State.
Photo: Saul Landau, right, with actor Danny Glover, left, visits Cuban Five prisoner Gerardo Hernandez.