Free The Cuban Five w/ Gloria LaRiva

The Cuban Five are Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, Ramón Labañino Salazar, Rene González Sehwerert, Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez and Fernando González Llort. They are sons, husbands, brothers, poets, pilots, college graduates and artists. Three of the Cuban Five were born in Cuba and two were born in the United States. Also three of them fought in Angola, during the war against apartheid. They are currently serving long prison sentences in the United States.


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Since 1959, Cuba has been subjected to threats, sanctions, invasions, sabotage, and violent attacks on its soil, resulting in 3,478 deaths and another 2,099 wounded. It has thus developed vigilance against foreign attacks. In 1976, 73 people died when a bomb exploded aboard a commercial Cuban airliner, destroying the plane in mid-air. The masterminds behind the attack were two men of Cuban-origin, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, former CIA operatives currently living in Miami. In the early 90s, following the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba was trying to establish a tourism industry.

Soon after, the right-wing exile groups in Miami started a violent campaign targeting tourist hotels and resorts, buses, airports and other facilities to discourage foreigners from visiting the island nation. In 1997, as part of that campaign, a bomb exploded in the lobby of Havana’s Hotel Copacabana, killing Fabio DeCelmo, an Italian tourist. The Cuban authorities arrested Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon, a native of El Salvador who confessed to having been paid thousands of dollars by anti-Castro exile groups based in Miami to plant the bomb. Due to the lack of response from the FBI to stop such attacks, Cuba sent the Cuban Five to Miami to monitor the organizations perpetrating these acts of violence. The idea was to gather information about similar acts that were in the planning stages in order to derail them before they were carried out. The Five were able to establish evidence implicating specific Miami exile groups and individuals in the attacks.

The government of Cuban sent a representative to Washington, DC in hopes that the U.S. government would help stop the acts of terror and turned over evidence implicating Cuban exile groups. Instead the FBI arrested the Cuban Five who were given kangaroo trials and convicted on trumped up charges. On June 8, 2001, the Cuban Five were sentenced to maximum prison terms. Gerardo Hernandez received a double life sentence plus 15 year. Antonio Guerrero received life sentences plus 10 years and Ramon Labañino received life sentences plus 18 years. The remaining two, Fernando Gonzalez and René Gonzalez, received 19 and 15 years respectively.

 Guests

Gloria LaRiva - Sign Petition to Free Cuban Five

Political Prisoner Radio w/ Baba Herman Ferguson

Tonight we focus on the case of Political Prisoner Abdul Majid who is a native of Queens, New York and has been imprisoned on a U.S. plantation for two decades. In the 1960s, he worked in the Grass Roots Advisory Council which is an anti-poverty program. In the late 60s he joined the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and the Republic of New Afrika.


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Abdul was involved in many of the community-based programs of the BPP including the free health clinic, free breakfast program for children and efforts to decentralize the public schools and the police department. Abdul was targeted by the FBI COINTELPRO program for his activities of uplifting and empowering the Black community. He was charged and convicted of murder and attempted murder. He and his co-defendant, Bashir Hameec were tried more than three times on the same charges. The first trial ended in a hung jury divided along racial lines. The second trial was declared a mistrial by the judge immediately after the jury rendered a decision that acquitted Bashir on the murder charge. At a third trial, they were eventually convicted for murder. Brother Abdul Majid was sentenced to 33 years to life and is still a political prisoner of the corrupt system that targeted him and others who stood up to oppression.

Guest Speaker:

Baba Herman Ferguson was one the founding members of Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro-American Unity. He also helped to organize the Republic of New Afrika and was a member of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). As a member of RAM, Herman was arrested for conspiracy. As a result, Herman was sentenced to 3 1/2 – 7 years, but he fled the country and surfaced in Guyana where he lived and worked for the next 19 years. In 1989 he returned to the United States where he was promptly arrested and imprisoned for seven years. Since his release he has served as a co-chair of the Jericho Movement, and as the chair of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee. 90 Years young, his autobiography is titled "The Unlikely Warrior".

Political Prisoner Radio w/ Fred Hampton Jr.

In Chicago during the early morning hours of December 4, 1969, a special police unit (organized by both the Chicago Police Department and the FBI) stormed the Monroe Street Apartment of Fred Hampton, Sr., Deputy Chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. Hampton, Sr. lay asleep in bed next to his pregnant girlfriend, Akua Njeri (formerly Deborah Johnson).


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Though, Hampton, Sr., Njeri, and Defense Captain Mark Clark among others were sleeping at the time of the raid, gunshots quickly ripped through the house, and both Hampton, Sr. and Clark were killed. Mark Clark could only shoot off a single round in his defense before he was killed, and it would be the only shot the Panthers fired. Hampton, Sr. was shot point blank while still in his bed. Three and a half weeks later, on December 29th, Njeri gave birth to Fred Hampton, Jr.

Hampton, Jr. was immersed in the struggle even before his birth, and he did not let the murder of his father deter him. Nor did he fall back on his father's accomplishments. Instead, he became an active community organizer himself, making sure that his father's legacy did not die with the man. In 1990 he became President of the National People's Democratic Uhuru Movement, an organization founded to defend the democratic rights of the African community. For this activism he too became a police target, and in 1992 he was incarcerated for two charges of aggravated arson. Hampton, Jr. spent almost 9 years behind bars before being released on September 14th, 2001. Both during his time locked up and after his release, Hampton, Jr. remained as active as ever. He is currently President and Chair of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC). Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr. is living testament to the reality that the struggle continues.

Free Lynne Stewart w/ Ralph Poynter

Human Rights activist Lynne Stewart is a former attorney who represented poor, and often unpopular defendants. Several members of Harlem CORE, both 'nationalists' and 'civil rights' types, have spoken very highly of her.


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She was convicted on trumped up charges of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists in 2005 and sentenced to 28 months in prison. She was convicted of helping pass messages from her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian cleric who many say was convicted on trumped up charges related planning terror attacks, to his followers in al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, an organization designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States Secretary of State.

After the brutal Dictator and American puppet Hosni Mubarack was dethroned and jailed by the popular uprising in Egypt, the new Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in a speech to supporters in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Saturday June 30, 2012, he said to a cheering crowd that he would work to free Omar Abdel-Rahman. Unhappy with the 28 month sentence given to Lynne Stewart, the prosecutor appealed the sentence and secured a politically motivated 10 year sentence against Stewart.

We will be joined by her husband Harlem Core member Ralph Poynter who is described as the 'hero' of the public school protests Harlem CORE led during the late 1960's.