CUBA: AN EMBARGO'S TIME IS PAST
HUNDREDS OF AMERICANS DEFY TRAVEL BAN OBAMA RELAXES CUBA BLOCKADE
VENCEREMOS BRIGADE WANTS IT BROKEN COMPLETELY
 
When the Obama administration eliminated travel restrictions on Cuban-American travel to Cuba, they forgot to do the same thing for the rest of the country. On Monday,Aug. 3rd, the Venceremos Brigade will remind President Obama of that omission when over 250 Americans return from an educational and work trip to Cuba in direct defiance of the federal travel ban.
 
The Brigade’s trip comes at a politically opportune time, as the Obama administration is finally taking tentative steps towards dialogue with Cuba. In addition, both houses of Congress are reviewing bills that would rescind the half-century old travel ban on Cuba. Meanwhile, the Organization of American States recently vowed to reverse a 47-year-old exclusion of Cuba from the group.
 
Over 150 Americans are defying the travel ban this year as part of the Venceremos Brigade’s 40th tour of Cuba. They hail from Massachusetts to Maryland, California to Florida, Cincinnati to Chicago, and Oklahoma City to Oakland. All are exercising their constitutional right to travel knowing they are violating the law, while urging, even demanding that the federal government finally do what most of the rest of the world has done: normalize political and economic relations with Cuba.
 
The Venceremos Brigade started organized visits to Cuba in defiance of the travel ban in 1969. Those tours began just eight years after the U.S. government made Cuba the only country in the world that Americans could not legally visit. Not only does this starve Cuba of contact with the United States, it prevents Americans from learning about what Cuba is really like on a citizen-to-citizen level.

 
For 40 years Venceremos Brigade participants have worked side-by-side with Cubans through volunteer work and first hand education about Cuba. They have taken part in and learned about Cuba’s hurricane relief efforts. They have learned about youth development, Cuban hip hop, environmental initiatives and struggles for women’s and LGBT equality within Cuba.
 
Though members risk fines from the U.S federal government for seeing Cuba firsthand, they act with Martin Luther King Jr.’s conviction that “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” The Brigade members are one of three groups engaged in civil disobedience of the travel ban this year. They are joined by the U.S-Cuba Labor Exchange and the Pastors for Peace Caravan, an interfaith group returning to the U.S. via Mexico.
 
Brigade members are available for interviews when they return on Monday, August 3rd, upon entering the U.S. through the International Peace Bridge in Buffalo, NY, holding demonstrations on both Canadian and U.S. sides of the border.