Massive Challenge to Defy Bush on Cuba

PRESS ADVISORY JUNE 18, 2004 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACTS:Lucia Bruno, IFCO: 212/926-5757 or 347/423-4330
Ellen Bernstein, IFCO:646/319-5902

Pastors for Peace launches a moral alternative to an immoral foreign policy as the Bush administration ratchets up restrictions on travel and aid to Cuba, Pastors for Peace has organized a massive challenge. The group plans to travel to Cuba on July 9th to deliver more than 100 tons of humanitarian aid and incalculable good will. Undeterred by threats of fines and prosecution, the faith based group is determined to get their message across: Enough is enough with an outdated, punitive foreign policy towards Cuba.

Visiting 127 different cities along 13 routes, the enormous organizing effort has taken more than six months to assemble. Many of the 25 vehicles in the caravan, which include brightly painted yellow school buses, trucks and cars will be donated to churches and community groups in Cuba.

Traveling through the US in late June and early July the group will converge at the US border at McAllen, TX. More than 100 participants and an expected 100 tons of humanitarian aid will be boxed and loaded into caravan vehicles for the July 7 border crossing into Mexico. The donated aid will include urgently-needed hospital equipment, medicines, computers, medical and school supplies, and equipment to make new mattresses for Cuban homes for the elderly.

As the Bush Administration reaches a new moral low ground, hundreds of thousands of US citizens are proclaiming a moral alternative to Bushs immoral policy toward Cuba, Rev. Lucius Walker, IFCOs executive director, said. Our duty as human beings demands that we share with our sisters and brothers in Cuba.

At each stop, the group will discuss why, as people of faith and conscience, they feel compelled to challenge the USimmoral foreign policy. During educational events and pot luck dinners in 127 cities, the group will collect more aid and participants for their journey.

Three Canadian groups will join in challenging the US blockade when they cross the Canada/US border with aid designated for Cuba: from Montreal into Maine on June 19; from Vancouver/Victoria into Washington on June 20; and from Fort Erie into Buffalo on June 24.

A delegation of Mexicans will also join the caravan for the journey to Cuba.

Pastors for Peace is a project of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), a national ecumenical agency based in Harlem. Since 1992, we have educated our fellow citizens about the immorality of current US policy toward Cuba. We deliver aid to our sisters and brothers in Cuba, as a civil disobedience against the brutal US economic blockade,said Ellen Bernstein, associate director of IFCO.

The Pastors for Peace caravan is coordinating its return with other
organizations which are also challenging the restrictions on travel to Cuba: the Venceremos Brigade, the African Awareness Association, and the Pastors for Peace Caravan will all be returning to the US on July 19.