- Letter to The Village Voice
- Lincoln Cushing
- December 17, 2003
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- The following letter to the editor of The Village Voice was
written by Lincoln Cushing, Electronic Outreach Librarian, Institute of
Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley. Views expressed in this letter do not
necessarily reflect the views of IRTF, SRRT, or ALA.
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- Editor:
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- I'm responding to Nat Hentoff's piece on the Cuban arrests. I'm a librarian,
and I consider myself informed and concerned about issues in this profession.
I even support civil rights. Am I troubled by Cuba's recent arrests of
political opponents? Yes. But at the same time, I'm acutely aware of the
hypercharged environment that surrounds all things Cuban. What Hentoff
fails to mention is that our own government has sown the seeds of this
problem by encouraging U.S. funding of opposition forces in Cuba. The dissidents
were convicted of "receiving funds and/or materials from the United
States government, either through its agencies or third parties,"
a direct consequence of our Helms-Burton legislation. If the PLO sent my
library a big fat check, you can bet that Homeland Security would drag
me off faster than you can say "ACLU."
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- My own government is too deeply involved in an ugly campaign of destabilization
for me to tell the Cubans what they can and cannot do. I will not add my
voice to those who, though well-meaning and principled, are unwittingly
supporting a decades-old imperialist policy.
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