Leid Stories - 12.18.14

The Big Thaw: Obama Seeks Rapprochment with Cuba, but Foes Aplenty

Benton Harbor: A Lesson About Justice and Why It’s Everybody’s Business

President Obama’s announcement yesterday that the United States and Cuba have agreed to pursue bilateral talks immediately to cease hostilities after 53 years sent stocks soaring, peace and political activists applauding, and diehard opponents of the communist regime to back-room drawing boards to plot their next bipartisan moves.

Seeking to reverse the Cold War, Kennedy-era isolation policy toward Cuba, Obama is making a bold move, arguing that isolation simply has not worked. But in the twilight of his tenure, and now with opposition even within his own battered party, can he pull it off?

Diplomatic scholar, historian, attorney and prolific author Dr. Gerald Horne puts Obama’s stunning announcement in political and historical perspective.

 

It isn’t getting the kind of media attention it deserves, but the controversial prosecution, conviction and sentencing of the Rev. Edward Pinkney—a pastor in Benton Harbor, Michigan, who has been leading a decades-long fight against a corporate takeover of the almost-all-black lakeshore town—is big news. It’s fired up grassroots activists across the nation.

In a poignant statement after Pinkney’s sentencing (Dec. 16 program), an elder-observer of Pinkney’s trial gives a stunning indictment of the criminal-justice system, the evil of capitalism, and explains why justice is everybody’s business.