In the opinion of the US Department of State, Cuba is a “terrorist state.” It is part of a list of a few countries determined by the United States to receive that designation. This list is used as a way to punish countries that the US is in conflict with. At the coffee hour we will focus on the list and its impact on Cuba. This list has damaged the people of Cuba and similarly affected other countries on the list.

We are pleased to have as our primary speaker David Ramírez Álvarez, Second Secretary of the Embassy of the Republic of Cuba in Washington, D.C. who will speak about the impact of the list on Cubans and their economy.

We will also have brief talks about how the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list impacts people in other countries on the list. We are delighted to be joined by Sima Shakhsari, co-founder of the No Sanctions on Iran Coalition and Chair and Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota, and Wyatt Miller, a member of the Anti-War Committee who recently traveled to Syria with the Syria Solidarity Movement and Arab-Americans 4 Syria.

We will encourage participants to take action to remove Cuba from the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list and provide them with tools to take action.

Sponsors: Solidarity Committee on the Americas (SCOTA), Minnesota Cuba Committee, Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective, Veterans for Peace, Chapter 27, Twin Cities CPUSA, Minnesota Peace Action Coalition.