Gainesville activist may take up Cuba's medical training offer

Gainesville activist may take up Cuba's medical training offer
September 2000

The Gainesville-Cuba Friendship Network is raising funds to allow Gainesville community organizer Kali Blount to attend a Nov. 10-14 conference in Havana. Kali has medical training, having received a nursing degree from Santa Fe Community College, and he will be attending the conference to explore the possibility of engaging, for himself and others, the medical training offered by Cuba during a recent visit by Congressional Black Caucus representatives.

Kali writes, "Many people outside Cuba have been involved in efforts to get needed medical and humanitarian supplies into that country since imposition of the trade embargo which both major candidates for the U.S. presidency have vowed to to maintain. People here in Gainesville have lent support to several "caravans" carrying loads of supplies in school buses, trucks, etc. These efforts have also raised awareness of the Real Cuba. The American Popular Version of Cuba has been sponsored by many of the anti-revolution Cubans who fled to South Florida. Their Cuba was a gravey train of tourism/ resorts /casinos, alcohol, prodtitution, drugs and organized crime with a color-caste system to rival Apartheid or Jim Crow. Today's Cuba is a place much closer to racial equity than the U.S. and with a population that is majority Black, with estimates ranging from 85% (from one credible indigenous source) down to 65% (from demographers and diplomats) people of apparent Afrikan descent. This Cuba, in spite of the crush of the present embargo, promotes medical education and fuels the supply of doctors around the Caribbean Rim and in various parts of the developing world as well as poor communities in the inudstrial world. Cuba's government and medical colleges are in dialogue now with the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus and others about training Afrikan Americans to serve in the U.S.'s "urban core villages" and other places in need... I would be pleased to discuss the conference trip, please call 371-8223."

Please send donations to the Gainesville-Cuba Friendship Network, earmarked "Kali Blount," and mail to P.O. Box 15063, Gainesville, FL 32604.