World

Close but No Cigar: US-Cuba Wrangle on Embassies 6 Months On

Published

10 years ago

June 17, 2015

A classic American car passes in front of some signs that reads in Spanish "Long Live Free Cuba" in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, June 16, 2015. Six months ago Wednesday, Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro stunned the world by announcing an end to their nations half-century of official hostility. In Cuba, aging leaders fear swift, uncontrolled change that would cost them power and spawn disorder in a country that dreads the violence and inequality scarring its neighbors. That fear is heightened by the United States long history of trying to topple Castro and his brother Fidel. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)

A classic American car passes in front of some signs that reads in Spanish “Long Live Free Cuba” in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, June 16, 2015. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)

MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN, Associated Press

HAVANA (AP) — Six months ago Wednesday, Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro stunned the world by announcing an end to their nations’ half-century of official hostility.

U.S. travelers, politicians and executives flew to Cuba as if a Caribbean Berlin Wall had crumbled. Some business-backed interest groups lobbied Congress to end a more than 50-year trade embargo. American soccer and basketball stars played for excited crowds in Havana. The website Airbnb expanded to the island, listing thousands of private homes available for rent across the country.

U.S. and Cuban diplomats went hunting for additional office space, readied flagpoles and ordered office supplies that say “embassy” instead of “interests section.” Yet, even as observers say a deal is imminent, a half year later the two governments have not taken the important but symbolic step of turning their “interests” offices into formal embassies in Havana and Washington.

“It shows you the complexity of this process,” said Jesus Arboleya, a political scientist and former Cuban diplomat in Washington. “If the first step has taken this much time, imagine the conflicts that can develop after it gets started.”

No embassy deal has been announced despite four rounds of wrangling over U.S. diplomats’ freedom to travel around Cuba and import supplies. The issues on the table after the embassies open are far more complicated. They include talks on human rights; demands for compensation for confiscated American properties in Havana and damages to Cuba from the embargo; and possible cooperation on law enforcement that includes the touchy topic of U.S. fugitives sheltering in Havana.

Plenty of people and groups oppose any U.S.-Cuba warming, including some dissidents on the island, anti-Castro Cuban-Americans and some members of Congress who believe the new policy essentially rewards Communist leaders for decades of human rights abuses. Presidential Republican candidates like Sen. Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida have both come out firmly against rapprochement.

But polls say detente has strong public backing in both countries, leading many to believe the process is irreversible.

“Even if it takes a while, for whatever reason, the embassy will open and relations will be re-established,” said David Fuentes, a parking lot attendant in Havana. “It just seems inevitable to me.”

Sen. Jeff Flake, a key Republican advocate of better ties, met with Cuba’s foreign minister and first vice president over the weekend and told The Associated Press that an embassy opening date is “imminent.”

But some advocates fear the broader process is moving too slowly to guarantee that a future U.S. president won’t be able to reverse Obama’s loosening of the trade embargo on Cuba, just as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush did after openings by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Robert Muse, a Washington attorney specializing in U.S. law on Cuba, said Obama deserves credit for his bold and unexpected opening with Cuba in December, but is also justly criticized for letting the relationship get bogged down in the minutiae of negotiations over embassy operations.

“I would like to see the president maintain a pace of normalization that will get him to his goal. The goal is the legacy of normalized relations between the U.S. and Cuba,” Muse said. “You can’t negotiate your way to normalization with Cuba in the time that Obama has to get this done.”

Advocates of normalization face powerful brakes on progress in both countries.

In Washington, anti-Castro lawmakers have attached riders to appropriations bills that would roll back Obama’s loosening of trade and travel.

In Cuba, aging leaders fear swift, uncontrolled change that would cost them power and spawn disorder in a country that dreads the violence and inequality scarring some regional neighbors. That fear is heightened by the United States’ long history of trying to topple Castro and his brother Fidel.

“I think we’re just realizing the degree to which they spent 40-plus years with this being as deep into their DNA as imaginable,” said James Williams, head of Engage Cuba, a corporate-backed bipartisan group that launched pro-engagement lobbying efforts Tuesday. “We’re not just going to turn the lights on and it’s going to be fixed overnight.”

A few real links between the U.S. and Cuba have nonetheless been forged since the announcement by Obama and Castro. U.S. travelers can book lodging in Cubans’ homes through Airbnb; the cost of calls to Cuba dropped after a new international telecommunications deal; and a New York research center will run a clinical trial of a Cuban lung-cancer treatment. The U.S. has approved new ferry services from Florida to Cuba and opened the door to direct air service between the two countries.

Amid those changes, there is a new sense of possibility and optimism among many in Cuba. But it hasn’t kept thousands more Cuban migrants than usual from heading to the United States to take advantage of preferential immigration rights they fear may soon disappear.

While U.S. businesses say Cuba is showing itself to be receptive to new projects, it has yet to take any real measures to make them possible.

Sarah Stephens, head of the pro-engagement Center for Democracy in the Americas and leader of dozens of U.S. congressional trips to the island, said Cuban officials want to be equal partners in the future of a country that they believe should be more than just a market where American business can do what it wants.

“It’s certainly the message that the Cuban officials are giving: ‘That if you want to engage with us, it’s going to take a while,'” she said.

___

Associated Press writer Anne-Marie Garcia contributed to this report.

___

Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein

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African Union Group to Award Rev. Dr. Amos Brown for Bringing Civil Rights Movement to Global Stage

Dr. Macaulay Kalu, secretary general of AU6RG, will present Dr. Brown with the Global Peace Builder Award. Other presenters include Rev. Dr. Freddie Haynes, senior pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas; Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, long-time advocate for appropriations to Africa as a congressmember; Rick Callendar, California-Hawaii president of the NAACP; Dr. Ike Neliaku, president and chairman of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations; Pastor Ituah Ighodalo, head of the African Leadership Group and Ambassador Thompson and John William Templeton, founder of the Journal of Black Innovation National Black Business Month®.

Published

4 months ago

August 25, 2025

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Dr. Amos C. Brown, pastor emeritus of Third Baptist Church with Ambassador Ladi Peter Thompson of the African Unity 6th Region Global and with John William Templeton, founder of the 22d Journal of Black Innovation National Black Business Month®. Courtesy photo.

By Carla Thomas and John William Templeton

On Aug. 31, the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco will mark its 173rd anniversary with an event steeped in history and global significance. This year’s commemoration, themed “Achieving Dr. King’s Promised Land Together,” will honor the lifelong achievements of Dr. Amos C. Brown, Sr.— a towering figure in the Civil Rights Movement — on a day that also observes the International Day for People of African Descent.

Brown will be recognized by the African Union’s organ for Africans abroad for ‘planetizing’ the civil rights movement gains at San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church, 1399 McAllister St., at 3 p.m.

The African Union, made up of 54 countries on the African continent, consists of five regions. It created a sixth region, the African Union Sixth Region Global (AU6RG), for the 400 million Africans living abroad. On Sept. 7, the second AU-Caribbean Community Summit occurs in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Held during the 173rd anniversary of the church, the event called “Africa-America: Achieving Dr. King’s Promised Land Together” is a Diaspora-wide discussion led by Dr. Brown on what Martin Luther King, Jr. would say today.

Galvanized by the horrific 1955 slaying of Emmett Till, Dr. Brown’s journey in activism began in Jackson, Mississippi, where a neighbor, Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s first field secretary in that state, encouraged Brown to found the Mississippi NAACP Youth Council.

In 1956, Evers personally drove Brown to the NAACP convention in San Francisco, where Brown would first hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak. Brown became a prominent Freedom Rider, later attending Morehouse College and taking the only class Dr. King ever taught there. Thirteen years after Evers was assassinated in Jackson, Brown arrived at Third Baptist Church in 1976, serving with distinction for 49 years before his recent retirement. Under his stewardship, the church solidified its commitment to social justice and international unity.

His Excellency Rev. Ladi Peter Thompson, deputy secretary general for peace and security of AU6RG, said, “As a mentee of Medgar Evers, Freedom Rider and student of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Brown is the perfect authority for the young people of the Diaspora on achieving the prophetic goal that Dr. King foresaw in Memphis.”

Lady Dentaa Amoateng, founder of Grow, Unite, Build Africa (GUBA), will also announce that Dr. Brown is an honoree at the GUBA Award in Bridgetown, Barbados in November. The popular actress in Ghana and the United Kingdom will attend in person.

Dr. Lezli Baskerville, president/counsel of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, which includes 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and 90 predominantly Black institutions (PBIs), invites its students, faculty, and alumni to attend or join remotely.

“HBCUs produced both Dr. King and Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and are the fountainhead for Diaspora unity,” said Baskerville.

Templeton, author of “ReUNION: State of Black Business, 22d edition,” said “Our movement will advocate the continuance of tariff-free treatment for Africa and the Caribbean; respect for African-American and African elected officials and the 13th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments and the strengthening of educational and research connections across the Diaspora.”

Templeton said Black institutions have been at the forefront of defining the image of 1.5 billion Black people globally, a mission that is even more important as African youth will be the majority of the world’s young people in the coming decades.

ABOUT THIRD BAPTIST CHURCH

Founded on West Indian Emancipation Day on Aug.1, 1852, Third Baptist said in its annual report in 1858 that its sole purpose was the elimination of American chattel slavery and took an active role among the California abolitionists who convinced President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. The current sanctuary is constructed with wood from the Goodall Mansion, where President U.S. Grant stayed after leaving the White House, and is the last place where Dr. W.E.B. DuBois spoke before leaving for Africa in 1958.

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Newsom, Pelosi Welcome Election of First American Pope; Call for Unity and Compassion

“In his first address, he reminded us that God loves each and every person,” said Newsom. “We trust that he will shepherd us through the best of the Church’s teachings: to respect human dignity, care for the poor, and wish for the common good of us all.” Newsom also expressed hope that the pontiff’s leadership would serve as a unifying force in a time of global instability.

Published

7 months ago

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Oakland Post

Pope Leo XIV. Screenshot.

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

Gov. Gavin Newsom and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom on May 8 issued a statement congratulating Pope Leo XIV on his historic election as the first American to lead the Catholic Church.

The announcement has drawn widespread reaction from U.S. leaders, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who called the moment spiritually significant and aligned with the values of service and social justice.

In their statement, the Newsoms expressed hope that the newly elected pope would guide the Church with a focus on compassion, dignity, and care for the most vulnerable. Newsom said he and the First Partner joined others around the world in celebrating the milestone and were encouraged by the pope’s first message.

Newsom also expressed hope that the pontiff’s leadership would serve as a unifying force in a time of global instability.

“May he remind us that our better angels are not far away — they’re always within us, waiting to be heard,” he said.

Pelosi, a devout Catholic, also welcomed the pope’s election and noted his symbolic connection to earlier church leaders who championed workers’ rights and social equality.

“It is heartening that His Holiness continued the blessing that Pope Francis gave on Easter Sunday: ‘God loves everyone. Evil will not prevail,’” said Pelosi.

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Retired Bay Area Journalist Finds Success in Paris with Black History Tours

In the late 90s, Stevenson finally realized her dream of living in Paris, now with her daughter. She started exploring the history of Africans in the city and would go on to teach others the same. Her business, which she named Black Paris Tours (BPT), received a significant boost when a family friend gave her a stack of cash and encouraged her to expand on the knowledge that she had only started to share with people she knew.

Published

10 months ago

February 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Ricki Stevenson, Blacks in Paris. Courtesy photo.

By Post Staff

There were two things Oakland-born, East Palo Alto-raised Ricki Stevenson always dreamed of:

Going to New York as a newscaster to tell the true story of Blacks in America.
Living and working in Paris one day.

Her dreams of life in Paris began when she was three years old and her mother, a former professional dancer, took her to see Josephine Baker perform. She was 11 when her parents took her to the Stanford University campus to meet James Baldwin, who was speaking about his book, “The Fire Next Time.” Ricki says that’s when she knew she’d one day live in Paris, “the city of light!”

But before that would ever happen, she had a tumultuous career as a newscaster across the country that was inspired by her family’s history.

Stevenson recalls marching with Cesar Chavez as he fought for labor rights for farm workers in California.

“Are we Mexican too?” she asked her parents. “No, but we will fight for everyone’s human rights,” they responded to her.

Ironically, Ricki’s paternal family roots went back to Greenwood, Oklahoma, infamous for the 1921 bombing of Black Wall Street. A time when Black people had oil wells, banks, and a thriving business community.

This background would propel her into a 25-year journalism career that gave her the opportunity to interview greats like President Jimmy Carter, PLO leader Yassir Arafat, James Baldwin, Rev. Jesse Jackson, UN Ambassador Andrew Young, Miriam Makeba, and the leaders of South African liberation movements.

A job offer from KCBS radio brought her back to the Bay Area in the 1980s. Then came the switch to TV when she was hired as a Silicon Valley business reporter with KSTS TV, working at the first Black-owned television station in northern CA (created and owned by John Douglas). Along the way, Stevenson worked as an entertainment reporter with BET; coproduced, with her disc jockey brother Isaac, a Bay Area show called “Magic Number Video;” lived in Saudi Arabia; worked as an international travel reporter with News Travel Network; and worked at KRON TV a news anchor and talk show host.

In 1997, Stevenson realized her dream of living in Paris with her young daughter, Dedie. She started exploring the history of Africans in the city and would go on to teach others the same. Her business, which she named Black Paris Tours (BPT), received a significant boost when a family friend, Admiral Robert Toney put a chunk of money in her hand. He said, “Ricki, my wife and I have been coming to Paris for 20 years, but in just two days with you and Dedie, we’ve learned and seen more than we ever did before.”

Years after BPT took off, Ricki met Nawo Carol Crawford and Miguel Overton Guerra, who she recruited as senior scholar guides for Black Paris Tours.

Guerra says he is proud of his work with Black Paris Tours in that it provides a wealth of information about the rich legacy of African and African American history and influence in Paris and Europe.

“I tend to have a feeling for history always being a means of a reference point backwards … you start to understand the history, that it isn’t just the United States, that it began with African people,” Guerra says.

He said that it’s been a pleasure to watch people learn something they didn’t know before and to take them through the city to key points in Black history, like hangout spots for writers like Baldwin and Richard Wright, restaurants in the busiest parts of Paris, the home of Josephine Baker and so much more.

Although the tours are open to all, Guerra hopes that those of African descent from all over the world can embrace that they don’t have to just stay where they are because movies and media have portrayed cities like Paris to be only white, it’s multicultural and accepting to all.

“We’ve been here, and we’ve been there, going way back when. And we shouldn’t be considered or consider ourselves to be strangers in any place that we go to,” he said.

Stevenson notes they’ve had 150,000 people take their tour over the years, with notables like former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, Smokey Robinson, Steve Harvey, Miriam Makeba, and more.

Friends and former media colleagues of Stevenson compliment the BPT crew on their knowledge of the city and their ability to always keep it interesting.

“He [Guerra] just had a deep, deep wealth of knowledge and he was constantly supplanting information with historical facts and the like. I love that it was demonstrating and showing how Black people have thrived in Paris or contributed to the culture in Paris,” Candice Francis said.

She toured in the summer of 2022 and stated that in the two weeks that they visited Paris, BPT was the highlight of her trip. She shared that she was proud of Stevenson and the life she’d managed to manifest and build for herself.

“Even if you’re visiting Paris for the tenth time, if you haven’t taken the tour, then by all means, take it,” Francis emphasized.

Magaly Muñoz, Gay Plair and Paul Cobb also contributed to this story. You can book your own adventure with Black Paris Tours at www.blackparistour.com.