10/6/09
On October 6th the City Council of San Pablo California unanimously passed a resolution in support of the Cuban Five and their rights of family visits. This is the third resolution approved in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the second this year.
The City of San Pablo is located in West Contra Costa County near Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco. Historically it was one of the oldest settlements Spanish in the region and today has a population of over 30,000 people. Although San Pablo is highly diverse, with a high percentage of Afro-Americans and Asians, almost half of the city population is Latino. The passing of this new resolution is a good example of cities in the United States that are represented by elected officials who really want to have better relations with the world.
There are thousands of city councils around the United States and this new development can be the beginning of a trend to bring resolutions to the public in big and small cities about the Cuban 5 as a way to counter the media silence surrounding the case.
In 2003 the city of Berkeley passed the first resolution in the country in support of the Cuban Five. Then in 2006 the city of Detroit Michigan passed a similar resolution and on April 7th of this year the city of Richmond did the same.
Coincidently, the resolution of San Pablo passed on the 33rd anniversary of the bombing of the Cubana airliner that killed 73 innocent people. The Cuban Five were monitoring the exact type of terrorist groups responsible for this heinous crime.
