June 28, 2017
Page 7
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O PINION
A President Not Interested in the Details
Just wants to
undo what
Obama did
J ill r iChardSon
There’s a lot to say
about Trump reversing
some of the Obama
administration’s pol-
icies on Cuba. The
White House recently announced
it was banning individual travel to
the island and further restricting
what business Americans can do
there.
Yes, there’s a lot to say, but
I wonder if there’s any point in
saying it. After all, most Ameri-
cans want to relax the embargo on
Cuba. Even most Republicans dis-
agree with Trump on Cuba, polls
show.
That requires a bit of explana-
tion. America has a longstanding
embargo on Cuba, preventing the
U.S. from selling much of any-
thing there. The policy traces back
to the Cold War. The economic
harm to the island resulting from
the policy is obvious when one
sets foot in Cuba.
by
When I visited in 2010, life had
gotten better for Cubans since the
hardest times in the early 1990s.
Still, life was difficult.
Meat was a luxury for
Cubans. Milk was only
rationed to young chil-
dren. I bought a hand-
made dress for $15, a
handsome sum to a Cu-
ban but a pittance to me.
Obama didn’t end the
government permit, and by going
for business instead of pleasure.
The U.S. government also limit-
ed how much I could spend there.
And, of course, I couldn’t bring
any Cuban rum or cigars home.
I’ve traveled all over on five
different continents. In college, I
spent an entire summer in China,
a Communist country with a bad
human rights record — quite a bit
worse than Cuba’s, arguably —
flight the next day to Cuba. On my
return, I was questioned, searched,
and scolded until I nearly missed
my connecting flight.
The hypocrisy was jarring.
Why is the U.S. on good terms
with China but not Cuba?
After Obama relaxed Ameri-
ca’s anti-Cuba policies, you could
literally fly Southwest to Havana.
I think the best comment on
Trump’s policies came in the
But more than that, Trump wants us to believe that
Obama made America a “mess.” To show us what a
great president he is, Trump wants us to believe that
everything was awful before him — so bad that it
required Trump to make it “great” again, by undoing
obvious boons like Obama’s mild Cuba reforms.
embargo. It’s still in place.
What Obama overturned were
other Cold War-era measures. He
restored diplomatic relations with
Cuba and relaxed a travel ban on
U.S. citizens visiting the island.
The only way I was able to visit
Cuba in 2010 was with a special
that the U.S. is on perfectly good
terms with, thank you very much.
Yet I’ve never been hassled,
searched, and investigated as
much upon my return home as I
was when I came back from Cuba.
On the way out, I had to first fly
to Cancun and then board a second
form of a satirical “news” article:
“President Trump Orders the Exe-
cution of Five Turkeys Pardoned
by Obama.” No, not really. It’s a
joke. But it exposes the motives
and sentiments behind many of
Trump’s actions.
In part, Trump is probably
working to secure the hard liner
Cuban vote in Florida by undoing
Obama’s Cuba policies.
But more than that, Trump
wants us to believe that Obama
made America a “mess.” To show
us what a great president he is,
Trump wants us to believe that
everything was awful before him
— so bad that it required Trump to
make it “great” again, by undoing
obvious boons like Obama’s mild
Cuba reforms.
If Obama did it, it’s bad. There-
fore Trump will do the opposite.
Yet he has no interest in under-
standing complex issues that can-
not be solved easily. Health care,
ISIS, and North Korea come to
mind — and now Cuba, too.
To Trump, trying to under-
stand the complex background of
America’s relationship with Cuba
is superfluous, since Trump him-
self doesn’t understand it. Yet he’s
hurting both Americans and Cu-
bans in the process.
OtherWords columnist Jill
Richardson is the author of Recipe
for America: Why Our Food Sys-
tem Is Broken and What We Can
Do to Fix It.
The Unfinished Struggle for Equality for All
Where do we go
from here
m arC h. m orial
As he prepared to
step down as presi-
dent and chief exec-
utive officer of the
Leadership Confer-
ence on Civil and
Human Rights, it is likely Wade
Henderson pondered the same
question that Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., did 50 years earlier as
he sat alone in a secluded rental
house in Ocho Rios, Jamaica –
the question that would become
the title of his final book: Where
do we go from here.
Both men are part of the long,
unfinished narrative of our na-
tion’s struggle for equality for all
its citizens. And at critical points
in our history, both reached a pe-
riod in their work as activists and
advocates that called for contem-
plation of the future of our coun-
try and its continuing fight for
civil and human rights.
In his book, Dr. King reflected
on economic and social reform
that would benefit all Americans,
and specifically looked at the
state of racial equality for African
by
Americans at the very infancy of
the civil rights movement follow-
ing the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965.
He also reflected on black
nationalism, which ap-
peared to be the next phase
in the struggle of African
Americans to attain basic
civil
rights—considering
for social justice did not stay on
the mall of the Lincoln Memori-
al. Before taking the helm of the
Leadership Conference for near-
ly 21 years, Henderson was the
Washington Bureau director of
the NAACP, directing the civil
rights organization’s government
affairs and national legislative
program and he worked as the as-
sociate director of the Washing-
rizing the Voting Rights Act, the
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and
the Fair Sentencing Act.
And like Dr. King, Henderson
recognized that a “generational
change” was taking hold in the
civil and human rights move-
ment, including the rise of Black
Lives Matter and newer forms of
activism. Rather than resist that
change, Henderson embraced
Today, while progress has been made, we find ourselves
fighting for much of what Dr. King fought during his
time, and we face the rollback of many hard-fought-for
reforms and legislation, but to his credit, Henderson built
a well-earned legacy and simultaneously forged a path
for the Leadership Conference and the next generation of
advocates to lead and succeed.
the effectiveness of the ideology,
its tactics, and its ability to shape,
mark and transform the move-
ment for civil rights.
At the age of 15, Henderson
attended the March on Washing-
ton for Jobs and Freedom where
Dr. King famously delivered his
“I Have a Dream Speech.” For-
tunately, Henderson’s passion
ton office of the ACLU.
Under his direction, Hender-
son grew the Leadership Con-
ference’s number of member
organizations from 170 to 200, in-
cluding its first Muslim and Sikh
civil rights groups, and he led the
coalition through the passage of
every major civil rights law in the
past 20 years, including reautho-
this newest phase, deciding that
his work at with the coalition
had reached its highest level and
concluded that, “it’s at that point
that I think it is best to step aside
and to promote constructive
change.”
Today, while progress has been
made, we find ourselves fighting
for much of what Dr. King fought
during his time, and we face the
rollback of many hard-fought-for
reforms and legislation, but to his
credit, Henderson built a well-
earned legacy and simultaneously
forged a path for the Leadership
Conference and the next genera-
tion of advocates to lead and suc-
ceed.
The coalition will now be di-
rected by Vanita Gupta, the first
woman and first child of immi-
grants to head the organization.
A long-time civil rights litigator
and former head of the Obama
administration’s Justice Depart-
ment’s Civil Rights Division,
Gupta is confident in her belief
that, “this organization is perfect-
ly situated to address the current
assault on civil rights that we are
seeing today.”
As a member of the Leadership
Conference, the National Urban
League firmly believes the coali-
tion has been entrusted to capa-
ble and intelligent hands and we
look forward to standing shoul-
der-to-shoulder with the Leader-
ship Conference on the frontlines
as we all work together to protect
our progress.
Marc H. Morial is president
and chief executive officer of the
National Urban League.