July 27, 2007

Cuba vote on Farm Bill, July 27
This afternoon the House took a confounding step backwards on Cuba legislation. Congressman Rangel (D-NY), a longtime advocate of changing Cuba policy and chair of the Ways and Means Committee, offered an amendment to the Farm Bill that would have removed the "cash-in-advance" requirement and a banking restriction on sales of agriculture products to the island. This change could have earned U.S. farmers between $175 and $350 million per year (U.S. International Trade Commission Report 2007). The amendment initially passed by voice vote this morning, but Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) requested a recorded vote. On the roll call vote, the amendment lost 185 to 245. The House has consistently voted in favor of selling agriculture products to the island for the past seven years! We are, to say the least, disappointed in this vote and will be spending some time trying to determine what it means for future efforts this year. Stay tuned for more on this vote; we'll let you know how your member voted on the amendment. And we hope you will respond appropriately to those who voted "nay."

Photo Exhibit Publication
We are excited to announce that the Love, Loss and Longing book has just this hour arrived at our office! It is beautiful, and we are so grateful for your support of this project. Without your contributions and moral support, we wouldn't have been able to make this publication a reality. If you contributed $100 or more to the publication of the book earlier this year, check your mailbox. We'll be sending you a complimentary book in the next couple of weeks. If you would still like to contribute to help deliver the book to every member of Congress, log onto http://www.lawg.org/misc/Donations.htm to make a secure-online contribution. Be sure to designate that your contribution is for the Cuba book. And watch for the book PDF to soon be available online at http://www.lawg.org for a preview and to order your own copy.

Save the Date
Venezuela Delegation - March 2008 (specific dates to be determined)
Mavis Anderson and Jeanne Lemkau, a LAWG board member and an author of Love, Loss and Longing, will be leading a delegation to Venezuela this March, in partnership with Witness for Peace. The delegation will focus on health and public policy in Venezuela. And we'd love to have you join us!

Our ten-day exploration of Venezuela will focus on the health of the people and how the policies of the Chavez government are affecting their physical and psychological health. We hope to talk with government officials and people at the grass-roots level to learn about current policies, especially those relevant to the quality of health services and access to care. We will visit clinics and hospitals in both urban and rural settings to gain first-hand knowledge of the status of health services, and we will meet with community groups and representatives of the religious and non-governmental communities to learn their perspectives on current developments in their country.

Since both Mavis Anderson and Jeanne Lemkau are well-versed in Cuba and U.S./Cuba relations, an additional focus of this delegation will be to learn more about the relationship between Venezuela and Cuba and the impact of current U.S. policy toward both nations. Toward that end, we will visit medical facilities and communities where Cuban physicians are working with Venezuelans and international teams, and we'll explore how the oil-for-doctors exchange is viewed by Venezuelans.

This delegation will be of special interest to health care professionals but is not limited to that group. We hope to have a highly diverse delegation in terms of age and interests.