Waiting is for the poor, the marginalized, those without the clout or the cash to buy the NOW.

But, here we are in Cuba– people from the culture and ethic of the NOW- for even we leftist, radical, revolutionary, counter-culture types are not immune to the siren song of The Almighty NOW. Here we are in Cuba and we are waiting.

We are waiting for permission to walk, or at least we are waiting for the absence of non-permission. We are waiting on some of our luggage- which did not arrive with us. We are waiting for sessions of the conference to begin, because everything seems to run about 45 minutes behind schedule.

We don’t mind waiting for any of these things. There are things worth waiting for. We don’t mind waiting for the Cubans to be okay with our plans and intentions, because we are confident that they will see their way through their concerns and bureaucracies to a way to help us or at least not to hinder us. The luggage will (or will not) come and the one borrowing tee shirts and underpants seems Unamericanly sanguine about it. And the lateness of the conference sessions give us a chance to connect with those around us- companeros and companeras from all over the world who are drawn here by Cuba’s example and by the desire to bring home the spark of the revolution to reanimate their own work.

All of this waiting is good.

But there is another kind of waiting that we cannot abide. It haunts us, it animates our organizing and our resistance, It is the lonely, fruitless, agony of waiting that is life for the men at Guantanamo. 13 years- 4,445 days- of waiting. That is the waiting– the torture of endless confinement, the torture of no human contact– that Witness Against Torture denounces in the strongest terms, we define this waiting as inhuman, immoral and illegal. And we will wait no longer for freedom and justice.

And so we work and try and strive. We know you are with us, please keep checking the website and Facebook. Share our work, support it, look for our action alerts.

Frida