I came to the United States as a 10 year old Cuban refugee. My father had been a political prisoner, one of the very few who made it through a trial and was released. Most of his friends died in Cuban prisons.They were tortured and starved in those horrible places. I always considered us the lucky ones.
I remember the G2 (secret police) waiting for my father before he was arrested and how my mother risked her life to sneak out of the back door of our house to alert my father at work not to come home carrying any incriminating papers.
I remember as a child the "committees for the defense of the revolution" being in every corner and how you had to watch everything you did and said because if anyone accused you of being against the revolution, you could go to jail for 30 years.
I remember being denied the right to be the first in my class in school because I was a "worm"...one of the children whose parents were also "worms" or people who had applied to leave the country.
I remember what it felt to visit my father in prison..he was there for 9 months awaiting trial. The way we were treated and the sadness in the face of my mother and my father.
I have always felt proud to live in the United States, a country known for freedom, a country full of opportunities. I have to admit I don't feel very proud right now.
I am disgusted when I read of the torture of prisoners as if humanity is defined by birth. They are not Americans, therefore they do not matter. They are human beings entitled to basic rights such as a fair trial. They are human beings who have the right not to be subjected to physical and mental pain. They are human beings and my country, my America is doing the torturing.
I shudder when I read the accounts of domestic surveillance. This the modern sophisticated version of those "committees for the defense of the revolution" that I recall from my childhood. It is my America, my country, my land that is doing this to its citizens and it is shameful and terribly wrong.
If we as a people allow these wrongs to be done, if we don't care enough about this land, about our freedoms, then I want to know who do we expect is going to do that for us?
It seems that those we elected to represent our rights are only interested in power and money. The lobbysts run our government, we waste billions in an unjust war and we lose our freedoms one by one.
Will we stand up as a people and demand an end to this or do we accept that we no longer care about our fellow human beings or ourselves?