Each of us is a potential agent of change, an earthen vessel through which God inspires and leads others to better their world, and the lives of others.
History — perhaps no more so than in the past 50 years — shows that the most vital change, comes as a reaction to, a rejection, really, of injustice, of oppression, of tyranny. Someone — a preacher, a shipworker, a playwright — recognizes the need for change, and embraces the risks it requires. Despite the odds against them, despite the very real threats to their lives, they lead the way to a better life, to a better world.
Today in Cuba, there are agents of change battling for freedom, against Fidel Castro's communist dictatorship. These journalists, lawyers, students, writers, and housewives, are marked for threats, assaults and other much more brutal repression. But their suffering is not what matters to them, it does not define them, except to make them stronger and more resolute. Their priority is to build a better Cuba, to build a better world.
These agents of change include men and women like Dr. Darsi Ferrer Ramirez and the Damas de Blanco ("Ladies in White"). On Monday, International Human Rights Day, Ferrer will lead a peaceful march demonstrating for the propogation and protection of all the rights with which Cubans, and all peoples everywhere, are endowed by their maker. The police have threatened Ferrer — even with death — to keep him off the street. But he has remained steadfast in his campaign for change.
For almost five years, the Damas de Blanco, have marched to Mass on Sundays, to stand witness for their loved ones locked away in the gulag. Their fathers, husbands, uncles, sons, brothers and nephews, and other prisoners of conscience, are in jail, because of their faith in freedom, and their willingess to sacrifice what little liberty they possessed, to change their world.
Even from behind bars, Cuba's political prisoners continue with their struggle. Oscar Biscet, Juan Herrera Acosta, Normando Hernandez and others, are the bravest of Cuba's agents of change.
There are others. They may differ in their tactics — differences that are not signs of weakness, but of strength — but men and women like Martha Beatriz Roque, Oswaldo Payá, Elizardo Sanchez, Juan Gonzalez Leiva, Oscar Espinosa Chepe and others share a common goal: Change for Cuba.
And then there hundreds, if not thousands of Cubans, whose names we do not know, clamoring for change. Like the dozens of young people and others arrested, simply for wearing a white wristband, declaring CAMBIO.
They are all doing their parts, and so must you. Each of us is a potential agent of change, each of us — even if we think our courage is only a fraction of what God has granted Oswaldo Payá or Oscar Biscet — has it in us to help bring cambio for Cuba. Each of us has what it takes to stand with Darsi Ferrer and others taking to the streets on Monday against the dictatorship.
Wear a wristband.
Write a letter.
Say a prayer.
The odds against change for Cuba, for freedom, may seem great. Ferrer is a man of peace, and the dictatorship has proven willing to do whatever it takes to silence, to crush, its opposition. The gulag is proof of that.
Fortunately, though, we have the example of others — leaders like King, Mandela and Walesa — who refused to cave to their oppressors, who refused to give up, and ultimately prevailed.
Don't give up, like the agents of change in Cuba never will, and you, too, will change the world.
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