Don’t talk to the FBI! New Orleans agents harass Cuba solidarity activist

New Orleans, LA- On June 25, FBI agents phoned Cuba solidarity activist Jack Reno Sweeney to attempt to interrogate him about his work. A week prior to calling him, they visited his former apartment, and then called his mother on June 24. They called his mother a second time two days later. 

This harassment came after Reno Sweeney hosted Cuban diplomats in the city from May 22 to May 24. The visit fostered solidarity between New Orleanians and the Cuban people, and fought the U.S. embargo on trade and aid to the island. 

Fight Back! interviewed Reno Sweeney about the trip and the FBI harassment. He’s a good example of what to do if an agent shows up at your door - don’t talk to the FBI. The FBI will try to find ways to throw you off guard, call at odd hours, show up at your home or work, contact family or whoever they can get ahold of. In every case, you tell them that you have nothing to say. If you have a lawyer, you can say that you legal representative might contact them. Jack Reno Sweeney is the co-chair of New Orleans DSA and a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

Fight Back!: Describe your interaction with the FBI. 

Jack Reno Sweeney: I had moved recently, and when I was getting mail from my old apartment, I talked to the new tenant for the first time, who I didn’t know. But she told me that two people looking for Jack Sweeney, wearing suits, showed up. I wasn’t positive that it was the FBI, but it seemed most likely. I did figure it had something to do with Cuba, having met with the delegates from the DC embassy and had them come here. When I went to Cuba and met with various officials, including the president, on the way back I wasn’t questioned, like some people are. But in the back of my mind, I suspected that doing Cuba work this would happen, but it took a while for them to circle around and get back to me. 

A week or two after that incident I got in touch with lawyers and did what I could to figure out what was going on. I got a call from my mom and found out that two agents had gone to her house, and they left a card. 

I hadn’t told her that I was being looked for because I expected them to come to my house. I had just moved, but I registered a change of address with the Post Office.

She calls them and they indicate that they believed that someone that they thought was me was driving two “visitors” from a country they could not disclose. They didn’t confirm that it was a visit from the Cuban delegation, and they told her that the car was still registered with her. For whatever reason it was easier to figure out what car the Cuban visitors were being transported in, I guess.

My mom wasn’t really prepared so she volunteered that I was hosting two Cuban diplomats, and she really doesn’t know anything else. Then she calls me, and I told her I had done nothing illegal that would warrant special attention. 

They call me the morning after trying to ask me questions directly.

I told them I wouldn’t talk to them without a lawyer present, and then they tried to get me in a coffee meeting with my lawyer present. I told them I’d talk to my lawyer but don’t expect a call back. 

Eventually they do call my mom back and say Jack doesn’t want to talk to us, and if there’s anything she can tell them please do. She said no, if Jack doesn’t wanna talk to you, he doesn’t wanna talk to you.

I did notice tinted window black Suburban, model and make within the last few years, on my block. You know, typical undercover cars. But other than that, I haven’t heard from them since.

Fight Back!: Why do you think they wanted to interrogate you? What did you do in relation to Cuba?

Jack Reno Sweeney: I’ve been interested in Cuba for a very long time. Culturally speaking, New Orleans and Cuba have a lot of ties that have been severed by the embargo. New Orleans and Cuban musicians do a lot of exchange. I live very close to a statue of José Martí, there’s not a lot of statues of José Martí in the United States. The first place that the Cuban flag was flown was in New Orleans. 

After going to Cuba myself and being received so warmly by so many different people, and appreciating how open and really community-based a society it was, I was really moved and compelled to do whatever I could to beat back the insidious narrative that the embargo is beneficial to the Cuban people when, in fact, it is the single biggest detriment to the quality of life on the island.

Cuba has achieved things that are difficult for even us, the richest country in the world to do. They have similar life expectancy. There’s also significant detriment to the people in the United States by the embargo, for example in terms of medical research. I wanted to take advantage of that opportunity to break down this wall between the American people and the Cuban people.

The FBI is very interested in keeping that wall up, they want to limit information about what Cuba is really like, so that people don’t get to investigate for themselves and find out that they too oppose the embargo.

It’s an intimidation effort to keep the lid on anti-embargo organizing and try to determine who locally is trying to organize to end the embargo. This shows that local efforts to oppose the embargo and state efforts to strengthen ties really do undermine the US effort to undermine the regime. 

Fight Back!: Can you tell me more about your delegation to Cuba?

Jack Reno Sweeney: Sure, we were there for four days. We met with various elements of civil society and government, including national trade unions, student organizations, representatives of ministries, people who deal with climate issues, representatives of the National Assembly for People’s Power—that’s Cuba’s equivalent of the U.S. Congress. 

There were some cultural exchanges. There were a lot of meetings, one of the most memorable being at CENESEX, the national sex education institute, that was the leading force in favor of the Families Code that passed in 2022, the most progressive LGBTQ rights codification in the world. That agency is led by Mariela Castro.

We were there to learn from example how the goals of the working people’s movement in the U.S. could be actualized in what is frankly a very similar environment to the US, a very racially and culturally diverse society. 

We visited with Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, basically neighborhood associations that function as a micro level of democracy for engagement in community issues. We learned how many people participated in revising the Constitution. We visited a hospital and dropped off a lot of medical supplies. When we visited we learned about a medication that treated diabetic foot ulcers and reduced 70% of amputations. But people in that hospital can’t use dialysis filters because of the embargo, so they had to invent a whole procedure to clean dialysis filters, which aren’t supposed to be reused. But they designed a way to do it because they had to. 

Fight Back!: What did you do with Cuban diplomats during their visit? 

Jack Reno Sweeney: We met with representatives of the City Council to try to get the ball rolling on an anti-embargo resolution. We met with Congressman Troy Carter’s local district office, he had been to the island multiple times and opposes the embargo.

We introduced them to a lot of local groups who were either interested in ending the embargo or otherwise. Many were interested because they were labor groups or student organizations that supported Cuba.

There are a lot of things that people here in New Orleans can learn from Cuba, like dealing with climate change, or organizing a multiracial social movement. It was kind of like a reunion, because there was a lot of Cuban and New Orleanian cultural exchange. There was an effort to reestablish the connection between the people of Cuba and the people of New Orleans on a basis that’s actually much more favorable than it was during the extractive colonialism pre-revolution. 

Back then, it was the same mafia guys controlling the casinos in Havana as the ones exploiting the people in New Orleans, often with the tacit or explicit approval of the government. 

I really do believe we’ll see the end of the embargo sooner rather than later, and it can’t come soon enough.

#NewOrleansLA #FBI #PoliticalRepression #endtheembargo #cubalibre #cuba