Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero's nonviolence message

 "The true Liberation is to always remember that humanity is not orphaned because we are all brothers, we are all children of God." - Oswaldo Payá

Mass tonight at La Ermita at 8pm

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante defied a totalitarian dictatorship using nonviolent means and just as importantly refused to hate their adversary. On the third anniversary of their untimely passing what they stood for needs to remembered, honored and their example followed.

"We Cubans have a right to our rights. Why not rights? It's time. That is the peaceful change that we promote and claim. Changes that signifies freedom, reconciliation, political pluralism and free elections. Then the Diaspora will cease being a Diaspora, because all Cubans will have rights in their own free and sovereign country. That is why we fight." - Oswaldo Payá, March 30, 2012

"Under the pretext of defending freedom they are attacking it. Martí would say it like this: 'The knife that is stabbed in the name of freedom is plunged into the chest of freedom'."  - Harold Cepero, November 13, 2002

The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: “You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.” This is the liberation which we are proclaiming.  - Oswaldo Payá, December 17, 2002
 
Those who steal the rights of others steal from themselves. Those who remove and crush freedom are the true slaves. - Harold Cepero, November 13, 2002

"The rifles will be buried face down, the words of hatred will vanish in the heart without reaching the lips. We'll go out into the street and all of us will see in the other a brother, let us look to the future with the peace of he that knows that he forgave and he that has been forgiven. Let there be no blood to clean or dead to bury, the shadow of fear and of catastrophe will give way to the reconciliatory light, and Cuba will be reborn in every heart, in a miracle of love made by God and us." - Oswaldo Payá, December 25, 1990

"They should think if at the bottom of this attitude there is a real respect for freedom, because to say freedom, to be free, is not to snatch the freedom of others." - Harold Cepero, November 13, 2002