 At first, there was an explosion. The six-story building vibrated, and a few wires snapped with the force of a whiplash. Immediately afterward, more than half of the facade collapsed without any warning, with each floor swallowing the one above as the ceiling crushed against the floor and the floor against the ceiling during the explosion, and a cloud of dust hid everything except the desperate screams of people. It seemed as if the ground had just opened and closed when two other buildings collapsed in the vicinity. The causes of the incident at the Hotel Saratoga in Old Havana on May 6 were immediately known, although the investigation is still ongoing: it was a gas leak from a tanker truck servicing the hotel building, which was preparing to reopen during the second week of May. With no guests, the rooms were locked tight, and a simple click of the light switch would have been enough for the mass of accumulated gas to cause the shock wave that shattered the glass, marquetry and ornately decorated facade of green and white stucco, which was originally from the 19th century. It is not the first time that Cuba has mourned tragedies like this. An accident like this might seem even minor in a country that has suffered more than 30 major hurricanes in half a century, dozens of deaths during the CIA sabotage of the steamship La Coubre in the port of Havana in 1960, the blowing up of a commercial airliner with 73 passengers in 1976, a chain of bombs in hotels and restaurants in the 1990s, the eternal blockade imposed by the United States government, a “rogue action,” as Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador calls it—that has naturalized the shortage of almost everything and made the pandemic more desperate, just to cite a few dramatic examples. But no. The explosion at the Saratoga Hotel, with almost 100 injured victims—including 43 deaths as of May 11—is something else. What made this story in particular the big news story was not the explosion that was felt in Havana, nor the dense smoke that could be seen overhead, nor the feeling of vulnerability that it left us all experiencing, but rather it was the solidarity of the citizens who crowded around the area demanding a place to rescue the victims from the rubble, and donated their blood for the wounded or helped alleviate the anguish of the victims. Two hours after the accident, the line of volunteers in front of blood banks, polyclinics and hospitals exceeded thousands, and most of them were young people, the same ones who Miami’s propaganda says are leaving Cuba en masse. While the government acts and the public press teaches immediacy and sensitivity, people from the streets, from all kinds of professions, continue to help their compatriots. We do not know the names of all those who were part of the rescue teams—many of them are volunteer firefighters—or of the teachers of the “Concepción Arenal” school that is right next to the hotel who protected their students, of the children who saved other children, of the passersby who helped the Saratoga workers and the families residing in the other two buildings that imploded in the neighborhood, nor the sniffer dogs that are still looking for the traces of at least two missing persons in the rubble. When crashing, the buildings showed their viscera, their arteries, their nerves and their fragility, similar to ours. But they also exposed that kind of decent sentimentalists who are not in danger of extinction and who are the best of us all, the heroes who went out to save others, not realizing that another explosion and another collapse could have made them victims. And, at the same time, there is an anonymous army of health workers who have not rested for more than 100 hours since the accident. In Soldiers of Salamis, the Spanish novelist Javier Cercas reminds us that “in the behavior of a hero there is almost always something blind, irrational, instinctive, something that is in their nature and from which they cannot escape.” They are the ones who look squarely at the absurdity and cruelty of life to make us more human, and they are the ones who warn us that struggle is born from despair. And once again, death does not prevail. AuthorRosa Miriam Elizalde is a Cuban journalist and founder of the site Cubadebate. She is vice president of both the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) and the Latin American Federation of Journalists (FELAP). She has written and co-written several books including Jineteros en la Habana and Our Chavez. She has received the Juan Gualberto Gómez National Prize for Journalism on multiple occasions for her outstanding work. She is currently a weekly columnist for La Jornada of Mexico City. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives May 2022
1 Comment
It is important for us to focus on the enemy and denounce them, but it is also very necessary to work on strengthening the socialist culture, the critical analysis and political debate between us.  How to think and do Cuba today? The liberal thought trends which are globally hegemonic, have a discourse about our country that is characterized by one key aspect: they analyze the Cuban reality through a rhetoric full of abstractions, while proposing solutions that mimic the model of liberal democracies of the so-called “first world”. The Cubans who did the most to obtain unity among the different political powers of the nation, also were two essential pillars in the making of an of authentic and counter-hegemonic platform of thought, according to the moment in which they lived: José Martí and Fidel Castro. They did not forge unity in a vacuum, they did so without abandoning the development of a specific political program, with a deep sense of independence, anti-imperialist, and social justice; in the case of Fidel, a program also deeply rooted in Marxism. Both revolutionary leaders gave a fundamental weight to the plane of ideas and through millions of pages filled with the best of Cuban and global thought left their mark on history. Something distinguishes them: a vision of Cuba taking into account all the variables of its context. This means, above all, the analysis of the sociopolitical situation in Cuba at the height of the time in which they lived. Through their essential contradictions, their sharp edges, their difficult points, they never shied away from addressing the knots in which the course of the nation faltered at on its path towards sovereignty and social justice. Considering the given sociohistorical determinations, also, the geopolitical coordinates of Cuba, located 90 miles from the United States and in South Latin America. Any analysis of our reality, even of its internal contradictions, that does not take into consideration the mentioned facts, is a limited analysis. “I’m the son of America and I owe it to her” Marti would say, and in that way connect to the reality of the Latin-American peoples, those who are “From Bravo to Patagonia” . Sometimes among Cubans there is a vision of capitalism that is unjustifiably closer to what the Nordic social democracies are, than to what capitalism has been and is in our region. What are the problems of our peoples and what are also their forms of resistance and struggle? The exercise of Marxism can be a valuable resource to continue developing critical revolutionary thought, without which it will be difficult to put the problems we face into perspective, if we wish to deepen socialism and, for that matter, carve out a horizon of greater democracy and equality. Today, other demands require our attention in form of thought and practice. There is the call of popular, anti-capitalist and anti-colonial feminisms, with a collective imaginary and tradition of struggle from below and to the left, to which we could contribute much of our experience, and from which we could also learn. We should not stay on the sidelines of the epistemic revolution that feminisms have promoted through their rebellion against capitalism and the heteropatriarchy. Cuba’s proposition in this context is, then, a provocation to the dialogue, critical revolutionary thought, politicization, and collectivization of the analysis of our reality. It is important that we focus and denounce the enemy, but it is also very necessary to work on strengthening the socialist culture, the critical analysis and political debate between us. AuthorKarima Oliva Bello This article was translated to english from Granma. Archives March 2022 Millions have proudly bared their shoulders to receive the Cuban vaccine "Abdala," but few know that this was the name given by Cuba’s national hero, José Martí, in his dramatic poem of the same name, to a young black African who fought and died for the independence of his country  Photo: Artwork by Kamil Bullaudy Millions have proudly bared their shoulders to receive the Cuban vaccine "Abdala," but few know that this was the name given by Cuba’s national hero, José Martí, in his dramatic poem of the same name, to a young black African who fought and died for the independence of his country, Nubia, invaded by colonialists. Abdala is the first play written by Martí when he had not yet reached 16 years of age. It is a testament to the love for his homeland of a young man from Nubia, a Sudanese region south of Egypt, a poem published in the context of the beginning of Cuba’s first war against Spain. In its eight scenes, the young Martí outlines his patriotic ideals and offers a preview of his own life. In the initial part of the drama, a senator comments to Abdala that a conqueror is threatening to occupy Nubian territory, and upon hearing the news the young man responds firmly: “Well, tell the tyrant that in Nubia / There is one hero for each of his twenty spears... “ The third act of the play features Abdala's meeting with warriors going out to confront the aggressors, when he says: “To war, brave men! From the tyrant / Let the blood flow, and to his impudent enterprise / Let our stout breasts serve as walls, / And let their blood fire our audacity!” The fourth and fifth scenes are very moving, as they reflect his mother's fear for her son, as she attempts to dissuade him from going to war, but Abdala tells her that he cannot be detained and is going to the countryside to defend his homeland. In this part of the play, Martí conveys in Abdala's voice his concept of homeland, which is well known and clearly evident in his life’s work: “Love, mother, for the Homeland / Is not ridiculous love for the land, / Nor for the grass where our plants tread; / It is invincible hatred for those who oppress it, / Eternal wrath for those who attack it…” Anticipating what would be his own death in combat, Martí concludes his dramatic poem as Abdala lies dying but happy, content that the enemy had been defeated. Like the young Abdala, created in his work when he was only an adolescent, Martí dedicated his life to his people’s cause and was present where the battles were fought, facing the death he had foreseen. Cuba’s national hero lived his life according to the precept he raised in New York City’s Hardman Hall, on October 10, 1890, when he insisted: "The true man does not look toward the side where one lives better, but toward the side where duty lies; this is the true man." And this is Abdala, in the vaccine we carry inside, with the same patriotic pride with which Martí conceived the young African hero. AuthorThis article was produced by Granma. Archives January 2022  Fidel Castro died five years ago, but I feel like decades have passed in Cuba since November 25, 2016. Trump arrived and passed slowly with his string of sanctions that have felt worse than ever because of the pandemic. Then came Biden with his faint-hearted court, reeling us each day with veiled or direct threats, without daring to fulfill his timid campaign promises. In five years, particularly in the last two years, incendiary slang has been unleashed on social media and international media networks, whose target is not only the Cuban government. They want to erase any trace of Fidel Castro. Since the news of the Cuban leader’s death, there have been hundreds of tributes for him from around the world; but simultaneously, a bombardment of calumnies have been launched against his memory to try to transform into ruins the sovereign, popular and democratic project of the revolution that he led. To present him as the symbol of defeat and failure, he is shown as a lonely idealist who led Cuba to ruin. They charge all his actions (real or invented) with negativity and perversity to villainize him and paint him as deserving of outrage. There are those who cynically excuse themselves in demystifying. But none of this is enough to dent the symbol. The verbiage of hate professionals and demystifiers ends up feeding the figure of the man who led the armed struggle in the Sierra Maestra, who opened his chest to bullets and hurricanes, who led internationalist wars of liberation in Africa, who survived 637 attempts on his life and whom Cubans always saw on the front line battling against injustice, selfishness and individualism. Fidel stood against foolishness and arrogance, facing it with humor or with actions that sharply contrast with the caricature that his detractors make of him. I know of this very well. I perfectly remember the press conference held in Havana, in April 1990, with the echoes of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the background and while Washington already had “its napkin spread over its lap, ready to have the island for lunch with a knife and fork,” as Eduardo Galeano then wrote. Fidel warned journalists that an attack on Cuba would repeat the feat of Numantia, the Iberian city that resisted the attack of the uneducated but powerful Romans in 146 BC, preferring self-sacrifice rather than surrender. Any Cuban understood, he said, why those people resisted surrendering their language, their gods, their ways of life, their fields and their cities to the empire. For virtues and defects, they preferred, in any case, without hesitation, their own. A Spanish journalist asked how it was possible that he summoned the people to the holocaust. “If your ancestors had thought like you, you would now be asking me in French,” replied the revolutionary leader. For Fidel, the Numantine idea was never fanaticism or suicidal nationalism. While this dialogue was taking place, a Cuban scientific laboratory was producing and trying to commercialize the first vaccine against type B meningitis, which had been the main health problem for children on the island and killed 85,000 people every year in the world. The United States government wanted the drug, but refused to pay a single penny to the government in Havana and made it a condition to exchange it for food. The main researcher, Conchita Campa, was surprised by Fidel’s response when she had to tell him the news: “The children who are going to be saved in the United States are not to blame for such arrogance. Of course, we are going to exchange it for food.” Thus arrived the first gringo chickens that Cubans ate after the naval blockade imposed by John F. Kennedy in 1961. It feels as if time has been drawn out and everything happened again simultaneously. The 1959 revolution, the hostility of the United States, the initiatory ’60s and the most inflexible ’70s, the stable ’80s, the insufferable ’90s after the Soviet fall and the difficulties of everyday life. We went through the hardest side of the blockade and the threat of a military invasion, like the Bay of Pigs. We’ve lived on the closed island and on the island open to tourism. Because of the lines, the disease and the vaccines. For the terrorist and celebrity Miami, and for the invisible Miami of migrants who want normalization in order to reunite with their families. We went through everything in these five years, but there is something that happened for the first time. Fidel Castro began to exist in other ways. Still, he is here and will continue to be. AuthorRosa Miriam Elizalde is a Cuban journalist and founder of the site Cubadebate. She is vice president of both the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) and the Latin American Federation of Journalists (FELAP). She has written and co-written several books including Jineteros en la Habana and Our Chavez. She has received the Juan Gualberto Gómez National Prize for Journalism on multiple occasions for her outstanding work. She is currently a weekly columnist for La Jornada of Mexico City. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives November 2021  Chilling testimony of the torture and abuses committed against Majid Khan, at the illegal U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo, was recently presented by the prisoner  Sensory assault, sleep deprivation, isolation, stress positioning, submersion in ice water are just some of the torture methods used at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo. Photo: Hispan TV Chilling testimony of the torture and abuses committed against Majid Khan, held at the illegal Guantanamo Naval Base, after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and at the Pentagon, was recently presented by the prisoner before a jury of eight U.S. military officers, members of the court trying him. Khan, born in Saudi Arabia and raised in Pakistan, was sentenced, October 29, to 26 years in prison after pleading guilty to aiding the Islamic fundamentalist group Al Qaeda. As part of the plea bargain reached with the court, he was allowed to testify about his experiences, in what was the first public description of abuse by a detainee following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S., according to The New York Times. Sensory assault with intense light and sound, sleep deprivation, isolation, stress positioning, submersion in a tub of ice water, were among the "techniques" used by torturers to obtain information from the detainee. After two days deprived of sleep and subjected to freezing temperatures, he lost his sense of reality and began hallucinating, seeing a cow, a gigantic lizard, Khan stated. In this situation, he "confessed" to his executioners whatever they wanted to hear in order to put an end to the torture. Recently, Abu Zubaydah, a prisoner held on suspicion of being a "mastermind" of 9/11, submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court a document describing the torture he endured in a clandestine CIA prison in Poland two decades ago. The prisoner recounts that he suffered 83 simulated drownings, the barbaric "specialists" pretended to bury him alive, keeping him locked in a narrow for coffin11 days. Abu Zubaydah, Majid Khan and many other prisoners illegally held in secret CIA prisons were subjected to so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," as the CIA practices are known. NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUNFrom its inception in 1947, the CIA devoted substantial resources to developing interrogation techniques to extract information. In 1963, the agency translated the results of its studies into a secret counterinsurgency manual, entitled Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation, which was distributed for use around the world, particularly in Asia and Latin America. "The right pain, at the right time, in the right amount, for the right effect," were the words used to describe the CIA’s torture by Dan Mitrione, an FBI agent who served as a U.S. security advisor in Latin America, under cover as a U.S. Agency for International Development official. Considered one of the masters of torture, his experience in the "deterrence" of "adversaries" in Uruguay in 1969 was incorporated into the CIA manual. In 1983 they wrote a new book entitled Human Resources Exploitation Training Manual, which was refined in 1996. Several corrections were made to the manual based on Congressional investigations, arrangements of extraordinary cynicism, including a suggestion made by Donald Rumsfeld in a memo, referring to so-called "stress positioning," which was to be inflicted up to four hours. He commented: "I stand eight to ten hours a day. Why limit it to four hours?" As Alfred McCoy explains in his book, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror, the techniques used at Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Guantánamo, denounced by Majid Khan and other victims, are the product of massive and secret CIA research on the coercion and malleability of human consciousness. A May 2005 report by Physicians for Human Rights, entitled Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by U.S. Forces, contains a wealth of information on the torture techniques used at Guantanamo and other imperialist detention centers. What do these methods of detention, interrogation, imprisonment without trial, secret prisons where a person can disappear for years, say about respect for human rights, which the gentlemen in Washington boast rant about so much? Is there any evidence of due process or the most elementary norms of delivering justice in these cases in these cases, principles the U.S. government self-righteously claims to protect The country that threatens Cuba, wielding the power of its weapons and its arrogance demanding that our besieged island allow its mercenaries to break the law and deny the rights of the majority, has no moral authority to demand anything from anyone. Do as I say and not as I do - a saying that seems fit the empire’s actions perfectly. AuthorThis article was produced by Granma. Archives November 2021   On September 20, letters began to arrive at eight Cuban municipal or provincial government headquarters announcing the holding of “peaceful” marches on November 15 by a group called Archipiélago. The motivation for these marches was a call for change. The letter was not a formal request to occupy the busiest streets of some cities in Cuba, but rather a notification by the group that they would do so and they also demanded that the authorities provide them with security for these marches. By virtue of Cuban laws and obsessive American support for the marches, the Cuban government denied permission for holding the protests. Almost two months have passed since these letters were sent, but there are few indications that the march will take place in Cuba. Florida’s propaganda machine assures the opposite and adds that similar marches will take place across more than a hundred cities in the world, a third of them in the United States. On November 10, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez warned the diplomatic corps accredited in Havana that the Cuban government “will not tolerate an opposition march” and further said that “Cuba will never allow actions of a foreign government in our territory, trying to destabilize the country,” while referring to the U.S.’s support of these marches. The provocation follows the plot seen many times before. Meanwhile, this march, which has been scheduled for November 15, is not what many hope it will be: a movement for change in Cuba. The March Is Not Autonomous Two days after the delivery of the first letter to the authorities, a string of statements by the U.S. officials and members of Congress began pouring in on September 22. Until November 10, there had been several public interventions from Washington or Florida with all kinds of demands and threats to the island’s authorities. No other issue in the U.S. domestic politics, in recent weeks, has received so much attention or been the case of such obsession before these marches. The spokesman for the U.S. State Department Ned Price issued a statement on October 16 condemning the denial of permission by the Cuban government to hold the march. Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) extended his support for these anti-government protests soon after the news about these marches began circulating, while a couple of top advisers from the Biden administration have threatened more sanctions on the Cuban government for denying permission to hold the march on November 15. As if that were not enough, more money has been raining in for such efforts against the Cuban government. In September 2021, the Biden administration gave almost 7 million dollars to 12 organizations that almost daily publicize the “civic march for change” in Cuba. Many analysts see the hidden hand of the “color revolutions” in this, which were exported by the West to the Russian periphery. In addition to “moral,” political and financial support, the U.S. diplomats offer support in many ways to the anti-government movement in Cuba and occasionally serve as chauffeurs to the opposition. The only thing missing in terms of interference is a show like that of the U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who distributed food to anti-government protesters in Independence Square, in the capital of Ukraine, Kiev, in 2013. The March Is Not Disconnected From Other Processes The march is just another episode in a more comprehensive strategy. The Biden administration has interpreted the combined effect of the pandemic, the global crisis and the economic blockade—plus the 243 additional measures imposed by the former U.S. President Donald Trump—as exceptional conditions that have hit Cuba even harder. No spies are required to realize that there are more queues, inflation and shortages in a country that has been managing shortages for 60 years, but it is also important to understand that the march does not have popular support within the country. Cuba is returning to normalcy with the opening of flights, families reuniting after being separated for two years, the return of students to schools and the revival of the national economy. The Group Organizing the March Is Not Peaceful The private Facebook group listed as the march organizer, Archipiélago, is anything but moderate. A large number of publications by the group support symbolic violence and political disqualification of those who defend the socialist project or celebrate some social achievements in Cuba. The debate in these spaces is not to modify opinions, but to stir up prejudices, instill hatred among Cubans as an exclusive source of legitimacy for a government that has led the country under very difficult conditions. The repertoire is an unbridled McCarthyism and an inordinate impulse to indulge in stigmatization that are very common communicative practices in the current political climate of the United States, but alien to the political, cultural and idiosyncratic character of Cubans. Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, on November 10, assured that Facebook could be sued for supporting the “dissident movement “ in Cuba, according to Reuters. The Marches Are Not Synchronous There is talk of the synchronization of the marches inside and outside of Cuba to promote change. But there is no such thing. In Cuba, there is definitely no atmosphere to support these marches, while the organizers of Florida speak of the participation of people from a hundred cities in the world on November 15, they have not specified the number of people who will do so. In reality, those willing to participate in this type of anti-Castro chaos are usually few, but that does not matter. On April 30, 2020, an individual opened fire at the Cuban Embassy in Washington with an assault weapon, which led to the recalling of the foreign minister. On the night of July 27, two individuals threw a Molotov cocktail at the Cuban Embassy in Paris. It’s Not What They Say The conservative ghost of the far-right that travels the world and arrives in Cuba is not what it seems or what is visible to the naked eye. Behind the “non-violent march” mantra is the long shadow of the life-long reactionaries who now combine economic ultra-liberalism, conservative morality, empty concepts, and creative use of social media. They dream of ending the Cuban Revolution no later than November 15, while leaving a moral question unanswered: How is it possible to talk of a civil, peaceful and independent protest, if Washington is lubricating the route plan of the protest with threats and dollars? AuthorRosa Miriam Elizalde is a Cuban journalist and founder of the site Cubadebate. She is vice president of both the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) and the Latin American Federation of Journalists (FELAP). She has written and co-written several books including Jineteros en la Habana and Our Chavez. She has received the Juan Gualberto Gómez National Prize for Journalism on multiple occasions for her outstanding work. She is currently a weekly columnist for La Jornada of Mexico City. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives November 2021   To understand the Cuban Embargo, one must understand that it is only one aspect in the broader goal of America to rule over Cuba. The US has long had an interest in colonizing Cuba. In 1823, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams wrote a letter to U.S Minister to Spain Hugh Nelson about the possibility of annexing Cuba within the next fifty years. The Cuban sugar industry at that time had been incredibly lucrative and drew the attention of American investors. Twenty five years later, in 1848, James Polk offered to buy Cuba from Spain for $100,000,000. This offer was rejected. Though the US may have never formally colonized Cuba, its economic domination of the island could be comparable to that of any colonial power. By the 1870s, 75% of Cuba’s sugar was exported to the US. In 1895, US investments in Cuba were valued up to $95,000,000. Cuba’s industries and economy quickly became subordinated to US corporations. In 1894, 90% of Cuba’s exports went to the US and 38% of its imports were from the US. Cuba served as a valuable geopolitical outpost for the US. It would be valuable in defending Florida and New Orleans, along with serving as an outpost and springboard for further economic and political control of Latin America. While Cuba might have technically gained independence from the US in 1902, the Platt Amendment, however, kept Cuba in a continual state of colonial subjugation. The Platt Amendment allowed the US to intervene in Cuba at any time. It also set up US control of Cuba’s foreign policy and its public finances. In addition, much of Cuba’s wealth remained in US hands. In essence, the Platt Amendment and the presence of US corporations reduced the notion of Cuban independence to a myth. By the 1920s two thirds of Cuba’s sugar production was controlled by US companies and in 1929, US investments in Cuba reached almost a billion dollars and 62% of it went into the sugar industry. By the 1950s Cuba was the largest recipient of US aid and the US controlled almost all the important industries in Cuba. By 1955, 90% of telecommunications and electric services, 40% of the sugar industry, and 50% of public service railways were in the hands of American investors. Four years later, the US controlled 90% of all the mines, 80% of the utilities, and almost all the cattle ranches and the entire oil industry. However, this vast investment in Cuba did not benefit the majority of Cubans, instead much of this wealth was repatriated back to the US or consumed by the American and Cuban elites on the island. That’s not to forget of course that US investment in Cuba heavily favored multinationals, and many of these corporations didn’t have to pay taxes to the Cuban government and were allowed to keep their profits, thus doing very little to develop an independent Cuban economy or help the lives of everyday Cubans. In fact, life for everyday Cubans was quite miserable under Batista and American imperialism. In 1953, the average Cuban family made six dollars a week and 15-20% of the labor force was unemployed. The average salary of a rural Cuban was $91. Sugar companies also owned 75% of the arable land and only employed 25,000 people full time and 500,000 people as part time workers during the harvest season which only lasted for about two to four months, for the rest of the year these people were relegated to poverty and unemployment. Only 2% of people in Cuba had running water and 9% of people had electricity. The vast majority of people in the rural areas lived in huts. The life expectancy was 59 years and infant mortality was 60 out of 1000 live births. The notions that Cuba prior to Castro was a ritzy tropical paradise couldn’t be further from the truth. The vast majority of the population lived in poverty and a system of racial segregation--as horrible as the one in the US if not worse--was institutionalized and barred Afro-Cubans from accessing any employment opportunities other than domestic or manual labor. The only people who truly benefited from Batista’s Cuba were white wealthy landowners, business elites, and the professional class. These were the people that fled immediately after the revolution, not common workers or campesinos. The Cuban revolution was a true revolution of independence. It freed Cuba from the neo-colonial clutches of the United States which subjected the Cuban economy to the whim of monopolistic expansion by American corporations. There is no political independence without economic independence. Castro’s land reform and nationalization of major industries allowed Cuba to buck the reins of US imperialism and chart its own path of development without the destructive interference of an imperialistic power. The US sees an independent Cuba as a threat to its grasp over the rest of Latin America and its own status as a global hegemonic power. Therefore, it can’t let Cuba’s socialist development succeed. Though the US has attempted various methods to sabotage the development through means of terrorism and assasination, the Embargo, otherwise known as the blockade has been the most enduring inhibitor to a prosperous and socialist Cuba. The blockade is incredibly thorough and applies not only to U.S. nationals and businesses based in the United States but also to businesses and nationals outside of the US as well. References https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/speech-senator-john-f-kennedy-cincinnati-ohio-democratic-dinner https://kawsachunnews.com/the-defense-of-the-cuban-revolution-is-a-struggle-against-fascism https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kencuba.htm https://cri.fiu.edu/us-cuba/chronology-of-us-cuba-relations/ https://www.jstor.org/stable/2009288?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents https://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/hernandez.html https://www.ourdocuments.gov/print_friendly.php? flash=false&page=&doc=55&title=Platt+Amendment+%281903%29 AuthorN.C. Cai is a Chinese American Marxist Feminist. She is interested in socialist feminism, Western imperialism, history, and domestic policy, specifically in regards to drug laws, reproductive justice, and healthcare. Archives November 2021  9/6/2021 Cuba: The first country in the world to vaccinate children under 12. By: Gloria La RivaRead Now Photo: Vaccination of youth in Cuba. Credit — CubaDebate.cu In the battle against COVID-19, Cuba has been a country of firsts. It is the only country in all Latin America to produce its own vaccines. Cuba has sent more than 5,000 doctors to help treat COVID patients in 57 brigades to 40 countries around the world since the pandemic began. No other country has come close. Now, in a major new development, babies and children two years old and up will be massively vaccinated starting in 10 days. Cuba is the first country in the world to vaccinate babies and children under 12. On Friday, Sept. 3, Cuba’s Center for State Control of Medicines, Equipment and Medical Devices (CECMED) announced emergency approval for the mass vaccination of two-year-olds and children up to age 11 using the Soberana 02 vaccine. Soberana was developed and is produced by the famous Finlay Vaccine Institute. Pediatric innoculations will begin September 15. Trials showed the vaccine to be safe and effective in that age range. Youths 12 to 18 years will receive Soberana starting September 5. By November 15 all schoolchildren under 18 will return to their classrooms fully vaccinated, and pre-school children as well. For now students will start their fall lessons on Sept. 6 by television, as has been the practice since the pandemic began. Dr. Olga Lidia Jacobo Casanueva, CECMED Director, told Cuban TV, “It is great news for the Cuban people, for the Cuban family which has waited to be able to vaccinate their children. It is a real achievement for Cuban science and represents an historic moment in our country.” Since late June, Cuba has experienced a dramatic increase in positive COVID cases amid the ever-harsher U.S. economic blockade and the shutdown of tourism due to the pandemic. From roughly 1,100 average new cases in early June, the figure skyrocketed to an average of 9,504 new positive cases exactly one month ago. The last four days’ average ending Sept. 4 was 6,899. Despite the many challenges of increased cases and material shortages, Cuba’s socialist government and health institutions are soldiering through with the national plan and its three most effective vaccine lines to cover the whole population. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel announced Aug. 31 — in a special meeting of scientists and health professionals — that by November, 92.6% of Cuba’s entire population will be fully vaccinated with the three-shot process. The bold project of universal infant, child and adult vaccination is possible because of the country’s highly organized vaccination system that has been in place for decades. Cuban scientists, fully supported by a government that places its trust in their expertise and dedication, work for the common good — free of a profit motive. Plus, Cuban society has not suffered the polarization whipped up by right-wing politicians and false media in the United States that have actively opposed mask mandates and vaccinations. Millions in the United States have fallen victim to the anti-science hysteria, failing to vaccinate. The U.S. COVID cases and deaths are in the second-highest wave since April 2020 and rising. The pandemic has been severe for Cuba due to the longstanding blockade further hardened under Trump. The tourism industry — a major source of income for the country and workers — has virtually shut down due to the virus. Up to now, all vaccines worldwide have been approved for emergency use by corresponding health institutions, due to their highly effective results and the need to take immediate action given the severity of the pandemic. The pediatric trials in Cuba began June 14 this year. The first stage was 25 adolescent volunteers, 12 to 18 years old, then a larger group of 350. In early July almost 600 babies and children under 12 took part in clinical trials. The children’s vaccine trial was named Ismaelillo, after poetry written by Cuba’s national hero José Martí to his son. No children are exempt from the highly contagious delta variant, now dominant around the world. The urgency for pediatric vaccination everywhere is greater than ever as the school year begins anew this week. The struggle against COVID is far from over. But Cuba’s latest achievement is a shining example of the Cuban people and their revolution facing adversity with determination to overcome. AuthorGloria La Riva This article was produced by Liberation news. Archives September 2021  With the money she earns cleaning houses in the morning and an office at night, Virgen Elena Pupo, a 47-year-old Cuban migrant, has managed to raise her family in Washington, D.C., but has not been able to help her parents in Holguín, Cuba. She is separated from her parents by more than 1,246 miles. In Cuba’s eastern region, Holguín has been hit hard by an increase in COVID-19 cases, but Pupo cannot visit or send money to her parents due to the restrictions on flights and remittances from the United States as a result of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies that President Joe Biden has continued. On October 27, 2020, a week before the U.S. presidential elections took place on November 3, Trump issued his final sanction against the island. Trump included Cuban financial company Fincimex, Western Union’s main partner in the country, in the Cuban Restricted List. The pretext was that it belongs to the Cuban business corporation, Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. This measure cut off the channels for sending remittances to Cuba, and Pupo’s elderly parents have not been able to receive any help amid the pandemic as a result of this move. Fincimex issued a statement on August 27, 2021, announcing delays in the delivery of remittances that arrive in Cuba from third countries due to the difficulty of finding financial institutions willing to authorize operations. The inclusion of this company in the list of restricted entities by the U.S. Treasury Department “continues to generate fears in the international banking sector about accepting operations directed to… [Fincimex] and tendencies to limit the scope of these transactions,” said the Fincimex statement. The U.S. policy relating to remittances goes against all logic. Remittances have come to the rescue of families affected by the coronavirus all over the world. According to the World Bank, money sent by migrants to their families in “low- and middle-income countries surpassed the sum of FDI [foreign direct investment] ($259 billion) and overseas development assistance ($179 billion) in 2020.” For example, remittances grew historically in Mexico in the first six months of 2021, as La Jornada recently reported. They reached $23.6 million, which is 22 percent more than the remittances received during the same period in 2020. “As COVID-19 still devastates families around the world, remittances continue to provide a critical lifeline for the poor and vulnerable,” said Michal Rutkowski, global director of the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice at the World Bank. The regular remittances that poor Latin American migrants send to their families have become vital to many of the region’s economies. Generally, it’s the working poor who send small sums of money, sometimes up to eight times a year, usually sending more money than they earn during the year. For years, remittances have been one of Mexico’s main sources of foreign exchange, and remittances form close to or more than 20 percent of the gross domestic product of Honduras, El Salvador and other countries in Central America. They protect millions of people. But why do migrants do it? Why do they make sacrifices and send money back to their home countries? Surveys say that the explanation for this grand gesture of solidarity, with enormous macroeconomic impact, lies above all in supporting the institution of family. Migrants send money out of moral inspiration and loyalty to their parents, siblings, children, and nieces and nephews. In a 2006 study on remittances and their imprint on the Cuban family, researcher Edel Fresneda Camacho recognized that this type of aid is not intended for productive investment. “It constitutes an important source of income for the recipient families, [for] their consumption and saving capacity, and implies an improvement in living conditions,” which in the case of Cuba includes the possibility of investing in a small private business. Camacho and other researchers have given an account of the manipulative forays of the U.S. government on this front. In the 1990s, during the crisis known in Cuba as the “Special Period,” the United States reinforced the economic siege. The former U.S. President Bill Clinton prohibited remittances from August 1994 to 1998 except under strictly humanitarian conditions: illness or in cases of people with official immigration permission. Bush imposed even more cruel restrictions, allowing only visits to the island once every three years if the person visiting had very close relatives in Cuba—aunts, uncles, and cousins were not considered “family.” Even then, remittances managed to continue reaching the island. That is, until now. Without Western Union offices, without the possibility of shipments by DHL, with banks being intimidated and flights being suspended to all provinces, except for those very limited to Havana, Pupo can only hope that her elderly parents can survive the pandemic without any help from her. And she prays every day for common sense to prevail among those making policies in the White House, which is located just two blocks away from the office she cleans at night with the stubborn will to keep her loved ones afloat. AuthorRosa Miriam Elizalde is a Cuban journalist and founder of the site Cubadebate. She is vice president of both the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) and the Latin American Federation of Journalists (FELAP). She has written and co-written several books including Jineteros en la Habana and Our Chavez. She has received the Juan Gualberto Gómez National Prize for Journalism on multiple occasions for her outstanding work. She is currently a weekly columnist for La Jornada of Mexico City. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives September 2021 8/14/2021 Anti-Government Protests in Cuba Provoked by U.S. Embargo Has Right-Wingers Salivating at the Prospect of Regime Change. By: Carlos L. GarridoRead Now The Washington Post featured this photo as an example of anti-government protests but it is clearly a pro-government rally in which the demonstrators are waving the Cuban flag in solidarity with the Cuban revolution. The man behind the flag in the baseball cap is Gerardo Hernandez, a well-known leader of the Committees in Defense of the Revolution and one of the Cuban 5, who spent 16 years in prison in the U.S., framed up for his work helping to stop terrorist attacks on Cuba. [Source: washingtonpost.com] U.S. Media have played up the recent anti-government protests in Cuba as a harbinger of regime change and a reason for U.S. intervention But they deceitfully hide the fact that anti-government protestors (funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy and CIA) number only a few hundred, whereas pro-government supporters—in defense of the revolution and opposed to U.S. intervention—have been flooding the streets, not by the hundreds, but by the hundreds of thousands The July 11th protests in Cuba had the Cuban opposition salivating with the hope of once again being the benefactors of an American takeover of the island of 11 million. As we have seen in the last couple of weeks, this has not been the case. On the contrary, the 17th of July saw more than 100,000 Cubans take the streets of el Malecón in defense of the revolution and against U.S. intervention. There were also demonstrations in other provinces across the island, altogether dwarfing the U.S.-backed opposition hecklers of the previous week. Nonetheless, the opposition protests, although insignificant in size and duration (in comparison to the pro-revolution assemblages), have provided fertile ground for Western media to perform their traditional role in setting the stage for the imperial war drums. The war drums have been played, as Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and the Cuban exile community have urged the Biden administration, to implement a “humanitarian intervention,” one that does not take airstrikes off the table.  City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez joins Cuban exiles at a rally in front of the Versailles Restaurant in the Little Havana section of Miami on Sunday, July 11, 2021. [Source: peoplesworld.org] Although a Biden administration pivot toward military intervention does not seem likely, Biden has sustained and expanded on the Trump aggression on Cuba. On July 22nd Biden implemented a series of new sanctions on Cuba and assured that “this is just the beginning.” Whether this means military intervention is on the table is unknown, but what it confirms is that, without strong pressure from the American Left, his campaign promise to return to the Obama-era relationship with Cuba seems unlikely. Although the July 11th protests, as Madea Benjamin and Leonardo Flores note, “pale in comparison, both in terms of turnout and in state repression, to mass mobilizations that have rocked Colombia, Haiti, Chile, Ecuador and other Latin American countries over the past few years—or even Portland, Oregon, or Ferguson, Missouri,” they are nonetheless the largest oppositional protests since the 1994 Maleconazo uprising during which Cuba was undergoing what it called el Período especial (the Special Period).  Scenes from 1994 Maleconazo uprising. [Source: translatingcuba.com] Situating this event in its proper long- and short-term historical contexts is necessary to provide a holistic understanding of it. It is not sufficient merely to point to the Trump administration’s tightening of the blockade, even if we agree that such actions are what immediately generated recent events. Instead, we must understand the blockade itself historically. Only then can we know how and why it is effective. Conditioned to Be SweetAlthough for centuries Havana was an important port for the Spanish empire, it was not until the 18th century that Cuba became the sugar hub of the world.[1] Starting in 1763, the Cuban export economy was centered around sugar, a process it would sustain for the centuries to come. Forty years before the 1959 revolution “sugar accounted for 82% of Cuba’s export earnings.”[2]  Cuban sugar mill in the 19th century. [Source: latinamericanstudies.org] This historically determined sugar dependency shows how the ancestral fingers of colonialism created the precondition for the Cuban economy being at the whim of global sugar price fluctuations. Beyond this, the centuries-long monocropping of Cuba’s economy, coupled with the destructive industrial means through which this monocropping took place, has left Cuba, according to the United Nation’s Environment Programme (UNEP), with “over three-quarters of its 6.6 million hectares of arable land affected by soil erosion.” As the UNEP states, “The result is that Cuba imports 80 per cent of its food necessities at a cost of nearly two billion dollars a year—a heavy burden for any developing country, especially one that continues to suffer an ongoing economic embargo from a major world power.” In our globalized world every country is dependent on international trade for acquiring the basic necessities for its people. Just think what would happen to the U.S., a country territorially about 90 times bigger than Cuba (with far greater soil biodiversity), if it were blocked from trading with the rest of the world and put into a commensurable position with the position it has put Cuba in. What would the material conditions in our country be like? How would this trade limitation affect us in moments of crisis, when basic necessities are scant, and allocation is based on our market logic? If, under our current condition as the global hegemon, we have 42 million people experiencing food insecurity, the famines that would result if we were in Cuba’s shoes are unimaginable. Yet, no such famine has ever occurred in Cuba. Even in the toughest of times, rationing measures have allowed the population to get what it needs to survive. The Cuban revolution did not come about in a void. Instead, it came about in a country shackled by centuries of plunder, having to face the results of forces that were already in the world before they were thrown into it. In this world, Cuba has international trade as an absolute imperative for its existence. The blockage of this capacity by the world’s largest empire represents a constant existential threat for the island.  Fidel Castro on horseback. [Source: isreview.org] Early U.S. Imperialism and Pre-Revolutionary CubaIn 1898 Cuba ended its century-long anti-colonial struggle against Spain and began its soon-to-be half-century anti-imperialist struggle against the U.S. which, with a sprinkle of yellow journalism, intervened in Cuba’s war against Spain. For Cuba, this was not just a transition from one master to another. Instead, this transition marked a qualitative leap into a new stage of capitalism, one which Lenin, a couple of decades later, would describe as Imperialism. From 1898 until the 1959 revolution, Cuba would be militarily occupied three times by the U.S. (1898-1902, 1906-1909, 1917-1922), including a continuous occupation since 1903 of the U.S.’s favorite torture spot, Guantanamo Bay.  Guantanamo Bay at time of U.S. conquest. [Source: time.com] Nonetheless, even before the Cuban War of Independence, the U.S. was already engaging in practices that were making Cuba economically dependent on the U.S. For instance, in 1865, 65% of Cuba’s sugar exports were going to the United States.[3] Cuba’s sugar dependency became inextricably linked to its ability to trade with the U.S. After 1898 the U.S.-Cuba relationship transcended dependency and entered into complete political-economic supremacy by the U.S. over Cuba. U.S. companies had nearly total control over the central industries in Cuba. For instance, by 1920, 95% of the sugar industry’s harvest was controlled by U.S. investors.[4] A similar condition existed in other industries, “by the late ’50s, U.S. financial interests included 90 percent of Cuban mines, 80 percent of its public utilities, [and] 50 percent of its railways.” For a small percentage of Cubans, those who compose the first generation of exiles, this condition was a paradise: “In 1946, less than 1% of all Cuban farmers controlled 36% of the farmland, and 8% of the farmers controlled 70% of farmland.”[5] For the great majority of the population this was a wretched existence, where 93% of rural households lacked electricity, 85% lacked running water, 54% lacked an indoor or outdoor toilet, 96% lacked a refrigerator, and fewer than half of children were enrolled in school.[6] U.S. control of Cuba allowed the island to become a gangster’s paradise. Havana was the city of sin that would make modern-day Las Vegas look like it was owned by Puritans. A viewing of the classic film The Godfather II should remind one of pre-revolutionary Cuba and the Mafia-loving corruption of U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, who had killed about 20,000 Cubans by the time the revolution came to Havana.[7] It is in this context that the revolution arrived. As Cuban revolutionary folk singer Carlos Puebla said: Here they thought they could  Carlos Puebla [Source: vintagemusic.fm] The Revolution, the Blockade, and the Historical Toolbox of Imperialism Shortly after the triumph of the revolution in 1959, the new revolutionary government would implement an agrarian reform which would distribute land amongst the campesinado and establish limitations for landholdings. As a cherry on top, these reforms would offer compensation to the previous owners that was “fixed on the basis of its value on the municipal tax rolls prior to October 10, 1958.”[8]  Cuban peasants who benefited from agrarian reform after the revolution. [Source: watershedsentinel.ca] Similar expropriation conditions would be offered to U.S. and other foreign companies in Cuba under the 851, 890, and 891 laws. These en masse expropriations eventually led to the nationalization of all of Cuba’s central resources and industries, establishing conditions where for the first time Cuba would belong to Cubans. Although a partial embargo (on arms) had already been imposed on Cuba in 1958, in the first couple of years after the revolution the U.S. sustained and expanded it. Each activity the revolutionary government would take to implement distributive measures was met with increased pressure from the expanding embargo. Such increased pressures would often be met with further expropriations. For instance, the Eisenhower administration prohibited the transport of oil to Cuba, forcing the island to turn to the USSR for imports. Then, as a reaction to “Washington’s orders, multinational oil companies refused to refine the Soviet oil, leaving Cuba no choice but to nationalize the companies.” This back-and-forth culminated in the Kennedy administration’s full implementation of the blockade in 1962.  [Source: govbooktalk.gpo.com] The Cuban revolution, from its inception, represented a grave threat to U.S. economic and political interest in the region. Such a rejection of U.S. hegemony existing right under the nose of the U.S. was unacceptable in Washington. Thus, from the outset, the reasons for the blockade have been clear. As Lester Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in 1960: “Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy [blockade] is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”  Lester Mallory [Source: oncubanews.com] In the same memorandum Mallory stated that “the majority of Cubans support Castro (the lowest estimate I have seen is 50 percent),” and there is “no effective political opposition.” Therefore, “the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” By removing Cuba’s historical and geographically natural trading partner and removing access to the planet’s largest economy to all countries which dared to trade with Cuba, the policy intended to “bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government” was in full swing. Nonetheless, one would be wrong to consider the blockade the only method of force the U.S. has used against Cuba. Instead, the last 60 years have shown that nothing is off the table, the toolbox of American imperialism is open to anything, from military attacks, attempted assassinations, biological warfare, and terrorism. Some of these beyond-economic attacks on Cuba include: a) the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, squashed within three days; b) the 600+ CIA led unsuccessful attempts on Fidel’s life (some whose creativity is quite laughable); c) ten or so biowarfare attacks, most famously, as CAM reported, the 1971 CIA-orchestrated African Swine Fever virus spread; and d) the backing and funding of groups and individuals who partook in terrorist bombings, the cases of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles are perhaps the best known, specifically the latter’s involvement in the 1976 bombing of Cubana Airline’s flight 455 which killed 73 people—both are celebrated figures of the Miami exile community. Luis Posada Carriles [Source: wikipedia.org] Orlando Bosch [Source: nytimes.com] As the 1962 Operation Northwoods shows, the U.S. government was considering orchestrating a “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” which “would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.”  Declassified document detailing plans to invade Cuba. [Source: upload.wikimedia.org] Effectively, the consideration was to terrorize U.S. cities to delegitimize Cuba and justify a full fledged U.S. military intervention. This surface-level assessment of the beyond-economic forces used to topple the Cuban government shows that, for the U.S., the means through which regime change is sought are irrelevant.  Castro holds up newspaper documenting CIA plots to kill him. [Source: theguardian.com] The policy of the U.S. toward Cuba, from the emergence of the revolution until now (with a slight variation during the Obama administration) has been the following: Cuban socialism must be overthrown by any means necessary. Thus, over the last 60 years Cuba has not only been at the whim of the global market because of inherited colonial-era economic dependencies but, stemming from the breadth of the U.S. empire’s blockade and the variety of regime-change tactics used, it has also been dependent on the existence of a global counter-hegemonic force to American Imperialism. Until the mid-1980s the Soviet Union and the Socialist Bloc provided a global alternative that was necessary to ameliorate the effects of the blockade. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba was left to fend for itself outside of U.S.-dominated neoliberal capitalism. Nonetheless, even under the difficulties of the Special Period, Cuba was able to remain a global beacon of hope and, through the devastating economic hardships, it was able to sustain a revolutionary and innovative spirit that kept it alive until solidarity arrived via the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998 and the subsequent “pink-tide” that swept across Latin America, creating the counter-hegemonic force that Cuba needed to re-stabilize itself.  Fidel and Hugo Chávez: resisting empire. [Source: pri.org] It is a truly impressive feat that, even under such conditions as the ones Cuba suffered in the 1990s, it was still able to develop innovative and sustainable agricultural reforms which served as the precondition for its current state as the “most sustainable developed country in the world.”  Organic agriculture in Cuba. [Source: greenleft.org.au] Obama, Trump, and the Pandemic It would take 55 years from the triumph of the revolution for minimal positive change in the aforementioned U.S.-Cuba relationship to come about. In 2014, though sustaining the economic embargo, the Obama administration would begin normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba, a process that was mediated with the help of Pope Francis. This process, known as the Cuban Thaw, saw the easing of travel and export sanctions; the opening of a Cuban government bank account in the U.S., allowing it to free itself of the burden of having to handle financial affairs in cash; the removal of Cuba from the U.S. list of “state sponsors of terrorism”; mutual openings of embassies; Obama’s visit to Cuba, which was the first time a U.S. president had done so since Calvin Coolidge in 1928; and much more.  The Obamas deplane at Havana’s José Martí International Airport on historic visit. [Source: theguardian.com] Although this normalization process was mutually beneficial, it was the partial easing of the 60-year-old blockade weight off Cuba’s back that was the most significant. Within a year of the initial moves toward normalization, Cuba would have one of the highest GDP growth percentages in all of Latin America. With the election of Donald Trump and the backing he received from the Cuban exile community, the minimal advances of the Obama era were rolled back. Trump’s cancellation of the Obama policies toward Cuba included restricting travel to Cuba, banning the sending of remittances, reinstating Cuba to the list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” and implementing 243 new sanctions on the island.  Trump’s draconian policies won him praise among right-wing Cuban exiles in Miami. [Source: theconversation.com] The effects of such measures cost Cuba $9.1 billion between April and December of 2020, a number which rises to about $1,300 billion when accounting for the six decades-long blockade and the dollar’s depreciation against the value of gold in the global market. It is also important to note that the tightening of the blockade on Cuba comes at a time when its largest trading partner, Venezuela, is also facing dire conditions thanks to a similar blockade and various regime-change efforts.  Protesters in Miami demand end to U.S. embargo of Cuba. [Source: cubanmoneyproject.com] Although an analysis of U.S. imperialism in Venezuela is beyond our scope, it is important to note that a central reason why the tightening of the blockade has been so effective in crippling Cuba also has to do with the pre-established and continued imperial policy against Cuba’s central allies. While Trump’s maximum pressure strategy toward Cuba was effective in causing economic distress on the island, the emergence of the pandemic would intensify these hardships. The COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult for every country in the world. In the U.S. millions have lost their jobs, employer-based health insurance, and more than 600,000 have lost their lives. Cuba has had to endure the blockade, the pandemic (resulting in the closing of the border and the commensurate losses to the tourism industry), and the U.S.’s exploitation of the pandemic to increase pressure for regime change. The combination of the pandemic and the blockade has created a situation where, over the last year and a half, the Cuban government has struggled to procure the basic medical necessities to treat the virus. For instance, in April 2020, with the pandemic in full swing, the U.S. blocked Cuba’s ability to buy ventilators. In the same month the U.S. would block a shipment of coronavirus aid to Cuba coming from the Jack Ma Foundation. Similar events have occurred throughout the pandemic. Nonetheless Cuba, as the country with the most doctors per capita, has sent volunteer doctors all over the world to help countries deal with the pandemic. For these efforts the U.S. and its media puppets have produced unsubstantiated allegations of the doctors’ missions as “forced labor” and has urged its allies to refuse Cuban medical aid. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who expelled Cuban doctors, quickly begged for their return, as their departure left Brazil’s medical system in egregious condition.  Cuban doctors arrive in Italy to help fight COVID-19. [Source: theconversation.com] However, the world has not been fooled by these preposterous allegations. For its courageous internationalism which has saved countless lives around the world, the Henry Reeve Brigade, named after an American who fought and died in the first Cuban revolutionary war with the army of liberation, has created a movement for it to receive the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. The ProtestsOn the 23rd of June, the United Nations General Assembly voted on a resolution concerning the U.S.’s embargo on Cuba. As CAM reported, the result was clear: 184 countries voted in favor of lifting the embargo, 2 (U.S. and Israel) voted against.  [Source: mintpressnews.com] This decision marks the 29th consecutive year that the General Assembly has called for an end to the U.S.’s economic, commercial and financial embargo on Cuba. For 29 years the U.S. has been ignoring the near unanimous will of the world and has continued, as Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla stated, a blockade that, “like the virus… asphyxiates and kills.” This systematic rejection of international will is at the core of the material conditions that led to the events of July 11th. The policies of the blockade and its intermingling with the conditions of the pandemic have led Cuba to a state where, months before the protests, shortages in various areas arose. As Cuban President Díaz-Canel stated in his speech on the day of the protests: “This whole situation [blockade + pandemic] caused a situation of shortages in the country, especially of food, medicines, raw materials and supplies to be able to develop our economic and productive processes that at the same time contribute to exports. Two important elements are cut off: the ability to export and the ability to invest resources. And from the productive processes, to then develop goods and services for our population.” These shortages, manifested through the annoyance of long lines, power outages, and rationing, ensure a quantitative and cumulative process of dissatisfaction. The U.S. Capitalist media seizes on this dissatisfaction to further indict Cuba’s socialist economy, ignoring the impact of the U.S. blockade and long war on Cuba. Further ignored is the fact that Cuba, despite a syringe deficit and vaccination slowdown, has produced 5 vaccine candidates, two (Abdala and Soberana) of which have already been shown to be safe and effective.  Man gets vaccine on outskirts of Havana in May. [Source: peoplesworld.com] Overlooking the Underlying Source of Malaise Like in Plato’s allegory of the cave, the July 11th anti-government protesters are capable of seeing only the immediacy of the shadows. In a world limited to only seeing the government’s role in rationing, discourse on the blockade sounds as irrational as the escaped slave explaining to the others what it’s like outside the cave. Nonetheless, the misguided upheavals were not simply the spontaneous expression of a genuine opposition grounded and influenced solely by the Cuban situation. In these upheavals there exists an externally added variable which organized, funded, and facilitated these rabble-rousings as yeast does to water and flour when baked. This external variable is the decades-long U.S. funding of the Cuban opposition and its anti-government propaganda media outlets under the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which allowed television broadcasting from the U.S. into Cuba and also tightened the embargo and permitted Cubans who had become U.S. citizens to sue in U.S. courts anyone who had purchased property once belonging to them in Cuba but was confiscated by the regime after the revolution.  [Source: radiogritodebaire.cu] Yankee Meddling Tracey Eaton, founder of the Cuba Money Project, has found that, between the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)—the CIA’s two new fronts—and the U.S. State Department, more than $1 billion has been given to Cuban opposition groups and media, both within Cuba and in the Cuban exile community.
 Los Aldeanos received NED funds. [Source: concerty.com] Recently, the San Isidro Movement—whose joint work with Gente de Zona in the song “Patria y Vida” has become the token expression of the recent protests—has been shown to be heavily funded by the NED and USAID. As Max Blumenthal writes, “Leading members of the San Isidro Movement have raked in funding from regime-change outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy and U.S. Agency for International Development while meeting with State Department officials, U.S. embassy staff in Havana, right-wing European parliamentarians and Latin American coup leaders from Venezuela’s Guaidó to OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro.”  [Source: havanatimes.org] In the era of woke intersectional imperialism, this afro-Cuban “movement” has been the perfect token for the regime-change goons. Altogether, the uprisings on July 11th have not only had their source in the difficulties created by the combination of the blockade and the pandemic, but also in a heavily funded opposition which was intentionally created by the U.S. to channel the natural distress of the politically unconscious into the streets to protest the government. It is important to note that the orchestration of the protests by U.S.-funded agents takes place a few weeks after yet another near unanimous vote against the blockade in the United Nations. The protests and the media treatment of it (examined below) help redeem the blockade-justifying narrative of the “Cuban police state” pushed by the U.S. at a time when international opinion is unanimously against the blockade. People Fail to Come Out Nonetheless, what is impressive here is how, with the combination of the blockade, pandemic, and U.S.-funded opposition and propaganda campaigns, so few Cubans were at the protests. Considering the breadth of public and covert tactics used by U.S. imperialism, it has been a laughable defeat to see that all its efforts and spending was only able to materialize into a few thousand hecklers in the streets for less than a day. These protesters quickly disappeared, given that shortly after Díaz-Canel told revolutionaries to hit the streets. Tens of thousands of them did so—chanting “these are Fidel’s streets,” “I am Fidel, I am Díaz-Canel,” “Homeland or Death,” while waving Fidel portraits and the black and red 26th of July Movement flags—dwarfing the anti-government groups.  Protesters carry Che Guevara banners in support of the Cuban revolution in July. [Source: reuters.com] Media Disinformation The MVP (most valuable player) of the July 11th protest must be awarded to the media. Both mainstream and social media coverage of the protests tossed any shred of journalistic integrity aside and showed themselves for what they really are—lapdogs of the American empire whose sole function is to manufacture consent for wars and plunder abroad. By ignoring the blockade, the U.S.’s exploitation of the pandemic, and the U.S.’s role in funding and organizing the opposition, the media were able to spin the myth that a majority of Cubans were protesting a repressive, one-party dictatorship. For anyone familiar with the structure of Cuba’s participatory democracy, these “dictatorship” allegations are laughable, especially as they take place on the heels of the 2019 enactment of the citizen-drafted and massively supported socialist constitution.  Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel casts his vote during the referendum to approve the constitutional reform in Havana, Cuba, February 24, 2019. [Source: telesurenglish.net] A critique of the audacity and hypocrisy liberal democracies in accusing Cuba of being undemocratic and repressive—governed in reality as dictatorships of capital—is beyond the scope of this essay. Nonetheless, it is important to ask what standing a government with the largest incarceration rate in the world—with just 4.4% of the world’s population yet approximately 25% of the world’s prisoners—to talk about repression in Cuba? Similarly, what standing does the government, whose elections are 91% determined by who can raise the most corporate money, have to talk about the problem of democracy in Cuba? For the media’s coverage of the July 11th protests, nothing was off the table: From fake photos to twitter bots, everything was fair game. For instance, mainstream media outlets like the Guardian, Fox News, Boston Globe, Financial Times, Yahoo! News and NBC’s Today have used images from large pro-government demonstrations in previous years and claimed them to be from the July 11th protests. CNN also used a picture of a rally in Miami and titled it “Cubans Take to Streets in Rare Anti-Government Protest Over Lack of Freedoms, Worsening Economy.”  [Source: fair.org] After public humiliation most of these outlets have removed these “errors,” but their intended effect remained. One must ask: Was this an issue of ignorance or willful action? It seems hard to miss the massive 26th of July Movement flags in the pro-government demonstrations. It also seems unlikely that one would miss the southwest Miami street signs and the red Make America Great Again hats in CNN’s images. In the case of Fox News any claim of ignorance is preposterous: In its July 13th segment with Ted Cruz, in which he discussed the “bravery” depicted in the images of the protesters, the image that appeared on screen in that moment was of a pro-government rally where the words on the sign—“the streets belong to the revolutionaries”—were intentionally blurred and quickly replaced by a clip of a Miami rally in front of the famous Cuban-cuisine Versailles restaurant in the Little Havana section of the city.  [Source: sputniknews.com] The U.S.-funded Cuban opposition has also been effective in creating false narratives about the protests’ size, police repression, and claims about the destabilizing effect the protests have had on the government. For instance, photos of mass protests and demonstrations in Washington, D.C. (2007), Egypt (2011) and Argentina (2021) have been used and described as Cuban anti-government protests.  This photo was actually taken during the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C. [Source: verifythis.com] To spark sentimentalism, the opposition has also used photos of an 11-year-old boy who was shot in the face in Caracas, Venezuela, and claimed that the Cuban police shot and killed him. To intensify the narrative of “police repression,” the opposition has created Facebook groups dedicated to those allegedly lost after being kidnapped or killed by the Cuban police. These claims have been shown to be false. Such was the case of Juan Carlos Charon, who was alleged to have been killed but who appeared in a phone call with Cubadebate to be quite alive and angry at his image’s tokenization by the Cuban opposition. One of the most repulsive tactics used has been bribes. As exposed private messages have shown, the Cuban opposition has attempted to bribe Cubans with phone recharging points if they beat themselves up and then make a video claiming the police did it. Furthermore, there have also been fabricated claims intended to produce the narrative that the government was losing power. For instance, claims were made that, in Camaguey, the “people” had seized power and kidnapped the first secretary of the province’s Communist Party. This information was quickly disproven by images of thousands of pro-government demonstrators and with an interview conducted with the (supposedly kidnapped) first secretary of the party, who not only affirmed by his presence that he had not been kidnapped but also attested to the conditions in Camaguey as normal. The opposition has also used a 2015 picture of Raul Castro exiting an airplane for the Third Summit of Latin American and Caribbean States in Costa Rica and declared he had fled to Venezuela because of the protests.  Photo of Raul Castro that was used to make the false claim that he had fled the country. [Source: twitter.com] This misinformation campaign was made viral with the “Bay of Tweets” bot campaign. Days before the protests broke out in Cuba, the hashtag #SOSCUBA began to show up on Twitter. On the day of the protests the hashtag started trending thanks to thousands of newly created Twitter accounts that were retweeting it at speeds impossible for mere mortals. Although a clear violation of Twitter’s “coordinated inauthentic behavior” rules, Twitter allowed the bot scheme to unfold, propelling an en masse campaign to distribute the sort of fabricated information discussed above. Concerning this bot campaign, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said he had “irrefutable proof that the majority of those that took part in this (internet) campaign were in the United States and used automated systems to make content go viral, without being penalized by Twitter.” This would not be the first time the U.S. has used a social media bot campaign to push regime change, as Ben Norton noted last year when the same tactic was used to prop up the right-wing opposition in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico. For instance, during the 2019 coup in Bolivia, there were 68,000 fake Twitter accounts made to support the coup. ConclusionFor the U.S., as we have seen, the “by any means necessary” philosophy remains intact in its regime-change efforts in Cuba. The plot laid out more than 60 years ago by Lester Mallory continues today: Starve the population and agitate around their dissatisfaction. Although new equipment has been added, the David and Goliath battle—a gigantic empire dripping in blood and dirt vs. a small, autonomous, socialist, and internationalist island 90 miles away—remains. On July 23rd, an open letter entitled “Let Cuba Live,” signed by 400 prominent activists, scientists, intellectuals, and artists urging Biden to remove the criminal blockade on Cuba, appeared in The New York Times. As folks living within the empire, now is not the time to criticize Cuba or measure its deficiencies against our ideals. Now is the time to stand in solidarity with the Cuban people and their revolution. This requires doing everything in our power to push the Biden administration to end the blockade. The words of the late Howard Zinn ring as true as ever today—“you can’t be neutral on a moving train.” Work Cited
AuthorCarlos L. Garrido is a philosophy graduate student and professor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. His specialization is in Marxist philosophy and the history of American socialist thought (esp. early 19th century). He is an editorial board member and co-founder of Midwestern Marx and the Journal of American Socialist Studies. This article was produced by Covertaction Magazine. Archives August 2021 8/11/2021 Díaz-Canel: Those with the Strength, the Energy and the Capacity are the Youth. By: Yaima Puig MenesesRead NowAn encouraging gathering marked by sincerity and commitment took place yesterday at the University of Havana, where the President of the Republic conversed for almost four hours with 100 young Cubans from different sectors of society  Photo: Estudios Revolución The diversity, commitment and wealth of the ideas of Cuba’s youth were once again made clear at the historic University of Havana yesterday, August 5, during an honest, casual dialogue. The sun was just rising as 100 young Cubans gathered in the emblematic Cadenas Square waiting for a special guest: they had an appointment with the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez. The group waiting included university students; teachers; farmers; health workers, service workers... and also self-employed, with representation not only of young people from the capital, but from all of Cuba. This is how they were introduced by the first secretary of the National Committee of the Young Communist League, Aylín Álvarez García, beginning of the meeting, when she expressed her certainty that "we are who must contribute, transform, support, participate..." The meeting provided an encouraging display of sincerity and commitment, as the President of the Republic conversed for almost four hours with those present, taking notes on the comments and proposals made by a variety of participants. Concluding the dialogue, the President commented, "For me it is clear that there are a number of challenges in society, in life today, challenges to what we want to do... Those who have the strength, the energy and the capacity (to overcome the challenges) are young people - without denying anyone’s contribution, because here everyone must participate and we must give all generations their space - but the future lies in our youth. "I am convinced of this... I believe in our youth," and there is always a task for the young, there is a task calling them, engaging them, because we know that if it is in your hands, it will be stronger, it will be more developed and it also engages you and provides you a space to participate, he said. AuthorThis article was produced by Granma. Archives August 2021  The recent protest demonstrations in Cuba, which started on July 11, have set off a frenzied anti-communist response in the United States, from politicians of both the Republican and Democratic parties and from both right-wing and supposedly “centrist” and even “liberal” sectors of the press and media. One Florida Republican congressman called for the Cuban national leadership to be “executed.” President Biden called Cuba a “failed state.” Even before the protests, Senators Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida) renewed the offensive of the U.S. right against Cuba’s much-lauded international health solidarity missions, which have been praised in the many countries where they have helped to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, repeating the canard that the missions constitute “human trafficking.” The fact that there have been much larger pro-revolutions demonstrations in Cuba in response to the anti-government protests has been ignored or distorted, with enemies of the socialist government even mislabeling images of the pro-revolution demonstrations as being anti-government. The major bourgeois media in the United States have covered the recent situation the way they always have: to downplay or ignore completely the role of the 60-year blockade of Cuba by the United States in creating economic difficulties for the Cuban people, and to attribute any disturbances to “failed socialist policies” by an “authoritarian” and “repressive regime.” Not only that, but supposedly professional journalists and editorial commentators give credence to versions of events peddled by discredited right-wing hacks and ideologues. Media outlets forget the much larger protests against right-wing governments. When there are protests in Cuba, major U.S. press and media outlets forget the much larger protests against right-wing governments in many, many other countries, including Haiti, Colombia, Chile, Honduras, and Brazil, all of whose governments are subordinate to U.S. imperialist interests. In Colombia, for instance, the right-wing government of President Ivan Duque, closely allied with the United States, has unleashed a wave of violent repression against all opponents, repression which has cost the lives of many labor, indigenous, youth, and other leaders. There are other manifestations of the corporate media’s propensity to ignore wider context when they are out to do a hatchet job on Cuba or other left-wing-led nations. For example, there has been an uptick in the number of cases of Covid-19 in Cuba (as in the United States and everywhere) in recent days, and this is trumpeted by the right-wing enemies of the Cuban Revolution as proving that the pandemic has been “mismanaged” by the Cuban government. In fact, Cuba has done far better than any of the other poorer countries dominated by imperialism in mobilizing its national resources to fight the pandemic, while its access to vital medications and medical equipment (including syringes needed to provide the population with anti-Covid vaccinations) has been severely harmed by the U.S. economic blockade. The reasons for economic difficulties in Cuba are also distorted. This writer was in Cuba twice: in 1995 and 2017. At the time of my first visit, Cuba had been hard hit by the ending of favorable trade arrangements with the Soviet Union and the European socialist countries. Health care and educational institutions were still operating successfully, but there were serious scarcities and electrical blackouts caused by lack of fuel supplies. The United States government took advantage of Cuba’s difficulties by intensifying its attempts at economic strangulation of the island nation by passing the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996. These acts, along with sundry executive orders, had the purpose of strangling the Cuban economy by making it risky for foreign companies to do business with Cuba, especially if such business was to be done on a credit basis, and by making it extremely hard for Cuba to get hard currency to use in foreign trade. In 2017, improvements in living standards were clearly visible. Cuba overcame these problems by negotiating new international trade networks while also launching new productive enterprises, notably in the biomedical field. Then in December 2014, the Obama administration began a program of rapprochement with socialist Cuba. Agreements between Obama and then Cuban President Raul Castro helped to develop Cuba’s tourism industry by making it much easier for U.S. citizens to travel to the island. But much of the legal architecture of the blockade remained. So when I visited Havana in 2017, significant improvements in living standards were clearly visible. Public transportation was visibly improved by the presence of spanking new Chinese-built buses, cultural activities were thriving, and people were well fed, well dressed, and healthy looking, and Havana was clean and orderly. I even saw people walking “designer dogs”! That was in the spring of the first year of the Trump administration. But things went downhill very soon after that, as Trump reversed most of Obama’s rapprochement policies and added new sanctions, among others, restricting the ability of Cuban-origin residents of the United States to send cash remittances to their relatives in Cuba. Using the still unexplained “Havana Embassy Mystery” as an excuse, the Trump administration imposed new anti-Cuba measures and returned Cuba to the list of countries not cooperating with the United States in the so-called war against terror. These things had their impact, and then on top of them came the Covid-19 pandemic, which stopped tourism to Cuba for more than a year. Tourism had become a major generator of vitally needed foreign exchange funds for Cuba, so this was a serious setback. The pandemic, in the context of heightened U.S. attacks on Cuba, has had an extremely negative effect on the Cuban economy. And this is the moment that hardline anti-communists in the United States, which include influential Cuban-American politicians like Senators Rubio and Menendez, have been waiting for since the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959. A policy to “to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of the government.” In 1960, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Lester Mallory outlined the imperialist approach to reversing the Cuban Revolution that is still in force today. Noting the popularity of the revolutionary government, he proposed that this popularity should be undermined by employing “every possible means” which should “be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.” Methods should be employed to “make the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of the government.” And indeed, this is the policy that the United States has maintained against the Cuban people for nearly 61 years. This is why current U.S. claims to be “defending the Cuban people” are particularly repulsive. But this time, simply ignoring international and historical context has not been enough. Making use of the internet and social media, enemies of the Cuban people have flooded the U.S. public with completely fictitious or doctored material. For example, there are multiple instances in which images of pro-government, pro-revolution counter demonstrations in Cuba have been mislabeled as anti-government protests. False information has been put out concerning the size and effects of the protest demonstrations. For a long time, the U.S. government has been funding organized efforts to support dissident activism in Cuba. Recently, there has been a reliance on social media to achieve this aim. Much of the funding comes from U.S. government agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Institute for International Development (USAID), working through a network of right-wing nonprofit and religious organizations in the United States. The Bacardi Family Foundation received $181,699 for its anti-Cuba activities. For example, in 2020 alone, USAID channeled 2.5 million dollars (as far as we know) for subversion in Cuba through dozens of such organizations. Many have connections to right-wing Cuban exile groups such as the Bacardi Family Foundation, which received $181,699. This foundation was established by the family that formerly controlled Cuba’s rum production, pre-revolution. The Cuban Revolution nationalized Bacardi, offering the former owners managerial positions in the socialized enterprise. But like many rich Cubans, the Bacardis decamped to the United States, and since then have been involved in anti-Cuba activities such as a long-running trademark dispute over the right to use the famous “Havana Club” brand name. Another entity, which received $333,122 in 2020, is Canyon Communications, which announces that it is funding young Cuban artists and intellectuals to help them express themselves. A really splendid one is Grupo de Apoyo de la Democracia, Inc., a recipient of $167,107 and like many of these entities based in the right-wing Cuban exile community in Florida; it was accused in 2006 of spending U.S. taxpayer money for illegitimate purposes. The International Republican Institute, connected to the U.S. political party, got $470,267. “Evangelical Christian Humanitarian Outreach to Cuba” got $148,089; its goal is to foment the organizing of independent Evangelical Christian churches in Cuba, a country with plenty of religious congregations of its own. Much of the U.S. money directed at destabilizing Cuba has been directed at funding dissident artists, musicians, and bloggers, giving them the ability to project their message quickly to larger audiences on the island. Some of these artists, like the rapper Yotuel, have strong international networks, including in the Cuban exile circles in Miami. There has been a recent sharp uptick in Covid-19 cases in Cuba. This has also been decontextualized. In fact, overall Cuba has done much better than other Latin American nations in dealing with the contagion, and better than the United States. This recent sharp uptick has not been just a Cuban phenomenon—it is worldwide and is happening in the United States too. For the United States to make it difficult for Cuba to import vital supplies to fight the pandemic, including syringes and medications, is a strange way to “help” the Cuban people. With health services free, sick Cubans are not bankrupted and left homeless by medical bills, as happens in the U.S. The whole issue of Cuban health care, a strong point of Cuba’s socialist system, is constantly distorted. The fact that Cuban doctors don’t drive around in Bentleys has nothing to do with the quality of that country’s health care system. Omitted from bourgeois media accounts of Cuban health care is the fact that medical education in Cuba is completely free, so young doctors are not burdened with impossible student loan repayments as they are in the United States. Instead, they are asked to put time into community service, either in Cuba or, on a volunteer basis, in one of Cuba’s overseas health solidarity missions. And health services are also free, so sick Cubans are not bankrupted and left homeless by medical bills, as happens in the United States. Some so-called pundits express shock that some countries who host the Cuban missions pay Cuba for the service. The truth is that Cuba does not charge anything to provide these services to poor countries, only to countries wealthier than itself. And why not? Why indeed should Cuba subsidize the health care system of a wealthy developed country like Italy? Cuba’s per capita gross domestic product (calculated by the Purchasing Power Parity method) is estimated at $12,300 per year, while Italy’s is $42,492. So Cuba should subsidize Italy? In 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden hinted that if elected, he would return to the Obama administration’s policy of gradual normalization of U.S. relations with Cuba. However, current statements by Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, and other administration figures seem to indicate otherwise. However, the direction of the Biden administration Cuba policy should not be seen as immutable. Biden is getting pressure from the anti-Cuba lobby based in South Florida and New Jersey, an old story. This pressure is deliberately exerted in such a way as to threaten the Democratic Party’s hold on the White House and its majorities in Congress and state legislatures. Friends of the Cuban people must find more effective ways of exerting our own counter pressure. Here are some: *Act as a truth squad. Especially those of us who have been to Cuba and follow events there closely should avail ourselves of every opportunity to speak out when wrong information about Cuba is peddled in the press, radio, and television, and especially on social media. Write letters to the editor, call into radio and TV programs, and put out correct information on all online and social media platforms. *Support positive legislation on Cuba by contacting your federal senators and representatives, asking them to sign on to the following bills, and then to work to get them passed: S 249, United States-Cuba Trade Act; S 1694, Freedom to Export to Cuba Act; and HR 3625, United States Cuba Relations Normalization Act. Legislative action on Cuba can be found on the website of the organization ACERE. *Get your city council, state legislature, or other public or private body to pass a resolution denouncing the U.S. blockade of Cuba and demanding normalization of relations with the island nation. More than a score of city councils and state legislatures, including the city council of the country’s third largest city, Chicago, have already done so. *Support the many organizations working to help the Cuban people overcome the imperialist blockade, such as IFCO/Pastors for Peace and many others. *Join the international campaign to award the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to the outstanding Cuban international health care solidarity campaign of Cuba’s Henry Reeve Brigade. *Support specific campaigns to help Cuba fight the Covid-19 pandemic, like the recent one to send syringes to Cuba. AuthorEmile Schepers is a veteran civil and immigrant rights activist. Emile Schepers was born in South Africa and has a doctorate in cultural anthropology from Northwestern University. He has worked as a researcher and activist in urban, working-class communities in Chicago since 1966. He is active in the struggle for immigrant rights, in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and a number of other issues. He now writes from Northern Virginia. This article was produced by CPUSA. Archives July 2021 7/28/2021 Western Left Intellectuals Love Affair with Colour Revolution in Cuba. By: Josh BergeronRead NowThe Open Letter Left Noam Chomsky, Gilbert Achcar, Paul Le Blanc, Suzi Weissman, Tithi Bhattacharya, Charlie Post, Robert Brenner, Gayatri Spivak, Alex Callinicos, Ashley Smith, Eric Toussaint, Marc Cooper, Etienne Balibar. These are a handful of the over 500 signatories on an open letter directed to the blockaded Cuban government on July 12th demanding “respect for the democratic rights of all Cuban people” and the release of “dissident Marxist” Frank García Hernández and his comrades from jail after the protests of July 11th. These signatories are high-profile academic socialists in the US and Europe, featured prominently in the publication catalogue of Verso and Haymarket Books, or on the editorial boards of online journals like New Politics, Tempest, Spectre, Socialist Worker, and other ex-ISO-now-DSA, SEP, or UK SWP related outlets. Their work also frequently appears in more mainstream left outlets, such as Jacobin and the Nation. Their opinions on the left reach a wide audience and, in some cases, carry significant weight. Their petition circulation effort drew major support on social media in the days after the initial protests in Cuba, helping to stitch together a left-reinforcement to the edifice of the mainstream press, which described the event as an uprising by “political dissidents” against an “oppressive bureaucratic regime” in the pursuit of democracy and freedom of expression. The definition of “freedom” pursued and the political orientation of the protesters in question differed between the tales spun by the New York Times and those of the Socialist Worker, but the story was the same: Repressive government arbitrarily detains political dissidents. And while these signatories differ among themselves over their characterization of the Cuban government and its revolutionary tradition—ranging from the view that Cuba is “state capitalist” that harbors no revolutionary potential to the view that the once-revolutionary state has become an intransigent bureaucracy that is still preferable to the neoliberal model—all seem to find common ground with co-signer Gilbert Achcar’s warning about “the anti-imperialism of fools.” Achcar condemns those who oppose US imperialism no matter its target, because he believes this misses the “nuanced” view that US imperialism might be instrumentalized by popular movements in the pursuit of their own liberation.  Gilbert Achcar has been criticised for his paid work training the UK Military’s “Defense Cultural Specialist Unit” in a series of seminars that he organized for his employer the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Achcar was also flown to Australia as a guest speaker at Socialist Alternative’s Marxism 2014 conference in Melbourne. Our “knee-jerk” rejection of the notion that any positive could ever come from the machinations of empire, in Achcar’s formulation, puts us in the camp of “defending murderous regimes.” Ostensibly, sharing co-signature real estate with the likes of Achcar would suggest that the other petitioners agree with him that anti-imperialism is not always a principled position and the events in Cuba are an example of a situation in which they do not want to end up on the side of “fools.” So without further investigation, they and 500 others signed an open letter condemning the Cuban government for its “repression and arbitrary detentions” of “critical communists.“ AN ALTERNATE VIEW FROM THE GROUND On July 17th, a different narrative emerged from the mouths of Frank García Hernández’s Cuban colleagues themselves. The Comunistas collective Editorial Board, of which Frank is a founder, published an account of events that was much more balanced and far less negative in its appraisal of the Cuban government and its response to the protests than the narrative that was promoted by the petition’s signatories. Rather than a repressive response to an organic anti-state uprising, they portray the events of July 11th as unprecedented protests with a variety of origins and compositions, some legitimate and others manufactured. In their account, the protests were composed of three flanks: a small group of US-funded counter-revolutionaries with massive reach and influence, a small group of anti-state intellectuals with legitimate grievances that were co-opted by the reactionaries, and a much larger group of “non-political” demonstrators demanding an end to austerity and shortages—a crisis which the Comunistas Editorial Board attributes, with some reservations, almost entirely to the exacerbating US blockade and global pandemic. In short, the most explicitly anti-government slogans and orientations were crafted and carried by the US-funded counter-revolutionaries, whereas the majority of the demonstrators lacked a cohesive political consciousness and simply wanted a reprieve from their very real material hardships. As the editorial board asserts, “The protests did not represent a majority. Most of the Cuban population continues to support the government.”  A demonstration in Havana with thousands of people in a show of support for the Cuban revolution | Morning Star Notably, this closely mirrors the public address of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who stated, “The protests involve many revolutionary citizens who want an explanation for the current situation in the country, but are also contaminated by groups of opportunists who take advantage of the current crisis to undermine order and generate chaos.” And while Díaz-Canel expressed full faith in the Cuban people to engage in productive dialogue to resolve the present crises, his calls for revolutionaries to take to the streets to defend the nation against opportunistic attacks and US-financed subversion campaigns was met with scorn from the self-described “anti-campist” or “third campist” Western left. For these Western left critics of the Cuban state, Díaz-Canel’s calls for popular defense of national sovereignty represented a cynical demand by the Cuban state for its supporters to engage in vigilante violence against dissidents like García Hernández. The fact that García Hernández’s comrades—who engage in frequent criticism of the Cuban government themselves—did not subscribe to this narrative of events nevertheless did not discourage the petitioners from propagating the perspective that Frank’s arrest was the smoking gun evidence of Cuba’s authoritarian round up of “critical communists.” ARBITRARY DETENTION OR SAFEGUARDING THE REVOLUTION? No such round-up took place. The arrests that did occur followed outbreaks of violence and vandalism after mostly peaceful and unharassed protests in a number of cities, which the Comunistas collective describes as: “Violent groups carried out acts of vandalism, attacking communist militants and government supporters with sticks and stones.” The Cuban police and defenders of the revolution engaged in kind. In other words, according to this collective of Cuban critics of the state, the violence that resulted in scattered arrests were largely carried out by counter-revolutionary forces against government supporters and other communist partisans. This is a far cry from the narratives emerging out of the US corporate media and academic left circles, which characterized the violence as a one-sided repressive crackdown by an intransigent bureaucratic “regime” and its paid supporters against dissidents striving for freedom and plenty. Nevertheless, Frank García Hernández and some others were arrested—the catalyst for the petition. Frank’s comrades at the Comunistas collective address this too. It turns out, Frank was not arrested for being a “dissident” participant in the protests. In fact, Frank is a member of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) who merely watched but did not partake in the protests, and was arrested by “confusion” as he put it. Frank and another intellectual named in the petition, LGBTQ activist Maykel González Vivero, who did participate in the protests, were picked up after a nearby act of counter-revolutionary violence resulted in injuries and vandalism late in the night. By Frank’s own admission, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The next day they easily proved their innocence and were released without incident. According to his colleagues at Comunistas collective, “During his little more than 24 hours of detention, Frank affirms that he did not receive physical abuse, nor any type of torture.” No other person associated with the publication was arrested or targeted. But here a key detail emerges. Frank’s release actually preceded the publication of the open letter demanding his release by his “comrades” in the US and Europe. And while Comunistas collective maintained their own criticisms of the Cuban government, their characterization of the genesis of the protests, the response of the government to the protests, and the appraisal of the revolutionary process in general, differ significantly from the ostensibly “progressive” critics of the Cuban government in the US and Europe who organized the petition to release their friend who had in fact already been released. Again, these significant discrepancies have not been addressed by any of the prominent signatories and circulators of the petition. In fact, on July 17th, the day that the Comunistas blog collective published their retrospective of the protests and arrests, some of the US-based petition endorsers republished the original petition in Tempest Magazine without mention of any of the above critical divergences from on-the-ground reports. Further, the editorial board of Tempest broadened the appeal to a call for the release of “all detainees in Cuba.” Even the Comunistas collective demanded only the release of the detainees “as long as they have not committed actions that have threatened the lives of other people.” In the week that followed the July 11th protests, the Open Letter Left were confronted with an excess of evidence and investigative research documenting the existence of US CIA front subversion projects, tens of millions of dollars funnelled into counter-revolutionary activities, coup-propagating social media bot farms, and other examples of hybrid warfare that served as the backdrop of the unrest. And yet, they maintained their political line that all arrests were arbitrary and illegitimate. One signatory even asserted that the duty of the left in the West is to support all such protests, “whatever people’s politics involved in these struggles– against whatever states and ruling classes, even those who falsely claim the mantle of ‘socialism.'” This is, of course, a tacit endorsement of the reactionary tail that wags the dog of these astroturfed “color revolutions,” disguised as they are as organic movements of workers and oppressed peoples. WHITHER OPPOSITION TO EMPIRE Taken in isolation, a charitable reading could view signing such an open letter as a political slip-up brewed in the fog of war that is a developing foreign event. But for many of the most prominent left signatories, this was the only public statement or call to action made regarding the unprecedented events in Cuba. Too few matched their outrage of the arrests with equal outrage over the ongoing illegal blockade of the island by the US, and even fewer (close to none) circulated open letters or petitions calling for anti-imperialist solidarity with Cuban sovereignty against the now well-documented imperial provocations that played an important role in the outbreak and international media coverage of the protests in Cuba. Even after statements of support for the gains of the Cuban revolution came from all corners of the world, demanding an end to the illegal blockade and hybrid warfare, the signatories spared little attention for the very real threat of escalating imperialist intervention. When the mayor of Miami called on the US government to bomb Havana, none of the open letter endorsers change their tune. None came to the defence of Black Lives Matter after the organization’s condemnation of the US blockade brought them heavy backlash. At most, as in the petition itself, the blockade and imperial provocations were mentioned as an almost unrelated preamble to the real point, despite their absolute centrality. No open letter was signed and circulated by this group of Western academic leftists demanding an end to the blockade after the 29th consecutive UN General Assembly majority vote to end the economic siege in June, and neither was there an effort on their part to circulate the campaign to send millions of much-needed syringes to the island to help put Cuban-made COVID vaccines into Cuban arms. When President Joe Biden announced that he would not change course on Cuba and called the nation a “failed state” without reference to the blockade, they issued no scathing open letter. They did not collectively come to the defence of a patriotic Cuban woman who was censored on Twitter after she demanded that the UN Human Rights Council stop using her image as the symbol for the anti-government protesters, when in reality she was in the streets of Cuba defending her revolution. Similarly, many signatories silence on the ongoing violent US-backed state repression of a months-long popular uprising in Colombia, or the years-long popular uprising in Haiti, grew more pronounced with the circulation of this petition. Their priorities were laid bare. When confronted on social media, those that disagreed were accused of supporting “repression” and “ignoring voices on the ground.” No intellectually honest reference was made to the voices on the ground of the 100,000 Cubans who took to the streets of Havana in defence of their revolution. No mea culpas were issued after even Reuters was forced to admit that the media had fallen for lies and manipulations about the protests and the repression that ostensibly followed. Their perception of events, one must assume, remains the same as it was on July 12th. Their own political orthodoxy, it seems, left little room for “dissident Marxists” engaging them in criticism among comrades. On July 22nd, US President Joe Biden announced a new round of sanctions on Cuba, which he promised were “just the beginning.” The Biden administration’s intransigence—and its cynical hypocrisy in denouncing “mass detentions and sham trials” in Cuba that presumably does not describe the US-run torture camp known as Guantanamo Bay—saw a rapidly organized response in the pages of the New York Times on July 23rd. In a full-page advert, the People’s Forum, Code Pink, the Answer Coalition, and over 400 “former heads of state, politicians, intellectuals, scientists, members of the clergy, artists, musicians and activists from across the globe,” issued an open letter to the US government demanding the end to its economic warfare against the Cuban people. Here is an example of the kind of public statement with prominent endorsers that places the responsibility for human rights abuses at the feet of US imperialism, and that expresses solidarity with the working and oppressed people of the globe who resist empire. A rare few signatories of the July 12th petition directed against the Cuban government did sign the “Let Cuba Live” letter in the NYT, including Noam Chomsky. One can only wonder what the political priorities are of those who condemn the imperialism of their own government only after first making demands and criticisms upon the targets of that imperialism. BEWARE THE “ANTI-ANTI-IMPERIALIST LEFT” No matter the developments of the last two weeks, the July 12th petition denouncing the Cuban government has not been renounced by any of its signatories. File this away as one more example of Western academic socialists and progressives being captured by the ideological manipulations of US State Department propaganda and their own internalized colonial chauvinism toward revolutionary projects in the Global South. Other targets of these petitions and open letters in recent years and months have been Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Notably, all are targets of ongoing and well-documented subversion operations, economic sanctions, and electoral interference by the United States, something that is rarely remarked upon by the signatories. The outraged open letter from prominent leftist intellectuals making demands upon anti-imperialist nations and other targets of Western imperialism is one of the most insidious and effective propaganda efforts by non-state actors in the imperial core, as it serves to confuse and disorient the broader left within the belly of the beast, weakening our capacity to collectively undermine and resist the US empire, thus relegating the burden of the struggle against imperialism to the revolutionary peoples of the Global South alone. This is a dereliction of our revolutionary duties. As progressives and revolutionaries living within the empire, we must express an unqualified and unwavering solidarity with Cuba and all targets of US imperialism, and we must organize to put an end to US aggression, political interference, and economic strangulation so that Cuba and all working and oppressed peoples of the world can breathe. A version of this article first appeared in Fight Back News. Red Ant publishes this with permission of the author. AuthorJosh Bergeron This article was republished from Red Ant. Archives July 2021 7/28/2021 Let Cuba Live—The Movement Standing Up to Biden’s Maximum Pressure Campaign. By: Manolo De Los Santos & Vijay PrashadRead Now On July 22, U.S. President Joe Biden and his Vice President Kamala Harris released a “fact sheet” on U.S. “measures” against Cuba. The release from the White House said that Cuba was a “top priority for the Biden-Harris administration.” On March 9, Biden’s Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “A Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.” On July 12, NBC News reporter Kelly O’Donnell asked Psaki if Biden had reassessed his priorities regarding Cuba after the protests on the island the previous day. “In terms of where it ranks in a priority order,” Psaki replied, “I’m not in a position to offer that, but I can tell you that we will be closely engaged.” Not a priority, closely engaged, top priority: matters have moved rapidly from March 9 to July 22. What moved the Biden-Harris administration to focus so quickly on Cuba? On the morning of July 11, some people in Cuba—notably in the town of San Antonio de los Baños—took to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with the social and economic problems created by the U.S.-imposed blockade and by the global pandemic. The reaction to these events in Havana and in Washington, D.C., is instructive: Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel heard the news of the protests, got into a car, and drove the 40 miles to San Antonio de los Baños, where he met with the people; while in Washington, Biden used the protest to call for the overthrow of the Cuban government. U.S. government-funded nongovernmental organizations and Cuban American groups hastened to take advantage of the frenzy, excited by the possibility of regime change in Cuba. On the evening of July 11, tens of thousands of Cubans rallied across Cuba to defend their revolutionary process. Since that Sunday evening, Cuba has been calm. Maximum Pressure Eleven days after those events, the Biden administration announced its “measures” for the island. There are two kinds of pressure engineered by the United States government: tightening the blockade and lies. The Biden administration deepened the U.S. blockade that has been in place since 1960. Elements of this deepening include the continued ban on the freedom of people in the United States to make remittance payments to relatives and friends on the island. In October 2020, the United States forced the closure of 400 Western Union offices in Cuba. By this act, the United States denied Cuba between $2 billion and $3 billion in annual remittance payments (Cuba is not among the top 10 Latin American countries that rely on such income). In December 1950, the U.S. government created the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which manages the sanctions programs. Sanctions are a key element in the U.S. government’s “maximum pressure” campaign against its adversaries. Cuban banks and Cuban businesses as well as Cuban government officials populate the OFAC list alongside businesses and officials from about 30 other countries. In the “fact sheet,” the U.S. government mentioned the addition of “one Cuban individual,” namely Cuba’s minister of defense. He is accused of “facilitating the repression of peaceful, pro-democratic protests in Cuba.” The term “repression” is used loosely. In 2020, police officers in the United States killed 1,021 people, almost three people per day. There is no state violence at this scale anywhere in the world, let alone in Cuba. Who Is Álvaro López Miera? Cuba’s minister of defense is Álvaro López Miera, who took this post in April 2021. In 1957, at the age of 14, López Miera went up to the Sierra Maestra to join the rebels against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. He was motivated by his parents, who had been partisans in the Spanish Civil War, and who fled to Santiago de Cuba when the Spanish Republic was defeated by the fascists in 1939. López Miera was allowed to participate in the Second Front led by Raúl Castro, but only in the education department. He spent the next two years teaching peasants in the Sierra how to read and write. Subsequently, López Miera worked in the Cuban military, volunteering to be part of the anti-colonial Operation Carlota in Angola in 1975 (where he returned in 1987) and to be part of the defense of Ethiopia against Somalia in the Ogaden War in 1977-78. He is now sanctioned by the U.S. government. Diplomacy of Lies The “fact sheet” casually repeats several accusations against Cuba that are simply not true. For one, the U.S. government accuses Cuba of the “intentional blocking of access to the Internet.” Countless reports make this accusation, but their evidence is scant (for instance, the Open Observatory of Network Interference found that as of July 23, the Cuban government had blocked 86 websites, many of them U.S. government-funded regime change sites, while the United States had blocked 2,661 sites); in fact, many U.S. internet corporations—such as Zoom—prevent Cubans from using their technology. Secondly, Biden’s administration repeats the fantasy of a 2017 “sonic attack” on the U.S. diplomatic officials in Havana. After the July 11 events, the U.S. government circulated a one-page “Joint Statement on Cuba” among members of the Organization of American States (OAS) to get them to condemn Cuba. On July 21, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, who released the leaked draft on Twitter, strongly criticized the “interventionist maneuvers” of the United States “to intensify the blockade” against Cuba. On July 24, after Biden’s “fact sheet” and “joint statement” made the rounds, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that the Washington-dominated OAS needed to be replaced by an organization that is not “a lackey of anyone.” These comments were made on the birthday of Simón Bolívar, known in Latin America as the Liberator. From the port of Veracruz, Mexico, two ships—Liberator and Papaloapan—left laden with food, medicines and other goods for Cuba. Russia sent 88 metric tons of supplies on two aircraft. Let Cuba Live On July 23, a full-page statement appeared on page 5 of the New York Times under the headline, “Let Cuba Live.” The advertisement, paid for by the Peoples Forum, was signed by more than 400 prominent people including Susan Sarandon, Emma Thompson, Noam Chomsky, Mark Ruffalo, Jane Fonda, and Danny Glover. It was an open letter to Biden asking him to end Trump’s “coercive measures” and “begin the process of ending the embargo.” Most of the 193 member states of the United Nations made public statements to defend Cuba against the “maximum pressure” campaign. In a statement, the 120 members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) “strongly condemn[ed] the international campaign organized… with the purpose of destabilizing the Republic of Cuba.” The NAM called for an end to the U.S. blockade. The White House has so far responded neither to the open letter nor to the NAM statement. AuthorManolo De Los Santos is a researcher and a political activist. For 10 years, he worked in the organization of solidarity and education programs to challenge the United States’ regime of illegal sanctions and blockades. Based out of Cuba for many years, Manolo has worked toward building international networks of people’s movements and organizations. In 2018, he became the founding director of the People’s Forum in New York City, a movement incubator for working-class communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad. He also collaborates as a researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and is a Globetrotter/Peoples Dispatch fellow. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives July 2021  Sen. Mark Warner, Virginia Democratic Senator. The AFL-CIO is pressuring him to change his position to one in favor of the Pro Act. | AP WASHINGTON—Organized labor’s intensive drive to lobby senators, from supportive Democrats to resistant Republicans, to pass the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, revved up the week of July 17-24. It featured rallies, phone banks, and sometimes virtual events in cities ranging from Orlando, Fla., to Fairbanks, Alaska. And the workers picked up notable backing from groups of faith leaders from Judaism, the Catholic Church, Islam, and mainline Protestantism. One non-signer: The right-wing Southern Baptist Convention. The 21 supportive groups cast worker rights as a moral issue, too. And the eight Catholic groups’ stand agrees with the strong, frequent pro-worker pro-union statements of Pope Francis I. “Our belief in the intrinsic worth of both work and workers leads us to strongly support the PRO Act, which will strengthen and expand the right of workers to bargain collectively, form unions, and engage in collective action without fear of retaliation from their employers. Such assurances are also better for employers as they contribute to better productivity, mutual collaboration, and sustainability,” they said. The theme of the pro-PRO Act drive is “Workers’ rights are civil rights.” Details about the legislation, rallies and events are on a new website: www.proact.aflcio.org. Whether all the pressure will convince enough GOPers to defect from the party’s anti-worker, anti-union line is uncertain. And there are still two reluctant Democrats to persuade: Arizonan Kyrsten Sinema and Virginia’s Mark Warner. The Northern Virginia AFL-CIO holds “weekly Wednesday” demonstrations near Warner’s home in the D.C. suburbs. Without those two, plus 10 of the evenly split Senate’s 50 Republicans, a GOP filibuster threat by worker-hater GOP leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would halt the legislation, the most wide-ranging pro-worker labor law reform since the original 1935 National Labor Relations Act, in its tracks. “This PRO Act Week of Action is another full-court press. America’s labor movement is showing up in every corner of our country to demand a fix to our outdated labor laws that are nearly 100 years old,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “Our members and all working people are committed to making the PRO Act the law of the land this year.” That week of action led to rallies and events both thanking supporters—such as a planned July 23 rally at the two Illinois Democrats’ offices in Chicago—and lobbying the others. Those included a press conference in front of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s Orlando office, and rallies on June 20 in Juneau, Anchorage, and Fairbanks, Alaska, especially targeting Republican Lisa Murkowski. Federal figures put Alaska fourth in the U.S. in union density, behind Hawaii, New York, and Rhode Island. Those three states each have two Democratic senators, who already support the PRO Act. The religious groups’ letter cast the PRO Act in economic as well as moral terms, pointing out how its passage would help workers of color in particular, by invalidating “the harmful legacy of” state Jim Crow-era so-called “right to work” laws. Bosses use those laws to weaken unions financially and to divide and conquer workers by playing off race against race. “Our current labor laws are no longer effective in protecting the lives and dignity of workers and fall woefully short of allowing workers to productively advocate for their needs from a position of mutuality with employers,” the groups wrote senators. “As union membership has fallen due to counter-productive laws and amendments, inequality has skyrocketed leaving the working class with little constructive power over their own economic security; and thus, also harming sustainable business models.  Pope Francis, an outspoken proponent of labor organizing rights. | Andrew Medichini/AP “The PRO Act addresses these current inadequacies by empowering workers to effectively exercise their freedom to organize and bargain. Critically, it also ends employers’ practice of punishing striking workers, strengthens the National Labor Relations Board and allows it to hold corporations accountable for retaliating against workers, and would help us collectively do better for all our needs by repealing” the federal law—which congressional Republicans enacted in 1947—legalizing states’ RTW statutes. Those state laws “reinforce Jim Crow by maintaining labor segregation and further exploiting workers of color,” since eight of the ten states with the highest percentage of Black residents—and workers—are RTW states, they note. “These restrictions strip funding and bargaining power from unions, which have a devastating effect on the economic stability of people of color,” the faith leaders declare. Eight Catholic groups signed the letter: The Catholic Labor Network, the U.S. provinces of the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker of D.C., the Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, Pax Christi USA, the Franciscan Action Network, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and the National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. Other faith groups signing the letter were: the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights and the National Council of Jewish Women (all Jewish), the American Friends Service Committee and the Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers), the Islamic Council of North America’s social justice commission, the National Council of Churches of Christ, the Presbyterian Church’s Office of Public Witness, the Progressive National Baptist Convention (Black Baptists), the Episcopalian, United Methodist, Unitarian churches, and the United Church of Christ. AuthorMark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of Press Associates Inc. (PAI), a union news service in Washington, D.C. that he has headed since 1999. Previously, he worked as Washington correspondent for the Ottaway News Service, as Port Jervis bureau chief for the Middletown, NY Times Herald Record, and as a researcher and writer for Congressional Quarterly. Mark obtained his BA in public policy from the University of Chicago and worked as the University of Chicago correspondent for the Chicago Daily News. This article was republished from People's World. Archives July 2021 |
Archives
May 2022
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
