From the Parker-Gutierrez Campaign
Workers have a right to see Cuba; we won't let Bush take it
away
The Parker-Gutierrez Campaign is in total
solidarity with the more than 200 U.S. activists who are
challenging the blockade of Cuba today. In fact, two of Workers
World Party's candidates--Teresa Gutierrez for vice president
and LeiLani Dowell for Congress in San Francisco--are among
those returning to the U.S. from Cuba on July 19 after
participating in solidarity events there.
The U.S. government, under both Repub lican and Democratic
administrations, has tried to isolate Cuba and break its
economy ever since its 1959 revolution freed the island from
imperialist domination.
The groups returning from Cuba--IFCO/Pastors for Peace,
African Awaren ess Association and the Venceremos Brigade-are
defying the latest efforts of the Bush administration to
tighten the blockade. Wash ington has imposed new restrictions
on travel to Cuba, including by Cuban- Americans with family
members there, and holds heavy fines over the heads of anyone
who visits the socialist island without getting a special
license.
Why are the reactionaries so afraid of Cuba? Why don't they
want us to see for ourselves what it is like?
The Cuban Revolution transformed the lives of the working
people. The rich owners of casinos and sugar plantations, who
stayed in power through the bloody U.S.-backed Batista
dictatorship, are gone. (Many went to Miami, where they have
become a political base of the far right.) The Cuban people now
own everything, enjoy free, universal health care and
education, and have continued to develop their economy despite
every attempt from Washington to crush them.
Cuba's medical prowess is remarkable, especially for a small
country. It has the lowest infant mortality rate of any
developing country in the whole world-proving its overall
success in keeping the people healthy. It has developed new
vaccines so effective in fighting cancer that U.S.
pharmaceuticals are right now scrambling for the contracts to
develop and market them here.
Workers here, too, deserve:
* universal, free health care;
* free, quality education at all levels;
*jobs, not jails;
* affirmative action to erase centuries of racism;
* solidarity with the world's peoples, not a blockade of
Cuba or a war against Iraq.
The Parker-Gutierrez Campaign says: End the blockade of
Cuba! Fight to change the U.S. from an exploiting imperialist
superpower to a workers' powerhouse of progress and
equality!
Reprinted from the July 29, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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