Part of GDC’s International May Day 2024 Campaign
Viva la Revolución! When millions of Cuban workers shout these words during today’s May Day celebrations they honor Fidel Castro’s legacy and the 1959 revolution. They also honor the living revolution in Cuba: an ongoing socialist project led by working people everyday.
Cuba is a country of and for its people. Working class people hold leading government positions and dictate how Cuban society is organized. This is rooted in the workers’ parliaments of the 1990s, where workers discussed problems and debated solutions at national and local levels. Over 200,000 proposals from 80,000 parliaments led to several changes in Cuban society.
Proletarian democracy is still in use today. In 2019 the Cuban Constitution was ratified with input from 135,000 public meetings held in neighborhoods, union halls and workplaces. Cuba’s worker-led government has implemented socialist programs like free education and healthcare, equal land distribution, progressive family rights and de-privatized housing: 90% of Cubans own their home, and selling homes for profit is illegal; all farm work is unionized, and urban farms have made Cuba’s food production largely self-sufficient.
The ongoing revolution is part of Cuba’s fight against U.S. hegemony, enacted on Cuba through a decades-long blockade and oppressive sanctions. U.S.-based organizers can support Cuba materially by bringing medicines into the country. From the belly of the beast, we must organize to end the blockade, lift all sanctions, remove Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list, and end the US’ illegal occupation of Guantanamo.
The same powers that enforce the blockade are also funding the genocide in Gaza and oppressing working people in the US. Seeing the connection between all struggles against colonialism and imperialism, Cuba has sent doctors and soldiers to support revolutionary liberation movements in places like Nicaragua, The Congo and Angola.
We must extend the same international solidarity from within the US empire. On International Workers Day, we recognize that support for Cuba means supporting our own liberation and that of oppressed people everywhere.
Viva Cuba! Viva Palestina! Viva Haiti!
Learn more:
Podcast: Blowback, season 2
Articles
On a new international economic order: Because We Must!
On May Day: Defying Gravity: Reflections on the 2023 Cuba May Day Brigade
On the family code: Cubans just ratified the world’s most progressive Family Code
On housing: Cuba Opens to Private Housing but Preserves Housing Rights
On agriculture:: On land reform in Cuba & Urban Farm-Fed Cities: Lessons from Cuba’s Organopónicos
On medicine: Americans could beat lung cancer if US lifted blockade on Cuba
Interview: Assata Shakur interviewed by Pastors For Peace (2000)
Speech: Notes for the Study of the Ideology of the Cuban Revolution, Ernesto Che Guevara
Further resources
National Network on Cuba
Michigan Action for Cuba Committee
Progressive International
Belly of the Beast