Young people, workers, farmers, and all others opposed to the U.S. government's policies toward Cuba have an opportunity to take up the call by the National Network on Cuba to build the October 14-21 national mobilization against Washington's goals.
Organizing for the regional mobilizations in Chicago and San Francisco on October 14, building local activities in many cities that week, and maximizing participation in the October 21 march in New York City should become the central priority of all those who despise Wall Street's attempts to bring the Cuban people to their knees.
Students and other youth who recently returned from the Cuba Lives! international youth festival have already set an example. Dozens of these young people are writing articles, doing radio shows, and speaking at report-back meetings across the United States urging a big turnout for the October actions.
Washington continues to act on its almost 36-year-long strategic goal to weaken, divide, and ultimately overthrow the government and communist leadership in Cuba.
Travel restrictions imposed by the Clinton administration a year ago remain in force. The violation of the constitutional right to travel of all those living in the United States is one more proof of how much the U.S. rulers fear the powerful example of the Cuban revolution. Congress is debating legislation that would significantly intensify the U.S. economic war against the people of Cuba. And the big-business press continues its campaign of lies and slanders against the Cuban revolution.
From the day the socialist character of the revolution became clear in 1960, the main problem for the U.S. rulers has been the fact that the working class in Cuba has confidence in itself and its communist vanguard. Today that working class in its majority still remains capable and determined to defend the revolution's course and its government.
The outpouring of half a million Cubans on August 5 was a bitter reminder of this fact for Wall Street and its imperialist allies the world over. In fact, the big-business press has expressed its discouragement over this huge march, a stabilization of the Cuban economy for the first time in five years, and recent speeches by Cuban president Fidel Castro defending the revolution's working-class course.
For the same reasons that Clinton, Helms, and company hate and fear the determination of the Cuban people to make decisions affecting their lives and set their own course, working people and youth should defend Cuba and its socialist revolution.
The best way to do this right now is to join the National Network, its dozens of local affiliates, and other organizations and individuals in building the protests in October.
We must reach out to striking workers, other trade unionists, working farmers, defenders of women's rights, youth demanding freedom for Mumia-Abu Jamal, and every democratic-minded person and urge them to join the actions demanding: