The following statement was issued February 28 by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes on behalf of an SWP National Committee leadership conference held in New York City February 24-26. Participating in that gathering were members of the party's National Committee as well as an elected delegate from each party branch and from the National Committee of the Young Socialists.
Now is the time for workers, farmers, and youth everywhere to organize emergency picket lines in front of U.S. government buildings, as well as public forums, speak- outs, press conferences, and other protests, to demand an immediate halt to the military provocations, economic assaults, and campaign of lies orchestrated by Washington against the socialist revolution in Cuba.
Now is the time to take time off work and go all out to help distribute and sell the Militant, Perspectiva Mundial, and Pathfinder books, which tell the truth about Cuba.
What each reader of the Militant does in the next few days can make a difference. Acting now can win more people to the struggle against the Clinton administration's escalating threats, provocations, and economic warfare against Cuba.
By shooting down two belligerent planes that had invaded Cuban airspace and were headed toward Havana - the second such violation that day, and the 10th since May 1994 - the Cuban revolutionary armed forces did much more than carry out a legitimate act of self-defense by a revolutionary people and government repeatedly targeted for aggression by the U.S. rulers for more than 37 years.
This action struck a blow for the interests of working people and the oppressed in the United States and throughout the world.
Cuban revolutionaries did not allow the campaign of U.S.- engineered provocations to pick up momentum. They know it is an illusion to think that acting meekly in the face of incessant probing and pushing by the Yankee colossus is the road to peace. By standing up to Washington and the counterrevolutionary forces it nurtures and protects, the Cuban revolutionaries helped counter the U.S. rulers' preparations for war.
Working people around the world will benefit from these deeds by our Cuban brothers and sisters and their revolutionary government.
Washington can't act with impunity
The most mistaken and dangerous conclusion workers can
draw from the U.S. government's aggressive acts is that the
imperialist rulers can act with impunity. That when the U.S.
capitalists decide to use their armies, cops, and other
repressive state institutions against working people, their
power is simply overawing, they are bound to have their way.
If that were true, then no victory would ultimately be possible in any struggle against declining wages, worsening living and job conditions, racism, sexism, or the many other forms of exploitation and oppression inherent to capitalism. Imperialism's march toward fascist brutalization and a catastrophic world war would be inevitable, whatever the twists and turns along the way.
Ever since the opening of the revolutionary struggle for power in Cuba in the early 1950s, however, Cuban working people and the communist leadership they forged have consistently, and without bravado or adventurism, given the lie to any such notion.
Against enormous odds, they emerged victorious over the U.S.-backed Batista tyranny in January 1959.
They turned back Washington's multiple attempts - including by means of the Bay of Pigs mercenary landing in April 1961, and then the so-called missile crisis in October 1962 - to destroy the Cuban revolution in its opening years. They forced the U.S. rulers to back off initial hopes for a successful invasion, in face of what Patrick Buchanan - the ultrarightist candidate for the Republican presidential nomination - conceded February 25 on the CBS talk show "Face the Nation" would be "extraordinary" casualties inflicted on U.S. forces in such an action.
They've consistently refused to honor U.S. imperialism's claims to a piece of Cuban territory in Guantánamo, forcibly occupied by Washington for close to a century.
And Cuban internationalists have stood side by side with battling workers and peasants from Vietnam, to the Middle East, to Angola, to Central and South America, in resisting imperialist-organized tyranny and aggression.
Who can doubt that it has now become more difficult to recruit pilots and others to carry out provocations and terrorist actions against the Cuban revolution?
That fact, and what it registers about the relationship of class forces in this hemisphere, weighs in the scales on the side of every working person and revolutionary-minded young person who takes up the struggle against imperialist pillage, landlordism, and capitalism anywhere in the world.
What's more, that political reality is in the interests of every unionist, fighter for Black freedom, opponent of women's oppression, and others combating social injustice and inequality in the United States and other imperialist countries.
Isn't that also the lesson of British prime minister John Major's recent announcement of a date to begin all-party talks on Ireland, including representatives of Sinn Fein? Only the determined refusal of Irish working people and youth to submit to the yoke of the British crown and its military occupation of Northern Ireland brought about this day.
And wasn't the five-year-long intifada in Palestine what made it impossible for Tel Aviv to establish a "Greater Israel" on the basis of its military conquests in the 1967 war?
When working people organize together and act, even facing great odds, we can push the exploiters back.
Bipartisan war drive
The war drive against Cuba today is bipartisan and is in
fact spearheaded by prominent Democrats. President Clinton,
Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and UN representative
Madeleine Albright are leading the campaign of lies and
organizing to expand the economic war against Cuba.
Bourgeois public opinion ranges from those who identify with the course of the White House to those who wring their hands and "regret the tragedy"or "deplore the loss of life." But the great tragedy was in fact averted when the Cuban air force prevented the intruders from carrying through their hostile mission.
There are growing stakes for working people and youth right now in opposing each and every hostile measure by Washington against the Cuban government and people. On February 28, Clinton and Congress announced agreement on further tightening of the U.S. government's decades-long economic embargo of Cuba, uniting around support for the reactionary Helms-Burton bill. And on February 26, the White House announced the suspension of charter air travel from the United States to Cuba, along with measures contrary to workers' rights and interests such as further curtailing travel by Cuban diplomats in the United States.
How far Washington will go will be determined by the response to its announced measures - especially within the United States.
Working people should demand an immediate end to the brutal embargo.
We must call for the U.S. government to repeal every aspect of its unconstitutional ban on travel to Cuba once and for all.
We must demand that Washington grant visas to Cubans wishing to visit the United States, and that it lift the travel restrictions on Cuban government officials living within U.S. borders.
And we must oppose the plans announced by the White House to expand the operations of the cynically named Radio Martí, which is in fact the voice of the Yankee empire that will always resent "losing" Cuba.
Economic recovery in Cuba
Washington is taking these measures out of weakness.
Beginning in 1990, Cuba's aid and trade at preferential
prices with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe collapsed,
triggering what the Cubans refer to as the "special period."
But six years later, working people in Cuba are stronger
after organizing to confront the consequences of the crisis
and putting their country on the road to economic recovery.
Slowly, with enormous collective effort, living conditions
are again improving.
As a result, the masters of the U.S. empire are frustrated. Their hopes and predictions that the government and its communist leadership in Cuba would collapse are not coming true. The tightening of the embargo and the continued provocations by groups like Brothers to the Rescue are acts of desperation, not strength.
Working people and many youth within the United States are more open than before to evidence that Washington lies about Cuba and its government.
Central to taking advantage of this political space to organize and resist, opponents of Washington's war drive have the responsibility to help get out the truth about the socialist revolution in Cuba and why the U.S. rulers remain so determined to overturn it.
Take day off work, sell `Militant,' Pathfinder books
We urge all Militant readers to take a day off work or a
day off from school in the coming week to help accomplish
this goal.
Order a large bundle of the Militant, if you haven't already called one in, and sell dozens of copies to workers on the job, at factory gates, picket lines, door-to-door in working-class neighborhoods, on the campuses, and at social protest actions.
Only in these pages will you and other workers find the facts we need each week to answer Washington's lies about Cuba and organize more effectively to combat the U.S. war moves.
As you do so, invite workers and youth to participate at the Friday night Militant Labor Forums that socialists all over the world are helping to organize and build, to discuss the truth about the Cuban revolution and how to respond to Washington's aggression.
When the U.S. imperialists initiated this latest step-up in their unceasing campaign against Cuba, leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists participating in a national party leadership conference in New York City were already discussing a goal of selling 1,550 copies of Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War: 1956-58 by Ernesto Che Guevara between now and April 1. More than 700 copies have so far been sold by communist workers and youth to co-workers on the job, in the unions, and at plant gates, as well as to students and others on the streets and at political events around a wide variety of labor and social issues.
As the U.S. government announced plans to seek condemnation of the Cuban government by the United Nations Security Council, the socialist leaders responded by also pledging to sell as many copies as possible of To Speak the Truth: Why Washington's `Cold War' Against Cuba Doesn't End. This book contains speeches by two central leaders of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, in front of various bodies of the United Nations. Castro and Guevara used that platform effectively to rebut, point by point, all the U.S. government lies of that day, as well as to explain the attractive power of the example set by the socialist revolution in Cuba to toilers the world over.
Carefully read, these books explain why the imperialists hate and fear the Cuban working class and its communist vanguard. They explain why the U.S. rulers are pressing their current policy moves to weaken, divide, and ultimately overthrow the revolutionary government in Havana - as they have done from the moment Cuba's Rebel Army overthrew the dictatorship of Batista.
Readers will find out, for example, about the true, 37- year-long record of U.S.-organized military aggression and terrorist operations, including numerous examples of terror from "civilian aircraft" in the skies over Cuba, "civilian motorboats" in its waters, and "civilian volunteers" on its beaches.
Working people - many of whom have discovered in life how the government and daily press lie about their own strikes and other struggles - will be more open to the evidence presented by the Cuban government of Washington's long- standing complicity with counterrevolutionary groups such as the so-called Brothers to the Rescue. If that were not the case - more will begin to ask - then how could a group openly operating from U.S. soil send more than two dozen planes into Cuban airspace over the past 20 months, with each instance documented by the Cuban government and brought to the attention of U.S. authorities?
As they have done ever since making a revolution, Cuban workers and youth are once again demonstrating their determination to defend it by any means necessary. In doing so, they are helping to stay the hand of the greatest war- maker in the Americas and in the world - the bipartisan rulers in Washington.
This year, a range of activities is being organized across the United States to encourage the exchange of ideas and experiences between working people and youth in this country and in Cuba - speaking tours, brigades to Cuba, a delegation to a congress of Cuban trade unionists, and numerous others. Many of these educational and protest activities are being sponsored by the National Network on Cuba and the local coalitions and committees that make it up across the country.
The Socialist Workers Party urges all supporters of the Cuban revolution to redouble these efforts, as we work together to organize emergency street protests and public forums everywhere, demanding a halt to all provocations and assaults against Cuba by the Clinton administration, Congress, and the rightist forces they nurture and encourage.
We need to reach out to striking workers, working farmers, youth defending abortion clinics and mobilizing against police brutality and racism, and every democratic- minded person to join in demanding:
Stop the provocations against Cuba!
End the trade embargo!
Repeal the unconstitutional travel restrictions!
Normalize relations with Havana!
U.S. hands off Cuba!