Vol. 72/No. 30      July 28, 2008

July 12, 2008

Dear Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando, and René,

Warmest greetings and un abrazo fuerte from the nearly 400 workers, farmers, students, and others from across the United States and around the world participating in the July 10-13 Socialist Educational and Active Workers Conference in Oberlin, Ohio, organized by the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialists.

Although you are held in this country against both your will and ours, the example you are setting on the front lines of the class struggle in the United States strengthens us all. Growing numbers have come to recognize your political clarity, dignity, and unshakable confidence in the capacities—the humanity—of millions of ordinary men and women in Cuba and the world over fighting to win your freedom.

The worst capitalist financial crisis since the opening of the Great Depression in the 1930s increasingly marks every aspect of the sharpening class struggle in the U.S. and internationally. As the ruling families are driven to try to solve the crisis of the capitalist system on our backs, a working-class vanguard in this country is growing. Forged in the crucible of resistance to the assaults of the bosses, their government and political parties, and their cops, this fighting vanguard has already taken to the streets in actions large and small, in towns and cities across the United States. Since the spring of 2006 literally millions have been involved. The defiant response of workers both immigrant and U.S.-born to the recent factory raid in Postville, Iowa—the largest such assault in U.S. history—which turned nearby Waterloo into a virtual concentration camp, is indicative of the fighting mood. The demonstrative gesture of recently arrested workers who are women, who joined the protest picket lines with their pants legs rolled up to reveal the electronic monitor leg bands they are forced to wear, captured the “sí se puede” fighting determination more accurately than a thousand words.

As we battle to win and use union power to stop factory raids and deportations, to demand legalization of all immigrants, and to protect life and limb on the job, this vanguard, with increasing clarity, will recognize that the fight for your freedom is simultaneously a fight to defend our rights and the political space we must have here to organize and defend ourselves.

The laws and measures the U.S. government used to frame up and convict you are those they are using against working people every day—unconstitutional wiretapping, surveillance, and search and seizure operations in homes; “identity theft” laws; denial of the right to trial by an impartial jury of our peers; denial of access (for defense attorneys and the accused alike) to the “evidence” on which the prosecution bases its frame-up; resort to “conspiracy” charges when they cannot prove acts contrary to their laws; cruel and unusual punishment, including months of solitary confinement and prison lockdowns; denial of visitation rights for wives, children, parents, and other loved ones—and much more.

The signing into law this week of the bill, passed with broad bipartisan support in both houses of congress, to expand the wiretapping and electronic surveillance powers of the U.S. government’s police agencies is but the latest illustration of what they intend to do. How far they will go on this course depends on us.

We have used this conference to better prepare ourselves to explain these facts to our coworkers and fellow farmers, students, and all those who refuse to accept the future that capitalism has in store for us. All those who, in larger and larger numbers, will fight against such a catastrophe and for a socialist future. We know that more and more of them will also be won to see the example of the Cuban Revolution as the road forward for our class, and along that course your example will prove to be a powerful weapon.

Like yourselves, we will not stop fighting until each and every one of you is free.

With our warmest fraternal greetings,

Róger Calero
On behalf of the conference participants
 
 
Related articles:
Conference prepares for new class battles
Socialist Educational and Active Workers Conference draws 380 participants
Panel of workers, youth describes union struggles in the Upper Midwest  
 
 
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