Members of the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom are urging working people to join them in organizing and building protests against Washington’s stepped-up oil blockade and threats of worse against Cuba. They’re campaigning widely to get out the truth about Cuba’s socialist revolution and they’re joining actions to defend immigrant rights.
In Minneapolis SWP members joined a Feb. 7 union-supported march for immigrant rights with a sign on their table demanding “US hands off Cuba!” Despite the cold weather, several people stopped to talk. “I’ve been to Cuba and I’m glad to see your signs,” one man wearing a union peacekeeper T-shirt told SWP member Mary Martin. John DenBoer, a small-business owner from Milwaukee, told the Militant, “I don’t know much about Cuba, but I have kids and I don’t want to see a war there or anywhere.”
Roddie Stuckie said she’d come to the march because her father had been active in the Teamsters’ hard-fought strike battles in Minneapolis in the 1930s. “He was involved in fighting to organize truck drivers against corporate businesses. Today the fight for the rights of immigrant workers is the same kind of fight.” Stuckie looked at the book Teamster Rebellion, a firsthand account of the truck drivers’ fight by SWP leader Farrell Dobbs, and said she’d get it the next time she saw party members.
Follow example of Cuban Revolution
When SWP members Helen Meyers and Joanne Murphy were campaigning door to door in Fridley, north of Minneapolis, Feb. 2, they met Jacob and Anna Wegner. Anna said she was proud of people in Minnesota who are coming out to protest against immigration raids and deportations. After looking over the Militant’s coverage, she decided to subscribe for six months.
“We’re seeing what fascism is like, the kind of system that tries to keep us down. We need to change the current administration,” Jacob Wegner said.
“If we were actually living under fascism it would be very difficult to have this kind of discussion,” Murphy replied. Both Democratic and Republican administrations, she said, are responsible for enforcing the second-class status of immigrants to try to divide the working class.
“The working class is capable of doing what working people did in Cuba — taking power from the capitalists. The SWP is building a party to accomplish that here. You should join us,” Murphy said.
In the Dallas-Fort Worth region hundreds of high school students at several schools, including Haltom, Jasper, Plano and others, have walked out of their classrooms in the last two weeks to protest the ongoing roundups, arrests and deportations of immigrants. On Feb. 5 some 100 students from Forney High School lined the road just north of their school, many drivers honked and waved in support. Some students waved flags from Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the U.S. “Proud daughter of immigrants,” read one sign.
“A cook’s daughter in the restaurant where I work participated in the walkout at L.D. Bell High School Jan. 30,” SWP member Josefina Otero told the Militant. “And a Mexican-American host had a brother who walked out at another school.”
“I think it’s really important for everyone to come and protest and show that this isn’t OK,” Atlas Lee, a student who participated in a Jan. 30 walkout at Richland High School, told Otero. “ICE wanting to barge into people’s houses without judicial warrant, it’s an overreach of power. It affects every one of us.”
Amnesty for immigrants in U.S.
“No deportations! Amnesty is the way to unify the working class,” was the title of the Feb. 7 Militant Labor Forum in Fort Worth. A woman from El Salvador attended with her husband and picked up the SWP National Committee statement “US hands off Cuba.” “I agree we need action in defense of Cuba. Cuba is different than the U.S. In Cuba they put a priority on education, health and ecology,” she said during the discussion. The SWP is working to build a “US hands off Cuba!” protest at the Fritz G. Lanham Federal Building in Fort Worth Feb. 16.
In Miami the José Martí Cultural Association held a protest to support Cuban families Feb. 8. SWP members joined the action. Carlos Tamayo, who was trained as a doctor in Cuba and lives in South Carolina, bought a Militant subscription there as well as a copy of Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa by Cuban revolutionary leader Víctor Dreke.
In Pittsburgh Feb. 8, more than 400 people participated in an action supporting immigrants. SWP members carried signs that read “US hands off Cuba!” and “Amnesty for all immigrants.” Speakers at the rally celebrated the release of Jose Flores, originally from Nicaragua, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody where he’d been detained him for eight days. Flores has a work permit and an asylum application pending.
SWP member Candace Wagner reports that many at the action had heard about Washington’s blocking of oil shipments to Cuba and wanted to learn more about what could be done to defend the Cuban Revolution. Participants bought two Militant subscriptions and 10 single copies. One participant bought a copy of Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? to learn more about the fight for immigrant rights in 2006 and 2007 that was led by immigrant workers.
To join in distributing the SWP National Committee call to action and the Militant, contact distributors nearest you.