Steps by the imperialist rulers in Washington toward new wars have always been accompanied by attacks on the unions and on essential constitutional rights of free speech, political activity free from government interference and other protections in the Bill of Rights.
That’s true today as the rulers escalate their decadeslong economic and political war against the Cuban people and their socialist revolution. With bipartisan backing, Washington has imposed a total oil blockade aimed at strangling the population, ramped up threats of an invasion and has tightened sanctions in an effort to deny Cuba any assistance.
The U.S. capitalist rulers seek to wipe out the example Cuba sets — that working people can forge a leadership capable of meeting the fundamental challenges posed by the deepening crisis of capitalism. Fidel Castro led millions of workers and peasants to take political power into their own hands. On that foundation they mobilized to uproot exploitation and oppression, transforming themselves in the process. The Cuban people have steadfastly defended their revolution against Washington’s ceaseless assaults and have extended their hand to struggles for freedom around the world.
In May the Department of Justice filed baseless charges of murder against Cuban revolutionary leader Raúl Castro. Last week the State Department issued a 100-page anti-communist screed fingering the National Network on Cuba and other groups that oppose Washington’s attacks on Cuba. The document, prepared behind the scene for months, is a tool for slander and frame-ups. It tries to turn Cuba’s selfless aid to other people battling for independence into a “violent export of communism.” It claims the groups it smears are tools of Cuba’s “subversive activities.”
This exact same charge was leveled by the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in 1939 against political opponents like the Socialist Workers Party that spoke out against the U.S. rulers war drive.
“Subversive activities,” the 2022 political resolution of the SWP points out, was used by Roosevelt as “an undefined and elastic term calculated to include militant trade unionism, independent working-class political action, and above all, any determined opposition to the US rulers’ entry into the second imperialist world war.” Leaders of the SWP and Teamsters were framed up and thrown into prison for what they said about the need for the working class to oppose that slaughter.
Today it’s vital the labor movement and all defenders of constitutional freedoms take an unequivocal stand against attacks on any organization, whatever its political outlook, for speaking out in opposition to Washington’s offensive against Cuba. Or that faces government probes because it organizes defense of Cuba’s revolution.
“Defending and extending the freedoms protected by the US Constitution is at the center of the class struggle,” the SWP 2022 resolution explains. These protections include “universal rights limiting the reach of the bourgeois state, protections that are deeply in the interests of workers and our allies.”
The SWP’s resolution is available in The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward. It’s an invaluable guide for fighters in today’s union struggles for discussing and getting out the truth about Cuba’s revolution and for organizing the widest possible public opposition to Washington’s assaults on Cuban sovereignty.
Hands off Cuba! Hands off those who use their constitutional rights to defend Cuba!