------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the July 29, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
FROM THE PARKER-GUTIERREZ CAMPAIGN: WORKERS HAVE A RIGHT TO SEE CUBA; WE WON'T LET BUSH TAKE IT AWAY
The Parker-Gutierrez Campaign is in total solidarity with the more than 200 U.S. activists who are challenging the blockade of Cuba today. In fact, two of Workers World Party's candidates--Teresa Gutierrez for vice president and LeiLani Dowell for Congress in San Francisco--are among those returning to the U.S. from Cuba on July 19 after participating in solidarity events there.
The U.S. government, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, has tried to isolate Cuba and break its economy ever since its 1959 revolution freed the island from imperialist domination.
The groups returning from Cuba--IFCO/Pastors for Peace, African Awaren ess Association and the Venceremos Brigade-are defying the latest efforts of the Bush administration to tighten the blockade. Wash ington has imposed new restrictions on travel to Cuba, including by Cuban- Americans with family members there, and holds heavy fines over the heads of anyone who visits the socialist island without getting a special license.
Why are the reactionaries so afraid of Cuba? Why don't they want us to see for ourselves what it is like?
The Cuban Revolution transformed the lives of the working people. The rich owners of casinos and sugar plantations, who stayed in power through the bloody U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship, are gone. (Many went to Miami, where they have become a political base of the far right.) The Cuban people now own everything, enjoy free, universal health care and education, and have continued to develop their economy despite every attempt from Washington to crush them.
Cuba's medical prowess is remarkable, especially for a small country. It has the lowest infant mortality rate of any developing country in the whole world-proving its overall success in keeping the people healthy. It has developed new vaccines so effective in fighting cancer that U.S. pharmaceuticals are right now scrambling for the contracts to develop and market them here.
Workers here, too, deserve:
* universal, free health care;
* free, quality education at all levels;
*jobs, not jails;
* affirmative action to erase centuries of racism;
* solidarity with the world's peoples, not a blockade of Cuba or a war against Iraq.
The Parker-Gutierrez Campaign says: End the blockade of Cuba! Fight to change the U.S. from an exploiting imperialist superpower to a workers' powerhouse of progress and equality!
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