The United States insists on denying Cuba’s participation in the two most important political events to be held in the region this year: the Summit of the Americas and the People’s Summit for Democracy.

In early May, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla denounced that Washington had left the Caribbean island out of the initial preparations for the Summit of the Americas, which will take place in Los Angeles this week. Rodriguez also rejected The White House’s intentions to exclude Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from the continental event.

“The U.S. government is calling for a limited and exclusive Summit in Los Angeles due to the pressure put on it by the hemisphere’s far-right-wing. It excludes Cuba from discussions on issues that occupy an important place in the bilateral and regional relationship, such as migration,” the foreign affairs minister said.

Almost immediately, over 25 governments expressed their public discontent and demanded that all the countries of the Americas be invited. “Are Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua part of another continent, another planet, another galaxy?” Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador asked and asserted that he would not attend the meeting if all nations were not present.

Today, President Joe Biden, despite all his maneuvering, will have a very difficult time making a success of that Summit. He says he plans to address crucial issues such as migration, human rights, and democracy without the leaders of not only Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua but also Honduras, Guatemala, Bolivia, among others. How can Biden turn around U.S. political relations with the hemisphere before an empty auditorium? Is Biden becoming the Emperor who has no clothes?

Parallel to this failing event, there will be the People’s Summit that is a promising coming together of now over 225 progressive groups from all over the US along with representatives of political organizations and leftist social movements from Latin America and the Caribbean. This gathering is taking place not that far away from Biden’s Summit at the Los Angeles Trade-Technical College and will be an important convergence of progressive forces who are emerging from the post covid quarantine with a sense of urgency. The convergence will take on June 8, 9, and 10 with plenaries, panels, workshops and musical performances culminating with a march to the Summit of the America’s location on the last day.

The thrust of the Peoples meeting is an effort to put the Americas on the same geopolitical path of regional co operation outside the clutches of the imperialism that was pushed in the era of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Cuban leader Fidel Castro and other Latin America leaders.

However, Cuba will not be able to participate in this event either. Recently, the organizers of the Peoples’ Summit denounced that the U.S. government denied visas to the Cuban delegation that were invited and planning to attend this alternative meeting in Los Angeles.

This is an affront to the very democratic values that the U.S. government claims to defend, said the coordinators of the continental meeting.

“The policy of the U.S. government is cruel to the Cuban people and also to the people of the United States, who are denied the right not only to travel to the island but to be able to speak and dialogue directly with the Cuban people,” one of the coordinators of the summit and The People’s Forum director, Manolo De Los Santos, told the press.

Among the 23 people from Cuban civil society whose visas were denied by the US were renowned Cuban scientist and physician Tania Crombet Ramos, Olympic medalist Reineris Salas Perez, queer Christian student leader Jorge Gonzalez Nunez, and many others, including journalists, artists, trade unionists, and community leaders.

Joe Biden’s Summit of the Americas is marked by exclusion and the imposition of a political agenda the exact opposite of the parallel Summit that is striving for inclusiveness by bringing together diverse voices from across the Americas.

Despite the efforts coming from Washington Cuba will be represented because they have many friends who will defend Cuba and bring Cuba’s accomplishments despite, the over 60 year old blockade, to the Summit of the Americas and also to the Peoples Summit for Democracy.

The people of Cuba can be reassured that, “Cuba’s voice will be heard in the world, despite Washington’s efforts to prevent it,” as  Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel asserted.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericno – English

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The Unprecedented Cost of the U.S. Proxy War in Ukraine:
To protect civilians? Or promote NATO expansion and WWIII
Eyewitness Account & Analysis
Sunday, May 29, 5 pm ET, 4 pm CT, 2 pm PT

Hear an eyewitness account from Struggle-La Lucha correspondent John Parker, recently returned from the front line in the Donbass region, and analysis from Black Agenda Report co-founder, Executive Editor and Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley.

John Parker traveled to Donbass and Russia as an eyewitness reporter for Struggle-La Lucha. Parker is a founder of the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice in Los Angeles and candidate for U.S. Senate in California on the Peace & Freedom Party ticket. He is also a coordinator of the Socialist Unity Party and a member of the Black Alliance for Peace.

Margaret Kimberley is a co-founder, Executive Editor and Senior Columnist for Black Agenda Report and author of the book “Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents.” Kimberley is an Administrative Committee member of the United National Antiwar Coalition and Coordinating Committee member of the Black Alliance for Peace.

Go to www.Struggle-La-Lucha.org for detailed reports from John Parker.

[For immediate release]

The People’s Forum in New York City attacked by the far-right, enabled by the police

Since our founding in 2018, our space, The People’s Forum (TPF) has been the target of multiple attacks by the far-right on both social media and in our location. We have managed to defend our space which operates on values and principles of social justice and people power. Most recently a coalition of anti-vaxxers, Cuban and Venezuelan anti-communists, and other far-right reactionaries have increased their attacks on TPF. Today, over a dozen officers of the New York Police Department (NYPD) entered TPF, uninvited, and acted as security for the far-right who carried out an illegal attack on our space.

We ground and pride ourselves in organizing our own safety and coordinating with other organizations to defend and protect each other. Today, as many of TPF staff and leadership are in Los Angeles building The People’s Summit for Democracy, this far-right coalition attempted to forcefully occupy our space as part of a larger strategy against TPF’s politics and mission. The NYPD facilitated the attempted occupation by objectively preventing us from ejecting these far-right reactionaries. They allowed for the occupation attempt to continue for over an hour, while our staff and guests were physically assaulted and verbally harassed, and anti-vaxxers vandalized our space.

Today, this far-right coalition was driven out of the space by the strong stance and resistance of TPF staff and fellow comrades who protected the space. Rest assured, we will continue to uplift our socialist values and be a welcoming space for working people and all those who want to transform society for the better.

Editor’s Note: This first-person account from Leonard Peltier about his experiences at the Wahpeton Indian School from 1952 to 1955 was sent to Native News Online by one of his longtime advisers. Its authenticity was confirmed by Peltier’s attorney, Kevin Sharp.  

My name is Leonard Peltier and I am 77 years old. I am a member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe. I am Anishanaabe and Dakota. I was taken to Wahpeton Indian School, an Indian boarding school, in Wahpeton, North Dakota when I was nine years old and did not leave until I was 12. This is my story.

When I lost my grandfather in 1952, life changed forever. He was a good and kind man and he was my mentor and knew how to live off the land. But then he got pneumonia and did not survive. I will never forget watching him die from the foot of his bed. Even now, that sad memory comes back to me as I lay in my bunk at night in a federal penitentiary.

About a year after my grandpa died, my grandma had to go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to beg for help for her and me, my sister Betty Ann and cousin Pauline. As it turned out, that made things much worse for us. Now, we had to worry about the BIA agents coming to take us away. I grew up with the stories. I was old enough to know what happened when the government took you away. I knew some children never came home.

So we — my grandma and my sisters and I — watched for new cars from the top of the hill. Indian cars were old and made a lot of noise so we heard them coming. We were always prepared to run and hide in the woods.

But then one day, I forgot to run and hide and the girls were hiding in the house. This shiny car drove up the hill and stopped in front of our house. A man stepped out of a 1952 Chevy Fleetline.

I will never forget that government car.

Grandma could not understand much of what he said, and no other adult was there. But she finally understood that he came to take us away. The government man told us he was taking us away to a boarding school because my grandma could not take care of us. I loved my grandma. I knew he was wrong.

She started to cry and pleaded with him not to take us. She cried out, but he told her she would be jailed if she tried to interfere. That was it. I said nothing. I was 9 years old, but I was afraid if I said anything or tried to run, the government man would take my grandma and put her in jail.

So I watched as Grandma packed the few clothes we had and put them in a small bundle.

“Protect your sisters. Do not let anyone harm them,” Grandma told me before the government man took us away.

I promised her I would. But I almost broke out crying. In a single day, my whole world changed. I know I was just a little kid, but I just felt so helpless.

Maybe that day was my introduction to this destiny I did not choose. Little did I know that those school years would condition me well. I was treated very badly by the people in that school, but it made me stronger. I found out in boarding school I had no rights. So I guess I am not surprised that at 77 and still locked up, it is the same for me now.

The government man drove us to a parking lot with a long line of buses at the Belcourt high school. Families were saying goodbye. Children and parents crying in each other’s arms.

Some of the traditional Natives were chanting in that way they do when someone has passed. It was an eerie sound for a small boy and a chill ran up my back. I almost lost it.

Betty and cousin Pauline were crying, and I could not do or say anything to get them to stop. I thought: “I have to stay strong and be ready to fight if anyone tries to hurt them.” They held onto me so tight I couldn’t move at times, though. I can only describe the scene at the bus loading as one of horror. I know I was terrified.

Everyone was crying as they kept yelling at us to get on the bus. The BIA officials and Indian Police were watching and guarding. They made sure no one escaped and no Indians came to help us. They were all powerless to come and take us home.

We traveled all day. Poor Betty and Pauline cried all the way. They asked for water and to use the restroom only once –- the bus driver told them to shut up and sit down. I told them I had to watch where we were going. If we got away, we needed to know how to get home. Getting home — all I could think about was getting home, but I soon understood that there were too many turns. I could not remember them all.

We finally got to a rest stop. Only a few at a time were allowed to get out. Everyone had to urinate so badly, poor Betty and Pauline barely made it.

When we finally got to Wahpeton, they separated us and lined us up in military formation, smallest to tallest.

The girls were sent to the girl’s dorm, a two-story building, and us boys to the other one. The dining hall was in the middle, the school was across the road. To rez kids, this looked scary as hell. It was hell.

I could hear Betty and Pauline crying and screaming for me not to leave them. I came close to breaking down. But I knew I had to show them I was strong and brave. I did not cry. Mostly for their sake.

Others kids did break down. It was the beginning of a nightmare that at 77 years old, the fear of remembering it all still keeps me awake some nights.

The matrons used our fear against us. They yelled, “Shut your mouths…stop your damned crying…it won’t help.”

Some of us were angry, but we were scared. We had to whisper our anger. They marched us down to the basement where the shower and laundry rooms and the barber shop was. First, they buzz-cut our hair off. Then they took us to the showers and stripped off all our clothes.

This was disrespectful and humiliating. In shame, we marched into the showers. They had set them on HOT. Very HOT.

Some of the kids screamed as the water scalded them. None of us knew how to adjust the temperature. The older kids showed us. Some kids never wanted to go to the showers again – they had to be forced.

When we left the showers they put DDT (an insecticide used in agriculture) all over us. The poison even got in our eyes and mouths. They said it was to kill lice and other insects that carried disease.

Then the matrons sat on benches with a large jar of Vaseline. They lined us up very close together, naked and spread it on the top and back of our ankles, arms, and elbows. They then took a towel, wrapped it around their finger and rubbed the Vaseline off. If any dead skin came off, we were hit with a fat ruler. That sucker hurt. Then we were sent back to wash again. We rubbed our skin raw so as not to get beaten.

A young Native student came and brought me over to the girl’s dorm that first night. Betty and Pauline were still clinging to each other, crying. I almost broke down again. I somehow managed to stay strong and console them. I told them that they would beat me if they didn’t stop and that worked.

Later, we were assigned to wash the smaller kids. If dead skin was found after we washed them, we got the beating.They made it clear they considered us filthy from the inside out.

They made it clear we were hated. With every look, with every cruel word, they continued a war our ancestors had fought since their ancestors landed here back in 1492.

The sound of the ruler hitting the boys and their screams is something that still affects me whenever I see someone striking a child on TV or in a picture.

When I was older, I was forced to scrub the little kids. A small boy named White Cloud had tender skin and cried, so I did not scrub him as hard as they told me to do it. They found dead skin and they beat me. I had to scrub him again, with a stiff brush like we used to scrub the floor, only smaller. I was angry and I scrubbed until he started to bleed.

How does a person live with those memories?

As time passed and I lay in my bed, I heard crying and whimpering every night. So much crying and so much fear. The bigger kids would try to quiet the little ones, telling them the matrons would come in and beat them if they didn’t stop.

Some older boys told us they were trying to scare us into being submissive, but for some of us, our pain turned to hate and it made us rebellious.

We spoke our language. We sang our songs. And we prayed in our languages, all in secret. We called ourselves the Resisters, after the famous French Resistance.

I think I’ve hidden my hate and my anger throughout my entire life. It was impossible to manage as a kid. But I learned how to deal with their demons. I had to, as I was determined not to ever become one of them. I never felt bigger by hurting others. I am my grandmother’s legacy, not Wahpeton’s.

There was a prison cell in the basement. In my last year at Wahpeton, they used it for storage. They had me take a broken chair down there one time, and I saw it. I thought of what kids must have gone through in that prison cell in the past. I heard some children committed suicide and had been buried somewhere on the grounds. We did not want to know where this sacred ground was, so we never tried to find it. I admit I was scared.

What could be worse – the yelling and beatings, or being buried there?

Some heard phantom crying in the night. Lost children, hurt so badly they took their own lives. Some of us would not allow ourselves to believe they were spirits crying.

At one point we heard Eisenhower ordered no more maltreatment of Native children. It took a couple of years for the law to be enforced and it did not come in time for us — if it ever came at all. The staff was used to having free reign to beat the hell out of children that could not fight back.

I used to sit around with Dennis Banks and other men and talk about our days at Wahpeton. We could not find a single pleasant memory. Our memories from those vulnerable, formative years are harsh and violent. But we learned one thing from those awful places your people sent us to: We are survivors.

And we survived with our hearts intact.

You don’t treat people badly like that. I rise only when I help you rise. Despite all those beatings, I still believe it. It’s a law, like physics, and it’s true. You get nowhere being mean and disrespecting the feelings of others, especially the most vulnerable. I have seen both kinds of people and more than my share of evil ones, and I know I’m right. I rise only when I help you rise.

Leonard Peltier is a Native American activist and leader of the American Indian Movement.  Following a controversial trial, he was convicted of aiding and abetting murder and has been imprisoned since 1977. Many people and human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Congress of American Indians, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others believe Peltier is a political prisoner who should be immediately released.

Source: Native News Online

Los Angeles: Anti-Imperialist Summit Coalition Poster & Banner-Making Session and Discussion

Sunday, June 5 – 12:00 – 5:30 p.m. PDT

Harriet Tubman Center, 5278 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles

Want to volunteer to help us make posters and banners for the protest at the Summit of the Americas? We need volunteers, so join us this weekend. Thanks!

Struggle-La Lucha is publishing these dispatches from Katya A., an organizer of the Aurora Women’s Club in Donetsk, capital of the Donetsk People’s Republic. She writes daily about the ongoing targeting of civilians and infrastructure by the U.S.-armed Ukrainian military. Follow her Telegram channel for regular updates.

Today, as for the last eight years, the U.S. corporate media completely ignores Ukraine’s genocidal war on the Donbass republics. Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine at the request of Donetsk and Lugansk aims to end these attacks, which have cost more than 14,000 lives since 2014.

Donetsk, May 30: Yesterday, four civilians were killed in Makeevka and Donetsk as a result of Ukrainian shelling. Twenty people were wounded. 

A woman my age was killed very close to where I live. She was standing on the balcony at the time of the shelling. In Leninsky district an elderly woman was killed. A shell completely destroyed the house where she lived.

I don’t even want to write about damage to houses and civil infrastructure. Shells flew even into areas of Donetsk that everyone thought were safe. It was impossible to sleep at night: “UFOs” were being shot down over the city, and explosions were constantly heard.  

And this photo shows a crater from a 155mm shell fired from an M777 SAU over the Budennovskiy district of Donetsk. 

I want to say hello to all the leftists who are calling for more weapons to be supplied to Ukraine. The “defenders” use it like this. And when they started supplying weapons to Ukraine, I understood that all these gifts would be flying at the inhabitants of the republics. I have no illusions about these soldiers. 

The shelling, by the way, continues.

Arrivals in the center of Donetsk.

I once participated in a competition at this school. And today shells flew here. There are dead and wounded.

May 31: The Ukrainian Armed Forces fired on the 15th hospital, which is located in the Petrovsky district of Donetsk. It is in this hospital that about a hundred Ukrainian military prisoners are being treated. 

Such friendly fire.

Consequences of the morning shelling of Yasinovataya. Since 2014, this small town has suffered greatly from shelling. Now every day there is news of more dead, wounded and destruction.

Here is what Igor Gomolsky writes:

“As a result of the shelling of Makeevka, a five-year-old girl was killed. Not just dead, but murdered. Do not mix apples and oranges.

“I have heard different versions about the shelling in recent days. Ukrainians, for example, believe that the Armed Forces of Ukraine simply do not know how to use imported weapons. 

“But these attacks differ from those that have been conducted since Feb. 24, and all these years, only in their arrogance, intensity and breadth of scope. 

“Somehow it ‘coincides’ that the shelling starts precisely at hours when there are many people on the streets. We, for example, were bombarded today from half past eight, when people are going to work en masse. Or it’s midday on weekends, when people are getting out to get some air. Or evening rush hour. 

“And there is not a single green piece of iron [military equipment] in the immediate vicinity of the shelled quarters. Someone says: ‘No, but what if there was something a couple of kilometers away?’ Any kind of war crime can be justified. 

“But this is not what I wanted to say. In fact, to that piece of scum that pathetically calls itself ‘the whole civilized world,’ this murdered girl is a legitimate target. 

“We can and should inform the average citizen of Europe about the war crimes of Kiev, but it makes no sense to knock on the door of the media or politicians with this information. This is not the first time in recent history that the so-called Western world has legalized terror.”

Katya A. is an organizer of the Aurora Women’s Club and a longtime resident of Donetsk.

Frederick Douglass Square in Brooklyn, New York, celebrated African Liberation Day on May 28. People gathered outside Sistas’ Place to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic 1972 ALD marches in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

As many as 60,000 people marched in Washington, while thousands demonstrated in San Francisco.

Fifty years ago much of Africa was still under white minority rule. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger worked overtime to keep Black people in South Africa and Namibia in chains under apartheid.

The white settler “Rhodesia” regime occupying Zimbabwe was given a life line by the segregationist Strom Thurmond and his fellow U.S. senators. They voted to allow chrome to be imported from “Rhodesia”―in violation of United Nations sanctions―to retaliate against African countries that voted to admit the People’s Republic of China to the U.N.

Africans had picked up the gun and were waging guerrilla war against Portuguese colonial rule in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau.

African Liberation Day became another front in this freedom struggle. War criminal Kissinger later admitted that the U.S. couldn’t send troops to Zimbabwe.

Speaking to the people

The December 12th Movement organized the Bedford-Stuyvesant rally. D12 chairperson Viola Plummer was a key organizer of the 1972 mobilizations for African freedom. The late Coltrane Chimurenga, Field Marshal of the December 12th Movement, helped initiate African Liberation Day in San Francisco.

Roger Wareham, a member of the December 12th International Secretariat and a human rights attorney fighting for reparations, chaired the event.

Starting off the rally were drummers, two of whom were from Côte d’Ivoire. A large banner proclaimed “Pan-Africanism Rising!” Of the 13 freedom fighters whose photos were featured on it, six had been assassinated.

A recording was played of the Honorable Marcus Garvey speaking. The Black leader and immigrant who led millions was framed, imprisoned and then deported to Jamaica by the U.S. government.

A wonderful video was shown of the African Liberation Day marches in 1972. It was produced by Roy Campanella Jr., son of the legendary baseball catcher for the Baltimore/Washington Elite Giants as well as for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The historian Walter Rodney, author of the classic “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,” was shown speaking in San Francisco. Rodney was assassinated in 1980, a rubout that had CIA fingerprints.

Also shown on the video was the late Pan-African teacher, organizer and D12 leader Elombe Brath, Black Panther Party member Elaine Brown and the revolutionary poet and playwright Amiri Baraka.

The rally’s first speaker was D12 member Abdul Haqq, who gave a fiery talk about the need to fight. 

Other speakers attacked Black elected officials who are being used in the anti-Russia crusade. Among them is representative Gregory Meeks from Queens, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

There was also sad news to report. Former political prisoner James Haskins announced that his friend Thomas “Blood” McCleary, who had been a member of SNCC, the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, had passed. ¡Presente!

This writer for Struggle-La Lucha newspaper spoke of how African liberation fighters also brought freedom to Portuguese workers, who had lived for decades under a fascist regime.

Zayid Muhammad of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee reminded people how in 1998 former Mayor Rudy Giuliani had police helicopters attack the Million Youth March in Harlem. Zayid Muhammad was given a plaque to honor his longtime work.

Frederick Douglass declared that “without struggle, there is no progress.” Brooklyn’s African Liberation Day rally points the way forward.

SATURDAY JUNE 4 AT 3 PM – 10 PM
Baltimore Trans Pride
N. Charles & 23rd Street

We will be celebrating our 30th anniversary of Queens Pride on Sunday, June 5th, 2022 from 12:00PM – 6:00PM on 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights!

The New Queens Pride Parade and Multicultural Festival is the second oldest and second largest pride parade in New York City. Founded in 1993, it is held annually on the first Sunday in June, in the neighborhood of Jackson Heights on 37th Avenue.