‘Our enemies want to destroy Cuba and they want to destroy queer people’

Based on remarks given by Melinda Butterfield, an organizer with Women In Struggle/Mujeres En Lucha, at the event “Why Queer People Should Stand with Cuba Against Trump’s Attacks,” held at the Los Angeles LGBT Center on June 20, 2026.

Earlier this week, when I sat down to work on my talk for this event, I fell down a rabbit hole. Unfortunately, it’s one that is all too common these days.

By chance, I saw a social media post that said, “Why is no one talking about the death of a Black trans woman in the Birmingham Jail?” I’ve been closely following the escalating murders and social murders of transgender and gender-nonconforming people under the Trump regime. Eryka Caldwell, a Black trans woman, was killed just blocks from my apartment in Brooklyn in May.

I hadn’t heard of a death in Birmingham, Alabama. So I started digging into it. Information was not easy to find. 

Kalena “Peaches” Croskey died in the Birmingham Jail on June 11. The authorities and local media all deadnamed and misgendered her. It was difficult to confirm anything because of these “official” lies.

Finally, I found a moving tribute to Peaches from the TAKE Resource Center in Birmingham. TAKE is a local nonprofit that provides resources and support for trans people of color. Peaches Croskey had been a part of their community. They demanded accountability from the jailers and justice for Peaches. 

I took the info I gathered and reached out to a couple of journalists at national queer publications. By the end of the day, they had confirmed what happened and published articles in Them and Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents. Peaches’ story began to circulate nationally.

I bring this up not to brag, but to draw attention to the conditions we are living through. If it hadn’t been for one trans writer and activist seeing a random post and finding the tribute by her local community, Peaches’s death might have gone uncounted, and our community would be unable to honor her life and struggle.

By my count, Peaches is the 16th trans and gender-nonconforming person to be murdered or die under suspicious circumstances since March 1. That works out to about one per week. 

We don’t know how many other siblings’ deaths have gone uncounted because of coverups by local authorities, the media, and hostile biological families.

In this context, I want to talk about the parallels in the U.S. wars on the Cuban people and trans people here at home.

Why they hate Cuba

What is it that has driven the unrelenting U.S. war on Cuba for over six decades, under 13 presidents, and now into genocidal overdrive under Donald Trump?

Yes, the U.S. ruling class and its toadies like Marco Rubio want to “take back” the neocolony they lost in 1959. They want to reclaim the island’s natural wealth and the labor of its people for themselves. They want to turn Cuba into a gentrified, white supremacist playground, as they have been trying to do to Puerto Rico for the past decade.

But it’s more than that. The U.S. feels compelled to crush the example of the Cuban Revolution. 

Here is a small, blockaded country, just 90 miles from U.S. shores, that has steadfastly defended its independence and sovereignty; established universal health care and education that are among the best in the world; extended material solidarity to people around the globe; expanded civil rights and women’s rights in ways we can only dream of – all while upholding the struggle for socialism and communism.

This is what the U.S. ruling class can never forgive or make peace with.

That also goes for the great strides Cuba has made in expanding queer rights, as part of the 2019 Constitution and 2022 Families Code. But most people in the U.S., even in the LGBTQIA+ community, have no idea.

The corporate media don’t talk about it. Politicians don’t talk about it – not even those who are against the blockade and Trump’s escalation. 

Why not? Because if people knew how Cuba is uplifting trans lives, empowering all kinds of families, including chosen families, and promoting inclusion and liberation in schools and courtrooms, it would expose the utter hypocrisy of U.S. capitalism as it socially murders, displaces, and sets the stage for genocide against trans people.

So it’s up to us to share this information. That’s why we organized the U.S. Friends Against Homophobia and Transphobia delegation to Cuba, and why we published the book “Love is the Law: Cuba’s Queer Rights Revolution.” It’s why we’re here today.

Mass displacement

Imagine what a U.S.-conquered Cuba would look like. There would be mass displacement of the population, just like what is happening in Puerto Rico. And what would happen to those pushed out and forced to emigrate by land theft, privatization, and Washington death squads?

Los Angeles knows all too well! ICE kidnappings, family separation, indefinite detention, deportation to foreign death camps like El Salvador’s CECOT or dumped in countries on the other side of the world.

There is internal mass displacement of trans and other queer people happening in this country right now. Some 400,000 trans people fled right-wing-controlled states in the first several months of Trump’s second administration, seeking a measure of safety in California, the Pacific Northwest, Minnesota, New York, and New England. 

That doesn’t count other queer people who are also fleeing. Renee Good, a cisgender lesbian who was murdered by federal agents during the ICE “surge” in Minneapolis earlier this year, was one of them. The rate is not slowing.

It’s the biggest internal movement of a marginalized population inside the U.S. since the Great Migration of Black people in the mid-20th century, and in a much shorter period of time.

Our communities know this because we are living with the consequences every day: trying to provide support and material aid to our displaced siblings who are being pushed into the most expensive cities in the country, where Democratic politicians claim to offer “sanctuary” but provide no funds for jobs, housing, or health care.

The media and politicians have completely covered up this crisis. It is just now becoming more widely known because the queer community in Seattle has taken to the streets, demanding that local politicians provide resources for LGBTQIA+ refugees.

Stealing health care

Let’s talk about health care.

If the U.S. succeeds in taking over, it will mean the end of Cuba’s world-class, people-centered health care system. It will be replaced with U.S.-style health care for profit, which most Cubans would not be able to afford. The likely result would be death and devastation like that which ravaged the former Soviet republics during the 1990s.

And for trans and queer Cubans? We can look here to see how life-saving gender-affirming health care is being ripped away from the most vulnerable, including children. 

It’s not just Trump and so-called “red states.” Major hospital systems like L.A. Children’s Hospital are complying in advance, cutting off the care that has been shown time and again to be medically necessary and a major factor in stopping suicides.

Meanwhile, Democratic politicians write a strongly worded letter and shrug. It all leads to more death and displacement.

It’s not rhetoric to say that our struggles are connected. Cuban and Palestinian people being starved by U.S. imperialism. Immigrants being hunted and trans people being killed. Iranian school children murdered by U.S. bombs, and a Black baby murdered by a Mississippi cop’s bullet. It’s the same ruling class, the same politicians, targeting us.

Cuba sets the standard for what is possible to achieve with unity and people power under the most difficult conditions.

Our enemies want to destroy Cuba, and they want to destroy us.

Are we going to let them?

Hell no!