Hundreds showed up at the Federal Building in downtown San Diego on May 1 for the International Workers’ Day opening rally. The rally was followed by a three-mile march to Chicano Park, the heart of Barrio Logan in Logan Heights.

The May Day Organizing Committee, a coalition of grassroots organizations, unions, and workers, comes together annually to plan and organize the event. This year the committee, led by Unión Del Barrio, began organizing early in February. The committee united on the theme: “Trump and Biden, NO SOLUTION! Working Class for REVOLUTION,” recognizing neither Biden nor Trump prioritizes the struggles of the working class.

Chants emphasized the points of unity and demands: union jobs at a livable wage; free universal health care, housing, and education; end police terror; abolish all colonial borders and the U.S. war machine; end U.S. funding to Israel; and lift the siege on Gaza. 

Chants along the march included: “Not another nickel, not another dime! No more money for Israel’s crimes!”, “Abolish the war machine”; “Cancel RIMPAC”; and “Hands off Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Palestine, Africa, and the Philippines!”

Armed with banners and signs alerting the public about issues that have a direct impact on workers, the crowd swelled as marchers began the three-mile march from the Federal Building through Logan Heights to historic and artistic Chicano Park. There the Danza Azteca Dancers and Drummers performed while organizers prepared for the closing rally.

May Day is a day of international workers’ solidarity recognized in countries worldwide. Workers march – voicing our demands, showing we are determined to continue to fight until respect, dignity, and justice is won. Together we will end capitalism, colonialism, and U.S. imperialism.

We must believe we can change the world. The solution for the working class in the United States and around the world is revolution – a socialist revolution.

Endorsing organizations included: Unión Del Barrio, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), United Auto Workers, Socialist Unity Party, Association of Raza Educators, Party for Socialism and Liberation, International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (INPDUM), Anakbayan S.D., Malaya, The Panther Party, Palestinian Youth Movement, Free Them All!, Friends of Friendship Park, and Armadillos Search & Rescue.

This May Day, Cuba did not hold its traditional parade in the capital’s Revolution Square for the second consecutive year. The lack of fuel made it impossible to provide the necessary transportation for thousands of Cubans in the surrounding neighborhoods and provinces to travel to the iconic Paseo Avenue in Havana. This event every year attracted all generations of Cubans parading with Cuban flags in hand, and with the typical excitement and pride that characterizes us. The blockade’s impact is real and today is like a punctuation mark on what we face on a day to day basis.

Nevertheless, despite the obstacles, over 260,000 Cubans and international supporters today filled the squares of the country. This date could never go by unnoticed on the Caribbean island because Cuba as a country is solidly on the side of working people and not the rich and privileged and has been that way since the revolution in 1959.

It should be remembered that International Workers Day began in the US in 1886 when police in Chicago attacked workers fighting for the 8 hour work day. The government would like to forget that but it won’t go away. For example the Port of Oakland today, one of the busiest in the US, was shut down by members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in honor of the holiday. Retired leader of the ILWU, Clarence Thomas, who participated in the rally in Havana said that, “there is an effort going on in the Teamsters Union to include May Day as a holiday in future contracts.”

The  José Martí Anti-Imperialist Tribune, located next to the U.S. embassy,  was the main event on the island. The feeling there was strong, enthusiastic and united despite the difficult economic situation the country is going through, aggravated by the blockade imposed on Cuba for more than 60 years.

A major theme that underscored the air of resistance at the Tribune was the pervasive support of the heroic Palestinian people that was evident amongst Cubans and the solidarity activists attending from around the world. Palestinian flags, buttons, t-shirts and keffiyehs could be seen throughout.

The U.S. policy of maximum suffocation of the Cuban people and our internal insufficiencies mark this new anniversary of proletarian struggle. The problems derived from the blockade constantly affect Cuban workers in their own lives and the fulfillment of their work in fields such as production, education, health, science, and agriculture.

In this context, Cubans once again demand an end to the U.S. economic blockade and the exclusion of the island from the illegal list of countries allegedly sponsoring terrorism. The great majority of people on the island continue to stand behind Cuba’s socialist project.

The First Secretary of the Central Workers’ Union of Cuba (CTC), Ulises Guilarte, addressed the event, which was attended by Army General Raul Castro Ruz, President Miguel Diaz-Canel, and other senior leaders of the Revolution. He referred to the current complex and adverse socio-economic context of the country by explaining, “The hostilities of the U.S. government negatively impact the quality of life of the people, who suffer daily food and medicine shortages, as well as the devaluation of salaries and pensions. It limits access to inputs and raw materials destined for our industrial plants and puts pressure on banking institutions and companies around the world interested in commercial exchange and foreign investment in Cuba.

“There is not a single sector of the country free from these effects. Faced with these challenging circumstances, we dedicate this celebration of the world proletariat to the heroism of the Cuban working people, who concentrate their efforts on the country’s economic recovery as their fundamental cause.

“There are good examples in all the territories of the country that show that it is possible to achieve productive efficiency beyond the limitations of material and financial resources. And at the center of these good experiences are men and women who show us that human capital is the most secure and solid resource we have today, and we are not allowed to waste it,” Guilarte concluded.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English

O our great Palestinian people,

O people of the Palestinian working class and strugglers everywhere,

O all the free and honorable in our nation and the world,

Every year on the first of May, the peoples of the world, especially the global working class, and all the poor, oppressed, and downtrodden in this world, celebrate in the face of the brutal, savage, and enslaving practices perpetrated against them by a ferocious financial elite, which disregards all human values and principles, striving with all their might to perpetuate their control and dominance over the peoples of the world and their resources, using for their political, economic, and social objectives everything that military industries and modern technology have developed, and all methods of treachery and deceit, to achieve their goals and interests, without any moral or human scruple or conscience.

Our people, along with all the workers and free people of the world, commemorate the first of May this year at a time when they are subjected to the most brutal and fierce campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing, surpassing in savagery and bloodiness the fascists and the Nazis, at the hands of a group of murderers calling themselves an army for an invasive replacement entity, under the leadership, partnership, support, cover, and complicity of the American administration and the colonial Western imperial powers, the enemies of humanity. 

They believe that, with their crimes and brutality, they can break the will of our people and impose surrender and defeat on them, in a frenzied attempt not only to kill humans and destroy stones and uproot trees but also to erase the identity, history, and civilization of our people, and make it impossible for our people to remain on their land.

At a time when the massacres and crimes committed by the zionist-imperialist alliance continue and escalate, our steadfast people, believing in the justice of their cause, in all their cities, villages, and towns across the entire land of historic Palestine, and in all places of their presence, especially our steadfast people in the Gaza Strip, write a new page of heroism and miracle each day, the likes of which history has rarely witnessed. 

Despite the wounds and pain, despite the blood and body parts, the torrent of flowing blood, and ethnic cleansing in its ugliest forms, our people always rise from under the rubble and debris, carrying their wounds and marching towards victory and freedom, raising the flag of resistance, with more determination and belief in the justice of their cause and the inevitability of victory, their weapons being patience, steadfastness, and resistance, and the support of all the free and honorable people in our nation and the world.

As we bow in reverence and awe before the sacrifices, steadfastness, and determination of our people, we must emphasize the importance of strengthening the internal front and fortifying it, and unity of stance and action across various political, field, and social levels, and depriving the enemy of the ability to achieve through deceit and political maneuvers what it failed to achieve on the battlefields. 

We also call for enhancing social solidarity and support among the various political and social components of our people, to overcome this ordeal with greater strength and resilience in the face of conspiracies and thwart them.

In light of the intensification of the confrontation between the forces of aggression, injustice, and war profiteers, and the forces of peace, justice, freedom, and humanity in the world, despite all the financial capabilities, military capabilities, and economic hegemony that the forces of aggression possess, the forces of freedom and justice grow more aware and discerning in defending their interests against the imperialist plans aiming to eliminate all noble human and ethical values. In this context, we extend our highest expressions of thanks and appreciation to all the free and honorable in the world, who stand today alongside our people and their just cause, in the face of imperialist-zionist crimes.

We send a salute of respect and pride to the university students all over the world, especially to the students at American universities, who are protesting against the crimes of the occupation and the support of the U.S. administration for it, and who demand a halt to the aggression against the Palestinian people. 

We also salute all the labor and women’s organizations that stand in solidarity with our people and their cause, and all the free and honorable who fill the squares and fields of the capitals and cities of the world in support of our people and supporting their just cause.

Glory and eternity to the martyrs, freedom to the prisoners, and healing to the wounded. 

A salute to our steadfast people across the entire land of historic Palestine and in all places of their presence. 

A salute of love and loyalty to our brave workers as they, alongside all components of our people — political and social — wage the battle for national, economic, and social liberation. 

A salute to the global working class in the face of injustice, aggression, and the onslaught of global imperialism. 

A salute to all the honorable and free people in the world who stand against injustice and aggression.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Central Media Department

May 1, 2024

Source: Resistance News Network

In September, Serena Brennerman, a 16-year-old white trans woman, was found drowned in Salem, Oregon. Serena’s death was ruled a suicide by the police. But her friends and community don’t believe it. She was physically harassed by bigots in her school for a long time. Some of this violence was even captured on video. Whether Serena was murdered or took her own life, she was a victim of the trans panic being pushed by the rich and powerful and embraced by violent neo-Nazis and TERFs.

There’s no ambiguity about the murders of Semaj Billingslea, a Black trans man, who was shot to death in Jacksonville, Florida, on Sept. 21, or Mya Allen, a Black trans woman, who was murdered on Aug. 29 in Milwaukee. Nearly three dozen trans people have been killed so far this year, most of them people of color, and that’s only counting those who were correctly gendered and identified.

There’s a war against trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people in this country. It’s not new. But it has escalated to unprecedented heights in the last year and is spilling over into the whole LGBTQ2S community and those who support us. 

Doctors and children’s hospitals are threatened with bombings. Neo-Nazis shut down drag events, often aided by local cops. Parents are threatened with prosecution for supporting their trans kids. We are increasingly threatened and accosted on the street, in stores, on public transportation, with slurs and threats.

What are the supposed friends of the LGBTQ+ community in Washington doing to stop this? Not a damn thing. They tell us to vote for them, the way they told women to vote for them before standing aside and letting abortion rights be stripped away. Meanwhile, alleged progressives like Hillary Clinton and the New York Times are spouting TERF rhetoric and dismissing trans rights. 

The Biden administration and Congress have made it crystal clear that their priority is funding wars for empire on the other side of the world, not protecting the rights of people here.

It’s painful to watch. But we are not powerless.

On Sept. 25 something incredibly important happened just 90 miles from U.S. shores. After three years of democratic discussion and education at all levels of society, the people of socialist Cuba voted by a two-thirds margin for a new Code of Families. It enshrines in law the rights of queers, trans people and women in marriage and adoption. It changes the fundamental relationship between parents and children to one based on responsibilities and rights. It elevates chosen families to the same status as blood families. It embraces the rights that are being stripped away from us or that we never had at all.

In the U.S. media this was reduced to a vote for gay marriage. The Washington Post, Fox News, CNN and the rest don’t want people in this country to know what Cuba’s Code of Families is, or how it was achieved. They especially don’t want the trans and LGBTQ+ community to know, because people here might realize that we need to fight for what Cuba has: free health care, including gender-affirming care, free education, including comprehensive sex education, the right to housing and work and dignity for all.

There’s an old liberal saying from the 1960s that those who make reform impossible make revolution inevitable. Today’s liberals don’t mention that much, because it’s a damning indictment of their own inaction and complacency. 

Cuba made a revolution to get out from under the thumb of the U.S. empire. Washington has been punishing Cuba ever since. Cuba has been subject to a 60-year economic blockade on trade, medicine, food and more. Trump tightened the blockade and Biden has kept his hateful measures in place despite the pandemic and climate collapse.

One of the most hateful and destructive policies of the U.S. empire is using the rights of trans people, LGBTQ+ people and women as an excuse to attack other countries around the world in its wars for profit. It’s so obvious right now, as our own limited rights are being viciously stripped away. 

We need to rely on ourselves, not corporate-sponsored politicians, to fight for our rights. We need to build alliances with other people here and around the world who are fighting for their rights and against the U.S. empire. Trans people who are on the front line of so much abuse and bigotry can play a leading role in building a revolutionary movement here. Just look at how trans and other queer workers at Starbucks and Amazon have become an incredible force for organizing unions.

Bigots say get back, we say fight back! Protect trans kids! Unblock Cuba!

Thirty years ago, a labor organization was on strike under very difficult conditions.

This workers’ organization and its leadership were castigated by the corporate media. The bosses threatened, cajoled and bribed people to cross the picket line. Scabs were brought in. The heads of the international union colluded with the capitalists to undermine the strike.

Eventually, the strike was lost. But that wasn’t enough for the bosses.

Not satisfied with lowering the workers’ wages and benefits and breaking the union, they sent their state apparatus after the strike leaders with accusations of heinous crimes. The former president was driven into exile to escape prosecution.

The labor organization in question was Amalgamated Transit Workers Union Local 1202, which went on strike against behemoth Greyhound Bus Lines in February 1990.

But everything written above also applies to the German Democratic Republic–socialist East Germany–and the fall of the Berlin Wall a few months earlier, in November 1989. Both the capitalist class and some misinformed progressives have been crowing over the 30th anniversary of that event.

Picket line means ‘Do not cross!’

Ask anyone who’s been on strike if it is ever okay to cross a picket line, and you will likely hear a resounding “No!”

The Berlin Wall — so maligned and condemned by war-making imperialists and hand-wringing liberals alike — was nothing but a picket line on a much larger scale.

The wall was erected in 1961 in response to provocations from U.S. imperialism and its West German junior partner meant to destroy the attempt to build socialism in eastern Germany. These provocations included infiltrating East Berlin with anti-communist agents, military threats and bribing specialists whose labor was need by the workers’ state — the so-called “brain drain.”

The disgusting myth that the Berlin Wall was erected to destroy the freedom of Berliners, immortalized in President John F. Kennedy’s famous donut speech (“Ich bin ein Berliner,” which translates as “I am a jelly donut”), is just the opposite of the truth. The capitalist powers wanted to crush the working class’s freedom to build a society unchained from the profit motive.

The Berlin Wall was a world away from the apartheid wall built by Israel around Palestinian population centers, the U.S./South Korean military wall that separates family members from North Korea or the expanded U.S. wall against immigrants on the border with Mexico.

What is the difference? Those walls are aimed at repressing the workers and oppressed. The Berlin Wall, by contrast, was built in defense of the workers and oppressed.

Socialist Germany’s accomplishments

The GDR wasn’t the product of a classical revolutionary uprising. It was formed by an alliance of German communist, socialist and workers’ movements that had resisted Nazism and survived World War II, and the Soviet Red Army that liberated the eastern part of the country, all under the military and economic pressure of the U.S.-initiated Cold War. It was only established after U.S. imperialism and its new allies in the vanquished German ruling class had begun to build up West Germany as a bulwark of aggression against the USSR and its allies.

In some ways, it was a halfway house of socialism.

But whatever its faults, the GDR was a workers’ state that provided jobs, housing and health care for all its residents. It provided aid and support, including military and medical aid, to national liberation movements throughout the world, including the struggle against apartheid in southern Africa.

The GDR provided a safe haven for refugees from fascist terror in countries like Chile and Argentina. Socialist Germany also provided jobs and education for guest workers and students from Asia, Africa and the Middle East — many of whom were terrorized or driven out of the GDR by fascist attackers in the early 1990s after reunification with imperialist West Germany.

East Germany was far ahead of any country in the world in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights and freedoms. The gay liberation movement as we know it grew up within the German socialist and communist movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Regarding women’s rights to education, jobs and housing, and especially in establishing extensive child care, the GDR made enormous strides. Much of this progress was wiped away when the GDR fell.

The German Democratic Republic had a right to defend its sovereignty from imperialism, all the more so since the border between East and West Germany was also the border between the imperialist and the pro-socialist world camps.

Those who cannot or will not defend the right of a workers’ organization to defend itself — whether it is a union, a resistance movement or a workers’ state — will never be able to carry out a successful revolutionary struggle.

Sincere revolutionaries have to learn this lesson, and it is incumbent on those of us who lived through those terrible setbacks to help educate new generations.

On Nov. 25, 2016, Fidel Castro, the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, died at age 90.

Around the world and especially on the island he helped free from capitalist exploitation, organizations and individuals celebrated his life and contributions on the second anniversary of his death. These remembrances coincided with the final stages of wide public discussion both in Cuba and its diaspora to update the Cuban Constitution — a document that guarantees socialist development and the right to universal free health care and education as well as access to culture and sports.

Of the many proposed constitutional updates, one of the most discussed and noted is Article 68, which deletes references to gender in defining marriage. The proposed new Cuban Constitution defines marriage as between two people instead of between a man and a woman, opening the door for same-sex marriage.

In his first interview, Cuba’s recently-elected President Miguel Diaz-Canel supported equal marriage rights. He told TeleSUR on Sept. 17 that recognizing marriage as between two people without limitations is part of eliminating all forms of discrimination in society.

How is it that Cuba leapfrogs forward?  

On Nov. 29, Mariela Castro Espín, director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) in Havana and an activist for LGBTQ+ rights, explained why Cuba was ready for same-sex marriage in a video interview with the BBC. She said through a translator:

“This change is important because it is the political will of the Cuban government to advance a human rights agenda and to extend it to as many areas as possible.

“It is time that the people of Cuba understand the need to recognize and protect the rights of everyone without excluding people by their sexuality, their gender identity, disability or race. …

“Cuban society is showing it is continuing as a society in revolution. It is in an experimental stage of a socio-economic and political system in a socialist democracy, not a social-democratic one. This means we can have the mechanisms for a fair society.

“Cuba is far more advanced in comparison with other Latin American countries because the people have managed to take power and they are backed by the Communist Party.”

And this is also why Fidel Castro’s memory and life still give struggling people so many lessons. On May 1, 2000, he said:

“Revolution is having a sense of the historic moment; it is changing everything that must be changed; it is full equality and freedom; it is being treated and treating others like human beings; it is emancipating ourselves on our own and through our own efforts; it is challenging powerful dominant forces in and beyond the social and national arena; it is defending the values in which we believe at the price of any sacrifice; it is modesty, selflessness, altruism, solidarity, and heroism; it is fighting with courage, intelligence and realism; it is never lying or violating ethical principles; it is a profound conviction that there is no power in the world that can crush the power of truth and ideas.

“Revolution is unity; it is independence, it is struggling for our dreams of justice for Cuba and for the world, which is the foundation of our patriotism, our socialism, and our internationalism.”

Challenging class-based gender roles

Cuban women have been integral to the struggle for independence from colonialism. Carlota Lucumí, an enslaved Cuban woman of Yoruba origin, lost her life leading an 1843-1844 slave rebellion at the Triunvirato sugar mill in Matanzas. Cuba gave the name “Operation Carlota” to its international military support that, alongside Angola’s MPLA national liberation front, defeated the racist apartheid South African regime at Cuito Cuanavale in 1988.

Cuban independence fighters Mariana Grajales and Ana Betancourt are remembered for their early roles. After the July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago, Haydée Santamaria and Melba Hernández were imprisoned. In the Sierra Maestra mountains, Celia Sánchez and Vilma Espín(mother of Mariela Castro and founder of the Federation of Cuban Women) were leaders and organizers.

Fidel Castro formed, armed and trained the Mariana Grajales women’s platoon. Brigadier General Teté Puebla is the highest-ranking woman in Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces.

“How can we give rifles to women when there are so many men who are unarmed?” asked some of the men. Fidel answered, “Because they are better soldiers than you are. More disciplined.”

Cuba’s 1961 Literacy Campaign not only eradicated illiteracy in a year, but opened new horizons, especially for the young women teachers who broke traditions’ chains to build the new socialist revolution. Check out the wonderful movie “Maestra” for more on this transformation.

Following the 2018 elections, 53.2 percent of the Cuban National Assembly delegates are women. They are diplomats, like Ambassador Anayansi Rodríguez Camejo at the United Nations and Josefina Vidal, Cuba’s chief negotiator in the reestablishment of U.S.-Cuba diplomatic relations.

As documented in Leslie Feinberg’s 2009 book, “Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba,” gender reassignment surgery is available free of charge, and a person’s right to change their name and sexual identity was acknowledged by Cuban law. (p. 86)

Mariela Castro Espín told the BBC interviewer: “The world is very different from Cuba. It doesn’t mean that Cuba is better, but Cuba is fighting to make a different world. If they left us alone, and our project doesn’t get sabotaged, it would be wonderful. It would be a wonderful alternative in the world. Why does everything have to be capitalist?”

The vote on the proposed Constitution with amendments from the national consultation is scheduled for Feb. 24, 2019. The consultation included 133,681 meetings with 8,945,521 people attending. Of those, 1,706,872 speakers made 783,174 proposals, including modifications, additions, deletions and clarifications. Cubans living abroad made 2,125 proposals. (Granma, Nov. 27).