NEW YORK, NY, USA, April 24, 2023 — Today, 156 young people from across the United States are traveling to Havana, Cuba to engage in a historic exchange with the Cuban people and take part in Cuba’s May Day celebrations.
For the next ten days, the delegation will meet with different sectors of Cuban society such as artists, scientists, young people, labor organizers, LGBTQI+, community, and anti-racist activists. They will have the opportunity to hear firsthand about the impact of six decades of the illegal U.S. blockade and how despite this, the Cuban people resist and continue to develop their nation.
The delegation comes amid efforts by U.S. legislators to intensify the criminal blockade against the island by codifying the illegitimate designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. While an economic and political crisis in the U.S. intensifies with daily threats against reproductive rights, horrific incidents of racist police brutality, and attacks on labor rights, some U.S. elected officials have focused their efforts on attacking the sovereign nation of Cuba.
D’Atra “Dee Dee” Jackson, the national director of Black Youth Project 100 stated that “As organizers on the frontlines of struggle in the U.S. against racism, racial capitalism, and patriarchy, we have so much to learn from the Cuban people who have dared to collectively build a society based on dignity and equality of all people and everyday work to eliminate historic oppression. We also know that our struggle for full liberation at home is incomplete if we do not fight for the freedom of the Cuban people: their freedom to live without a criminal blockade that our government has unilaterally imposed for over six decades.”
The delegation, organized by the International Peoples’ Assembly, is composed of young leaders from a diversity of grassroots organizations, trade unions, and cultural groups, including Black Lives Matter Grassroots, Black Men Build, Black Youth Project 100, the Palestinian Youth Movement, CODEPINK, Unión de Vecinos, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the People’s Forum, and many others. They will participate in Cuba’s International Workers’ Day mobilization on May 1 under the banner “Build the future, break the blockade”.
