BY BRIAN TAYLOR

NEW YORK - Youth from all over the country, who recently returned from the U.S.-Cuba Youth Exchange trip to the Caribbean island, are getting out the truth about Cuba through leafleting at demonstrations and cultural gatherings, as well as giving reportbacks to anyone interested. At the center of their efforts is building the broadest possible U.S. delegation to the 14th World Festival of Youth and Students, scheduled to take place in Cuba July 28-August 5, 1997.

In New York, a few of the Youth Exchange participants went to the September 2 annual Caribbean Day Festival in Brooklyn. The street festival draws hundreds of thousands of people. Each person from the Exchange wore a sandwich board reading, "Go see Cuba for yourself; 1997 World Festival of Youth and Students." They handed out hundreds of leaflets to passers-by with information about the world event. A dozen young people signed up for more information on how to travel to Cuba next year.

Not everyone had the same response, however. A woman approached the group saying, "We can't go to Cuba. If we do [Cuban president Fidel] Castro will kill us. They are terrorists over there."

One of the Exchange representatives responded by asking her if she was sure she could trust everything the big-business media tells her. "When Malcolm X was leading a struggle for Black rights the media had nothing but bad things to say about him, and the same was true for Nelson Mandela before he became president," he said. The woman was dead set in her opinions, but her friend entered the discussion saying, "He's right. You can't always assume that what the media says is true."

Exchange participants also met a group of Haitian activists called the Haitian Mobilization to Defend Immigrant rights at the event passing around leaflets condemning U.S. anti-immigrant policy. One of them took a leaflet for the world youth festival and asked who was putting this trip together. One of the activists answered, "Young people from all over the country, including dozens of young people that just got back from a fact- finding trip to Cuba."

About halfway through the day, a young Argentine activist joined the group. She brought with her leaflets announcing an event to commemorate Ernesto Che Guevara, a central leader of the Cuban revolution who was later killed in Bolivia by the CIA- aided Bolivian army. The activists handed out both leaflets together.

In addition to meeting scores of youth, many older people approached the Youth Exchange participants, asking if they could go on the 1997 trip to Cuba. So many, in fact, that the Youth Exchange activists decided on the spot to put out a new flyer for the youth festival with information on an international conference of trade unionists in Cuba set to coincide with the youth event.

Called the International Workers Conference on Neoliberalism and Globalization, this gathering will bring together unionists and other workers from around the world to exchange ideas and experiences, and get a chance to see the reality of life for Cuban workers.

Andrew Blake, a member of the New York delegation of the Youth Exchange, said after the full day of leafleting, "If we go to events like this all the time and publicize the world youth festival, we will get a qualitatively bigger delegation than the one that went this summer on the Youth Exchange."  
 
 
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