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Vol. 73/No. 26      July 13, 2009

 
Socialist conference extends
support to Cuban Five
 
The following greetings were sent to Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González, known internationally as the Cuban Five, by participants in the Socialist Education and Active Workers Conference held in Oberlin, Ohio, June 18-20. The Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists sponsored the conference.

June 20, 2009

Dear Gerardo, Antonio, Ramón, Fernando, and René,

Warm revolutionary greetings from the nearly 400 workers, farmers, students, and others from across the United States and around the world who are today concluding a Socialist Education and Active Workers Conference here in Oberlin, Ohio, organized by the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialists.

We condemn the decision announced this week by the U.S. Supreme Court not even to hear the powerful legal arguments presented by your attorneys against the rulings in your case handed down by lower U.S. courts, including conflicting and ambiguous rulings on their own laws. The high court decision demonstrates once again the U.S. rulers’ fear of the example set by the men and women who are the authors of the mighty work that is the Cuban Revolution. The rulers know that is what you represent. Yet as René’s recent message put it, the enemy “will live every day of its life with the humiliation of not understanding” why it can never subdue you.

From your place on the front lines of the class struggle in the United States, you know well that the methods used to frame up and jail you are the same ones the U.S. rulers use day after day against working people the world over. Police wiretapping, denial of bail, expanded use of solitary confinement, denial of an impartial jury of our peers, conspiracy charges, secret “evidence,” and denial of visitation rights for loved ones—these are the methods employed by the U.S. government and its cop agencies against the oppressed and exploited whether in Kabul or Baghdad, Victorville, California, or Florence, Colorado.

The battle you are waging is a battle not only to defend the Cuban Revolution, but to defend the basic constitutional rights of all working people who live within the borders of this country. It is a battle that will become even sharper as the gravediggers of their system have no choice but to resist the inevitably accelerating drive by the owners and their government to shift onto our backs the price for the implosion of their system, a crisis that has barely begun. In this process, the stakes for us all in fighting for your freedom will become clearer to ever growing numbers.

As Gerardo put it so well, “We place our hopes in no court.” It is the “jury of millions throughout the world” who will have the last word. With that truth as our guide, we have better prepared ourselves at this conference to explain the facts of your case to the broadest numbers of workers, farmers, students, and all we are able to reach.

To you and the people of Cuba—the men and women who established the first free territory of the Americas and have defended it for fifty years—we say:

You can count on our commitment. We will fight ‘til you are free.

Jack Barnes
On behalf of the participants in the Socialist Education and Active Workers Conference
 
 
Related articles:
‘Courage and discipline’: traits of revolutionaries
Conference prepares socialists to act on political opportunities, build movement
Education, skills training feature of conference
Cuban 5: ‘We continue to resist until there is justice’
Toronto meeting discusses Cuban Revolution today  
 
 
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