End US Blockade Against Cuba

Photos: Leon Kunstenaar / Pro Bono Photo

(Oakland, Oct. 26) - As Cuba suffers the collapse of its electrical grid, protesters gathered today in front of Oakland's Grand Lake theater to protest the ongoing (since 1959) US attempt to destroy the Cuban economy. There was an additional protest in the adjoining farmers market by racial justice organization SURJ against the Israeli-US campaign to wipe out Palestine. They distributed free watermelon, a symbol of Palestinian resistance.

Noam Chomsky summarizes US policy towards Central and South American peoples that undergo socialist revolutions as "overthrow your government or watch your children starve." In the US mainstream press and political establishment the policy is framed as promoting our values of freedom and democracy in a rules based international order.

Cuba, a poor island nation with a population of eleven million, has been a prime victim of this largess since Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

Beginning as an outpost of European imperialism since colonial times, valued for its slave driven sugar and tobacco economy, Cuba eventually achieved independence only to become an economic appendage of the US. By 1959 it had become a mobster controlled gambling and prostitution playland under dictator Fulgencia Batista.

For the crime of expelling the US business interests that had dominated its economy, Cuba has been under economic attack ever since. The US has imposed crippling sanctions on its international trade and those whose dare to trade with it. Attacks have included actual military invasion, murdering vacationers in its hotels, sabotage of factories, and even sending exploding cigars delivered to the leader of the US proclaimed "sponsor of terrorism."

As with the long list of countries throughout the world, those who refuse their assigned role in the US economic order pay a heavy price. Those currently under attack include Russia, Iran, Yemen and North Korea.

See all high resolution photos here.