This speech was giving on May 2nd, 2025 at the International Meeting in Solidarity with Cuba on behalf of the U.S. contingent of the International May Day Brigade.
Greetings, my name is Onyesonwu Chatoyer and I am lead coordinator of the US contingent of the International May Day Brigade in solidarity with Cuba as well as a newly elected co-chair of the National Network on Cuba and an organizer with the Venceremos Brigade.
The National Network on Cuba is a US-based coalition of organizations engaged in collective struggle against the genocidal US economic blockade on Cuba and the US government attempts to overthrow the Cuban revolution. We fight for Cuba because its revolution shows oppressed people how to collectively transform society.
For those of us fighting within the United States, the belly of the beast, Cuba exists as proof that another world is possible: a world built by and for the oppressed and colonized masses struggling for their liberation. And we know the same forces strangling Cuba with the unilateral and illegal blockade are the very ones crushing our people and our communities under their boots and business shoes. As a co-chair of the NNOC, I see daily how the blockade divides us and strangles Cuba. But I also see how our network fights back.
According to US law, only an act of Congress can lift the US blockade on Cuba. However, as serious and clear-minded organizers we must understand that those politicians ultimately do not work for us. Their allegiance is to capital, to the ruling class, and to empire and so we recognize that only the organized and conscious masses of people in the US can build the power to force them to end the blockade.
The National Network on Cuba is fighting to end the blockade on on many fronts:
- Network members have sent many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of material aid to Cuba, desperately needed supplies that the island can not access – syringes, powdered milk, generators, etc – thanks to the blockade. Our next objectives include a new phase of the Saving Lives Campaign that will see much needed pacemakers sent to Cuba. Additionally the NNOC’s newly formed Action Committees for Cuba are launching a nation-wide Containers for Cuba campaign.
- We have passed hundreds of resolutions representing millions of people across the US calling for an end to the US blockade on Cuba and normalization of relations between the two countries while pushing legislators nationwide to join the fight.
- From the Venceremos Brigade to IFCO to Hands off Cuba to ELAM scholarships, we’re building transnational bridges of struggle and solidarity via US-Cuba delegations.
- We have created and spread political education connecting our domestic struggles to imperialist attacks on Cuba and illuminating the connections between the forces that exploit and oppress us all.
- And we have amplified Cuban music and art, the soul of the revolution.
Even with all this work done though, there is still much more to do. We must organize to build a disciplined mass anti-imperialist movement in the US that is strong enough to contest for power. We call for all those who believe in justice to find an Action Committee for Cuba near them and join the Containers for Cuba campaign. Pressure your unions, parties, and community organizations to join the NNOC. Help frontline organizers get to Cuba with the May Day Brigade, the Venceremos Brigade, and IFCO/Pastors for Peace, Witness for Peace, and Hands Off Cuba Committee brigades to witness revolution firsthand and bring those learnings back to transform our struggles in the US.
The fight to end the blockade isn’t just about Cuba. It’s about every nation choking under US sanctions and other attempts to repress, surveill, and control in the name of exploitation and extraction. It’s about Palestine, the Sahel, Venezuela, Western Sahara. It’s about the land defenders on Turtle Island and the martyrs of the Axis of Resistance. Genocide wears many masks – whether blockades, bombs, land theft, or cultural destruction – but the enemy is always imperialism. Cuba proves that the beast can be beaten. Now let’s become the movement that finishes the job.
We have nothing to lose but our chains!
Forward ever. Backward never.
Hasta la victoria siempre.