Members of the Venceremos Brigade with Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel

The Venceremos Brigade & the Necessity of Solidarity with Cuba

The Venceremos Brigade (VB) is the youngest and oldest Cuba solidarity delegation in the US. By that I mean the VB, whose name means the “We Shall Overcome” Brigade, is the longest running US-Cuba solidarity delegation in existence with a base of brigadistas who are predominantly African, Indigenous, Chicanx, poor, working class, queer, and trans young people.   The Venceremos Brigade was formed in 1969 by a group of US-based students and activists who wanted to show their solidarity with the Cuban revolution while also challenging imperialist US policy towards Cuba, including the genocidal economic blockade and the US government’s ban . . .

Pastors for peace delegation in Cuba

Between A Rock & A Hard Place: Reflections on Cuba

My body has been back in the United States of Amerikkka for three days, but it’s a shell housing a consciousness forever stuck there and then with them. Perhaps it’s a “blackened” consciousness, forever outside of time and place, which would explain why it feels like I’m out of time; matters are urgent. After being in Cuba, time, itself, passes differently—somehow slower yet faster, a cautious drag and then a rushed pull like a tug of war. Time now skips past me with its tongue stuck out and hands wagging at its ears like a teasing bully. I trace its . . .

Images from the Centro Fidel Castro Ruz

Crying at the Centro Fidel Castro Ruz

For most of my 10 days in Cuba I tried to play it cool, even though with it being my first real time out of the country, I felt overwhelmed the entire time. I kept it together though, for most of the trip, until our visit to the Centro Fidel Castro Ruz. It’s a museum dedicated to Fidel Castro, hero of the Cuban Revolution. And it’s a museum where I bawled my eyes out.  . . .

IFCO solidarity delegation with the Cuban people

Cuba Journal Day 1&2: “Cuban people have balls!”

The Cuban society I see today, that society that refuses to surrender its beauty, is the result of millions of Cuban people coming together and deciding they would no longer be controlled by capitalism and imperialism. . . .