The first Venceremos Brigade came to Cuba in 1969, just ten years after the triumph of the Cuban revolution, making the VB the oldest Cuba solidarity group in the world. The Venceremos Brigade started when a group of young people living in the US offered to send doctors, lawyers, and teachers in support of the Cuban revolution and to protest US policy against Cuba. In response, Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro explained that Cuba didn’t need doctors, lawyers, or teachers from the US – they had their own. What Cuba needed was help harvesting sugar cane. And so the Venceremos Brigade . . .
International Solidarity
I Witnessed the Truth about Nicaragua
Entering adulthood alongside the dwindling of 2020 uprisings for Black liberation (that I had naively seen as the beginning of the end), I felt very stuck. Understanding I am a poor queer Black woman, I saw myself facing a world where the options presented for survival were dehumanizing at best, and the innate dream of living as a free person essentially destroyed. I wanted to fight the liberal tendency of American youth to begin with strong spirits of resistance, before colleging, working and/or drugging, and ultimately, laying down into the nuzzle of the . . .
Smash Zionism
In 1986, The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party distributed their second educational brochure on zionism. The first educational brochure, which was printed in 1977, was entitled “lSRAEL COMMITS MASS MURDER OF PALESTINIAN AND AFRICAN PEOPLES: ZIONISM lS RAClSM. lT MUST BE DESTROYED.” We distributed more than half a million copies throughout the United States and in other countries. Like its predecessor, the second brochure has as its central purpose, the education of the masses of Africans (all people of African descent wherever they live in the world are African) about zionism. In the first brochure, the A-APRP called for the creation . . .
For Peace in the Americas, We Must Center Haiti
Adapted from remarks given by Austin Cole, Interim Co-Coordinator of Black Alliance for Peace’s Haiti and the Americas Team, as part of “America v. CELAC: Whither the Monroe Doctrine at 200?” hosted by the International Manifesto Group. As the crisis of imperialism in Haiti continues and US-led ‘Western’ nations debate how best to sell an escalated military invasion, it is imperative that we continue to say No to Military Intervention in Haiti. Yes to Haitian Self-Determination. But this is the bare minimum, we must also understand and center the critical role that Haiti plays in the Western Hemisphere – particularly . . .
Black & Indigenous Solidarity Takes Root in Ecuador
Last week the Black and Indigenous Liberation Movement (BILM) organized a coalition congress between Black and Indigenous communities throughout Abya Yala, which includes the regions of North, Central, and South America, and the Caribbean. BILM held the congress in Quito, Ecuador which has been the center of nationwide strikes throughout this year. This strike led by Indigenous and Black community leaders, against rising food and fuel costs, awakened a decades long issue of the Ecuadorian government excluding Indigenous and Black Ecuadorians politically, socially, and economically. The strikes brought together Black, Indigenous, student, and women groups, to bring the country to . . .
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 . . .
Cuba Burns and the US Stokes the Flames
The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party and the All-African Women’s Revolutionary Union would like to express our total solidarity with the Cuban people and their revolution as they battle a major ongoing disaster in the province of Matanzas that has been greatly exacerbated by the genocidal US economic blockade. On Friday August 5th, 2022 lightning struck a major oil storage facility in Matanzas, a province in the western part of Cuba. The lightning ignited a fire at the facility that killed several people, wounded over a hundred more, and sent a large cloud of smoke containing hazardous chemicals into the atmosphere, . . .
The Unknown Connection Between Marcus Garvey & Ho Chi Minh
If you possess even a cursory history of oppressed peoples, then you have undoubtedly heard of the great Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh and the outstanding Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey. Ho Chi Minh, who’s actual name was Nguyen Ai Quoc, was the founder and leader of the Viet Minh Front, which was the organized force of Vietnamese people that led their national liberation against colonial invading forces (including the U.S.) from the 1920s through the 1970s. Marcus Garvey was the Jamaican born African who helped initiate and lead the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which grew to be the largest liberation . . .