Black or white US President, change must be real. Obama must lift the 50-year-old inhuman blockade against America’s tiny neighbour, Cuba…
Cuba: she won’t go away!
WORKERS, OCTOBER 2009 ISSUE
The election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America sent waves of joy around the western world as people celebrated both the ridding of George W. Bush with his “God told me to invade and kill” politics and the inauguration of a leader that looked and sounded human as well as humane. Obama had promised Americans change under the campaign slogan “The change we need” and Americans had lapped it up and voted in the first black US President.
Change means different things to different people and election promises about change are not always what they are cracked up to be. Apart from a few “reforms” around the edges which mainly benefit Cuban exiles and their families, American policy towards Cuba and the Blockade seems likely to stay as it is, even though the United Nations has voted (once again) for the US to end this immoral, spiteful and vindictive action against a small country that poses no economic or military threat. But ideas are stronger than weapons, and in that, Cuba is winning the battle!
It’s up to us
If the blockade is not going to be lifted soon then it is still up to us to reach across the globe and work in solidarity with Cuban trades unions.
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Unison London Region has been campaigning to rebuild Havana’s ambulance service.
Photo: Workers |
The Unison London Region campaign to re-build the Havana City Ambulance Service is a great example. London Ambulance Unison is deeply involved in the appeal to raise money for the modernisation of the Havana City Ambulance Emergency Control Centre.
£45,000 plus has already been achieved! That is the largest amount ever raised by a trade union for a single project in Cuba. It took just three months and will be used to re-equip and modernise the control centre and bring it up to the standard that we take for granted here in Britain.
Because of the blockade the control centre, along with the rest of the ambulance service, has not been able bring in any new equipment or spare parts, to keep up with the demands of a capital city’s ambulance service in 2009.
The current Centre is so dilapidated and overstretched that it is nearly impossible for the public to use the emergency number (114) to call an ambulance. The centre just simply cannot cope with the demand. It is run on old one-line telephones, paper and pencils – a 1950 control room trying to cope in a 2009 world. We wouldn’t do it, we couldn’t do it, they shouldn’t have to do it. At a time when British ambulance services are getting all-singing, all-dancing digital radios the inequalities in wealth and opportunities strike most hard.
This is not the fault of the Cuban ambulance workers, or the Service managers, or the Government, or the political system in Cuba. To paraphrase Bill Clinton: It’s the Blockade, stupid!
Nations are built on trade. If that is denied them, then they will wither on the vine. Can’t sell – can’t buy! It is a slow, cruel and strangling grip on a people’s spirit. The vast majority of American citizens want the blockade lifted. The vast majority of countries within the United Nations want the blockade lifted. Consecutive US administrations have taken no notice and have been trying to choke the life out of Cuba for 50 years.
Spirit of resistance
The difference with Cuba is that she refuses to die. Her spirit to resist, improvise and eventually triumph with dignity grows stronger with every day. Cuba, with a population the size of London, has stood firmly by its beliefs and sovereignty in the face of (and only 90 miles away from) the most powerful nation on earth.
The people’s resourcefulness and inventiveness knows no bounds. They fix, they invent, they adapt. They have been recycling years before it became Green. They do all of this not just because they have to, but because they have taken responsibility for their future and their country.
Cuba: she won’t go away!