Statement of solidarity with Cuban workers...

This months edition of the Industrial Worker, the newspaper of the IWW carried a powerful statement of solidarity with the workers of Cuba, as they now face not only repression at the hands of a Stalinist state apparatus but also "economic reforms" which will likely mean an even greater lowering of living standards for some in a country in which outside free health care and education, living standards are already precariously low. Unfortunately the Industrial Worker is no longer available online, but the statement, issued by a long list of supporting unions and anarchist groups around the globe was available on one of the anarchist websites...

Statement in support of Cuban Anti-Authoritarian/Horizontalist organizers, workers, activists, artists, musicians y mas in Cuba. Scroll down to see current list of endorsements and the original statement in Spanish.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

The Communist Party of Cuba's VI Congress has just closed with an endorsement of the liberal reforms (“to each according to his labors”) promised in the realm of the economy: but along with these come cuts in social services and an increased presence for military and for technocrats in the machinery of government, with a reduction in the presence of intellectuals and workers.

In terms of rhetoric and deeds alike, efficiency, control and discipline replace equality, solidarity and partnership. Against this backdrop we have indications of a crackdown in the cultural realm, heralding yet another set-back to Cubans' exercise of their fundamental freedoms. Performing artists find their names blackened by cultural officials-turned-censors engaged in frantic campaigns, the length and breadth of the country peddling false rumors and spurious accusations. A prestigious Cultural Theory Center finds its facilities and equipment being sabotaged again by “thieves” who forget to take anything and whom the authorities cannot seem to identify and punish. Poets and community activists are visited by police personnel who threaten to haul them before the courts as “counter-revolutionaries” and to leave them to the mercy of the “people's wrath”, thereby demonstrating that said wrath is not “of the people” nor independent of the powers that be who direct it.

Damage to social property, defamation and physical and psychological bullying (and violence) are not only offenses punishable under legal codes the world over – Cuba included – they are also considered acts of State Terrorism. For decades, the Cuban people gave their best efforts to their children and to the world in order to build up a fairer country with universal and high quality culture, health and education despite the irrational and begrudging bureaucracy that always depicted the people's gains as its own creations. Are the repressiveness and lying of such “apprentice Stalins” to go down in History as the features by which the Cuban process is to be remembered, rather than the day to day heroism of the Cuban people? This is not justice...

For the rest see the following link...

http://libcom.org/news/international-statement-solidarity-cuban-anti-authoritarians-you-are-not-alone-16052011