By Pete Seidman

MIAMI, Florida, October 21, 2025 — Fifty people attended a meeting at Florida International University here today to hear reports from four Cuba solidarity activists who had just returned from the island. The Miami Coalition to End the U.S. Blockade of Cuba and the Miami Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) sponsored the event, which was hosted by the campus chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists.

Megan Romer, a national DSA co-chair, who was just back from five days in Cuba with a 40-person DSA delegation, was on the panel. She was joined by Hakim Jihad of the newly formed Jacksonville, Florida, Hands Off Cuba Coalition, and Mark Friedman and Brenda Lopez of the Los Angeles Hands Off Cuba Committee (LAHOC). Jihad, Lopez, and Friedman had taken part in the 3rd International Meeting of Theoretical Publications of Left-Wing Parties and Movements in Havana, along with representatives from 30 countries, and then a festival celebrating the 60th anniversary of the daily newspapers Granma and Juventud Rebelde.

The four panelists stressed the extremely difficult conditions the people of Cuba are facing because of the ever-tightening U.S. blockade and sanctions. Romer spoke of the lack of food, problems with the water supply, and recent emigration of 15 percent of the population. “Grandmothers are raising kids whose parents have left the island,” she said.

Despite Cuba being a place that is “care-focused vs. production focused,” Romer added, “everything is really bad…. We’ve got to end the blockade! And the fight to do that inside the United States will be decisive.”

Underscoring the complexities of Cuba today, Lopez said, “We shouldn’t romanticize Cuba, just as Cubans shouldn’t romanticize things in the United States.”

“What matters most,” explained Jihad, “is that Cuba faces its contradictions and resolves them. The revolution is referred to in the present tense in Cuba.”

Jihad, also a member of the African People’s Socialist Party, said he had first traveled to Cuba last May Day and was so inspired by what he learned that he felt compelled to help organize a new coalition in Jacksonville when he got back. He drew further inspiration during this trip when festival participants joined 50,000 Cubans in a demonstration of solidarity with Venezuela, which has been the target of increasing threats and attacks by Washington — including boats being blasted out of the water by the U.S. Navy.

“It is Cuba’s internationalism that keeps the revolution alive,” Friedman explained. “There’s the blockade on one hand and, on the other, the resilience of a people who have fought imperialism in every part of the world.”

Friedman announced plans for a new front in this international fight against the blockade — a campaign in cooperation with Cuba’s National Institute of Sports, Physical Education, and Recreation (INDER).

As the Cuban newspaper Granma reported October 21, “Cuba ranks second among the American countries in terms of gold medals in the last Olympic Games, only behind the United States. Despite these results, Washington has denied, so far in 2025, the entry permit to more than 80 Cuban athletes, coaches and sports officials from various disciplines. This attitude is contrary to the ethical principles of the Olympic Charter and compromises the country’s right to participate on equal terms in the upcoming world sports event.”

“The Olympics should not be a political weapon against the Cuban people,” Friedman insisted. “Cuba’s athletes have a right to compete.”

Organizing out of Los Angeles, the site for the next Olympics, the Hands Off Cuba Committee will soon host a Zoom call to launch a broad-based campaign to let Cuban athletes participate in the games.

Wells Todd, a leader of Take ’Em Down Jax, was invited to take the mic following the panel presentations to explain how the new Hands Off Cuba Committee was organized in Florida’s most populous city. Take ’Em Down Jax has had some success fighting to get city authorities to rename public schools named after Confederate generals and to remove from public parks statues honoring the Confederacy.

A highlight of the discussion was the number of young Cuban Americans in the audience who spoke of the difficult discussions they have with their parents about the blockade, whether it is real or not, or merely an excuse used by the Cuban government to cover up the shortcomings of socialism. 

Romer took note that Cubans who have recently come to the United States will be more sympathetic to the demand to end the blockade than those who came in earlier waves of migration. This will present opportunities, she said, to involve more Cubans in the United States into the fight against the blockade.

Participants donated or pledged $430 to sustain the work of the Miami coalition.

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