Activists at Socialism Conference Discuss Building Opposition to US Blockade
By Linda Loew
CHICAGO, September 6, 2026 — Chants of “¡Cuba Sí, Bloqueo No!” opened the round table session “Cuba Under Siege” during the Socialism 2026 Conference held here over the Labor Day weekend. The conference, sponsored by Haymarket Books, was attended by approximately 3,000 people.
More than 100 conference attendees took part in the workshop on Cuba, which was hosted by the Chicago Cuba Coalition; another 50 participated online.
Brenda Lopez from San Francisco, California, a co-founder of the US Hands Off Cuba Committee in Los Angeles and now working with the Bay Area Cuba Solidarity Network, and Hakim Rutledge, a leader of the Jacksonville, Florida, US Hands Off Cuba Committee, co-chaired the meeting. Tamara Hansen, coordinator of the Vancouver Communities in Solidarity with Cuba and an organizer with the US-Cuba Normalization Conference Coalition, hosted the virtual session from Canada. All three brought energy and experience from their active solidarity work to the panel.
Peter Kornbluh, author of Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba and co-author of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana, kicked off the discussion with a central theme that was echoed by all panelists. The Cuban people are “suffering from a maximum pressure policy being implemented by our government,” which is “methodically and, I would say, diabolically” working to reassert “imperialist dominion over Cuba … if not the rest of the western hemisphere,” he said, speaking to the audience through a remote connection.
The use of economic destabilization has been in effect in one US operation or another for decades since the Cuban revolution of 1959, seeking to undermine the regime, Kornbluh explained. The escalating strangulation of Cuba’s economy includes the chasing away of foreign investors as well as the shutting down of medical brigades to third countries, using threats against participating nations.
Kornbluh pointed to the most recent example of threats against countries such as Mexico that might export oil to Cuba to bridge the gap created when the United States cut off imports of Venezuelan oil following its January 3, 2026, attack on that country. “The impact on Cuban society is horrific and fatal, quite frankly,” Kornbluh said.
Helen Yaffe, professor of Latin American Political Economy at Glasgow University and author of We Are Cuba! How A Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World, also joined the meeting online. She described in detail the “tightrope” Cuba is walking with the 176 economic reforms it is undertaking, emphasizing that they must be seen in the context of Cuba as a small island that is dependent on trade. The Cubans also need capital for infrastructure and social welfare, she added.
Challenge in the face of increased capitalist market intervention
Yaffe said the new measures “are referred to quite rightly as liberalizing reforms. They are an economic imperative, but they do constitute a political risk.” The challenge, she emphasized, is how to get foreign capital without undermining sovereignty, or the project of building socialism. “Cubans are not for restoring capitalism!” she declared.
Yaffe also underscored that the implementation of these reforms and success in the search for foreign exchange will only be possible with the end of the US policy of strangulation through sanctions and threats against potential trading partners.
At the closing of her remarks, Yaffe played a videotaped segment of an interview with Fidel Castro in the 1990s, when Cuba was carrying out a similar set of measures in response to the collapse of the Soviet Union — one of its principal trading partners. Castro was asked whether he feared that increased foreign investment in Cuba might undermine the principles of the Revolution and the independence and sovereignty of the Cuban people.
“We have to resign ourselves to that possibility,” the Cuban leader said. “Those are the negative aspects associated with capitalism and the so-called market economy. That’s why we are socialists!”
Chants of “Viva Fidel!” from the audience punctuated the end of Yaffe’s presentation.
Perhaps the most optimistic view was presented by documentary filmmaker Reed Lindsey. He is a founder of Belly of the Beast, a Cuban online platform that tells its stories through hard-hitting journalism and cinematography.
Lindsey shared the painful realities of extreme energy shortages, lack of fresh water due to the inability to use electric pumps, a 60% reduction in food production this year, and the other struggles of daily life for Cubans on the island.
The journalist, who has traveled extensively in Latin America, noted that some have blamed this on a so-called “failed state” in Cuba.
Resilience and determination of Cuban people
“Are you kidding me? Failed state?” Lindsey exclaimed. “The state is extremely, extraordinarily efficient and effective. Just look at Cuba’s response to natural disasters and hurricanes … way better than the United States.”
The so-called failures of the Cuban state, Lindsey said, are because US policy “is gutting the state of every resource it has to do what it does.”
Turning his focus to the resilience and determination of the Cuban people in the face of the US economic war, the filmmaker said, “There’s no lack of negative things to cover right now… anywhere in the world…. But there are so many positive … beautiful stories… One that jumps to mind … is that even in the midst of this economic war, Cuba has developed this potentially groundbreaking medication for Alzheimer’s.”
Ending on an uplifting note, Lindsey showed one of Belly of the Beast’s most recent videos of the first day of school this year in Cuba, when 1.4 million kids returned to their classrooms. This was both an act of survival and resistance, Lindsey explained.
Justine Medina, a leader of Cuban-Americans for Cuba, was a participant in the Nuestra América Convoy and is a former Amazon Labor Union organizer. “My family has a very complicated relationship, like many in that generation, to the Revolution,” she explained. “They were supporters of it; my grandfather actually participated in the revolution.
“But he was also a small business owner and didn’t like the socialist turn,” Medina said. The family, including her father who was an infant at the time, left for the United States.
“I grew up hearing a lot of the classic anti-Cuban talking points,” she said. “But my father, though he is a liberal and a capitalist, always hated the embargo, hated the sanctions. So, I grew up with the very interesting mix of knowledge and perspectives.”
‘Real dictatorship is right here in the United States’
“I grew up hearing that Cuba is a dictatorship where no one’s allowed to vote or say anything that the government doesn’t want to hear,” Medina explained. “It’s sort of been astounding to me in my adulthood, studying more on my family history and learning more about Cuba and really getting to know Cubans.
“You know, the real dictatorship, the real oppressive regime, is right here in the United States, right? It is aptly named ‘belly of the beast.’ We live in the belly of the beast; we live in the middle of an empire that goes around bullying the world, blowing up the world, killing the world.”
Medina said that most Cubans in the United States are against the embargo and current oil blockade. Cuban Americans for Cuba has “created a hub to bring people together,” she said. She urged activists to get unions involved and to go to Cuba, as well as joining with anti-Zionist Palestinian efforts to oppose U.S. support of genocide.
Meeting of reproductive rights activists
Just before the start of the Haymarket conference, a summit of reproductive rights activists convened to hear reports on global progress. This included a report back from Cuba by Winnie Swan and this author, who both participated in the Building Relations with Cuban Labor May Day delegation to the island this spring. At the summit, Swan was representing the Orlando, Florida, group Stand with Abortion Now; I was representing Chicago For Abortion Rights.
With special emphasis on learning more about the extraordinary updated Family Code of 2022, we met with and learned from activists in the Cuban Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) as well as members of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC).
The new code amended the Constitution to include legalization of same sex marriage, and strengthen laws against discrimination.
Cuba was first in the hemisphere to make abortion legal, shortly after the revolution, and then free, and also achieved among the lowest infant and maternal mortality rates, even lower than that of the United States a decade ago. Big strides have been made in Cuba, in sharp contrast to the total abortion bans in 13 US states and partial bans in another 28. All of Cuba’s gains, however, are now in extreme jeopardy due to frequent shutdowns of the electrical grid and lack of supplies reaching the island.
Standing up against US policy
During the Cuba Under Siege session at the Haymarket conference, participants discussed campaigns to broaden opposition to Washington’s war against Cuba and to provide much needed material aid. One of the most important efforts is to raise funds for the critical Neonatal and Maternal Healthcare Initiative of Global Health Partners to alleviate and reverse the rising infant mortality rate in Cuba.
The round table on Cuba ended by outlining what must be done. We can spread the word, especially through our contacts in the labor movement, recruiting others to join us in condemning US government policy; demanding an immediate end to the crippling and illegal oil blockade and an end to all sanctions and restrictions; and calling for the immediate removal of Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. We can organize forums, town halls, press conferences, picket lines at US federal buildings, and more. We can bring people to sessions like this and invite them to join delegations traveling to Cuba throughout the year.
Let Cuba Live!
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Categories: Cuba/Cuba Solidarity