Demonstrations and other activities took place across the United States the last week of October as part of a Global Week of Action Against US Genocide in Cuba: October 24–31 called by the National Network on Cuba.
These included an October 24 march in New York City, and interactive presentations by Dayanis Garcia Farinas of the Martin Luther King Center in Havana on how ordinary Cubans are responding to the US blockade. The latter took place at the Casa de Cultura in Chicago on October 24; the First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, on October 26; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston on October 27.
We publish below for the information of our readers reports from several other actions that local activists sent to World-Outlook.
— World-Outlook editors
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MIAMI, Florida
By Pete Seidman
MIAMI — About 50 people protested the US blockade of Cuba at the Torch of Friendship in downtown Miami on October 28, 2026. The demonstration was called to underscore the reality that many people in Miami stand with a big majority of countries who voted earlier in the day at the United Nations General Assembly to support Cuba’s resolution to end Washington’s blockade.
Built in 1960, the Torch was intended to salute Miami’s role as a gateway for immigrants, particularly Cubans who came after the revolution, into the United States. From the beginning, however, “friendship” was not universal. A curved wall displaying 20 shields of the nations of the Americas has a big gap between Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic where the shield of Cuba should be. Authorities here refuse Cuba its place as part of the anti-Communist glue that helps hold the city’s capitalist politics together.
Demonstrators concluded the event with a ceremony to symbolically right that historical wrong. An honor guard of immigrants from Haiti (whose government abstained in the UN vote), Colombia (whose government voted no), Brazil (voted yes), Cuba, as well as US-born activists attached a replica of Cuba’s seal in the gap. Punctuated by chants of “Abajo el bloqueo” (End the blockade), a whole bunch of cameras flashed at the emotional moment.
Exilio Unido Ya, a right-wing, pro-blockade organization of Cubans here, threatened to hold a counterdemonstration confronting us in the same place and starting a half hour earlier. The Miami Coalition to End the US Blockade of Cuba had received a permit for the space, however. When the rightists moved provocatively towards the earliest arriving protesters, police ordered them across the street, where the 30 or so of them proved harmless for the rest of the evening.
The Exilio Unido people carried signs calling for the tightening of the blockade and even “Intervencion Ya!” (Intervention now!). It’s hard to be sure from such a small sample, but these kinds of demands are no doubt isolating the ultra-rightists to some extent within the Cuban community, which is very aware of the increased suffering of their families across the Florida Straits and concerned about the dangers of a US military intervention.
A factor that no doubt effected the size of our demonstration was the energy that many opponents of the blockade have been putting into the election campaign of Angie Nixon, the liberal Democrat who is running for US Senate in the midterm elections next week.
Nixon described herself as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) when she launched her successful primary campaign. But she now appears to be denying that she is a socialist and has disavowed the DSA’s policies when asked about them by reporters.
Most recently she got into a tiff with CBS news claiming a report had misrepresented her position on Cuba. The candidate objected to an ambiguity in the report that her opponents used to claim she was defending “the dictatorship” in Cuba. Nixon demanded the network take down the report and made a public clarification to stress that she thought “Fidel Castro was a bad person. Dictatorship is bad. Socialism is not good.”
The Miami Coalition’s next project will be a meeting to support Global Health Partner’s Maternal/Neonatal aid project. For more information, contact: endblockade305@gmail.com
Radio Miami had significant coverage of the October 28 anti-blockade protest.
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CHICAGO, Illinois
By Cathy Gutekanst
CHICAGO — More than 90 people from a variety of organizations rallied at Federal Plaza in Chicago on October 28 to denounce the US government’s attempts to starve the Cuban people into submission.
Russell Dahlman of the Venceremos Brigade, who chaired the rally, focused his remarks on the dire conditions he had seen in a recent trip to Cuba resulting from Washington’s blockade of fuel and other intensifying sanctions. He highlighted the 148% rise in infant mortality and how he had seen malnourished newborns waiting for incubators in hospitals. Prior to the most recent draconian sanctions against Cuba, the Caribbean country had lower infant mortality rates than the city of Chicago.
“What they’re doing to the Cuban people is horrific, and they’re doing it in our name with our tax dollars,” said US representative Jonathan Jackson (1st Congressional District, Illinois), referring to the food, medicine, and energy blockade against Cuba. Jackson traveled to Cuba last April as part of a Congressional delegation and at that time. He denounced the US blockade of fuel to Cuba as a “cruel collective punishment — effectively an economic bombing of the infrastructure of the country — that has produced permanent damage. It must stop immediately.”
Other speakers at the rally included Jackson Potter, vice-president of the Chicago Teachers Union; Maggie Sivit of Cuban Americans for Cuba; Kobi Guillory from the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression; and Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th Ward Chicago Alderman.
Sigcho-Lopez was the lead sponsor of the Chicago Resolution to remove Cuba from the State Sponsor of Terrorism List (SSOT). The Chicago City Council passed the resolution unanimously in July 2025.
“It is a critical time in our history, where we see actual terrorism and intervention throughout Latin America, spreading terror, war, starvation and chaos in the name of democracy,” said Sigcho-Lopez in his remarks at the rally. “It is here we have the most important and dire task, to organize our communities and to tell our brothers and sisters the truth about the embargo, which is that it is an embargo to destabilize a whole country for the sin of belief that a better world is indeed possible.”
The rally ended with a call to gather at the Federal Building to protest if the US Government intervenes militarily again in Iran.
Participants at the rally and picket line included representatives of About Face: Veterans Against the War, Anti-War Committee Chicago, Chicago for Abortion Rights, Code Pink, Communist Party – USA, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Hothouse, Levantate por Cuba, Party for Socialism & Liberation, Puerto Rican Cultural Center, SEIU Healthcare, Socialist Action, Socialist Workers Party, and South Siders for Peace.
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LOS ANGELES/SAN DIEGO, California
By Mark Friedman
Hosted by Workers United, allied with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), LA area unionists and political activists met October 24 to denounce the 67-year blockade and organize further before the UN debate and vote on October 27-28.
“As I stand before you today, I want you to understand something with absolute clarity: the US fuel blockade is not an abstract policy debate,” said Savannah Boyd, speaking for CODEPINK and All Power Books. “It is not a diplomatic chess move. It is a weapon aimed directly at the hearts of the Cuban People. This violent blockade is the longest and most comprehensive in modern history. Constant blackouts are tearing through schools, hospitals, and virtually every aspect of daily life on that small but proud island. This is not collateral damage. This is the deliberate, calculated infliction of suffering on human beings.
“Today, I want to point out some specifics of who this man-made crisis is affecting. I want you to see, truly see, how it has affected thousands of pregnant mothers and putting them and their families at risk. There are over 32,000 pregnant women in Cuba. Mothers who are being forced to bring new life into a world of darkness, uncertainty, and fear. Because of Cuba’s robust healthcare system, a system revolutionaries fought for with blood and selflessness, maternity homes on the island provide free, round-the-clock care, nutritious meals, and a safe environment for women with high-risk pregnancies.
“Cuba acts as a beacon of hope for what future generations can look to if we never stop fighting against the exploitative, for-profit healthcare system. Women in the United States are still crushed under social and economic repression, still told to choose between their futures and their bodies, between their families and their survival. But in Cuba, medical care is free. For everyone, higher education is free. Jobs are guaranteed. That is what a society looks like when it refuses to sacrifice its people on the altar of profit. The US blockade, we are told, exists to protest against human rights violations. Don’t believe it. That lie collapses the moment you see how Cuba holds its mothers, how it shelters its children, how it refuses to let a single-family fall through the cracks.
“CODEPINK is raising funds to provide solar panels and equipment to 15 maternity homes in working-class communities on the island, creating reliable power during Cuba’s US-engineered prolonged blackouts. Reliable electricity can mean light, refrigeration, ventilation, and more when mothers need it the most. Every dollar helps bring light, safety, and dignity to Cuban families. This is what solidarity means, practically.”
“I am the organizing the political director at our union to help consciousness of knowing your worth and understanding what your value is,” Evelyn Zepeda, of Workers United, told the crowd. “New generations really don’t understand unionism or solidarity, but they are keenly aware that what happens in the halls of power; people are getting rich and powerful off them… For decades we have been working on Cuban solidarity and taking the staff on delegations to Cuba. Our union and our local will continue and are firmly committed to supporting that work and also opening the eyes of new generations as to the realities portrayed in the media and by our government regarding those in other countries.”
— Gary Willhite, San Diego Hands off Cuba Committee
Although ill, Lili Bernard, sent the following video message: “I do not support US military intervention in Cuba. My family moved to the US in the late 1960s from Santiago de Cuba. I know that increased sanctions and military intervention have only ever made things worse. I want to see a future where Cuba and the US could have normal relationships like any other neighbors who are only 90 miles apart. Cuba has so much to offer the world in terms of culture, art, music, dance, medicine, low infant mortality rates. They are on the cutting edge of science, cancer research, vaccinations. You name it. Their literacy is off the chart. They have very healthy literacy, superior education. We can do so much together agriculturally. Our countries.
“I visit regularly and multiple times a year, my kids, I and our LA artist peers bring hundreds of pounds of humanitarian aid to the hundreds of Cuban artists with whom we collaborate in our art groups, called the Mambises Project (Mambises were Cuban rebels who fought in Cuba’s war for independence from Spain).
“Cuba has been on the right side of history. They stopped, the expansion of apartheid. I say, end this decades-long, cruel, inhumane, criminal, genocidal blockade against my birth island. It’s causing so much suffering to our loved ones. There’s hunger, thirst, extreme shortages of gas, electricity, water, food, medicine. Let’s treat Cuba as we should, as our neighbors, have the normal relationship that we should be enjoying. So, as a Cuban American, I say, let Cuba live.”
Gerry Condon sent a message on behalf of the Veterans for Peace National Board of Directors.
“Sixty-four years ago this week, the world was on the brink of a civilization-ending nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis,” Condon’s message said. “Americans are taught that the cause of this crisis was the Soviet Union had deployed nuclear weapons in Cuba, capable of reaching the United States. What we are not taught is that Cuba accepted those missiles on its territory to defend itself from persistent US aggression, such as the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of right-wing Cuban exiles in Florida, organized by the CIA.
“The US obsession with overthrowing the Cuban Revolution almost led to global nuclear annihilation. 64 years later, the US government is still at it, trying to squeeze the life out of Cuba and threatening to invade it. Even as the Trump administration considers the use of nuclear bombs against the people of Iran, what could go wrong?
“Veterans for Peace calls for an end to the vicious US blockade and threats of military aggression against Cuba. This is why we sailed the historic Golden Rule anti-nuclear sailboat to Cuba three years ago and is why we will continue to stand with Cuba. The Cuban people are our friends. Hands off, Cuba.”
The meeting responded generously to a fund pitch by Michael Riggins, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and the LA Hands-off Cuba committee, for the Global Health Partners material aid campaign for maternity hospitals in Cuba. Nearly $1,000 was raised.
At the end of the meeting people broke into committees to expand outreach, organize movie showings, campus meetings, and union engagements, increase our social media presence, and paint banners for a banner drop over busy highways on October 28, the day of the vote at the United Nations.
Mark Friedman is a member of the International Association of Machinists.
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Categories: Cuba/Cuba Solidarity