Message from Cuban organizations to the U.S. Social Forum

The Cuban and international organizations based in Cuba, joined together on the Cuban Committee of the World Social Forum, would like to express our appreciation of and solidarity with the United States Social Forum, which will be an important political contribution to the struggle for that other world that is possible and necessary, and that together we are committed to building.

It was in the greatest interest of our organizations to be present at the Social Forum in Atlanta. Unfortunately, restrictions currently in force on the granting of visas—the result of the stubborn and hostile policy against Cuba followed by the United States government—prevent us from being with you on this occasion.

Atlanta would have been another platform for denouncing the unjust economic, commercial and financial blockade to which our people have been and are being subjected; for opposing the demented, unbridled militaristic escalation of the United States government and its wars of aggression and plunder against other peoples; for demanding freedom for the Cuban Five, unjustly imprisoned in the United States for fighting the terrorist actions of Cuban-American right-wing forces based in the United States that have cost Cuba thousands of innocent victims; and for condemning the impunity and hypocrisy of the Bush administration in providing protection and refuge to the notorious Cuban-born terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, recently exonerated from charges and set free in the United States, among other important issues. We very much would have liked, as well, to explain to you the successes achieved through the modest work of cooperation in solidarity carried out by the Cuban Revolution in the interest of the well-being and social justice of other peoples, who for centuries had been denied their right to health, knowledge and hope.

However, those who believed that Cuba’s voice would be silenced in Atlanta were wrong once again. We feel that we are represented by numerous friends and social actors from the United States and other corners of the planet, and that in solidarity they will raise our banners of struggle and multiply our ideas. We stand together with the noble people of the United States who are mobilizing and uniting to celebrate their first Social Forum. It is to them that this message of gratitude and unwavering solidarity goes.

Another world is possible!

—Cuban Committee of the World Social Forum
Havana, Cuba, June 25