On the whole I thought the event was excellent. I have a lot of admiration for both Camila Piñeiro Harnecker and Claudia Jimenez. However I have a few criticisms, which I hope can be taken as comradely.

First and main criticism : the framing of the event was largely of a type that I would call progressive internationalist rather than socialist.

I.e., it (in my opinion) presented the Cuban struggle as something which we should support for essentially moral reasons, because what our government is doing is so terrible.

A socialist framing would say: the Cuban struggle *is* our struggle. It is part of the global struggle of the working class against capital. The Cubans are us, are part of our movement, and we should not let an imaginary line drawn in the ocean fool us. This is for several reasons: (1) The same repressive apparatus that is bearing down on them is preparing to catch us in its gears as well. This is clear from the state department’s report that portrays all leftist groups as essentially part of the Communist Party of Cuba and seems to be teeing that up as a legal pretext for action against us. (2) The Cubans walked very far down the socialist path for many decades (of course in unique conditions that are different from ours) and thus have much to teach us. They have developed institutions, cultural forms and habits, new relationships with nature, new kinds of social relations, etc. formed in a struggle towards socialism. Its a living and breathing (although less so with each passing year) repository of social knowledge that can aid in humanity’s global development toward socialism.

So: our perspective is we should care about Cuba as we care about ourselves, because there are material linkages between “our” struggle narrowly construed (i.e., what happens to the bodies of revolutionaries and workers within the borders of the United States) and on the island.

Second criticism: The emcee (Claudia) did an excellent job overall but unfortunately concluded things on a progressive electoralist note by encouraging us to vote, to look to the midterms etc. This is in my opinion completely wrong. The current electoral outlook in the US is hopeless if your goal is to effect immediate change in foreign policy. Democrats still show themselves to be unwilling to put much sand in the gears of the Trump administration’s warmaking, and even if they did, the executive would be likely just to ignore the declarations of Congress. We have to assess this against the other options for responding to the situation. I do think there is some probably small potential for a mass movement to influence the Trump admin given that Cuba does not represent any kind of geopolitical problem for the US in the way that Palestine or Iran do. So that perhaps slim chance is already a better option than the hopeless one of trying to influence Democrats in Congress.

Third criticism: Unfortunately, this means the US policy towards Cuba is on the whole unlikely to change, and so a military action of some kind is likely. The event did not deal much with this (in my opinion, most likely) outcome. The speaker expressed hope of future aid from China, but overall the discussion of the future seemed to be slightly in denial of reality. If the US is preparing for some kind of warmaking against Cuba, what would it look like and what could we do to prepare?

More on content: I broadly already understood the state of things, but seeing it directly through videos is heartbreaking and infuriating. A good emotional reminder. Singing Guantanamera was lovely and very moving. The closing song was so-so but I think a good idea. I think better would have been a song people had more familiarity with.

I thought the most interesting thing that the speaker said was her analysis of the error that the party made during the Obama years: i.e., that rather than  investing in tourism, it should have invested in energy and agricultural production, the material foundations of the society. Of course complete autarchy is (with current technology) impossible on Cuba, but any additional capacity there would lessen the ability of the US to squeeze it.