February Indy: An Epic First-Person Report from Cuba
Is Cuba an authoritarian regime run by a repressive state bureaucracy? Or an all-too-rare example of a country where state power is wielded to advance humanitarian ideals that benefit the common good over the enrichment of a wealthy few?
In October, Danny Valdes, a socialist organizer in New York City, explored these questions and more when he returned to his homeland for the first time as a member of an international delegation that had access to top Cuban leaders as well doctors, educators, community leaders and others doing the day-to-day work of building and sustaining a socialist system.
“What I … saw in Cuba,” Valdes writes, “was a vibrant culture of solidarity, a people of incredible warmth and resilience, a government that was trying and failing in significant ways to cope with modern realities, and yet a government that was trying.”
For Valdes, the journey was also deeply personal as he sought to reconnect with and understand the history of family members who had been persecuted by the Cuban government and fled to Miami more than a half-century earlier.
Cuba’s Uncertain Future: A Cuban-American Socialist Finds Hope and Heartbreak When He Visits the Island for the First Time
By Danny Valdes
Click here for the full February-March PDF
Upcoming Live Events
Join us on Zoom on Tuesday March 5 at 7 pm when Danny Valdes talks with us about more of what he saw and heard in Cuba and what the future may hold for the island’s socialist system. Indy Editor-in-Chief John Tarleton will moderate the conversation . We will also take audience questions. To register, click here.
Important Update: Our movie screening of “Born in Gaza” + panel discussion this Thursday February 29 at Starr Bar has been postponed. We are working to reschedule it for the near future. Stay tuned.
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Indy Radio Update
The Indypendent News Hour, our weekly radio show on WBAI-99.5 FM, will be preempted this week. We will be back at our regular time next Tuesday March 5 from 5-6 pm. To listen to recent shows, visit the archive at our Indy SoundCloud page.