 My name is Kavena Ula-Okala Kapahua. I'm a member of Academic Labor United that I also organized with the Hawaiian Independence Movement. My name is Didi. I am the National Director of BYU-100. Hi, my name is Anacare Nalcocer and I'm with Unión de Vecinos, the East Side Local of the LA Tenants Union. Philip Agnew, Black Man Bill. My name is Maria Malswan and I am with the Palestinian Youth Movement in the New York City chapter. A Lillian House and I'm with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. The Hawaiian Independence Organization at home looks like a lot of political education, direct action, protecting our sacred land, pursuing the demilitarization of the Hawaiian Islands, and dislodging U.S. empire from the Pacific. So some of the work that we do in BYU-100 is mostly circled around criminalization of black people. So the many, many different facets of our criminal justice system, including police budgets, including surveillance, including having access to resources, alternatives to policing. Many of those things are campaigns that our champions and our organization is a part of. We organize hundreds of tenants in the city of Los Angeles, low income immigrant communities, poor communities who are devastated by the housing crisis in LA. The Human Build is a national membership organization that is bringing black men into the movement, into the left, into the movement for social, for gender, for real justice in the country. Palestinian Youth Movement is a transnational grassroots movement of Palestinian and Arab youth fighting for the liberation of our homelands from the forces of Zionism and imperialism. Socialism and liberation exist to build a movement for socialism in the United States, and that means being involved in all of the struggles facing working class people everywhere in the country and uniting with and training the organizers that are emerging out of these struggles. Over 150 youth leaders from progressive organizations across the United States traveled to Cuba from April 24th to May 3rd, 2023, as part of the International People's Assembly's May Day Brigade. They were in Cuba to learn about the impact of the U.S. blockade on the island nation and to gain insights into the experiences of building socialism in Cuba. During their visit, the young leaders from the U.S. met with Cuban social and civil society organizations, visited educational institutions, community projects, and cultural spaces to learn about the country's political, social, and economic system. They also saw how, despite all odds, the Cuban people continued to build, innovate, and advance, not only to better life for themselves, but for all of humanity. Cuba has been a real transformational experience for many of us on the brigade really seeing in real life what it looks like to build unity across people from all different backgrounds and coming from many different starting points. I think that we cannot imagine actually achieving a socialist transformation of society without being able to do this. What I learned about international solidarity with Cuba is that our struggles are linked, that they also wage the struggle for housing, for dignified housing, through the revolutionary process. They also wage the struggle for against a big private ownership of land by landowners who owned multiple buildings and a lot of land. And that is what we're learning and taking away that it is possible to fight for a world where everybody is sheltered, where housing is a human right and not a commodity, and also like to understand that the reason why people here in Cuba can't repair their homes is because they don't have the materials because of the blockade. The reason why we don't have repairs in our homelands is not because of lack of materials, because of the greed of people who benefit from the very miserable conditions under which we live. Cuba offers political education lessons, but they offer real material change to the nations of the world who will continue to fight back against capitalism and imperialism and colonialism, racism, sexism, all the exports of U.S. empire. And Cuba's commitment to that really shows what internationalism needs to be for all of us, not just focusing on our own home struggles, but finding ways to support each other and finding our responsibility to each other to support each other's struggles no matter how we're connected, no matter where we come from. And Cuba exemplifies that in ways that are unimaginable. What I've learned is that international solidarity requires a deep, deep, deep clarity about who is ours, who is on our side, and who is our enemy. And if you're unclear about that, it is a depth of sentence upon any version of solidarity. And so to witness what I have been able to see here in Cuba, African nations, South American nations, our delegation from the United States, to witness all of those folks here not just show up, but talk about the exchanges that have happened, not just standing up for people, but sending supplies, sending resources, sending people to ensure that your comrades, a world away who may not look like you, who don't speak the same language, have the access to the fullness of human potential, to just survival, to thriving, that practice is so very inspirational. And really, no matter what we want to say about the shortcomings of the U.S. movement, international solidarity is not full, is not strong unless it includes the United States. And so we've got a lot of work to do. We are not our government. A few days ago, going into one of the transitional neighborhoods and then holding up signs, kids being out there just ready to welcome us to being a part of their revolution, learning about the real Cuba and not holding on to some of the media and the propaganda that is so pervasive across the United States. Like, they carry so much love in their hearts for people. And then it's not about being against Americans or being against the U.S. it's about being against imperialism, against colonialism, against racial capitalism. And that is the common enemy that we're all fighting for and they understand it. I think that in Cuba you really see that international solidarity is not just something that we're, you know, gifting upon Cuba from the United States, but it's a relationship that goes in both directions and it's based on an understanding that we really do share one common enemy and that we are side by side in this struggle and that's really how we win. And I think that that's so important for people in the imperialist corps to understand our responsibility but also this true partnership, this true, you know, like relationship of equals with the working people of the world. So coming to Cuba, the work to end the blockade, the work to support the Cuban political project for me have become a mental exercise. It was something that I knew had to happen, something that I understood through my study was an essential part of being a revolutionary in the United States. We have the opportunity to visit a biomedical facility here in Cuba where we learned about the vaccines, the cancer vaccines that they have built and developed, the work around diabetes and the work that they've done to develop a medicine for Alzheimer's. It was that conversation at a biomedical facility, a sterile place with white coats and purification and fermentation and somewhere where you would not expect it that the work to end the blockade touched my heart. My mother is suffering from early onset dementia and so to understand that the United States government knows full well that the Cuban government, the Cuban people have designed a remedy for not just Cuban people, Cuban folks but something that can help folks suffering from debilitating deadly illnesses around the world and still replies with, you know what, it's angering and it touched me in a way that I didn't anticipate and so for me that was the most impactful thing to be in a place where you wouldn't expect your heart to be touched and to see the work of the Cuban people despite not having the resources to steal better the world through health and through innovation and science that really touched me and that's when the ending of the blockade went from my head to my heart. Through our reflections with the Cuban people, through our reflections with each other we've come to understand that all struggles against imperialism are necessary and important struggles and the unity of these struggles is the only way that we can achieve liberation and in the words of Hassan Kanafani who is a Palestinian revolutionary writer, journalist and a national hero imperialism has laid its body over the world its head in eastern Asia, its heart in the Middle East its arteries stretching across Latin America and Africa wherever you strike it, you serve the world revolution this is the most important lesson that we can remember from being in Cuba and that Cuba has embodied and shown with its discipline and principle to us and to the rest of the world standing in solidarity always no matter what it costs them with national liberation struggles around the world