[NYTr] Celebrating the Life of Che Guevara: Opening Remarks Oct 6, 2007 NYC

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

 Opening remarks by Ike Nahem at October 6

"Celebrating the Life of Che Guevara"

October 6, 2007 - New York City

Opening remarks by Ike Nahem

Sisters and Brothers,

My name is Ike Nahem. On behalf of the July 26 Coalition I would like
to welcome everyone to this very special event. The July 26 Coalition
brings together more than 50 solidarity, progressive, labor, civil
liberties, anti-war, anti-imperialist, Black, Latino, religious, and
socialist organizations as well as prominent individuals in the New
York-New Jersey- groups that otherwise might have differences and even
historic animosities - in a spirit of profound unity around the
overriding issue of our solidarity with the Cuban Revolution, our
uncompromising determination to end Washington's economic and political
war against Cuba, and our fight to Free the Cuban Five, which we will
see to the end!  We have [achieved] a degree of unity in New York and
New Jersey which we are building upon and which is being manifest
across the United States. We understand that revolutionary Cuba is at
the center of the deep, radical transformations that are shaking the
western Hemisphere, "Our America" as Jose Marti said. We understand
that the deepening popular resistance and struggle in Latin America and
the Caribbean is also, and this is bound to deepen, having a mounting
impact on US politics and progressive struggles.

Tonight we are honoring the memory and celebrating the life of our
dearest, most beloved and cherished revolutionary hero, Ernesto Che
Guevara. The capitalist marketplace, where every human emotion and need
is turned into a commodity for vulgar commercial exchange, alongside
bourgeois and opportunist politicians and middle-class "commentators"
and writers, some still clinging to the vestiges of their radical
youth, they all have manufactured many Ches. They all aim, consciously
or not, to obliterate Che's contemporary political relevance and to
obliterate his actual ideas and leave an icon, a symbol, a fashion
statement. We and, most of all, the workers, peasants, youth, the
exploited and oppressed of the Americas will not let them!

Che was above all a revolutionary and rock-solid adherent of the
scientific socialism of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, and V.I. Lenin.
Che, of course, was a brilliant military thinker and practitioner; his
military leadership in the Cuban revolution was legendary and even
decisive. There was a time, and may still be, when Che's book "Guerrilla
Warfare" was a required text in the Pentagon's top military schools. It
is a brilliant exposition on military strategy and tactics. But I would
say that Che's military writings and theories are the least important
of his revolutionary contributions and ideas, even though many
commentators both friendly and hostile practically reduce Che to the
military aspect. To Che military tactics and technique, while
definitely an art, are wholly subordinate to and serve political ideas
and ends. Che, like Fidel, promoted armed struggle, only when peaceful,
legal forms of political struggle have been exhausted. 

Contrary to the expectations of the imperialist "civilized" gangsters
and their Latin American lackeys and oligarchs who murdered him or
applauded his death, the memory, the revolutionary legacy, and the
political influence of Our Che, the Che of the oppressed and exploited
majority, the Che of the youth all over the world that are fighting
for the better world that they know is not only possible but which is
coming, is greater than ever.

Why is this?

It is because as the people's struggles advance in response to
capitalist and imperialist-imposed economic and social devastation, as
social and political radicalization and mass action deepen, the
oppressed and exploited, the youth seek out [the] best, the most noble,
the clearest thinking and truth-telling, the most honest and selfless
representatives of their interests and their visions of justice and
liberation. And there they have found and will continue to find Che.

Che was a product of, and became a central protagonist of the Cuban
Revolution. Che was greatly shaped by that experience as a collaborator
and comrade of his Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro. In honoring Che we
honor the revolutionary continuity of the Cuban Revolution.

This event tonight is not nostalgia; it is not a veneration of the
past. To celebrate the life of Che Guevara is to join in the struggles
of oppressed and exploited humanity today! It is to defend Bolivarian
Venezuela and the new Bolivia and Ecuador that [are] being forged in
struggle. It is to demand freedom for the Jena 6 and justice for Sean
Bell! It is to demand an end to all federal raids and all attacks on
immigrant workers in this country! It is the fight to immediately get
all US troops out of Iraq! It is to fight against any military attacks
against Iran!

Above all, for us, it is to fight to free our five brothers, Rene,
Tony, Ramon, Fernando, and Gerardo from the Yankee prisons! These
brothers represent to the highest degree the spirit, the ideals, the
example of Che and of the new socialist human being, like the tens of
thousands of internationalist Cuban doctors serving in Venezuela,
Bolivia, Haiti, many African countries, and all over the world.

We are entering a deeply anesthetizing period in US politics: the
election of President of the United States, or, more accurately, the
front man -- or maybe this year, woman --for US imperialism. As far as
Cuba is concerned, none of the major big-business candidates are
recognizing Cuban sovereignty. All assume the right of Washington to
force the changes they want to occur in Cuba. As Fidel said in a recent
Reflection, "No one should entertain the slightest illusion that the
empire, which carries the genes of its own destruction, will negotiate
with Cuba." And he doesn't mean just Bush. 

Hillary Clinton's stated positions on Cuba have not even the slightest
rhetorical difference with Bush. Barack Obama has said he would restore
the ability of Cuban-Americans to visit their homeland once a year like
before Bush changed it to once every three years. But no travel rights
for anyone else. And he absurdly argues that this will help bring down
what he calls the Castro tyranny. Since both Houses of the US Congress
came under Democratic Party majority control, votes against Cuba that
have occurred have been with even greater margins that when the
Republicans were in a majority. The US ruling class remains totally
united in their desire and right to destroy the Cuban Revolution and
retain and strengthen US economic, financial, and political domination
of the Americas. They differ, sometimes sharply, on the tactics of how
to achieve this, especially in the current framework where Washington's
policy of overt economic and political war is isolated in world
politics, as will be overwhelmingly reaffirmed in three weeks when the
United nations General Assembly has its annual vote on US economic
sanctions against Cuba.

We encourage everyone here tonight to take advantage of the books and
literature at the tables set up by many of the groups that make up the
July 26 Coalition, especially the speeches and writings of Che. Treat
yourself again, or for the first time, to the beautiful, profound, and
clear writing and thinking of the actual Ernesto Che Guevara, before
someone else's "analysis" or "interpretation" of Che. The truth is this
is the only way to truly embrace and understand Che.

Viva Che!

Hasta la Victoria Siempre!