This action plan was unanimously passed on Sunday March 16 on the second day of the 2025 International U.S.-Cuba Normalization Conference held at the People’s Forum in New York City, by those attending both in-person and online.
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The new Trump administration has begun a brutal multi-pronged offensive against Cuba and much of Latin America. On day one Trump reinstated Cuba on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list (SSOT), put virtually all Cuban hotels back on the list of restricted entities, and reinstated Title 3 of the Helms Burton Act which is the “legal” basis for extra-territorial US anti-Cuba sanctions. Trump has also made clear in his rhetoric that he sees all the Americas (even Canada!) as the de facto property of the US, and military intervention can’t be ruled out.
His Secretary of State Marco Rubio has since added Orbit to the list of proscribed companies. This impedes Cuban Americans from sending money to their relatives in Cuba via Western Union (though most currently send their money on flights to Cuba). Trump has also trampled over Cuban sovereignty by his plans to deport 30,000 Latin American migrants to the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. These measures already take the genocidal economic blockade of Cuba to a new level of intensified economic and political war against the Cuban people. We should anticipate, and be ready to oppose, additional measures to tighten the blockade including by imposing new restrictions on travel to Cuba from the U.S., and on the ability of Cubans to obtain visas to come to the U.S. for any reason.
The role of the 2025 International U.S.-Cuba Normalization Conference is to help chart a course for combating this war, which goes beyond strengthening our existing work against the blockade to discussing new strategies and tactics for the unfolding new situation we find ourselves in. To this end we resolve to:-
1. Step up the political and organizational work we do to reach out to the more than 2.4 million Cubans who live in the United States. While the mass media presents them as a united block of reaction and hatred for their government, the truth is that as many as 40 percent of them, regardless of their position on the Cuban revolution and its government, have told pollsters that they oppose Washington’s embargo because it makes it more difficult for them to help their families in Cuba.
Because bipartisan Washington claims its economic and political war against Cuba is carried out in response to this Cuban community, differences and actions that emerge as the Trump administration cracks down further on remittances and travel to the island will offer important opportunities for us to expose this lie and amplify the political power of actions and lobbying against the blockade. This has especial relevance for our work in South Florida, but also in Texas, New Jersey, and many other places where there are Cuban Americans in the U.S.
2. Welcome and promote all forms of sending material aid to Cuba. The current dire economic situation in Cuba is sure to continue. Purely humanitarian endeavors, or the individual actions of tens of thousands of U.S. visitors taking aid and goods in their suitcases, are both important and we should work with organizations like Puentes de Amor, Not Just Tourists, Code Pink, Canadian Network on Cuba and La Table de Concertation de Solidarité Québec-Cuba along these lines.
However, our movement needs to prioritize aid campaigns linking political education against the blockade and SSOT, such as the Saving Lives Campaign/Global Health Partners, the Peoples Forum, Project Hatuey and IFCO/Pastors for Peace. At the conference a new medical aid and advocacy initiative was launched by the Saving Lives Campaign.
3. Maximize the amount of travel to Cuba from the U.S. and Canada for whatever reason. Family visits, individual travel including tourist travel, and best of all, solidarity brigades and delegations, all offer very important economic support to the Cuban people, and a crucial way to break the information blockade and allow people to see the Cuban reality. This conference has particularly promoted several brigades that are going to Cuba for May Day 2025. We also welcome the production of a new slide show promoting all forms of travel to Cuba by Massachusetts Peace Action, Marazul Tours, and the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP).
All measures by the Trump administration to restrict travel to Cuba must be opposed. This includes the Biden/Trump use of the ESTA program to bar Europeans who have visited Cuba from entering the U.S. Travelers to Cuba, especially on solidarity brigades and delegations, need to be informed of their legal rights and be prepared to handle any harassment that may take place on their return through US customs and immigration. Should Trump stop all flights to Cuba and all licensed travel, we must be prepared to defend our constitutional right to travel including the right to travel to Cuba as tourists, and to promote unlicensed travel from the U.S. through third countries.
4. Involve Cuba travelers in activity against the blockade on their return. Recent brigades have brought a new generation of activists into our movement but many more are needed. In our partially virtual world this activity can take many forms but rebuilding a strong and vibrant network of local Cuba centered coalitions must be a crucial part of this. Our national movement requires strong local bases, working within the framework of united national and cross-border movements and increased hemispheric and international collaboration.
5 Draw connections between Cuba’s achievements and the blockade, and all the forms of progressive struggle that will emerge against Trump – such as for abortion rights, gender rights, Queer rights, combating climate change, for better healthcare, etc. These campaigns have much to learn from Cuba, but Cuba needs their support in combating the blockade. We need to be involved in protests, talking with people, with literature about Cuba’s achievements. We particularly need to reach out to the struggles of African American and Indigenous communities.
We should especially expect an upsurge of struggles against Trump’s agenda for the mass deportation of immigrants, which will certainly involve deportations of Latin Americans including Venezuelans and may include Cubans. Without losing our Cuba focus we need to discuss and develop ways to relate to these struggles. We can justifiably assert that the mass migration from Cuba and many other countries is a direct response to the economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. We will work with Sanctions Kill/Americas Without Sanctions to show the links between sanctions and migration, to unify our struggle with those defending the rights of migrants and in defense of the whole region, with a view to a mass mobilization in the coming months.
6. Oppose Trump’s plan to trample over Cuban sovereignty by turning Guantanamo Bay into a mass prison camp for Latin American migrants to the U.S., regardless of whether the deportees include Cubans. The return of Guantanamo Bay to Cuba has always been a demand of the Cuban people.
7. Particularly emphasize building connections between the Cuban workers movement and workers/union struggles in the U.S. We will work to share the lessons learned in California, Chicago, and Seattle as to how to secure approval by trade unions for resolutions against the blockade/SSOT at local, county, state, and national levels. Taking militant workers to Cuba is a travel priority so that they can feed back what they have learnt to their co-workers in ways that oppose the blockade but also strengthen union organizing.
8. Publicize the incredible work done worldwide by the Cuban international medical brigades and strongly oppose the outrageous attempts by the Trump administration to label them as international slavery and force recipient countries to send them home. We will strongly support the work of IFCO/Pastors for Peace in developing a Cuban trained medical cohort in the U.S. via the recruitment of U.S. students from humble backgrounds to train to be doctors on full scholarships at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Havana.
9. Continue to build upon the success of the last eight years in getting more than 117 anti-blockade or anti-SSOT resolutions passed, including in many of the largest cities in the U.S. Biden’s pathetic and cynical removal of Cuba from the SSOT list for 5 days does at least remove any serious argument by Democrats for keeping Cuba on the SSOT. We need to make more creative use of these resolutions in our political advocacy work.
10. Support the efforts by the Democratic Socialists of America, National Network on Cuba, ACERE and others to mobilize Congressional opposition to HR 450 (often referred to as the Force Act) and any accompanying Senate resolution, which seek to prohibit Cuba’s removal from the SSOT except under circumstances of complete surrender. There is no current prospect of any positive Cuba legislation passing Congress. However, Senator Wyden’s recently reintroduced bill to completely end the blockade should be wholeheartedly supported in all our publicity work and congressional advocacy as a counter to the dominant anti-Cuba sentiments in the media and Congress. We support the intention of the U.S. Women and Cuba Collaboration to hold advocacy sessions in Washington DC in the Fall.
11. Support the campaign of the National Lawyers Guild and others, to point out the unconstitutionality of the Helms-Burton legislation which underscores, as the “legal basis” for the entire U.S. Anti-Cuba policy, and which also violates the legal rights of U.S. citizens to travel, send mail etc. to Cuba.
12. Street protests and public visibility need to remain at the center of our work against the blockade. We can expect to face a generalized climate of repression from State or quasi-fascist groupings so our actions need to be legal, peaceful, disciplined, and self-marshalled. We should particularly look for opportunities to mount nationally coordinated local actions. The annual UN vote to condemn the blockade in October or November is the most obvious opportunity. We will once again organize a 24hour virtual picket on the day of the UN vote. Part of public visibility is continuing to build the SSOT postcard and petition campaign now updated for sending to the Trump administration, launched by Friends of Cuba Against the U.S. Blockade – Vancouver and NY/NJ Cuba Si Coalition at our 2023 conference.
13. Develop creative ideas for more effective media work including the use of alternative media and social media outlets. The corporate media oligopolies will never be friends of Cuba and we can expect the situation to worsen through restrictions on progressive content in social media outlets such as Facebook and X (Twitter). Black media, ethnic media and some local media do offer outlets for our campaigns and messages.
14. Support all efforts to build solidarity collaborations with cultural workers including the bringing of Cuban cultural workers on tours of the U.S. and Canada. We particularly support the plans by Hot House to stage a major online showing of their musical concert for humanitarian aid for Cuba on April 5.
15. Support the 2025 “Maratón Mundial de Amor por Cuba” launched on December 30, 2024 by the Red Continental Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Solidaridad con Cuba y todas las causas justas, which was presented during the opening plenary of this March conference.
16. While retaining our Cuba focus, we should participate in international forums with our sister solidarity movements in/of Latin America and the Caribbean. Trump’s assault on Cuba is the sharp end of a much broader attack on Latin American sovereignty, to return it all to the status of being the backyard of the US. The upcoming hemispheric solidarity conference in Mexico City in October is an important initiative and we support the proposal of ICAP to convene a gathering of U.S., Canadian and Quebecois solidarity activists at the time of the conference in October 2025.
In addition, the conference unanimously passed the following emergency resolution:-
“That the International U.S.-Cuba Normalization Conference promote and sign-on to the petition demanding the immediate release of Palestinian graduate student, legal resident, and political activist Mahmoud Khalil and that we affirm our resolute commitment to defending the free-speech and constitutional rights of activists and organizers.”
