AH Vignette: Revolutionary Solidarity

Angela Davis AKA Assata Shakur had left fifteen minutes ago. She'd come to talk to him about the US lifting the Cuban embargo and the Feds probably looking to get them.

Raoul Castro and Che Guevara had both publicly stated that was off the table. Privately, the wondered.

Malcolm X, former leader in the Nation of Islam, and after the Black Panther Party had been living in exile in Cuba for decades, along with others like Angela and Mumia Abu Jamal.

Raoul and Che had taken joint control after Fidel Castro's stroke but they were old and Cuba's economy was ailing from the US embargo and the end of the USSR and its aid. Venezuela had helped until Chavez had been overthrown by the right wing and military.

He watched CNN on his satellite TV and looked for news items about the embargo being lifted by Barack Obama. It struck him as a cruel irony that an African American was President, and would not be so without his efforts, among others, despite the aggressive methods he and his had used with such controversy, yet this heir of his might just unleash the white "justice" on those who pioneered his path while they pressured Cuba, an Uncle Tom of the worst kind.

He'd renounced the Nation of Islam in those fiery days and almost paid with his life when he narrowly missed them taking him out. He'd kept at it with Black self defense and initially supported the Black Panther Party. He'd sat at planning sessions with Stokely Carmichael in Oakland, publicly advocated for them, participated in their revolutionary struggle, served soup to the people...but the shootings of police like Assata's and Mumia's had been blamed on him as well, and he'd had to flee to Cuba with them.

He'd invited Che over to discuss it.

Havana was wet and recovering from a tropical storm the last month, and the evening was humid when he heard the knock.

"Comrade Che."

"Malcolm."

"Come in."

"You're concerned about the embargo? Or...the lack of it?"

"Yes."

"Its...coy of them. Raoul is going with it. Frankly, its bullshit. I oppose it, but I'm too old to raise hell like I used to. Its a gringo ploy to get us soft when they couldn't nail our ass to the wall. I didn't haul my ass through Angola, Bolivia and Burundi just to give the Yanqui a welcome mat when he wants to try fake amicability to fuck the poor when exploding cigars and ambushing me in Bolivia doesn't work."

"So you wouldn't hand us over?"

"Hell no. Revolutionaries we both are. Raoul wouldn't either really. He wants the embargo over before he goes senile too but he isn't giving them the whole island."

"Reassuring."

"Besides...if they managed to get us capitalist...think what they'd do. They'd put me on one of their cheap third world sweatshop t-shirts. I couldn't live with that man."
 
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