No more blockades!
We need medical brigades
It’s inhumane to block the needles
Vaccines for the people!
See how power does its evil
See how power is illegal
War is their cathedral
And their actions are so lethal
No CIA to come invade
It’s time to end this U.S.-led charade
We stand with Cuba unafraid!
We shout out, end the blockade!
They put Cuba on the list
But we all know the real terrorists
The ones who oppress the poor
And make economic war
For 60 years or more
Violating international law
The hypocrisy’s extreme
We’ll sell arms to oil regimes
We’ll fund the corporate machine
And we’ll never intervene
As Palestinians scream
Our morality’s so select
“Responsibility to protect”
Protect the colonial project!
The wealth of the one percent
And the people can’t collect on any of this check
Nah, they want their boot stuck on your neck
While your children die in debt
So you can be a black site prison
A servant for tourism
You can work in sweatshop conditions
They can dump their ammunition
And they won’t brook any opposition
When the people have a vision
When the people have a mission
When the people are physicians
When the people are musicians
When the people are technicians
So they’ll strangle their nutrition
For the crime of giving back the land
For the crime of kicking out the banks
For the crime of taking money from the hands
Of corrupt politicians and their gangs
And we all know who gets paid
Which is why they’re so dismayed
As our people live in tents under bridges and highways
You see they’re scared of an outbreak
Not of Covid but of rage

From the cashiers and the janitors and drivers and the maids
So they have to keep Cuba contained
And that’s why they stop the trade
Because the people disobeyed
Because their spirit wouldn’t fade
Revolution’s a grenade
In the minds of the enslaved
Just ask Mandela why he raised his fist
And shouted Viva Cuba Libre!
And that’s why they follow this crusade
But the people won’t be played
And justice may be delayed
But the chickens always roost and the beds are always laid
And the truth won’t be betrayed!
We stand with Cuba unafraid!
And that’s why the world is shouting, end the U.S. blockade!
Hypocrites, the hypocrites
Can’t stand Cubans literate
They want resources stripped
Their greed is infinite
But you see how we resist
And not just resist but keep on dreaming
Doctors sent to tend our health across the Caribbean
2000 Cuban lives laid down for South African Freedom
Neoliberalism don’t want you to know there’s another way of being
While our own people are freezing
Hitting up against the ceiling
They’re so busy starving Cuban babies of the calories they’re needing
While they sit on all the profits the pharma companies are thieving
But they still can’t stop the teaching
Equality’s what we’re feeding
We can do without new Jordans if everyone is eating
They just don’t want Black people breathing
Colonialism keeps us bleeding
And that’s why Che Guevara is still gathering believers
And that’s why Fidel’s Revolution never will be sleeping
And that’s why they won’t succeed to ever crush the lives they’re squeezing
No more working in the heat while they’re resting in the shade
No more fighting over scraps while they run the whole buffet
And no more scrambling like a dog to lick the boots of USA
We should address the genocide of Indigenous people our own country made
Instead of preying on an island with people living day to day
All for some right wing exiles in Miami cause they have a lighter shade
Your moral authority has long ago been drained
And there’s another Revolution somewhere already taking shape
And that’s why we’re tearing down your statues and the symbols of your hate
And that’s why we stand with Cuba and our reckoning won’t wait
Because the debt the world owes Cuba will never be repaid
And that’s why the world is shouting end the blockade!
No more pointless suffering over this masquerade
Justice for the Cuban people, end the blockade!

El Jones – A poet, professor, activist and author of, “Live from the Afrikan Resistance!” (Roseway, 2014) El Jones is a former poet laureate of Halifax, Canada.