A Verdade on Cuba's electoral system + Some upcoming events, including anti-war protests 4/2

Register for the GDR event at:  peoplesforum.org/events/the-untold-successes-of-german-democratic-republic/

The Friends of the Chatham County Library will have in-person sales March 30th - April 1st and September 21st - 23rd:  www.friendsccl.org/  and they have an online store at friendsccl.org/Store

The Digging Durham Seed Library is open:  durhamcountylibrary.org/digging-durham-seed-library/  

The annual North Carolina Science Festival will be April 1 - 30 with events throughout the State: ncsciencefestival.org/ 

The NC SciFest will be at Cary's Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve April 1st [just postponed to the 2nd] 10am - 1pm.

The Great Raleigh Market will be at the NC Fairgrounds April 1 - 2. 

The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA is organizing protests around the country against US/NATO war with Russia and China Sunday, April 2nd:  revcom.us/en/dont-stand-aside-join-others-protest

[I forgot that there was also this call for protests on April 2nd worldbeyondwar.org/on-april-2nd-lets-take-peace-into-our-own-hands/ and www.pressenza.com/author/europa-per-la-pace/ ]

The NC Botanical Garden's Annual McNeill Sims Native Plant Lecture will be Sunday, April 2nd 5:30 - 6:45pm, with a hybrid and free format:  ncbg.unc.edu/event/annual-evelyn-mcneill-sims-native-plant-lecture-architects-of-abundance-indigenous-regenerative-land-management-and-the-excavation-of-hidden-history/

[Quarterly anti-torture vigils (and monthly peace vigils – STN announcement:

As part of the international movement to close the United States' notorious Guantanamo Bay prison, NC Stop Torture Now is supporting international vigils and organizing quarterly vigils in North Carolina. The next vigil will take place at noon on Wednesday, April 5, at the Federal Building, 300 Fayetteville Street, Raleigh.

 

The vigils are also calling for the release or fair, speedy legal processing of the remaining prisoners, and accountability for the United States' use of torture, rendition and post-9-11 detention at Guantanamo and the so-called "black site" prisons.

North Carolina served as the staging ground for rendition flights to torture during the “war on terror.” There has been no investigation or accountability of the state's role in the CIA's use of rendition and torture. Prisoners were seized abroad and transported by Smithfield-based Aero Contractors to secret CIA black sites or in some cases to Guantanamo.

 

Please join us for the first vigil on Wednesday, April 5 at noon in Raleigh. We will join peace activists at their monthly vigil at the Federal Building at 300 Fayetteville St. 

Our second vigil will be Monday, June 26 (time and address to be announced), UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture at Aero Contractors headquarters in Johnston County [at the airport]. Over the full length of the Bush Administration’s rendition program, Aero transported at least 34 of the known 119 CIA black-site prisoners, plus at least 15 of those sent by the CIA to other, often secret sites, where most were tortured. 

Our final vigils will be in September and December at sites to be announced. We hope continued and renewed pressure will highlight the need to close this international symbol of torture, and push Governor Roy Cooper to finally investigate our state’s illegal role in kidnapping, and aiding and abetting torture.]

JC Raulston Arboretum at NCSU will have plant sales online Thursday, April 6th and in-person April 28 – 29th

The NC Botanical Garden's Twilight Thursdays, when it will be open until 7pm, for equity, will be April 6 - June 15th and August 17 - September 28th.

The annual NC Pilgrimage for Peace and Justice, inspired by Nicaraguan examples, will be in Raleigh April 7th, Good Friday:

Dear Cohorts, Co-Conspirators, Co-Defendants and Co-Dependents:

It's Lent and Good Friday looms April 7 so the Pilgrimage for Peace and Justice needs your help. 

We hope you will walk with us to remember the "outcasts" and in opposition to all forms of imperialism. 

We need speakers at each stop, readers for the 14 stations of the Way of the Cross at the Capitol 

and suggestions for themes for each station. A "sag wagon" with water is also needed.

 

We want to have speakers/prayer at each walk stop and a reading and prayer at each station at the Capitol. 

Please let us know if you can join us April 7 

or take on a role such as writing and reading a station. 

   Peace, Tirzah, Gail and Patrick

 

Good Friday Pilgrimage for Peace and Justice

 (Walk with us or Meet at the Capitol)

When: Good Friday, April 7, 9 a.m.

Begin at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Gardens 1215 MLK Jr. Blvd. Raleigh

2. Women's Prison (N.C. "Correctional" Institution for Women 1034 Bragg St.) End Mass Incarceration; Free All Mothers

3. Central Prison 1300 Western Boulevard (abolish the death penalty)

4. The Women's Center 400 S. West St. (end homelessness, provide affordable housing)

5. Wake Country Jail 330 S Salisbury St. (end cash bond, stop racist jail/prison industrial complex)

6. North Carolina Justice Center 224 S. Dawson St. (welcome immigrants, support workers right to organize, Black Lives Matter)

7. State Capitol (arrive at noon) for Peace and Justice Way of the Cross (end all wars, feed the hungry, liberty to captives, health care for all, abolish ICE, stop voter oppression)

For more information contact  Witness for Peace SE Director Tirzah Villegas [  ] or Patrick O’Neill [  ]

There will be a Carolina Wetlands Association meet and greet in Raleigh April 12th 6 - 8pm.

A Carteret County, NC seed library will open April 14th:

[The UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens' plant sale will be April 6 - 8th. 

From the Haw River Assembly – 

The Third Fork Creek Trash Trout litter trap is scheduled to be cleaned out April 1st:  docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScecuMpJaumTOYGJ4C4hT3074SIvoPnCnKne4kmXkWH_Tn8jg/viewform

The HRA Lobby Day will be April 5th in Raleigh.

Burlington climate change talk

May Memorial Library in Burlington will be co-hosting a program at 3 p.m. on Earth Day, April 22^nd, about climate change, the misinformation that surrounds the topic, and the impact it will have locally on our agricultural community. The event will feature light refreshments and a special guest speaker, Dr. Ademe Mekonnen, a climate and atmospheric scientist from NC A & T University. The library is located at 342 S Spring St, Burlington, NC 27253

The HRA's blog:  hawriver.org/riverkeeper/

The previous calendar is posted at:  durhamspark.blogspot.com/2023/02/some-events-and-anniversaries-in-late.html

A Verdade #267, March 2023

A newspaper of the workers in the struggle for socialism

Is Cuba a dictatorship?

The Cuban electoral system

Pioneers. Cuban children inspect the ballot box [photo.]

Savio Peres
Pinar del rio (Cuba)

One of the countries that fascists and liberals attack most in Latin America is Cuba. They shout that Cuba is a dictatorship and that the Castro family owns the island. They even say that in Cuba there are no elections. However, in Cuba not only do elections exist, but they also have active popular participation.

In 2019, a new constitution was approved in Cuba (the country has already approved more than three constitutions since the 1959 Revolution). In this way, legislative updates were subsequently made, such as a new Criminal Code, the Code of Families and Electoral Law No. 127 – the latter will serve as the basis for this article.

Municipal Assemblies

The first thing to understand is that the Cuban electoral process has two forms – one direct and the other indirect. Let us start with the Municipal Assemblies, which is one of the direct voting processes. In Cuba, each municipality has a Municipal Assembly. The Municipal Electoral Council meets months before the elections and makes a proposal to divide the municipality into constituencies.

From there, a delegate (what we call councilor) is elected by the constituency of the municipality. To make it easier to understand, in comparison with Brazil, suppose that Barreiro (region of the city of Belo Horizonte) is a region of the Municipality of Belo Horizonte. Then the people of Barreiro will elect a person from the region to represent them in the Municipal Assembly. In the same way that the residents of Pampulha will elect the representative of their region and so on until the Municipal Assembly is formed.

How do you run within a constituency? Suppose you want to be a delegate of your neighborhood within the Municipal Assembly. Then, before the electoral contest begins, a popular assembly is organized in that neighborhood. This assembly is open to everyone and the people in the constituency who want to run make themselves available, argue why they want to be candidates. In this previous people's assembly, all citizens have the right to speak for or against the person's candidacy.

After the open discussion within this assembly, there is the first vote in the assembly itself (open and public), which will elect the people who can run for delegate (minimum of two and, at most, eight elected). Those with the most votes will have their biographies presented in the localities defined by the law and, finally, days later, each citizen will be able to go to the polls to choose who will vote for the delegate of the municipality in free, equal, direct and secret voting.

An important observation: the vote is on paper and the counting of votes is done publicly, in the presence of the candidates, the members of the electoral bodies, the representatives of the political and mass organizations and any other person (voter or not) who wishes. Here there is the possibility of a second round if necessary.

National Assembly

The election for deputy of the National Assembly is also made by free, equal, direct and secret vote by the population. To be a candidate for deputy of the National Assembly also goes through a previous ballot, both by bodies called candidacy committees, as well as by the Municipal Assemblies themselves.

There are three types of electoral commissions: municipal, provincial and national. The members of these commissions are representatives of the Cuban Workers' Federation (CTC), the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), the National Association of Small Farmers, the University Student Federation (FEU) and the Federation of High School Students.

These commissions organize the list of people who will be proposed as candidates for the National Assembly, in a complex and interconnected process, and people who have already been elected within the Municipal Assembly (delegates) and people from outside the Municipal Assembly must be chosen, in a proportion of, at most, 50% of municipal delegates.

In the end, this list goes through a vote within the Municipal Assemblies of People's Power, and some people may be removed from the process if they do not have half the votes of the delegates of their municipalities.

Once the nomination of the candidates is over, the dissemination of their biographies by the broad media begins for a certain period of time, and then the voting is carried out by the population – along the same lines as the election for delegates.

Once the deputies of the National Assembly of People's Power have been elected, this body will elect the President, Vice-President and Secretary of State – an indirect election at this stage.

Therefore, to say that Cuba is a dictatorship is, in fact, to ignore the democratic and participatory electoral process of this country. It is worth mentioning that on March 26, Cuba held its direct vote for new members of the National Assembly.