January 25, 2017
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE!
FIDEL HONORED IN NY AT HISTORIC SHABAZZ CENTER!
On Saturday, February 4th, Fidel Castro, the late champion of the Cuban Revolution, will be saluted in a Memorial Tribute at the historic Malcolm X /Dr. Betty Shabazz Center – Broadway and 165th street in Manhattan. This moving gathering sponsored by the NY/NJ Cuba Si’ Committee will begin at 7pm.
“It is profoundly fitting that we memorialize this great man where Malcolm rallied our people and where he ultimately sacrificed his life,” said Zayid Muhammad, people’s artist and press officer for the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee.
Muhammad was referring to the legendary meeting between Fidel and Malcolm at Harlem’s then famous Hotel Theresa back in September 1960, when Malcolm invited Fidel to stay there in Harlem when the city administration and lower Manhattan hotels were hostile to the young socialist leader because of his political orientation. That landmark moment, chronicled in Rosemari Mealy’s book Memories Of A Meeting: Fidel Meets Malcolm X, cemented a bond of solidarity between African Americans, progressive New Yorkers and the Cuban Revolution at the height of the Cold War… these bonds continue today.
Fidel came back to Harlem to speak at Abyssinian Baptist Church in 1995 and at Riverside Church in 2000 to overflowing crowds reigniting this incredible people to people solidarity.
Fidel Castro, who will go down in history as one of the most important revolutionaries of the modern era, passed away at 90 on November 25th. From critical infrastructure support to the VietCong during the Vietnam war, to Operation Carlotta where Cuban troops helped defeat the Apartheid Regime, to Cuban doctors providing critical care in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, to providing critical care in West Africa to check the dangerous Ebola epidemic, to free education for young people at the amazing Latin American Medical School in Havana that has already turned out 26,000 doctors from all over the world including 150 from the United States, his relationship with the international community is well documented and is now the stuff of legend.
His relationship with New York’s progressive community over a period at least 50 years is very much a part of that legacy. “Fidel stewarded a proud people from a poor country on a small island on how to make a lasting and humanizing impact on the world by being steadfast to principle and willing to share everything,” Muhammad went on, “We can not thank him and the great people of Cuba enough.”
Muhammad, who will close the evening with a poetic tribute to Fidel, will be among a host of many expressing profound gratitude to the late revolutionary and to the Cuban people at the memorial.
Rising AfroCuban Jazz pianist Dayramiz Gonzalez and violinist Tatiana Ferrer will offer musical tribute. Zenzile Khoisan from South Africa and Frank Velgara of Pro Libertad will also do poetic tributes. Representatives from the UN Missions of Angola, South Africa, Namibia and Venezuela, are expected to participate. Graduates from ELAM, the international Latin American Medical School will also express their gratitude. A moving video tribute to Fidel will close out this amazing evening.
“It will be an evening full with revolutionary love,” exclaimed Sally O’Brien of WBAI’s “Cuba In Focus” and “Where We Live”…
This broadcast is produced by the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party (aaprp-intl.org), People’s Video Network (peoplesvideo.org) and Información al Desnudo (informacionaldesnudo.com)
***National Conference for the Full Normalization of US-CUBA Relations will be taking place March 25-26, 2017. Please go to http://nationalcubaconference.org for more information***
