20th newsletter: summer edition with Acampada Jove, antiretaliation and an opinion on Cuba!

SUMMER EDITION 2021

ACAMPADA JOVE WE WILL BE BACK! Since 1996, Jovent Republicà has been organizing every July the Acampada Jove. This is an open festival where music and politics meet: three days of concerts, talks, speeches and debates. In the 2018 edition, more than 31.000 young people came from all around the Catalan Countries, and the 2019 edition was even bigger. It represents the biggest political event Jovent Republicà organizes each year, mobilizing hundreds of volunteers, the members of our own organization that devote themselves to the assistants of the festival.

One of the different topics covered and of utmost importance to us is that of internationalism, alongside socialism, republicanism, feminism or ecologism. Each year we invite different organizations, such as Gazte from the Vasque Country, Galiza Nova from Galiza, Jóvenes Andalucistas from Andalucía or Plaid Ifanc from Wales and Sinn Féinn from Ireland. They visit the festival, participate in debates and cultural events and join us for the night concerts.

Last year, due to the COVID pandemic, the festival was not held. This year it was all organised, and it was going to happen with all the safeties possible.

However, the current state of the pandemic in the Catalan Countries has forced us to take the difficult decision to cancel this year’s edition again. This is another proof of the responsibility that we, the young population, have shown during the pandemic, against the criminalization we have been subject to these months. Next year, we will celebrate the 25th anniversary of Acampada Jove with the biggest edition ever. We’ll come back!

EEP

www.joventrepublica.cat/internacional www.jerc.cat/internacional @joventinter @jercinter

JUNE 2021

AGAINST ALL RETALIATION Retaliation is something that, shamefully, is common in the independence and social rights activists lives. Not only politicians that participated and led the independence process and the first of October of 2017 have been retaliated, but more than 3000 people are being retaliated today. Amongst them, three members of our organisation. Two of them have open processes for their implication in demonstrations to defend the public university, and the other for demonstrations related to the independence process of Catalonia.

As it is evident, retaliation affects everyone that suffers it, and their families and friends. It is a worse situation when it affects young people, because it is a time when they are preparing their future, studying, or starting their work life. It is young people that would normally fight unconditionally for a better future, a better education, a better health system.

What can we do? First of all, we need to keep denouncing the retaliation exercised by the State against, specially, young people who defend civil rights. This goes in hand with denouncing the brutality of the different police bodies in demonstrations. But primarily, we need to both visualize the retaliation cases, explaining the reasons why these young people are being retaliated, always knowing that this that is not visibilized does not exist. and they are facing sentences for not having committed any crime. We need to solidarize and mobilize. We need mutual support with all people being retaliated against. It does not matter what their organisation or flags they are holding, we will be there supporting everyone. At the end, we need to acknowledge that all this situation is easier to go through if there is an organization or a support group behind the retaliatied people that works tirelessly to make all this possible.

Always with those who fight!

EEP

www.joventrepublica.cat/internacional www.jerc.cat/internacional @joventinter @jercinter

TROBADA MEDITERRÀNIA FOR A FREE AND

SOVEREIGN CUBA

The USA has always though that they’ve got a divine power over the entire American continent and since Monroe’s doctrine they’ve fought to make all Latin America their “backyard”. This fact is not only historical but is also a reality that still continues with which the Yankee Empire tries to impose its interests around the continent. For example, in the year 2019 we saw two attempted coups d'état, one in Bolivia and another one in Venezuela; the USA wanted to preserve their interests over resources such as lithium and petrol with two presidents whom would help with the task. But in this context, we already see that the attempts to destabilize the alternative governments were more discreet, because of the international geopolitical context which doesn’t agree with hard power methods.

In Cuba’s case, they’ve tried through hard imperialism at first and soft imperialism at second. With the support of organized terrorist groups (Bahia cochinos or the terrorist attacks of 1997) and through financing mercenary groups and corrupt morals that have sold themselves for a couple of dollars in exchange of promoting anti-Cuban campaigns through the media (Movimiento San Isidro or #SosCuba are the latest known). And finally, through the blockade, a criminal practice that has been implemented for more than half a century attacking, directly and indirectly, the Cuban people and their natural development.

In the end, the United States of America has been attacking for six decades the national sovereignty of a country that had liberated nationally and socially with the revolutionary victory. So, from the year 1959 until our days, Cuba has resisted and shown that it has actually put the community, the bare necessities and the education of the people at the center, all that without stopping its solidarity with the rest of the peoples.

As a matter of fact, this internationalism has conquered the heart of young generations around the world. Because it has shown that it is possible to defend patriotic interests and also fight for the international just causes. That’s why, against the last imperialistic attack covered as a spontaneous social revolution, the #SosCuba campaign, internationalists have marched the streets. In our case, the biggest mobilization was in Barcelona with hundreds of people protesting in front of the USA consulate, the principal instigator of the campaign and the blockade.

In conclusion, as Victor Jara said “si quieres tomar ron pero sin Coca Cola a Cuba iré” (if you want to take rum without Coca Cola to Cuba I’ll go). If we want to know Cuba’s reality, the best way to do it is by going there, participating in the solidarity here, and educating ourselves so we don’t blindly believe everything that the conventional media tells us.

www.joventrepublica.cat/internacional @joventinter