Since doing my deep dive into the story of Fred Hampton I have identified as a revolutionary. The United States of America required revolution for it’s origin, but the “Founding Fathers” only wanted freedom for specific white men in order to pursue property. They disented from the Monarchy’s financial control an ocean away. What was revolutionary for a bunch of racist, sexist, dead white guys is not the revolution I dream of.I begin writing this on the bus from Santiago to Guantanamo in Cuba. I’ve spent my days here having my mind decolonized in ways I didn’t know were possible with community love as a catalyst. I have supplemented this with books like Cold Anger by Mary Beth Rogers, Letters by Che, and currently The Death of Che. Episodes of the Revolutionary War by Che is next in my small suitcase library. Community love or radical love as I have taken to calling it here, has been the most truly foreign concept to me as an indoctrinated American. Thinking on what life is like back home, I live alone, I spend my days with coworkers who don’t know my truest self, when we are asked how we are doing the expectation is always that we are fine or good even when we aren’t. Everyday I take anxiety and depression medication. We live in a world of surplus but are taught scarcity mindset. Everyone wants what we have is the idea we use like a Boogeyman in the States.Cuba, a little island in the Caribbean, is prevented from getting their import needs met by the US blockade. Now that blockade is accompanied by a spot on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. The United States prevents food, medicine, and many more necessary items from reaching everyday people, but Cuba wanting the right to self determination is labeled as terrorism. Radical love, as taught by the Cuban people is first asking how something will impact my neighbor before asking how it will impact me. Community is first, the collective is first, suffering of one is enough to spark an outcry. Racism dominates in the USA, sexism & patriarchy are rolling back women’s rights, trans people are being dehumanized, people make money on the modern slavery that is prison, healthcare is hidden behind a paywall, and public education is being stripped. We have the largest military budget in the world, but do we even have anything worth protecting? The Cuba government takes a stance of being actively anti racist, medical care is free with the most doctors per Capita, they hold a 100% literacy rate, maternity and paternity leave are a required minimum, mental health is worked into the prison system, women hold office at all levels and the family code is constantly expanding to provide even more protections for vulnerable groups. Being here I have been so excited for what the day holds I have to actively remind myself to take my medicine. Depression and suicide thrive in isolation and that is why the USA has a mental health crisis, our rights are being stripped and we are trying to hold all of it alone. Everywhere we have been here is drenched in community planning. Plazas come to life every night with music, dancing, playing, and conversation, even on week nights. I don’t want to go home where having a phone means being available to produce for people at all times, not calls from your loved ones to tell you they care. My time in Cuba has allowed me to meet friends from all over the world, shout-out to my new comrades in Belgium. History has its eyes on the United States, and we can choose to be complicit in the system or we the people can fight back. Photos from the Granjita Siboney museum are burned into my mind. Men and women whose bodies were found brutalized because they were vessels for revolutionary thoughts and actions. What are you willing to die for? I certainly won’t die for a country that puts profit over people. Love is worth dying for but it is also worth living for. In the words of Che, “Remember that the revolution is what is important, and that each one of us, alone, is worth nothing.”