On Saturday, August 13, the world celebrated the 90th birthday of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro Ruz, the only individual ever to be acknowledged by the UN as a “World Hero of Solidarity.” It is very hard to think of a more important world leader than Fidel.

Emancipation Day sends a clear message to the labouring classes that capitalism exploited their ancestors’ labour under chattel slavery and is doing the same to theirs under wage slavery. It is the responsibility of the revolutionary organizers to use Emancipation Day to strengthen the class consciousness, feminist commitments and anti-racist opposition of the labouring classes.

Jamaica has one of the highest rates of police killings in the world. Physical assaults, arbitrary detention and arrests, torture, humiliation, sexual assaults, extortion, robbery, intimidation of witnesses and fabrication of evidence are also common. The working-class communities that bear the weight of this brutality need to collectively and systematically organize in order to combat it.

The renowned radical scholar-activist was murdered 36 years ago because he did not fit into the old political mold, where leaders accepted the colonial structure and wallowed in its fineries, especially the misuse of the machineries of state to silence dissent. His death reminds all progressive people of their responsibility to organize and resist the abuse of state power.

The famous portrait of Che Guevara graces T-shirts and posters the world over, but what did the revolutionary leader actually stand for?