This year Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser proclaimed January 18th, Cuban National Day! Come and learn how the importance of such proclamations can go beyond the symbolic, given that 19 percent of adults in Washington DC cannot read a newspaper or complete a job application, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy that at a national level approximately 32 million adults can’t read.

Join us for an exchange with Griselda Aguilera Cabrera, one of the youngest volunteers in Cuba’s historic literacy campaign of 1961 that was able to eradicate illiteracy in Cuba in a year. Discuss lessons Cuba can offer to the US and how a human rights framework around literacy versus a framework of competition can have a profound impact. This event will include a viewing of the short film Maestra by Catherine Murphy about the campaign that features Griselda among many other women of the campaign.

Now retired from her career as an educator, Griselda Aguilera Cabrera works with the Cuban Psychology Society’s Working Group on Identity and Diversity in activities to combat homophobia, racial discrimination, prejudice against people with HIV/AIDS, and violence against women and girls.

Griseld will also be speaking in Hartford, Boston, Albany, New York-New Jersey, Baltimore, and Knoxville.

Local co-sponsors: DC Metro Coaltiion in Solidarity with the Cuban Revolution, IFCO/Pastors for Peace, National Network on Cuba, African Awareness Association, All African Peoples Revolutionary Party (GC), Nyumburu Cultural Center of University of Maryland College Park, Kwanzaa Associates Inc., and Socialist Workers Party, and Institute for Policy Studies.