They’re probably just trying to be nice. Folks are more likely to listen to what you have to say when your kind and polite and not seeming judgemental. And being nice pushes against this idea of scary communists trying to take everything you own and change everything you like.

Can’t find much about the numbers of prisoners. But folks should check out the plan progressivo. (i had to use scihub to view) Most Cuban prisoners have short term stays (1-4 years). Are paid the same as civilians. Are watched and given political education by civilians who do the same work, live in the same quarters and eat the same food as the prisoners. There are lots of sports, with baseball being pretty popular. It kinda sounds closer to a summer camp with classes, paid farm work and camp counselors than what we think about prisons in the US.

Unions at their core are just all of the workers in a workplace. Sure workers in the US can be reactionary as hell so how do we change that? Well, Lenin talked about unions being schools for communism. They’re where the average person can start to gain organizational skills, political training and ultimately state building skills. These are skills no other school in the US will teach you. You take these skills to address the material conditions of the workplace and then you can broaden that to outside the workplace. As socialists we don’t get power from capital, we get it from people. If we want any chance of meaningful power in the imperial core, then we need to meet people where they’re at in the struggle. Lots of those people are workers struggling in workplaces and unions are the tool we can use to address that.