New York, September 25 (RHC)--  A full house in the Riverside  Church Theater in Harlem, New York, welcomed the Cuban and Venezuelan foreign ministers. They are participating in the high-level segment of the 77th period of the United Nations General Assembly.

Democracy beyond the U.S. Empire was the banner that led the solidarity gathering on Saturday evening with the presence of delegates to the U.N. and representatives of solidarity groups and grassroots movements.

Addressing participants at the event organized by The Peoples Forum, the island's top diplomat, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, called for a world based on equality of all states, built on the desires and interests of all people, and with the guarantee of all human rights for all human beings.

"Cuba does not abandon socialism, nor the determination to build a society based on solidarity and justice for all," Rodriguez stressed.

Venezuela's Foreign Minister, Carlos Faria, noted how the U.S. destroys the world on behalf of its democracy. That is a perversion of the word democracy. He asked who gave the U.S. the right to claim the word.

Faria added that Washington accuses Venezuela of being a dictatorship. What dictatorship would allow 29 elections in 22 years? , "he asked.

The hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy and the aggression of imperialism against the peoples of the world, including the economic blockade against Cuba, were denounced.

Claudia De La Cruz, Co-Executive Director of the People's Forum, said

that U.S. 'so-called' democracy has victimized, criminalized, and murdered people at home and abroad and stressed that defending Cuba and Venezuela is to defend the working class of the United States.

During the event, chants of Cuba Si, Bloqueo No, and Bye Bye blockade were reiterated.