Ben is a high school student who had been passing out flyers about the U.S. coup in Venezuela at track practice. A participant in the March 16 Hands Off Venezuela demonstration in Los Angeles, he told Liberation News, “I came here because what the United States is trying to do in Venezuela isn’t good. Part of the reason Venezuela is in such economic problems, has to do with the drop in oil prices, and a big thing that caused that was the 2011 [U.S.-led] removal of the Libyan government … If they want to give [Venezuela] aid and money, why don’t they give it to Maduro, and not Guaidó?”
On March 16, 400-500 Los Angeles residents gathered in a march and rally made up of community activists, labor organizers, faith groups and other allies. Despite the tiring heat, they marched down the packed downtown streets as part of a worldwide day of solidarity with Venezuela, which saw protests from South Africa to Argentina, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and across the United States, with concurrent actions in Washington, D.C., Seattle, San Francisco, Asheville, Denver, and other cities. Banners read “U.S. hands off Venezuela,” “Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution,” and “The oil, gas, diamonds and gold belong to Venezuela,” and protestors chanted “Venezuela, we’ve got your back.”
The action was formed on a united front basis, focusing around the agreement that the United States has no right to intervene in the affairs of any sovereign country, whether via sanctions, interference in elections, “choosing” a new president as they have done in the case of Juan Guaidó, or outright military action. Speakers noted how claims of creating democracy, bringing humanitarian aid, or fighting drugs and terrorism, after the nightmares of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yugoslavia, and countless other examples, have been shown to be convenient cover for the looting of natural resources, the crushing of countries taking independent economic and political paths, and the installation of puppet governments that repress human rights. “Getting rid of Maduro would mean implementing fascism in Venezuela, to deal with the over ten million people who voted for him,” said Mike Prysner, U.S. veteran, anti-war organizer, and activist with the ANSWER Coalition.
Speaking before and after the march from Pershing Square to Los Angeles City Hall were Abby Martin, journalist with The Empire Files on teleSUR, Margaret Prescod, KPFK radio host and co-ordinator of the Global Women’s Strike, Kenia Alcocer, co-hair of the California Poor Peoples’ Campaign, along other organizers with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Green Party, the National Lawyers Guild, Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition and Anakbayan Long Beach. Kenia Alcocer started her speech – on the many ills facing U.S. society today, homelessness, hunger, poor education, lack of opportunity, and oligarchy, noting how these are all things that the revolution in Venezuela was initiated to tackle – with the chant “Alerta que camina la espada de Bolívar por América Latina,” or “tell the streets that the sword of Bolivar walks through Latin America,” in reference to Simon Bolivar, the Latin American independence leader whom the Bolivarian Revolution honors.
As the U.S. monopoly media establishment lets loose a blitz of confusing, misleading, and cynically dishonest information about the situation in Venezuela, protesters spoke about the historic use of media in building consensus for war against and destabilization of countries in the global south. Valeria Espinoza, co-ordinator of Af3irm Los Angeles, a transnational, anti-imperialist feminist organization, said: “History tells us that whenever the U.S. intervenes in foreign matters, it only has negative consequences. We recognize imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, and we see the ramifications it has against women.”
Leo Martinez, a community organizer who drove a group down from Oxnard, California, told us “There’s no bigger sponsor of terrorism around the globe than the U.S. empire. First and foremost, you could start based on this – that the U.S. has never intervened anywhere and not caused a tremendous amount of destruction, with greed behind it. I know enough about the devil at home.” He talked about his annual work with autonomous schools in Mexico, where Venezuelan (as well as Cuban and other Latin American) teachers and professors come to work, where he learned from living examples of the Bolivarian revolution and its achievements in health, education, women’s rights, mutual aid between poor countries, and other fields.
The March 16 international actions served multiple purposes: they worked to inform the U.S. political establishment of a growing challenge, inside their own borders, to the support they want to build for their interference in and repression of the popular Chavista movement in Venezuela. They also let the Venezuelan people know that they have a committed ally in progressive movements inside the US, ready to strike out at militarism and interventionism, and deprive it of legitimacy and public support. Edwin Rosales, a migrant from El Salvador, and militant in the FMLN, said that “I came here today because we’re here helping, and we’re in favor of the government of Nicolas Maduro, and we know this because he’s won election after election, more than 65 percent of the vote, and he’s the only president in Latin America who has done that. Neither Trump, Bolsonaro, nor Macri, have gotten that much.”
“We need to have something like this every month, to the point that we deter Trump from putting troops on the border. What we’re doing here today is demonstrating what we have to do, which is support the Venezuelan people,” said Deacon Alexander, former member of Black Panther Party in Los Angeles, to Liberation News. March 16 showed that people all across the United States and the world as a whole are ready to stand in solidarity and aid to the revolution in Venezuela. No Coup! No Sanctions! No War!
