Salt Lake City, UT – On January 11, Utah community members and activists gathered to write letters of support and encouragement to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Kidnapped by U.S. forces on January 3, the Venezuelan leader and First Lady Cilia Flores are currently held in a New York federal jail as political prisoners. The event also served as a planning and educational meeting for future organizing in Salt Lake City against war and Trump’s agenda.
In their speech, Adrian Romero of the Utah Anti-War Committee stated, “I woke up to a text from a friend of mine that read, ‘The USA just snatched Maduro after bombing the capital.’ I was horrified. I thought to myself. ‘How could this have happened?’”
Romero continued, “This is our opportunity to not just show President Maduro and his defense team support and human connection, but to reclaim the narrative,” continued Romero, citing the importance of past solidarity letter-writing campaigns for freed Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier.
Speakers emphasized that this brazen kidnapping is only the latest and most aggressive move in the U.S. government’s 25-year campaign against Venezuela and its democratically chosen Bolivarian government. American aggression has included coup intrigue against Presidents Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez, constant U.S. media slander of Venezuela, and U.S. sanctions.
Sebastian Miscenich of Freedom Road Socialist Organization pointed out that the Trump administration’s stated excuses of combatting “narcoterrorism” and drug trafficking in Venezuela thinly veil the imperialist push to war and economic conquest, and that the U.S. government fears the example of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution.
“The bipartisan goal of the U.S. ruling class is to attack Venezuela’s viability as a sovereign competitor and to capture its domestic market and oil reserves for its exclusive profit,” stated Miscenich, citing the continuity between Trump’s recent strikes, Joe Biden’s $50,000,000 bounty on Maduro, and Barack Obama’s 2015 sanctions on Venezuela. “Failing to settle on a convincing lie, Trump now openly boasts that Venezuelan oil is ‘going to make a lot of money’ for U.S. oil monopolies!”
“Moreover,” Miscenich continued, “by striking and demonizing Venezuela, capitalists hope to diminish knowledge of the Bolivarian Revolution here, to hide this neighborly example from the working and oppressed people of the United States.”
This event was organized by the Utah Anti-War Committee and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. After dropping off nearly a dozen letters to Maduro, attendees were invited to return the following week for a planning meeting of the Utah Anti-War Committee.
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