As they woke up to the news that Washington had invaded Venezuela Jan. 3, SWP members organized to seek out and join protests against the assault, encouraging people they knew to join in too. They also campaigned widely in working-class neighborhoods, explaining why working people have a stake in the fight to demand Washington get out.
Members of the SWP and the Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada, and the U.K. distributed a statement issued by the SWP National Committee, “Condemn Washington’s Attack on Venezuela Sovereignty! US Out Now!” It’s published in English and Spanish in this issue. In their discussions with fellow workers, SWP and CL campaigners placed Washington’s attack within the broader crisis of capitalism today and the drive of all the imperialist powers toward a new and even more devastating third world war.
“Our party across the country is protesting the U.S. government attack on Venezuela and its oil grab,” Norton Sandler, SWP candidate for governor of California, told La Opinión, a widely read Spanish-language daily at a protest of 150 in the pouring rain in Los Angeles. Washington’s intervention “goes hand in hand with employer and government assaults on the living standard and rights of the U.S. working class. The SWP is calling on the labor movement to take the lead in protesting this attack,” Sandler said.
SWP member Craig Honts was part of a team that campaigned door to door in Passaic, New Jersey, Jan. 4. He met a woman there who works in an electronics factory.
“I voted for Trump,” she told Honts, “and I think he’s trying to do some good things.”
“Trump says that Venezuela’s oil belongs to the U.S.,” Honts said. “That’s an attack on the sovereign rights of Venezuelans and a threat to people the world over.”
“I can see what you’re saying,” she said.
When Honts pointed to the administration’s stepped-up raids and deportations, she described going into work recently “and finding there was hardly anyone there.” Many of her co-workers didn’t come, fearing there would be a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“A union fight for an amnesty for immigrants in the U.S. is needed to lift the fear of deportation facing millions of workers,” Honts said. “This is crucial to unite the working class for the fight against the bosses and their government.” She decided to get a subscription to the Militant.
At a Jan. 3 protest of nearly 200 people in downtown Dallas, SWP members Hilda Cuzco and Josefina Otero spoke with Diane Symons from nearby Benbrook.
“It’s an act of war. He’s been threatening to do this because he wants the oil,” Symons said. “It’s all about money. I am not about the money; I am about the people.” Symons bought a subscription to the Militant and the books, The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class and The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward.
“I’m here because I oppose the U.S. invasion. People are divided and there seems to be no end to this,” Lauren Arant, a health care worker from Dallas, told SWP members Gerardo Sánchez and Alyson Kennedy.
Sánchez pointed to Malcolm X who “explained the importance of building unity among working people no matter what your nationality.”
Workers need to take political power
“This invasion is a violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty,” Kennedy said. “It is part of the drive of the imperialist powers toward another world war. That can only be prevented if working people take political power into our own hands.” Arant bought a Militant subscription and a copy of Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire In Africa, Pathfinder’s newest book.
In Montreal some 100 people responded to a call from the Quebec-Cuba Solidarity Roundtable to demonstrate their opposition to the intervention at the U.S. Consulate on a busy street downtown Jan. 3.
Joe Young, the Communist League candidate in the St. Laurent riding in the Quebec elections, was one of the speakers at the protest. “We need to denounce the U.S. aggression,” Young said. “We also need to denounce the Canadian government. It has declared its support for the U.S. intervention.”
Anna Salles, a passerby of Brazilian origin, stopped by to talk when she saw the protest. “I am outraged by Trump’s action! He’s a madman,” she said.
“It’s not just him. The U.S. oil bosses are aiming for Venezuela’s oil. This is about Cuba, too,” CL member Katy LeRougetel told her. “Trump and Prime Minister Mark Carney share the same goal of crushing the Cuban Revolution.” Salles gave $5 for an issue of the Militant to learn more.
The Minnesota Peace Action Coalition called a protest against the U.S. invasion of some 200 people in Minneapolis. Tina-Desiree Berg, a reporter from YouTube channel Status Coup, was in town to cover attacks on immigrants and interviewed SWP member Kevin Dwire at the action.
During the wide-ranging interview Dwire said the SWP was for the defeat of Hamas and defended Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for the Jews.
“What about the Palestinians?” Berg asked.
“There are two national questions. What way forward for the Jews and for the Palestinian people?” Dwire replied. “The last two years have shown why Hamas is the biggest problem facing the Palestinians.” Its defeat will remove an obstacle to common struggle by Jews, Palestinians and other working people in the region, he said.
In San Francisco, Margaret Trowe, SWP candidate for Congress in California’s 12th District, joined a protest of nearly 1,000 people Jan. 3. SWP campaigners carried signs demanding “U.S. Hands Off Venezuela and Cuba!” They got a lot of thumbs up. One participant who asked to photograph the signs purchased books on the Cuban Revolution, including Revolution and the Road to Peace in Colombia by Fidel Castro and Cuba and the Coming American Revolution by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes.
In New York City Jan. 3 some 700 people protested in Times Square. SWP member Seth Galinsky told the Militant that a number of Venezuelans came by who supported Washington’s action. He also talked to two young Venezuelans who didn’t support Maduro, but were outraged at the U.S. intervention. “They have no right to bomb our country and it’s up to us to make changes. They just want the oil,” one of them told Galinsky.
Later that evening, the Militant Labor Forum, which had scheduled a talk and discussion on the class struggle in Canada, switched gears for a forum on developments unfolding in Venezuela and the stakes for the world working class. Given by Militant editor John Studer, speaking for the SWP Political Committee, it engendered a lively discussion appreciated by all.
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