Rally to tell Bush: ‘Hands off Venezuela!’

On Nov. 8 activists will gather at historic Town Hall in midtown Manhattan to demand an end to the U.S. government’s aggressive posture toward Bolivarian Venezuela.

The Evening of Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution is taking its place as the latest of many important events held at Town Hall over the past eight decades. Built by the women’s suffrage movement, the venue has been the launching pad for many historic struggles, from a protest over the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in 1927 to the movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.

The Nov. 8 rally is expected to be the largest action in the United States to date in support of President Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution.

Teresa Gutierrez, coordinator of the New York Committee to Free the Cuban Five and Nov. 8 event organizer, descri bed the event’s purpose: “The most important thing Venezuelans thing need from us is for us to galvanize support for Venezuela and to stop Bush's aggres sion. This Town Hall event will plant a seed for a national movement in solidarity with Venezuela.”

A host of distinguished scholars and activists have endorsed the event. Sup porters include former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, actor Danny Glover, and rad ical authors Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. Letters of support have poured in from all around the country and the world.

Actor Peter Coyote, for example, wrote: “It is ironic that the American government tried to overthrow a democratically elected president of another country whose ‘voter approval numbers’ are nearly double that of our own president.”

Political analyst James Petras wrote: “The Night in Solidarity with Bolivarian Venezuela sends a message to all Ameri cans that social welfare, self-determination, racial justice and popular power embedded in the policies of President Chávez are a viable alternative to imperialism and neoliberalism.”

Worldwide support

Portuguese author, journalist and former member of the European Parliament, Miguel Urbano Rodrigues, wrote: “Boli varian Venezuela is now an extraordinary laboratory of the class struggle in Latin Amer ica and a fortress of resistance to imperialism and the annexationist drive of the ‘Free Trade Agreement of the Amer icas.’ To stand with Chávez and his humanistic revolution is to struggle for the progress of humanity.”

In Austria and Italy the Anti-Imperialist Camp has called a series of meetings and demonstrations on Nov. 7 and 8 in solidarity with Bolivarian Venezuela and with the Town Hall meeting.

The Nov. 8 rally is a timely and necessary response to the complicity of the Bush administration, the extreme Christian right, and the corporate media in their attempts to undermine, overthrow and even kill President Chávez.

Since Chávez’s election in 1998, the Bolivarian government of Venezuela has expanded educational opportunities, turned over idle factories to the workers, and with the assistance of Cuban doctors provided health care to the poor. The revolutionary process is deeply rooted in the Venezuelan masses’ aspirations of dignity and independence.

Poor and working class Venezuelans are counting on the progressive movement in the United States to vocally express their dissent with the U.S. government’s policy of isolating and fomenting unrest.

Venezuela needs the support of progressives in the United States. What it doesn’t need is U.S. imperialist interference aimed at turning back the clock in Venezuela. The Nov. 8 rally is an opportunity to stand up and speak out against the ruling class’s attempts to destroy the Bolivarian Revolution. A similar solidarity event is set in Los Angeles on Nov. 10. Call 323-936-7266 for information.

Link: An Evening in Solidarity With Bolivarian Venezuela