By Will Hodgkinson
November 27, 2025

Boston

As part of a week of over 100 coordinated actions, protesters rallied on Boston Common Nov. 22 to denounce increasingly provocative U.S. imperialist aggressive moves against Venezuela.

As speakers noted, the Trump regime has escalated Washington’s decades-long, bipartisan terror campaign against Venezuela, which, since the world-historic presidency of Hugo Chávez, has consistently defied U.S. imperialism in the hemisphere, refusing to surrender Venezuela’s vast oil reserves to Western capital.

The governments of Chávez and current President Nicolás Maduro — promoting “21st Century Socialism” — have used revenues to support building public housing and providing free health care and education for its working class while promoting international solidarity throughout the region.

Massachusetts Peace Action’s Brian Garvey noted, “The fiction that Maduro’s government is trafficking drugs is an all too obvious pretext the U.S. is using to engineer regime change, which would allow foreign investors to loot Venezuela’s resources.”

In fact, Trump has openly discussed taking over Venezuelan oil fields. Venezuela’s “opposition” leader, Maria Corino Machado — a longtime Washington collaborator, which earned her this year’s Nobel Peace Prize payment of $1.17 million — has begged U.S. corporate bosses to colonize the Venezuelan economy. (msn.com, Nov. 4)

In the largest single U.S. naval mobilization since the Iraq War, Trump has sent dozens of warships, including the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford, to menace the Venezuelan coast and entire Caribbean region.

Over the past three months, U.S missile strikes have destroyed 21 boats and murdered at least 83 people. U.S. forces have provided no evidence to back their specious claim that the boats were smuggling drugs. The only survivors of the attacks were fishers from Venezuela and Colombia. Other victims’ families have reported them as missing fishers. U.S. puppet Machado celebrated the extrajudicial murder of the citizens she claims she wants to liberate.

Jeff Parente, an Iraq War veteran with About Face, denounced these atrocities and urged on-duty soldiers and sailors to defy Trump and self-proclaimed Secretary of War Peter Hegseth’s illegal and criminal orders for a murderous invasion.

Susan McLucas, decades-long leader of Boston’s Committee for Human Rights — which has staged a weekly antiwar vigil at Park Street Station since the second Gulf War in 2003, led the crowd in spirited chanting.

Ben Grosscup of the People’s Music Network punctuated the program with revolutionary folk ballads denouncing U.S imperialism.

Stephen Kinzer — author and journalist who during the 1980s covered revolutions in Central America and wrote his first book, 2005’s “Bitter Fruit,” about military coups and destabilization in Guatemala during the 1950s — destroyed the Pentagon and U.S. politicians’ false pretexts in their attempt to justify their decades-long attacks on Venezuela.

Mairead Skehan-Gillis of Workers World Party vowed solidarity between the struggle of the Venezuelan people for sovereignty and self-determination and that of working people in the U.S who are defying austerity cuts in government services, racist ICE raids and U.S. troops targeting civilians in U.S. cities. “Working people here in the U.S. need a government like President Maduro and the Socialist Party of Venezuela are attempting to create, one that funds people’s needs … not an endless war budget and police state to terrorize our communities.”

Yet even as the U.S. empire intensifies its violence at home and across the hemisphere, it betrays its weakness.Skehan-Gillis concluded:  “An aggressive Washington could awaken a continent-wide resistance, and we here in the U.S. have a duty to take part in that uprising. Until victory!”

Class struggle in core of U.S. empire

Longtime UNITE HERE! Local 26 leader Ed Childs fired up the crowd by linking the defense of Venezuelan sovereignty to class struggle in the core of the U.S. empire. As Childs explained, the U.S is looting billions of dollars from social programs to pay for the drones, missiles and bombs it is deploying against the popular struggles for self-determination, from Venezuela to Palestine.

Childs declared: “We’ve got to aim at our enemy. It’s not Venezuela, and it’s not Palestine, and it’s not China. It’s the one who is closing our schools, who is closing our hospitals, the one who is making our rents high and our housing unaffordable. The one who is busting our unions and closing down government services. Who is that? It’s Wall Street and the Trump administration! We have to understand that. That’s our target, because we’re their target.”

Jorge Marin, a Venezuelan organizer of the Martin Luther King Jr. Bolivarian Circle in the greater Boston area, lauded the Venezuelan government’s vast improvements in housing, social welfare, free education and health care that Nicholás Maduro’s government has achieved despite years of crushing sanctions.

As he noted, the mass mobilization of Venezuelans – including an armed citizens’ militia of nearly eight million combatants – shows the popular will to fight for these gains.  He warned, “If they do attack Venezuela, they’re going to be surprised.”

From the Boston Common, demonstrators marched through the shopping and tourist districts of downtown Boston. As they marched, Skehan-Gillis led protesters in chants of “Venezuela offers Free Tuition. U.S Funds the Opposition!” and “USA, CIA, Hands off Venezuela!”

The action ended in front of Boston City Hall, where organizers pledged to continue showing up to support Venezuela’s ongoing struggle for self-determination – for as long as it takes.

The coalition that organized Saturday’s action — the area’s newly formed Venezuela Solidarity Committee — includes Massachusetts Peace Action (MAPA), Veterans For Peace (Smedley Butler Brigade), About Face, Workers World Party and the Committee for Human Rights, which answered the call by the United National Antiwar Coalition for a week of nationwide and global actions.