Protests erupt in US cities over Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela | Venezuela
Protests flared in many US cities over the weekend as people demonstrated against the Trump administration’s unilateral military intervention in Venezuela, while many in the diaspora openly celebrated the forced removal of president Nicolás Maduro.
The meetings took place as crowds expressed opposition to a possible war with Venezuela and the United States declared illegal an operation to kidnap Maduro and bring him to the United States to face drug trafficking charges in court early on Saturday.
Maduro is expected to appear in federal court in New York at noon local time on Monday.
Hundreds of people came out to protest in major cities from coast to coast, including Chicago, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Seattle.
“Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or the Taliban in Afghanistan, Panama, Libya, you name it. When the United States attacks another country like that, it’s the people of those countries who suffer the most,” Andy Thayer of the Chicago Committee Against War and Racism told a local ABC affiliate at a protest attended by several hundred people.
Others have argued that Donald Trump does not have the authority to launch such an attack on Venezuela without at least the approval of Congress. Top Democrats on Sunday condemned the US president’s bypassing his constitutional obligation to involve the congressional branch of government as international leaders said the US was violating the United Nations charter.
At a protest organized by the group The Answer (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) in Seattle, crowds chanted “No Blood for Oil” and “Stop Bombing Venezuela Now!” They carried banners with expressions such as.
“We’re here to show solidarity with a country whose sovereignty and right to self-determination is being violated by our government using our tax dollars,” Taylor Young, an organizer with Answer, which has also organized protests in other cities, told a Fox News affiliate.
“So the least we can do is say to Seattle and across the country that we’re not going to let you do this while we’re standing there,” Young added.
Republican lawmakers generally continued to support Trump and praised his actions, although senior figures pushed back on the president’s claims on Saturday that the United States would rule Venezuela during the transition to a new regime.
Congressman Tom Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota, said on Fox News on Sunday morning: “God bless this peace president Donald J Trump.”
However, protesters also opposed the deportation of Venezuelans living in the country. “We’re creating wars, we’re creating chaos, and we’re simultaneously kidnapping our neighbors and sending them back to countries that we’ve destabilized,” Olivia DiNucci, an anti-war organizer with the activist group Code Pink, told Philadelphia public radio station WHYY.
Although both parties condemn Maduro as a dictator, some activists have also called for his release.
Protesters gathered in front of the detention center where the captured president is being held in New York City’s Brooklyn borough and chanted “Release Maduro now.”
