Stop
the Threats Against Venezuela and Cuba! |
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On Saturday, April 8, thousands of people from cities up and down the East Coast and Midwest will travel by bus and car caravan to march on the White House. This demonstration comes at a critical time as the Bush administration is moving aggressively to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela, while it initiates new provocations against the people of Cuba. The ANSWER Coalition has joined with many other organizations to form the April 8: Hands Off Venezuela and Cuba Coalition. We are urging progressive organizations and local organizing/transportation centers that have brought antiwar demonstrators to Washington, DC in the past years to mobilize. To list your organization as a local transportation center, click here. Desperately bogged down in its war for Empire in Iraq, the Bush administration is escalating its threats and campaigns to undermine, subvert, provoke, and overthrow the government of Venezuela, while strengthening the economic blockade of Cuba, tightening the travel ban to Cuba, and refusing to extradite vicious anti-Cuba terrorist killers like Luis Posada Carriles. All the signs that the U.S. is preparing for new aggression against Venezuela are there: Rumsfeld has likened Hugo Chavez to "Adolf Hitler," Condoleezza Rice has called the democratically elected government a "major threat to the region," and National Intelligence Director John Negroponte has made a special point to link Venezuela with countries in the U.S. government's so-called "axis of evil." Just this past week, a U.S. naval officer functioning as an attache in Caracas was expelled from the country for illegal espionage and attempting to recruit Venezuelan military officers to oppose Chavez. In retaliation, Washington expelled the Venezuelan Embassy's chief of staff. In countless elections and a popular referendum, the people of Venezuela have voted for Chavez. With the country's social revolution deepening every day and Chavez up for re-election in December, violent subversive activities backed by Bush - like the failed 2002 coup - seem increasingly probable. U.S. hostility towards Cuba is of course nothing new. For 44 years, the U.S. has imposed a criminal blockade on the island nation, preventing it from receiving essential goods and medicines. Last year the United Nations General Assembly condemned the blockade for the 14th time by a large margin. The U.S., which invaded Cuba in 1961, has spent four decades providing financial and political support to a network of anti-Cuba terrorist organizations based in Miami. It has undertaken scores of covert attacks on the people and the leaders of Cuba. As it executes a so-called "war on terror" abroad, the U.S. government provides safe harbor to infamous, admitted terrorists like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles in the United States. The U.S. has refused Venezuela's extradition request for Luis Posada Carriles who is charged with planning the 1976 deadly bombing of a Cuban plane departing from Venezuela. Meanwhile, it has kept actual anti-terrorists, the Cuban Five, languishing in jail for over seven years. Their crime: infiltrating anti-Cuba terrorist organizations.
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As the U.S. escalates its aggressiveness and threats against the people of Venezuela and Cuba, it is critical that the antiwar movement step forward to say "No!" Join the march on April 8 in Washington DC, from Malcolm X Park to the White House, with a closing rally in Lafayette Park!
April 8 Endorsers include: |
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