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June 19, 2003 Two women were physically attacked at a meeting in a Philadelphia church by people from a group of 20 who support the discredited and defeated white racist elite in Venezuela. Having failed to overthrow the elected government there, they attempted violently to censor the truth about Venezuela today. The meeting, on Saturday June 14, “Venezuela Report Back – One Year After an Uprising Reversed the Coup”, was organized by the Global Women’s Strike. The disrupters, stationed within and outside of the Tabernacle Church, harassed the multiracial crowd, which included several older women, a wheelchair user, youth, as well as church members. There were two assaults: one outside the church against a woman going into the meeting whose wrist was wrung as she attempted to shield her face from a camera wielded by a disrupter; the other inside the church against a meeting organizer who was slapped loud enough to be heard across the room – including by a Police Civil Affairs officer. The police were called and reports filed. There are several other witnesses. “We in the US have a hard enough time finding out what is really happening in Venezuela, since the mainstream press is biased against President Chavez. Though elected by a landslide, the US government is hostile to his refusal to privatize oil or allow the oil revenue to be siphoned to the US, and because he encourages grassroots people taking charge of their own society – the kind of democracy we in the US have not known for many moons,” said event coordinator, Phoebe Jones Schellenberg of the Global Women’s Strike and the Germantown (Quaker) Meeting Peace & Social Concerns Committee which endorsed the event. “When people got together to hear what we saw on our April visit, the first anniversary of the popular reversal of the coup, we were physically attacked. They behaved just like their counterparts in Venezuela, to prevent US people finding out what is being accomplished there, and what we can learn from it.” Despite Venezuela supplying 14% of US oil needs, 80% of Venezuelans live in extreme poverty. People have organized themselves into neighborhood groups, cooperatives, and unions to organize for the housing, education and food they need. Venezuelan Dozthor Zurlent, one of the speakers, said the opposition is increasingly desperate and violent, having twice now failed to overthrow President Chavez who has emerged from the latest failed attempt – a so-called strike – stronger than ever. Los Angeles-based Margaret Prescod of Global Women of Color WinWages, who also reported on her Venezuelan visit, said: “The attackers were laughing when I spoke as a woman of African descent about the impact of slavery. They attempted to silence a man of African descent who opposed them in the meeting. This is the crude racism of the pre-civil rights movement, when Black people needed security outside meetings to protect ourselves. These racists are emboldened by US support for the white elite’s opposition to President Chavez. Recently Gustavo Cisneros, their leader, was given an award by Henry Kissinger, the mastermind of the 1973 US-organized coup in Chile. At this meeting the opposition was trying to get away in the US with the sexism, racism and violence they have failed to impose in Venezuela.” Prescod, a regular contributor to KPFK, the distinguished West Coast radio station, was taunted and harassed as she left the meeting.
Tonya Wenger, a Mennonite with a long history of non-violence and pacifism,
was slapped inside the Church. She said, ”This was a peaceful meeting,
attended by other Mennonites, Quakers, anti-war activists, Black community
organizers, women’s rights activists, pacifists, youth, and environmentalists, who came to find out about the ’peaceful and democratic
revolution’ taking place in Venezuela. For them to bring violence and
disruption to such a gathering tells us what grassroots people in Venezuela
have had to suffer for decades from this same elite which they are now The meeting launched the acclaimed video, Venezuela – a 21st Century Revolution, featuring grassroots Venezuelan women and men, as well as the head of the Women’s Development Bank and the head of the oil workers’ trade union, all speaking for themselves. The new video shows the role women have played: they were key to reversing the coup in April 2002, when they poured onto the streets bringing the whole community with them and working with grassroots soldiers to get back their president and constitution – that recognizes housework as productive, entitling housewives to health care and a pension, that gives land and housing to rural and homeless people beginning with single mothers, and that promotes pay equity between women and men. Just one day before the meeting, approximately 30 supporters of President Chavez were shot by opposition police in Caracas. This is the opposition we faced at a peaceful meeting in Philadelphia. The event was a success despite this. For information contact Phoebe Jones Schellenberg Global Women’s Strike 215-848-1120 |