Transcription
[music] We're ready. [music] >> Not another endless war. >> It's not for sale. [music] No boots on the ground. No falls in the air. >> No boots ON THE GROUND. HANDS UP. >> Hands up. >> Is it yours? >> [music] >> Trump's attacks are war crimes. >> OCC.
Hi everyone, and thank you so much for joining this critical webinar on building the anti-war movement nationwide. My name is Rachel Demand, and I'm with the Answer Coalition.
Yesterday, with just hours notice, more than a 100 cities across the country organized emergency actions in response to the Trump administration's illegal bombing of Venezuela and illegal kidnapping of the country's president. Trump even went so far as to announce that the US would run Venezuela and sell its oil. Today, as we speak, an additional 45 plus US cities are mobilizing in response to this warmongering.
Why? Because the American people have made clear that we will not accept another endless war built on lies. Our people here are in desperate need of healthcare, affordable housing, decent schools, and quality nutrition. Meanwhile, our tax dollars are being eaten up in the billions by the US war machine. A machine that does not benefit working-class people at home or abroad.
That's why we're convening today to continue to build a powerful anti-war movement that captures the 70% of Americans who oppose a new war. This isn't the end. This is just the beginning. In just a few weeks, on January 20th, millions of people all across the country will walk off the job, walk out of school, and stand up against one year of Trump's terror campaign against our people at home and all across the world.
This is a watershed moment, and it'll take all of us to stop Trump and his entire billionaire warmongering establishment in its tracks. We invite you to join the majority in continuing to stand up not just to oppose Trump, but to fight for a better and brighter future for us all.
Today, we have an incredible lineup of speakers from a diverse array of organizations helping to build and lead the US anti-war movement. We'll hear from them more about the current moment and what comes next.
Now, on that note, I'd like to introduce our first speaker, Manolo de los Santos. Manolo is the executive director of the People's Forum in New York City and a researcher with the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.
>> Well, thank you, Rachel, and thank you to the Answer Coalition for inviting us in convening this very important conversation about what's at stake right now and what are we going to do about it. And I want to start primarily by giving context by talking about the history that precedes us because obviously this conflict didn't just start in the early morning hours of yesterday when the US did its massive bombing campaign of Venezuela. Actually, it goes further back. And I want to start in 1999, which is a very important starting point for the Venezuelans because it's the year in which they really became independent. Independent after having to live for over a hundred years under the boot of US imperialism, of having to live under the constant threat of the Monroe Doctrine, in which they were constantly being told what to do, how to run their country, being told to hand over all their natural resources over to the US.
But after 1999, when the Venezuelans elected a new government into power led by Hugo Chavez, for the first time, for the first time in centuries, Venezuelans started to use their massive oil revenues to develop their country, to lift millions of people out of poverty. For the first time in history, Venezuelans were not simply lining up the pockets of big oil executives in the United States. They were for the first time taking care of their own people.
But that decision has a price. And since then, since 1999, every US administration from Bush to Obama to Trump and Biden and Trump again have essentially made regime change towards Venezuela their number one objective. We have seen over the last 20 plus years how Venezuela has been attacked by the United States on multiple fronts. There have been military coups, sponsored, funded, and organized by the United States government. We have seen violent protests organized, funded, sponsored by the United States government, all with the attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government.
One can like or dislike the Venezuelan government, but it is never up to the United States, its government, to determine their right to exist or their right to be a government in Venezuela. Only the Venezuelan people have the right to determine their own future.
But this went even further because it was in 2016, 2014, that the Obama administration then declared that Venezuela was an an extraordinary and unusual threat to the national security of the United States. And this was the beginning of a growing escalation of conflict between the United States and Venezuela. An escalation which didn't make any sense. One, because Venezuela has never attacked the United States. Venezuela has never sponsored acts of terrorism against the United States. Venezuela has never acted in any aggressive way towards the people of the United States at any point in its history.
And what has happened since then is that the US government took advantage of Obama's declaration about Venezuela being a threat to essentially justify a massive regime of sanctions, economic sanctions that have sought to destroy Venezuela's economy. In a very short period of time, primarily because of sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry, Venezuela's economy was essentially forced to collapse. Within a short period of time, the fastest anywhere seen in the world, Venezuela's economy shrank by over 80%. For the first time in Venezuela's history, millions of people were forced to migrate and leave their country. Where did they go? Many of them to the United States. Not because they wanted to leave their country, not because they hated their country or were even opposed to their government, but in a majority because the conditions of life under US sanctions became so horrible, so difficult to even sustain just the basic necessities of their families that they were forced to leave home. We also know there's statistics out there that explain how the sanctions themselves produced over a 100,000 deaths due to these complications.
That brings us to now. For the last 3 months, the Trump administration has been waging a non-stop campaign of lies and deception to try to convince the American people that Venezuela is the enemy, that the Venezuelans are somehow the largest drug traffickers on the planet, that all the fentanyl or the majority of the fentanyl and cocaine and other drugs coming into the United States are coming from Venezuela. Every international expert, even drug experts in the United States, even the Drug Enforcement Agency in the United States has declared time and time again this to be false. Venezuela has never been a major source of drugs, not just going into the US, but going anywhere on the planet.
It has become clear that this was really about oil and about totally controlling Venezuela and Latin America as a whole. And we have seen how the Trump administration has spent billions of dollars at this point essentially to build up the world's largest armed flotilla in the Caribbean. Scores of military vessels that have had only one mission: to attack innocent civilian vessels in the Caribbean, in which they have killed over a 100 innocent people whose stories we will never fully find out because they weren't even given the chance to be taken to a fair trial by the United States. They were simply extrajudicially and illegally killed in open waters.
That brings us to what happened yesterday. The Venezuelan people woke up in the middle of the night to find out that they were being massively bombed by the United States, and what was eventually really a a series of attacks meant to cover their actual attempt to illegally kidnap the president of Venezuela. Again, one can like or dislike the president of Venezuela, but it goes against all international law. It goes against the charter of the United Nations. It goes against even just basic international diplomacy for one country to intervene militarily in another. But more importantly, to kidnap and bring to trial the leader of another.
But we have to ask the most important question: Why was President Maduro kidnapped and taken to the United States? Why? Because he defied US interests. Because he went against US domination. Yesterday, Trump declared very clearly that American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again. Trump made it clear that this is the new and real explicit definition of the Monroe Doctrine. Anyone who questions the United States government will face regime change and will face imprisonment. And I think this is a threat not just to leaders in Latin America, but is also a threat to the American people. They say they run Venezuela now, but we are the ones who actually have to stop Trump in his tracks. We are the ones who actually have to save humanity from the slide towards fascist rule that is taking hold in this country. We have to be the ones who say clearly: no coups, no wars. Latin America and Venezuela do not belong to the US. Latin America and Venezuela belong to its own people. Thank you.
>> Thank you so much to Manolo. Next, I'd like to introduce Claudia de la Cruz. Claudia is the executive director of IFCO Pastors for Peace, an organization founded in 1967 by progressive church leaders and activists fighting for justice and self-determination for people around the world.
>> Thank you so much, Rachel, and thank you to the Answer Coalition for convening us in this very important webinar. Thank you, Manolo, for providing that overview and framing. I think it is clear that we are standing on dynamic and dangerous grounds. Um, the Trump administration's illegal bombing of Venezuela, the attacks on civilians in Caracas, and the kidnapping, the kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife represent more, I would think, than an escalation. These are warnings and the continuation of a persistent and deliberate attack on international law and the very principle of of national sovereignty. And unlike other imperialist wars, because there have been many, there wasn't even an attempt to make this appear in the slightest bit legal, by passing Congress. It blatantly violated the UN Charter. It is a unilateral act of war decided by Trump, his administration, and his close allies, and executed with brute force, mocking every diplomatic norm, and letting it be known that this administration is not accountable to anyone or any law, and it is able to make its own rule of law for profit, because that's just it. They're doing this for profit.
The United States has placed itself above the law overtly and shamelessly, and is doing so has made the entire world more dangerous and unstable, from Palestine to Venezuela and communities all across this country. The implications, which is what I would would like to share in the few minutes that I have. The implications for Latin America and the Caribbean, a region that a decade ago declared itself a zone of peace, are catastrophic. These illegal bombings and the kidnapping of a head of state are a direct assault on that project of sovereignty and self-determination. A continuation of the full spectrum dominance in the United States will undoubtedly cause more instability, and that will produce more migration, continuing to create a crisis that will be exploited by the right-wing to scapegoat refugees and continue to militarize cities all across this country. A crisis that they are creating.
This means that re, the the reactivation of US military forces across the region, like we're seeing in Puerto Rico, which continues to be used as a strategic military base by the United States in the Caribbean because of its condition as a colony of the United States. Although Venezuela is now the epicenter of the US imperialist aggression in the in this region, the American region, this declaration of war is against all the countries and any country that would dare to be free from US dominance. These acts are acts of war that are sending a thunderous message to Cuba, to Nicaragua, to Mexico, Colombia, and any nation that dares to govern outside of Washington's orders. This is telling them: you are next. The doctrine of full spectrum dominance, the Monroe Doctrine, is now being enforced not only with blockades, not only with sanctions, but with bombs and kidnapping teams. These are acts that legitimize political terror. That is what's happening.
These acts of war are also about us. And I want to direct myself to the people in the United States. This matters to us because when the most powerful military on earth declares that laws do not apply to them, it invites brutality and chaos not only abroad but also at home. While it tells every nation that the only right that matters is the, the only right that matters and that should be respected is that of US imperialism. It tells us, the people in the United States, that our communities, our basic needs do not matter either. All that matters is feeding, is housing, and is strengthening the war machine. These actions shred the notion, any notion of democratic check on executive power here at home. And we must understand that war is one of the greatest acts of theft being perpetrated against us. The trillions of dollars that will be poured into illegal occupations, into stolen futures, that money is the single source for our livelihood as as working-class people in the United States. It is the denied free healthcare that they tell us is a fantasy. It is the crumbling bridges. Is the, the flooding of train stations. I live in New York. Um, it is a cancellation of student debt and the guaranteed living wage. These are the things that are being stolen from us while they feed this war machine. Every bomb dropped on Caracas is a conscious choice to deny dignity and survival to the people here at home. A state that operates through illegal warfare abroad will inevitably turn those tools inward. And we're seeing that. They have done that. They have rolled back democratic rights under the guise of national security. They will deem protest as sedition. They will call dissent terrorism. And we need to be clear again on who our enemies are. Our enemies are not the people of Venezuela. The truth is that those who deny us healthcare, deny us housing, dignified wages, civil rights are our enemies. And they are not the Venezuelan people or their leadership.
At this very moment, the Venezuelan people are demonstrating breathtaking tenacity and courage, flooding the streets with millions of people to demand the end of aggression and the return of their president. They're not our enemies. They are teachers. They are, they are workers. They're students. They're farmers. International working-class people. They are fighting for the same things we are fighting for: for the right to exist, for the right to self-determination, for the right to have democratic rights to choose. And they have chosen, and the United States needs to, needs to learn how to respect that, because it hasn't done that.
This is why we must rebuild, I think, and I know Brian will talk more about this, a powerful and unapologetic anti-imperialist, anti-war movement um right here, right now. Not a movement that seeks a gentle empire or a more ethical intervention, but a movement dedicated to dismantling US imperialism and its endless war economy against our people all across the globe. We need a movement that makes the direct material connection between the bombings abroad and the measures that are and policies that are taken here at home. A movement that understands solidarity not as charity, but as the strategic self-defense of the international working class. At this moment, the movement demands faith communities to unite with labor. That labor unites with those fighting for immigrant rights and those who are in every struggle to advance, protect humanity and the planet. If we fail to stop this illegal war drive, if we allow this president's lawless aggression to stand, our movements for justice will be set back generations. I think it's very hopeful to have hundreds of cities across the country flooded by a multinational, multi-generational group of people demanding an end to these aggressions, demanding that Venezuela have their president, their elected president back. That is very hopeful, and we need to continue to feed that. The tenacity of the Venezuelan people is a beacon. They are holding the line. The question is whether we will join them in holding the line and against war, oppression, extraction, and this war machine that is killing not only our brothers and sisters across the globe, but is also killing us. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you so much, Claudia. Next, I'd like to introduce Ashik Sadik. Ashik is the national co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, a national organization fighting to replace the unjust and exploitative capitalist system with democratic socialism.
>> Thank you so much for having me and thank you for organizing this call. Thank you to the thousands of folks who are joining us today. Uh my name is Ashik, and I'm here with Democratic Socialist of America. We are proud to stand with our 90,000 members across the country in solidarity with working-class people around the world and the right to people everywhere to to their own self-determination against brazen acts of imperialist aggression like what we're seeing right now from the United States government.
We know that all of our struggles are interconnected. We just won a massive victory in New York City, the largest wealthy city in the country, the wealthiest city in the world, electing a socialist mayor, taking on the cost of living that's getting impossible for millions of New Yorkers. And we're ready to fight to make this city livable for everybody who lives here, like we are for everybody in the United States. And we know that's directly connected to acts of imperialism like what's happening right now against Venezuela.
While social services are being slashed for working-class people across this country, the United States government is now spending almost $1 trillion on a military budget that is meant to harass, threaten, and invade other countries to take their resources for the profits of very few right here in the United States. The ICE budget is billions more than the militaries of most other countries to invade our own cities here in the United States. Just a fraction of that would be enough to end homelessness for Americans right here in this country. And who profits from all this warmongering? Its billionaires, weapons companies, and oil CEOs.
This is part of a long-standing pattern of naked aggression to install US puppet governments that will give Venezuela's oil resources over to US corporations and force US hegemony over Latin America. As we've heard from our our speakers already, the White House is calling this the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Trump himself is calling it the Donroe Doctrine. This is the most obvious uh imperialism that we've seen so far in our lifetimes, but it's part of a long-standing pattern that's been more subtle in the past. Um, less less obvious to people who are watching. And we're seeing now that openly illegal wars like this under international law and the laws governing the declaration of war within the United States. This is just happening very openly now. They're not even pretending like 20 years ago, over 20 years ago when they invaded Iraq, that it's about democracy or whatever. This is just openly about taking their oil, and they're saying they're taking their oil resources back from the people of Venezuela who stole it from profiteers in the United States. And it's, it's very clear that this war has nothing to do with drug trafficking. There's no evidence that high-level members of the Venezuelan government are narco-terrorists like they're saying. And yet the Trump administration is using this claim as the pretext for this illegal war. And as we've already heard, we, we know what this is really about.
The United States has never forgiven Latin America for liberating itself from colonialism over the past century. There's a reason that beyond this, this bombing of Caracas and and extraditing their president, there's a reason that they're explicitly naming Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba as next targets because they've stood up against this kind of imperialism. So, we can see very obviously this is another regime change war to steal another country's oil and to crush any resistance to US imperialism. It's even more openly like the failed war against Iraq over 20 years ago under false pretenses that happened then. Millions of people stood up on the streets then because it was obvious. And that's what we have to do now and figure out how we can leverage the power that we have now that we didn't have then.
We remember how that illegal regime change operation destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and the US wars on terror after 9/11 forced over 38 million people out of their homes across the Middle East. That's like the entire population of the state of California. And it's no accident that the Trump administration is directly linking this takeover of Venezuela to ICE raids that are invading our cities across the United States. The reactionaries running our government have a long pattern of exploiting other countries and making life so difficult that people are forced to leave in search of better conditions, and then they exploit their labor when they come here, and then scapegoat them after they are living and working in communities, tearing apart families. So, we know that Trump's war is only going to impoverish the people of Latin America for the profits of very few. And here in the United States, we'll keep getting blowback for these kinds of devastating choices that are made by the billionaires, by the war profiteer CEOs. And the Trump administration is very openly linking this takeover, take this takeover of Venezuela to ICE raids that are targeting millions of people across our cities right here in the US. So, this is just going to continue unless it's stopped. Where does it end? That they, they, they're only making their ambitions very clear to dominate this entire hemisphere. So this threatens not only Venezuela but any nation that refuses to bow to the demands of Donald Trump's warmongering, and it affects us right here in the United States.
So this is the time that we must stand in solidarity with the self-determination of the Venezuelan people against these attempts to force regime change and steal control of their natural resources. And this is a time to really take stock of what exists today that didn't over 20 years ago that we can leverage to build an even more powerful anti-war movement. We have more socialists in office than any time in the past century. We have a reviving labor union movement with strong presence from people who understand anti-imperialism. We have more members of socialist organizations like the ones we see on this call than in many decades. And we have stronger relationships and communication within the US with working-class people, working-class organizations around the world than we have in many decades with mass left parties and labor unions across the Global South.
So, this is the time to take action based on the power that we have, based on the resources that we have. Uh DSA is proud to call on people in across the United States to stand up with the protests that we're seeing already to resist this illegal war, to stand in solidarity with the sovereign people of Venezuela. Uh we've been showing up uh in actions around the country over this weekend, and we will uh join the days of action coming up ahead. Uh there are some very basic steps that we're taking, like calling on the public to contact representatives in Congress. This is very low-hanging fruit. Obviously, a lot of people in Congress who are just paid to ignore calls like this from the people are going to ignore us. But there are many people who can be pushed. There was a vote on a war powers resolution um just in the past month that only failed by two votes. And this is something that we're trying to leverage right now to take action. We put out a letter tool just in the past day and have already sent over 2,300 letters to members of Congress from people across the country. So, this is something you can do. It'll just take a minute. Uh go to our website, dsausa.org. We have a statement and a banner at the top that links to the letter tool. You can just take a minute out of your day to do that. We're going to be escalating with all of you over the next few weeks to keep escalating actions. Uh we're also having a mass call this Tuesday, January 6th, at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. Uh so hope you can join us then. And yeah, we just want to emphasize we, we can't leave any power on the table in the heart of empire. We have a responsibility to people around the world to take whatever action is within our means to build working-class power and become strong enough to challenge this horrific status quo that's becoming more obvious than ever, but is stretching itself thin. And we have to find all the cracks and uh just hammer away at them within this power structure that's already falling apart, and they're flailing to to get whatever they can to grab whatever they can while while the status quo breaks. So, hands off Venezuela, hands off everywhere, and solidarity with all of you, and we have to, we have to end this.
>> Thank you so much to Ashik. Now, I would like to introduce Sarah Parker. Sarah is the executive director of Voices of Florida, a Black, queer, and women-led organization fighting to preserve reproductive freedoms in Florida. Sarah is also a national coordinator of 5051, a nationwide movement that has helped to activate people in the millions since Trump's second inauguration.
>> Thank you so much, Rachel. Um, I want to first start by taking a moment and kind of grounding myself and all of us and and the moment to send love and strength to Venezuela and the people of Venezuela. I think by grounding ourselves in this moment, like we're actually holding true to our values um by centering the most impacted people. With that being said, I really want to thank Answer Coalition for um allowing me to be here to represent 5051 and also giving you guys flowers for mobilizing people um rapidly to respond to this corrupt and outrageous act of aggression led by this disastrous administration and their shameless sick offense. Um, and also all these amazing partners who I'm just getting to meet on this call for not only taking the time out of their day to be here, to build power, to build a movement, but to also be in community with one another. I think that's really important and we often forget that. Though I do wish it was under better um circumstances.
With that being said, I want to be clear. Wars don't help the working class. Wars kill working-class people. Wars destroy communities. Wars steal our taxpaying dollars when people can't afford to even buy groceries and have to choose between healthcare and basic needs. Wars have only ever benefited billionaires and millionaires. They benefit the corrupt corporations who also refused to even pay a livable wage to their employees. They benefit weapon contractors who have made millions by the blood of communities across the globe. And they benefit opportunistic political figureheads across all parties.
I will be damned in 2026 as a 33-year-old Black woman after watching the Iraq War since the elementary school that I'm going to engage in being gaslit by this administration and the mainstream media. This was and is an opportunistic moment portrayed as a humanitarian white savior rescue mission. I'm going to call it how I see it, and it's giving the United States of America. And since the founding of this country, the tactic has always been that a war must have a humanitarian crisis to be impalatable. They can stop pretending that this was about drug trafficking. It was about power. This isn't about saving Venezuela. This is about oil. And this isn't about the people of Venezuela. The US actions in Venezuela is and always have been about billionaires and oil corporations. I've know I've been hearing it, and we're going to continue to hear all the talking points and buzzwords because it would not be strategic to call it what it is. And no matter where you stand, we need the people to be clear-eyed in this moment. People have varying opinions about Maduro. Many things can be true at once. And what is important though is that we must be true to our values and stand up against this atrocious behavior being done in our names. This is not what we the people wanted. This is not where we asked our taxpaying dollars to go to. This was and is an act of war, an act of aggression that has the potential to be disastrous and has already been disastrous.
The hypocrisy is palpable. I'm really confused because often times I hear they are the America First party. We have a Department of War, yet they're defunding schools and defunding the Department of Education. They're cutting healthcare while they're funneling millions of dollars to the United States war machine. How dare they say America First and then plunge ourselves plunge us into a position of spending if not millions, billions of dollars of our taxpaying dollars for a manufactured war when our own people can't afford groceries? When mothers have to choose between paying their light bill and feeding their children? When we don't even have access to abortion care?
In the history of our country, there have been warmongers. There have always been people that turned a blind eye or digested the talking points fed to them by politicians and the media. But there are also been people like you and me and like everyone on this call who have stood up against US imperialism and stuck to the values of being anti-war. We are standing on the shoulders of giants. Our playbook is there. It's been written. We have it. And we have an obligation in this moment to follow in the footsteps of the people who came before us, just like during Vietnam, during the war in Iraq, and use our voices to push back. This action is nothing more than what the US has always done across the globe: aim to extract resources and disempower the people of varying countries. We will not and we cannot stand silent in this moment.
In February of last year, the people mobilized across the country to stand up against this administration. You know, I, I can say for myself, we had a sense of what it was capable of, but today I can also say we had no idea what this administration would actually do and the atrocities and at the level that they committed them would be committed. Throughout the past year, 50-51 has been proactive and nimble. We kicked off the first mass protest. We have worked in partnerships with coalitions across the country to mobilize millions to take the streets. We have been nimble and responsive throughout the year. We have been proactive. We, we have worked with partners to enact effective economic pressure campaigns. We have done mutual aid campaigns. Grassroots groups have built out rapid response ICE watches. I want to, I want to be so clear in this moment. We can't just go out there and hold a sign. We can protest. We need to protest. But this is also important that we start educating ourselves. Educating ourselves about what other people before us did. Educating ourselves about the history of this country. Educating ourselves on how we can move forward in the most strategic way. We need to build networks and we must stay nimble. We could not have done that. And I want to be clear because like oftentimes you see a talking figurehead. We could not have done that without every single person and every single organization, every single organizer on the ground.
This is not the end. It's just the beginning. And we at 5051 know, and I think everyone on this call knows that this is not a sprint. It is a marathon. I grew up in the middle of Georgia where I lived in a town of like 300 people. Um, and it was also a place where my family was once enslaved. And my great-grandmother every summer would make me read books about my ancestors. I actually hated it. Now I, I love the fact that she forced me to do that. These people fought and died for me to read, to live, and to love. Those stories every day give me strength. They give me courage. And courage is not the absence of fear, but it's acting despite of it. And I'm asking everyone that's watching today to embody that. Find your strength, find your story, and embody that because we have a long road ahead of us. I have an obligation to do so for future generations, as do you. It is our obligation to fight, and it is a privilege not to fight. It is a privilege to be silent, and we must forgo those privileges, and we have to continue to use our voice. We have to continue to stand up. We have to be, like my grandmother would say, the David in the story of Goliath. So today and every day, I'm asking everyone across the country, educate yourself, protest, and mobilize on January 20th to make it loud and clear: we do not stand with this administration. We do not stand with these acts of atrocities that are happening. This is not in my name. And it sure as hell ain't in all of our names. No more bombs, no more wall, no more wars, and hands off Venezuela. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you so much, Sarah. Now, I would like to introduce our final speaker, Brian Becker. Brian is the national director of the Answer Coalition, which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, founded in 2001, just 3 days after September 11th. Answer initiated the massive US anti-war movement opposing the US invasion of Iraq in the months prior. Brian is also a long-term, longtime veteran of the anti-war movement dating back to the fight against the Vietnam War. So, welcome Brian.
>> Thank you, Rachel. I, I couldn't help but be inspired by the earlier speakers and really inspired by Sarah's comments at the end. It really, it made me feel, and I, I think anybody listening to this will have felt the same thing, that if we act together, if we move together, if we realize how powerful we can be, we can win this battle. We can win this battle, and we have to take ourselves seriously. And I think when we consider January 20th, the one-year anniversary of the Trump regime's war against working-class people in the United States, against immigrant families in the United States, against Black and Latino communities in the United States, against indigenous people inside the United States, against all workers who are suffering so much. You know, half the country is living barely paycheck to paycheck. One out of every two personal bankruptcies is because people can't pay their doctor's bills. And the Trump administration wants to loot the budget to make a hundred, not a $1 trillion is what the real number for the US War Department. $1 trillion. That's a war against US working-class families. All of that money is going to billionaires. All that money is going to corporate capitalists. If, if they said to the country, "Oh, we're going to take a, a trillion dollars of your tax dollars and give it directly to the rich," you know, we'd all be in the streets immediately. But they give it another name. They say it's for defense. Or Trump is more explicit. It's for a war, but it's for the country. It's to keep us safe.
When we think about one year of this, and then we think about the events of the past couple days where Trump bombed civilian neighborhoods and killed, killed so many Venezuelans and kidnapped the president of the country and brought him in chains, and he sits in detention here where I am in New York City, like the way the Roman Empire captured the, the rebellious slaves in the colonies and brought them back to Rome, home, and brought them into the coliseums. When you think about this war against working-class people in America, and in Venezuela, or in Iran, where Trump used 21,000-pound bombs to destroy civilian nuclear energy, uh, projects. When you think about what they've done, and you think about the fact that Trump does not speak for the majority, that we, in fact, those of us who are on this call have the majority sentiment with us, that 70% of the country on the question of Venezuela stands with us against Trump. When you think about where public opinion is, and this is what I was thinking about when I was listening to Sarah, if we mobilize this public opinion, we can win. If we mobilize this public opinion, we can defeat the entire Trump program. It's war against working-class families at home, and it's war against the people of Venezuela and the other people in the Global South. We can stand with all of the communities that are being demonized. It's not just immigrant families, in the Black community, trans kids, the LGBTQ community. This gamut of people who are under attack by Trump. Instead of us being divided and fighting separately, let's fight together. Let's have a unified general strike. Let's shut this country down, and let the public opinion that stands with us manifest its power. We can do it on January 20th. We can do it on Mayday, May 1st, 2026. We have the power. General strikes are common in France or Spain. They're very uncommon in the United States. But if we did this, if the people of this country, if all of the organizations stay together, stand united, don't allow ourselves to be divided, we can actually do it.
You know, I was noting what Trump said at his press conference where he was crowing about his trophy. And that's what Maduro's arrest, his kidnapping is. It's another Trump trophy. You know, he said, "American dominance will never go, American dominance of the Western Hemisphere will never go un-be questioned again. American dominance of the Western Hemisphere will never be challenged again." That's what the invasion, the bombing, the kidnapping is all about. The American dominance of the Western Hemisphere. If you think about what that actually means, what does it mean for the Americans to dominate Venezuela or to dominate Venezuela's oil? What US worker, what US worker owns an oil well? What working-class family has any investments in oil? What investments do we working-class people in the United States have anywhere in Latin America or anywhere anywhere else in the world? This is not American dominance over the Western Hemisphere. This is a small clique of capitalists and billionaires who intend to dominate the land, the labor, the resources of the people of Venezuela or Cuba or Nicaragua or South Africa or wherever people have tried to be free people. This is not our dominance over Latin America. It's their dominance. The same capitalist class that engages in mass layoffs, that makes sure that the minimum wage has not been raised since 2009. It's still $7.25 an hour. While income inequality goes off the charts, while the number of billionaires continues to grow, while the number of children in poverty and the number of people who are unhoused and homeless living on the streets right outside of where I am in Midtown Manhattan continues to grow. This is not about American dominance. It's about the dominance of American capitalists.
And our message yesterday when we were out in the streets, more than a 100 cities were organized in less than 12 hours, and 40 more cities today, as Rachel mentioned. That's 150 cities in two days. That's not because any particular organization is that effective, even though the Answer Coalition is very proud about how effective we are as organizers. That's because the American people are sick and tired of being told that we have to send our sons and daughters to endless conflict. War in Vietnam, a war in Panama, two wars in Iraq, a war in Afghanistan, a war in Yugoslavia, a war against Libya. All of which were deemed to have some noble cause, as Sarah pointed out, but all of which were designed to increase the domination of American capitalists. And they can't say to us, to the American people, "Look, send your sons and daughters to Vietnam or Korea or somewhere else to fight and die against a people you don't know, a people who speak a a language you don't understand, a people whose culture you have no capacity to understand. We want your sons and daughters to go and fight so that we can exploit the land, labor, and resources of those people so that we can become ever richer." They can't tell the American people that because people would stand up immediately. So they always say it's for a noble cause. In Libya, it was to protect civilians. In Iraq, it was to stop Saddam Hussein from having weapons of mass destruction. The invasion of Panama in 1989 was because Manuel Noriega traded in drugs. When we know the biggest drug profiteers were the biggest banks in the United States who laundered and were convicted of laundering hundreds of billions of dollars. In each and every instance, there's some noble cause attached with a war which loots the treasury of the United States, our tax dollars to pay for aggression against working-class and poor people somewhere else.
And as Dr. Martin Luther King said in 1967, one year before he was assassinated, the bombs being dropped in Southeast Asia on Vietnam were bursting in the inner cities of the United States because you can't have a war of aggression thousands of miles away and pretend to have an effective war against poverty at home. The Answer Coalition was formed three days, uh, Rachel, as Rachel mentioned, three days after September 11th. We all gathered in Union Square, not far from where I am. We had friends who were in the World Trade Center. We were New Yorkers. We saw the death and the destruction. I mean, real death and destruction from September 11th. And we knew that George W. Bush would cynically take hold of the grief, the rage, the anger of the American people to do something that was completely unrelated to the attack, to carry out a war against the people of Iraq. Why? Because Iraq had the second biggest oil reserves in the Middle East. We built a massive anti-war movement in the United States. Did we stop the war? Sadly, no. A million Iraqis died. A million 50,000 American soldiers either died or had life-changing wounds. Two or three trillion dollars was spent. All of that was based on a lie. All of that was based on a lie that Saddam Hussein posed a great danger to his neighbors because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And that's after the US government led UN weapons inspectors in carrying out 13,000 weapons inspections in Iraq. They knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And even if they did, even if Iraq had them, the US has 7,000 operational nuclear weapons. The US was the only country in the world to have ever dropped a nuclear bomb, and it did so on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two civilian cities, and incinerated 100,000 people in each city. The US was not threatened by Iraq.
Here you have Donald Trump invoking Article 2 of the UN Charter, saying Venezuela posed an imminent danger to the people of the United States, and that's why he had to bomb Caracas and kidnap the president and bring him in chains. That's a complete and obvious lie. There was no imminent threat from Venezuela to the United States. And unfortunately, even though there are great number of Democrats in the House of Representatives and in the US Senate, and they say that Donald Trump is the worst thing ever, and who would disagree with them on that, that's a fairly muted response from the people in Congress to this obvious war crime, this obvious crime against humanity, this obvious violation of the UN Charter, and a violation of US law. I think, uh, I think it's up to us. I think it's going to be up to us. It's going to be up to the people. Look at all of our groups here: 50-51, which has done such a remarkable job mobilizing millions of people, the People's Forum, DSA, IFCO, the Answer Coalition. And if you look at the list of organizations that endorsed the protest over the last 24 hours, there are hundreds of organizations. And there are many people who are forming their own groups and their own local level. We don't have to rely on any single organization. We want to build unity between all of the organizations. But every person listening to this webinar can form your own organization. You can become self-acting on January 20th, on the anniversary, the one-year anniversary of the second Trump regime. We can be in the streets. We can make a difference. We can build a kind of movement that Republicans and Democrats, the powers that be, can never ignore. It's going to be up to us.
I want to, I want to finish with one particular message, and it really is about the power of the people. The power of the anti-war movement, the power of the civil rights movement, the power of the LGBTQ movement, the power of the labor movement. Everything that is good in the United States, whether you have unemployment insurance or Social Security or Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, uh, marriage equality, any, any effort to curb pollution and to provide and and save the environment. Everything that's good that has come about in the United States has because grassroots movements of millions of people, and in many cases tens of millions of people, came together and acted together. We have to believe in ourselves. Somebody said, "We have to bet on ourselves." I like that. Let's bet on ourselves. Let's believe that we can be the people who make the change. And if our movement is strong enough, big enough, broad enough, loud enough, militant enough, the powers that be will not be able to resist it. We should not take, even though it's depressing to see what Trump has done, we should not be depressed. We should be optimistic in our own possibility, our own, the possibility of our own power. Sisters and brothers, siblings, friends, let's build the movement that makes a difference. We can defeat Trump if we act. Let's act together. Our next step after this weekend is going to be January 20th. Let's everybody be there. If you can't walk out of school or your job, hold a meeting there. Get together with people afterwards. Everybody can do something on January 20th. We can continue to build a mass movement. Thanks so much.
>> Thank you so much, Brian. And thank you again to all of our incredible speakers today. As they have all made clear, a new US war based on lies is not in our interest as working-class people. It's only in the interest of Trump, his billionaire cronies, and fake politician friends, the oil executives, and the weapons manufacturers. Not us, and not the Venezuelan people. Trump's actions this weekend and over the course of his entire administration thus far do not mean that this is the end. In fact, this is just the beginning. And it'll take all of us, all of us to fight for an alternative, to not just fight against war, but to fight for peace and for a system that prioritizes the needs and well-being of all of our people, both at home and abroad.
We encourage everyone to continue to talk to your friends and your family about what's happening in Venezuela and to stay educated and active. As I mentioned at the top of the call, more than 45 cities across the US are mobilizing today as we speak to say stop the war against Venezuela. And I encourage you all to visit answercoalition.org/venezuela to find if there's an action today in a city near you. And do keep your eyes peeled for more actions in the coming days and weeks. And as we've reiterated throughout this entire program, we want to see everyone in the streets in the week, in the, in a few weeks on January 20th. Millions will walk off the job and walk out of school in protest of Trump's domestic and international program of war against working-class people. Enough is enough, and we, the people of the United States, the belly of the beast, need to be the ones to stop him. As Brian just said, let's believe that we can be the people to make the change necessary. Thank you everyone for tuning in today and again to our speakers. We will see you all soon.