[van-announce] Fw: Attack on June 14 Venezuela meeting in Phila
Charles Boylan
charles_boylan at telus.net
Tue Jun 24 10:49:45 PDT 2003
Dear Friends:
I received this notice recently and thought you might want to read it and pass it on.
Subject: Attack on June 14 Venezuela meeting in Phila
-----Original Message-----
From: Phila Crossroads Women's Center
Subject: Press release re Attack on June 14 Venezuela meeting in Phila
June 19, 2003
PRESS RELEASE...PRESS RELEASE...PRESS RELEASE..
For information contact Phoebe Jones Schellenberg Global Women's Strike
215-848-1120
Violent Anti-Chavez Elite Attack Peaceful Meeting Organized by Women in Philadelphia
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
overcoming."
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.
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