Miami, FL – Over 50 protesters gathered in front of the Trump National Doral Golf Course to boldly demonstrate against U.S. war plans targeting Venezuela. Protesters displayed banners and signs demanding the U.S. government end its sanctions against the Venezuelan people, calling for peace, and denouncing the attempted coup against Venezuela’s democratically-elected government.

After an hour of spirited chanting, the crowd took to the streets of Doral and marched over a mile down to United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) – where the U.S. government plots its interventions, coups and invasions against countries across South America and the Caribbean. At the gates of the military base, several speakers blasted Trump and his foolish attempts to create a conflict on the border between Colombia and Venezuela.

Michael Martinez from the Emergency Hands-Off Venezuela Committee said, “Trump has struck a rock. He has dislodged a boulder. And it will crush him.” He went on to add, “If Trump attacks Venezuela, it will be another defeat for U.S. imperialism.”

Doral is known for being home to the highest number of Venezuelan nationals in the U.S., with hundreds of thousands of right-wing émigrés moving there since the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution. Leaning out of the windows of their Audis, BMWs and Range Rovers, the right-wingers cursed the protesters while shouting nasty insults and making obscene gestures. A few enraged right-wingers got out of their cars and attempted to disrupt the march. However, they were sorely disappointed as the demonstrators continued unfazed.

The event was organized by the Emergency Hands-Off Venezuela Committee and was part of the February 23 International Day of Action in Solidarity with Venezuela.

#MiamiFL #AntiwarMovement #Venezuela #US #Americas #PeoplesStruggles #DonaldTrump #HandsOffVenezuela #EmergencyHandsOffVenezuelaCommittee #USSouthernCommand

USF has contracts and memorandums of understanding with U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). SOUTHCOM is in charge of U.S. military interventions in Latin America. This includes the use of death squads in Colombia and running the torture prisons at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

CENTCOM runs the U.S. wars and occupations in the Middle East, including both Iraq and Afghanistan. The USF memorandums of understanding give the U.S. military access to resources and space on campus to further their agenda of aggression and domination.

“USF's partnership with the military has shown that USF is interested in the continued slaughter of the people of the world. The U.S. military is responsible for the continued training of terrorists, overthrowing of sovereign governments, sanctions that result in the starvation of children and the overall maldevelopment of nations around the world. USF is complicit.”

In December it was revealed that one of the two architects behind the torture techniques at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base did his research at USF. James Elmer Mitchell received his PhD in 1986 at USF and then was paid millions to advise the CIA during the Bush torture years at Guantanamo.

Members of Tampa SDS vowed to escalate the fight against the USF administration and their cooperation with the U.S. military.

#TampaFL #AntiwarMovement #PeoplesStruggles #USSouthernCommand #UniversityOfSouthFlorida #TampaSDS #USCentralCommand

Doral, FL – Over 100 protesters rallied near U.S. Southern Command here, Jan. 11, to demand an end to the torture and abuse being carried out in Guantanamo Bay. Many of the protesters came from nearby cities like Fort Lauderdale and Miami, and some came from as far away as California and Michigan to demand that President Obama close down Guantanamo Bay for good.

The rally was organized by South Florida-based POWIR – People’s Opposition to War, Imperialism, and Racism. The anti-war group formed a coalition with several groups to lead the protest, including Code Pink, Students for a Democratic Society and Veterans for Peace. The protest marked 12 years of the U.S. sending prisoners to Guantanamo Bay, a trend which started shortly after the ‘war on terror’ began.

Protesters began by assembling near a busy intersection approximately one mile from U.S. Southern Command. As people gathered, they brought signs that read “12 years too many” and “Stop the torture now! Close Guantanamo!” Protest organizers led militant chants such as, “Obama we don’t want your shame, no more torture in our name!” and “I don’t know what I’ve been told, we’ll keep marching till its closed! We are marching here to say: Obama close Guantanamo Bay!” The chants won a lot of support and honks from nearby cars. From there, protest organizers began the march to SouthCom by leading the people into the streets, even though the police denied that their permit protected the rights of the protesters to march in the streets. But the organizers were experienced and knew that the cops weren’t worth being worried about and marched into the streets anyways.

The march took up a full lane of traffic on the way to SouthCom. The lead banner read “Close Guantanamo now!” and listed the demands of the protesters. Once the march reached SouthCom, protesters dressed in the signature orange jumpsuits that prisoners at Guantanamo are forced to wear knelt down, blocking the entrance to SouthCom. The rest of the activists gathered behind the orange jumpsuits and also blocked the entrance. Speakers from Code Pink, Students for a Democratic Society, Progressive Democrats of America, Students for Justice in Palestine, POWIR, Freedom Road Socialist Organization and the Committee to Stop FBI Repression condemned the U.S. for keeping Guantanamo open and demanded it be closed and the prisoners released.

POWIR founder and protest organizer Cassia Laham told the crowd, “For half of my life, 12 years, Guantanamo has been allowed to exist – all as part of some warped strategy to win some ill-defined U.S.-fabricated war on terror. A war that knows no boundaries, no rules and no end. But who knows better than the U.S. what terror really means? Terror is the nearly 100,000 Iraqis who have been slaughtered by American bombs, terror is the thousands of Afghan children who have been murdered and raped and tortured… We stand here to today to say no to war, no to political repression, no to indefinite detention, no to torture and no to Guantanamo!”

#DoralFL #StudentsForADemocraticSociety #GuantanamoBay #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #USSouthernCommand #antiwar #USImperialism #InjusticeSystem #CodePink #POWIR

As you read this, Professor Palmera is held as a political prisoner in solitary confinement by the Bush regime. However, it is the war criminal President Bush and the corrupt, narco-trafficking President Uribe of Colombia who are the criminals deserving of punishment.

The extradition, trials and imprisonment of Ricardo Palmera have nothing to do with justice. Those who fight for the exploited and oppressed, both our brothers and sisters in the oppressed countries as well as those of us within the U.S. empire, cannot receive justice in U.S. courts. U.S. courts are of, by and for the rich.

Ricardo Palmera’s trials are a joke, a mockery of justice. Chief Judge Hogan was caught cheating and forced to step down, only to be followed by the biased rulings and extreme sentencing from Judge Royce Lamberth. The U.S. judges and prosecutors are more corrupt than those in Colombia. As Palmera himself said, “My trials are political from start to finish, no matter how much the U.S. government denies it.”

Ricardo Palmera should not be tried in U.S. courts. It is a violation of the sovereignty of the Colombian people. Colombia is its own country; the U.S. has no place putting any Colombian revolutionary on trial. The Bush administration is expanding its interference in Colombia through these trials. It furthers the U.S. war strategy, known as Plan Colombia, that brings nothing but poverty, misery and death to the Colombian people.

The U.S. has intervened in Colombia’s civil war for 44 years. The civil war involves the armed insurgency of the FARC – peasants and workers – against the corrupt thieving elite that runs the Colombian state. The U.S. is on the wrong side; it is on the side of the big capitalists, big landowners and those who are up to their elbows in the blood of Colombian trade unionists and peasant organizers. U.S. corporations are robbing Colombia blind of its natural resources while arming and paying paramilitary death squads.

The U.S. military commands the Colombian military through the Pentagon’s U.S. Southern Command. There are at least 800 U.S. ‘military advisors’ and 500 ‘military contractors’ participating in Colombia’s civil war. The U.S. Command, the Colombian military and the paramilitary death squads kill thousands every year, displace hundreds of thousands from their homes and unleash a reign of terror upon the people. The U.S. is losing its counter-insurgency war in Colombia, so it is thrashing around for new ways to preserve the rule of the rich Colombian oligarchs.

The trials of Ricardo Palmera and comrade Sonia are a desperate attempt by the Bush regime to criminalize the Colombian national liberation movement, to claim FARC are not freedom fighters. Under Bush and company’s new paradigm of the ‘war on terror,’ national liberation struggles are portrayed as criminal, not political.

From the sands of Iraq to the mountain peaks of the Philippines to the rain forests of Colombia, we know the armed people’s movements against imperialism are gaining strength and strategically defeating the might of the U.S. and its military. Uncle Sam is growing older and weaker, while brave men and women – ordinary peasants and workers – along with revolutionary and patriotic people rise to join forces to overthrow corrupt despotic regimes backed by the U.S. The true criminals are the imperialists of the developed countries, led by the Bush administration and its massive military. Anti-imperialists, revolutionaries and communists throughout the world stand in solidarity with Ricardo Palmera and comrade Sonia.

In the 21st century, the FARC carries forward the legacy of Simon Bolivar, of Che Guevara, of Colombia’s revolutionaries. Today, FARC commander Manuel Marulanda represents the living embodiment of these revolutionary icons. The Venezuelan government recently recognized the status of belligerence the FARC-EP is entitled to; it recognized the FARC’s legitimacy as a political-military force for national liberation and swept away the ‘terrorist’ label that Bush wrongly promotes.

The FARC-EP stand firmly at the head of an unstoppable movement that will bring peace and justice to Colombia and Latin America. The revolution in Colombia promises to turn all existing social relations upside down and put workers and peasants in power!

Free Ricardo Palmera!

You can jail the revolutionary, but you will never jail the revolution!

Long Live the FARC!

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