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By: Liam Noble
BOSTON COMMON, MA – 2026 is off to an ignominious start. In the morning of January 3rd, Boston woke up to bizarre and disturbing news: the U.S. government had abducted the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in the night. Caracas had been bombed. In a symbolic act of vandalistic terrorism, the mausoleum and final resting place of Hugo Chavez had been blown up. The US military Southern Command had violated the most basic principles of state sovereignty – with no attempt at hiding imperial motive, unlike the Bush Administration in Iraq.
Less than twelve hours later, outraged protests erupted in every major city across the United States.
In Boston, at least 250 people turned out to hear speakers from the antiwar ANSWER Coalition and Boston Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), alongside Massachusetts Peace Action and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). Considering the very short notice on a freezing Saturday afternoon, the turnout was spectacular.
Rage simmered in the cold air.
The speakers hit continuous beats: opposition to imperial madness, opposition to murder and war, opposition to the venomous and ignorant lust for domination in our rulers that Americans are all too familiar with.
Again and again the question was tip-toed around: How do we stop the war machine? Answer: Organize, organize, organize!
Brian Garvey, representing Massachusetts Peace Action, said:
Go to your friends and family. Go to your neighbors. Talk about what is happening. We are creeping towards fascism, and have been for a long time. And join an organization!
Both Boston DSA co-chairs Bonnie Jin and Estefania Galvis spoke in the rally around the Park Street Station, and to reporters after.
Jin reported to WCVB:
The kidnapping of President Maduro from Venezuela is an illegal act. Whatever you think about the politics of Venezuela, the United States taking illegal intervention is an illegal act and will only make this worse.
The national DSA organization similarly organized a rapid response. A mass call was scheduled by noon and a statement released before rallies rocked the cities, and a statement analyzing the situation and issuing demands was released in hours:
This is a nakedly imperialist war to install a US puppet government that will give Venezuela’s oil resources over to US corporations and to force US hegemony over Latin America — the new “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.
Other speakers emphasized the sovereign choice of the people of Venezuela as paramount and referenced the wealth extraction that Trump and his billionaires are poised to now preside over. Hersch Rothmel of the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) called the attack “an outrageous violation of international law.” He went on: “The only people who benefit are the oil billionaires.”
Trump himself, by the end of the morning, was boasting about the Venezuelan oil he planned to sell off and threatened the same upon nations not subservient to the U.S. empire. He wrongly claimed Mexico was run by cartels, aiming a threat at another Latin American socialist leader. The bloody, ridiculous imperial game will be repeated again and again.
This also marks the outbreak of a monumental crisis for the world— there is no international law any longer. This attack was carried out in the middle of negotiations, just to lull Caracas into a false sense of security. Colombia, with the People’s Republic of China and Russia both assenting, has requested a Security Council meeting at the United Nations — scheduled now for the next business day, on Monday.
Today Maduro, tomorrow, who knows?
If Trump’s War Department can abduct a sovereign head of state, just as his ICE agents abduct our neighbors, what about any of us?
Liam Noble is a photographer and contributing writer to Working Mass.
The post Boston Common Shakes With a Rally Organized in Hours After US Attack on Venezuela appeared first on Working Mass.
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