Petition demands safety guarantees for Chavez visit to US

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Coalition to Welcome President Hugo Chavez

We, the undersigned, condemn the US actions that prevented Venezuelan
President Chavez from coming to the US to speak at the United Nations



While heads of states and the people of the world have been able to
hear President Bush address at the United Nations this week, they will
not hear from the democratically elected Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez.  His trip has been cancelled due to ?security concerns?.  Not
only is the US not offering protection, but has organized violence
against him and the Venezuelan people.  It is totally unacceptable
that a head of state would have to risk his life to meet with other
heads of state at the UN in New York.



Background: Venezuela is the world?s 5th largest oil supplier, yet 80%
of its population lives in poverty. President Chavez was elected in a
landslide in 1998, initiating a ?peaceful and democratic process?
aimed at making fundamental change, such as using the country?s oil
revenue to end poverty & corruption, and tackling racism, sexism, &
other forms of discrimination.  In April 2002 the US backed a coup
which kidnapped Pres. Chavez and overthrew the new democratically
constructed constitution.  But within three days, millions of people
from the poorest areas took to the streets and, with the help of loyal
soldiers, won both back.  The wealthy white racist coup leaders now
reside in Florida.



Days before President Chavez was forced to cancel his trip to New
York, the US government sent a message when it refused to sign a UN
Security Council resolution condemning Israeli threats to remove
Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat by deportation or assassination: it
wants us to accept its right to remove any head of state,
democratically-elected or not, whom it does not want.  The US
administration together with the President of Colombia have decided to
give amnesty to paramilitary death squad leaders, as a condition for
receiving aid.  Venezuelan airspace has been violated by 15 Black Hawk
helicopters flying over the border from Colombia in a clear act of
aggression.



These events, along with the US invasion and occupation of Iraq,
another large oil-producing nation, and the violent overthrow of
Chilean President Allende (that commemorated its 30th anniversary on
Sept 11), are ever-present specters.  Now Venezuelan intelligence
reports that the CIA was plotting to bring down Pres Chavez?s
airplane.  No one who knows the CIA?s history will reject that
possibility.



President Chavez represents the growing global movement for economic
and social justice, against US domination and for self-determination -
beginning in Latin America. The people in the United States have been
deprived of truth and of information about the new Venezuelan process,
by a corporate media which has vilified and censored Pres. Chavez, and
the movement he spearheads.  Pres. Chavez has said he most regrets not
being able to give a televised speech at Riverside Church where the
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a year to the day before he was
assassinated, declared ?[the Vietnam] war is the enemy of the poor.?



We call on governments at the UN, Congress and people in the US in
whose name these policies are carried out, to join us in;

·         Protesting US interference in the ability of a government to
represent itself in the UN, and this attack on free speech;

·         Condemning the US refusal to protect President Chavez on its
soil and, worse, its use of assassinations, deportations, illegal
arrest, torture, overt and covert invasions and other methods to
dispose of democratically-elected and social change leaders it doesn?t
want;

·         Demanding that the Bush administration stop its complicity
with a discredited and corrupt elite, financing & sheltering their
attempts to destabilize the economy, provoking violence and chaos, and
imposing a dictatorship that would enable them again to steal,
impoverish and exploit the Venezuelan people, on behalf of US
multinationals and themselves.



Add your Name:                                  Organization:
___                  Email:

Return to Coalition to Welcome Chavez (a coalition of 15 Latino,
Black, women?s and community organizations).  212-924-8585.
chavezinnewyork@xxxxxxxxx



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