These were the remarks made by Brian Garvey at the Boston Stop Regime-Change War on Venezuela Rally.
First I want to thank everyone for being here today on such short notice. Tyranny must be opposed every day. That is what people are doing by showing up—holding banners and signs, standing in the cold and exhaustion—because they understand it is crucial to be here. It matters. People showing up make a difference.
Like many of you, I didn’t get much sleep last night. But I know the people of Caracas, living under the threat of U.S. bombs, bullets, sanctions, and endless intervention, are not getting much sleep either. Neither are the mothers and fathers of U.S. service members who are being sent into yet another pointless, expensive, and dangerous war.
We live in a society with a president who claims to love U.S. service members. And yet, what he does tramples on the most basic constitutional rights that they—and all of us—are supposed to enjoy. The president is not a king. The president does not have the power to go to war on his own. That distinction defines the difference between a democratic republic and authoritarianism, and we have been creeping toward authoritarianism for a long time.
This administration is unusually blatant. The president openly says the United States is simply going to “run Venezuela,” as if that approach has not already failed catastrophically. It failed in Afghanistan and Iraq. It fails in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. It fails under presidents of both parties. You can barely find a country in Latin America that the United States has not invaded or intervened in.
I also draw a local connection. I live in Burlington, Massachusetts. Right next to the mall—next to the Macy’s parking lot—is ICE headquarters for all of New England. This is a force whose budget is massively expanded and which now operates like a paramilitary agency. It invades our neighborhoods every day, dragging people away to force them to sleep on concrete floors in a makeshift detention center. The overwhelming majority of those taken have no criminal record at all.
When the Supreme Court allows people to be detained based on the color of their skin, the language they speak, or the job they do, what is at risk is foundational: due process itself. And if you lose due process, you lose everything. Without it, you cannot prove anything. People can be disappeared, black-bagged, or sent to distant prisons for political speech.
This is what is on the line, and it is directly connected to this new regime-change war against Venezuela. Every new war takes away more of our rights. Every act of extrajudicial violence, every destruction carried out without evidence, reinforces the idea that the government can act as judge, jury, and executioner. If we do not think we are all somewhere on that list, then we are fooling ourselves.
This must be the moment to draw a line in the sand and say: we are not going down this road again. We remember Iraq. We remember Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Libya. We remember Vietnam, Iran, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. The list is so long that naming every country would cost us our voices.
If we do not stand up for the right of other people to live free from authoritarian intervention, we eventually lose all of our rights here as well.
The encouraging reality is this: the American people do not want this war. Poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans—including a plurality of Republicans—oppose war with Venezuela. That gives us an opportunity, and it gives us responsibility.
So we organize. We talk to our friends and families. We reach across ideological lines. People oppose endless wars for many different reasons, and if we can agree on this one point, we must come together. The only way we win is by building relationships, strengthening movements, and refusing to accept yet another disastrous regime-change war as normal.
We have the people on our side—millions of them. It is up to us to find them, bring them together, and build something powerful enough to make war politically unacceptable again.
No war on Venezuela!
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Brian Garvey is the Executive Director of Massachusetts Peace Action.
