Go Home!: Supporting Venezuela and Cuba : NM IMC

"Go home!" the man shouted out the window of his new Chevy Tahoe.
"We ARE home!" came our response. Four people in unison saying the same thing at once.
We stood in front of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Albuquerque, across from KOAT Channel 7. Ironic. Here we were, in front of news station that wasn't covering a rally. Not suprising, though.
People held up signs, waved the Venezuelan and Cuban flags, exchanged ideas and stories, handed out flyers.
At one point, one of our intrepid members attempted to give a driver a flyer.
"I don't want it!" he spat, throwing it out the window. Damn....I wonder what he wanted? To be left alone? I'm sure that's what Cuba and Venezuela want, considering they're both sovereign nations. But the Bush administration, in all of its "wisdom" decided to extend the blockade against Cuba, and stop weapons and spare parts shipments to Cuba. Why keep a blockade against a country that has ran itself pretty well since the revolution? Why suspend arms shipments to a country that will only use them in self defense? Most pressing, what does the U.S. have against leftist governments?
Hugo Chavez's domestic approval rating is over 70%, compared with Bush, who only garnered 29% and falling. Maybe Bush could take a lesson from Chavez and Castro and look below. Yeah, maybe one day I'll vote for Sensenbrenner's so-called proposals, too.
The thing that pisses the neo-cons off the most is not the fact that Chavez is trying and succeeding at making socialism work. The thing that just gets under their skin is the fact that he knows how to play their game. They tried to oust Chavez once, Castro too. But they are sick of the games.
It goes like this: a leader gets democratically elected, the neo-cons organize something to topple said leader, smear campaigns, military coups, assassinations, and then they install a leader who is pro-neoliberalism and will go along with "foreign policy". That leader then represses the people, but it's a democracy! The U.S. ousted Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide by tying him to drugs. Will they do the same to Preval? How about Evo Morales?
What needs to happen is the U.S. MUST stay out of other countries' business and attend to the people, NOT the business, of this one. If a country wants to run its government in a good way, and it works, then fine. The neo-cons need to take a hint, get the message. They need to lose once in a while.
This affects me directly. My fiancee is Venezuelan. The last thing we need is hostility from the State Department and her getting deported. Given the attitude towards Bolivian nationals coming to the country to give speeches, and Venezuelan professors having pro-Chavez views, it is not unreasonable to think that it could happen.
If supporting Venezuela, Bolivia, and other countries who take the power out of America's hands and use that power to help their own people makes me "un-American", then I guess to some that's what I am. Then again, you don't see the people who say "Go home!" out there protesting things. They think everything is hunky-dory....as long as they get theirs, of course.
It's like a lightbulb that's burnt out, or maybe it got busted. It needs to be changed. Then maybe it can shine on those beneath it, not just the 1% who keep replacing it with the same busted bulb.

From the Other Albuquerque, Anthony Moss