Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Dozens of cities in Italy organized actions in solidarity with Venezuela, demanding the release of President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores

One month after the US attack on Venezuela, dozens of Italian cities once again took to the streets in support of the Bolivarian process, demanding the release of President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores. Organized under the international slogan “Bring them home!”, the decentralized actions represent a stepping stone toward a national assembly in Rome on Sunday, February 8, as well as permanent mobilization against war and rearmament.

Students and youth made up a significant portion of participants in Tuesday’s demonstrations. “In response to the United States’ military action, a clear expression of its desire to reassert control over the continent, we once again stand alongside the Bolivarian Revolution […] against US imperialism and to demand the immediate release of Maduro and Flores,” the organizations Cambiare Rotta and OSA wrote on the day.

Read more: One month after the attack on Venezuela: the resurgence of imperialist “diplomacy”

Left groups also denounced the Trump administration’s threats and attacks against other countries in Latin America, particularly Cuba and Colombia, warning that the strategy is rooted in a model of imperialism that harms people all over the world. Marta Collot, spokesperson for the left party Potere al Popolo, emphasized that the protests were also aimed at opposing a “model based on extractivism that seeks to seize the resources of other countries.”

“The ambitions of the US are not limited to Venezuela, but extend to all the countries of Nuestra América, which are to be turned into mere territories for resource extraction, from oil to rare earths, from vast freshwater reserves to a ‘disposable’ workforce,” Potere al Popolo wrote ahead of the protests. Venezuela, with its socialist transformation, “has always been a thorn in their [the West] side, against which they have directed all weapons of hybrid warfare, from economic and military aggression to cognitive warfare,” the party added.

“We condemn this attack, which was not only an attempt to seize Venezuela’s oil, a nationalized oil, but also an effort to restore US hegemony over Latin America, which the US continues to regard as its backyard,” activists from Potere al Popolo Turin said on the day.

“But Latin America does not bow to US imperialist ambitions,” they added. “It resists, as shown by the massive crowds in Caracas, where the Venezuelan people are not celebrating, as our subservient media would have us believe, but are instead fighting loudly for the release of President Maduro and the primera combatiente.”

Read more: Trump’s ultimatum to Cuba: no fuel until surrender!

“We are here to say it once again: hands off Venezuela,” Collot said. “Today we are facing a paradox in which Trump not only allows himself to kidnap President Maduro, but also threatens half the world, from socialist Cuba to Iran, Colombia, and even Greenland.”

“All of this must end,” she concluded. “We need to reverse course and focus on policies that genuinely support workers and peoples, promote solidarity, and oppose the war-driven agenda that is pushing us toward the brink of World War III.”

Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.