FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: press@blmgrassroots.org
January 4, 2026
Black Lives Matter Grassroots vehemently condemns the United States’ military strikes on Venezuela, the unlawful kidnapping of President Nicholás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and the threats against Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and the Venezuelan people. These actions have brought death and injury to civilians, desecrated the land and seas, and violated the nation’s sovereignty. Not only are these actions illegal according to international law and the United States Constitution, we know these to be war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Donald Trump’s claim of “narcoterrorism” by Venezuela to justify the coup that he is directing is an obvious ruse, given the pardon that he issued to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández for identical and convicted offenses just weeks before. Drug trafficking allegations against Maduro have quickly given way to a central motivation – oil. With Venezuela having the largest confirmed oil reserves in the world, Trump is advancing the interests of corporations like Chevron, Exxon, and ConocoPhillips. He is using public resources, paid for by American tax dollars, to make private corporations richer. These are not theoretical claims, they are based on Trump’s own public statements.
Beyond a war for oil, this is classic U.S. colonialism. It is the same racist, imperialist playbook that has been used to kill or remove elected leaders who refuse to comply with the will of the empire. U.S.-orchestrated “regime change” has plagued Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America throughout the 20th and 21st centuries in places like Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Grenada, Haiti, Congo, Ghana, and Libya. The U.S. is ousting Maduro in order to seize the nation’s resources and make it an American outpost. The U.S. is deathly afraid of the Bolivarian Revolution, solidarity among Black and Brown nations and people, Venezuela’s socialist potential, and what it could mean for Latin America and the world at-large. Socialized resources and government can translate to power for the people, and the toppling of predatory, murderous global capitalism.
White Venezuelans in Miami with ties to power and money might be celebrating the coup, but the masses of Black and Brown people in Venezuela are in the streets demanding the return of their President. Regardless of any criticisms of President Maduro, the United States government has no right to invade a sovereign nation and remove its leader. The Venezuelan government, the military, and the people’s militias are loyal to the Bolivarian Revolution. They have pledged to fight even if it costs them their lives and they are inspiring nations around the region and the world to rise up. Black Lives Matter Grassroots stands with the African and Indigenous descendant Venezuelans, who constitute the majority of the nation, and have every right to be safe from harm in their own lands. We remember Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, the Afro-Indigenous socialist, who inspired the people to own their collective power.
As Black people in America, we know all too well that the United States government has no problem violating international laws and even its own Constitution, forcing the world including internal colonies within U.S. boundaries, to bend to its corrupt will. This regime’s moves to directly control Venezuela parallels its efforts to deploy federal troops into Black-led American cities. This kind of unlawful aggression is not a new phenomenon, however flagrant it may be under the current Trump regime. It is also not isolated, but part of rapidly expanding imperialism exemplified by genocides and atrocities in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, and Nigeria, with others looming. The United States should be a nation among nations, not the bullies, conquerors, and pilferers of the world.
As we condemn this violent, horrific display of U.S. imperialism, we call on all people of conscience to resist. May this mark a moment of international working-class solidarity and global uprising. May it offer an opportunity to use the earth’s resources for the good of the people, not to satiate the greed of the rich. May it prove a death knell to the global capitalism that sucks the lifeblood from the people and ravages the earth. May we all find honor, dignity, and new life in revolution. U.S. out of Venezuela!
Black Lives Matter – California and each of the state’s eight chapters condemn the passage by the state legislature and signing into law by Governor Gavin Newsom of the unconstitutional and undemocratic bill AB 715 and its weak companion legislation, SB 48.
Leimert Park, Los Angeles – Black Lives Matter Grassroots now has fifty-two chapters, including three led by imprisoned folks and one in Stockholm, Sweden. The now-international organization, whose mission is to end state-sanctioned violence, convened this past weekend to celebrate twelve years since the founding of the birth of one of the largest racial justice movements in the history of the world and the very first Black Lives Matter chapter on this same spot, Leimert Park (aka Africa Town), the heart of Black Los Angeles. The organization was sprung into being after the murderer of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was acquitted by a legal system that never served Black people.
“BLM Grassroots, Local Organizers, Justice Families, and Student Activists Warn of Alarming Trend of Black Students at Predominantly White Institutions BeingTargeted by White Supremacists and Cops.”
