A Call for Accountability: IofC USA’s Statement on The Trump Administration’s Illegal Abduction in Venezuela and Colonizing Rhetoric in the Region”
As an organization dedicated to disrupting and healing historical harms, we condemn the Trump Administration’s illegal abduction of Venezuela’s leader and his spouse, the killing of civilians, and the colonizing rhetoric aimed at Venezuela and the wider region.
IofC USA remains dedicated to healing the Americas and building camaraderie, trust, and solidarity across Turtle Island (a Native American name for North America) and South America. We know that a different way of existing based on care, dignity, agency, and responsibility is both necessary and possible because we have experienced it within our global fellowship.
What we have never experienced is how colonization, imperial domination, and what Dr. King called the triple evils of racism, greed/capitalism, and militarism lead to any significant or lasting peace, freedom, or “liberation.”
We remind the Trump administration that the United States are neither the whole or even majority of the Americas, but are a part of the Americas, and it is long past time that the U.S.A. begin acting as a good neighbor instead of a self-delegated “superpower.” As Dr. King said, “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.” So, if we aspire to be a so-called “superpower,” let us be a superpower of love and justice. Instead of the Trump administration carrying out the demands of profiteering U.S. Oil Companies to exploit Venezuela, we demand that they instead carry out the demands of justice for the over 1,000 women and girls abused by Jeffrey Epstein and his colleagues; that they release the full Epstein files within the timeline as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Following these brazen and illegal attacks, President Trump stated that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.” As a descendant of enslaved, trafficked, and exploited African People, originally brought here under such “American dominance,” I stand today as both an eternal question and an embodied counter-narrative to this delusional claim. As a subjugated people on this continent with a deep understanding of our nation’s true colonial origins as “the Virginia Company,” we know that when a nation operates as a company in search of profits instead of a community in service of people, true liberation is suppressed and justice deferred.
We stand in agreement with the response of the 5 American nations (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay) and Spain that called the Trump administration’s actions violations of “basic principles of international law, in particular the prohibition of the use of force and respect for territorial sovereignty established in the United Nations Charter…We express our concern over any attempt to control, through government or administrative means, as well as the external appropriation of the natural and strategic resources (of Venezuela), which are incompatible with international law and pose a threat to the economic, political and social stability of the region.”
We stand in solidarity with the people of Venezuela who are protesting and who desire true relief and liberation, not just the mere replacement of one extractive dictator and system of exploitation with another. IofC USA also echoes the words of Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum: “The Americas do not belong to any doctrine or any power. The American continent belongs to the peoples of each of the countries that comprise it.”
The continuation and survival of such dehumanizing doctrines and delusions should call all of us into a time of radical reflection; to free our spirits of the narratives that demean the agency and dignity of our neighbors. A key aspect of true liberation is releasing and freeing ourselves of the fictions that cause us to function as vessels of dehumanization and separation from both our neighbors and life on this planet.
As I hear a regurgitation of the same trite imperialist fictions that falsely claim to lead to liberation, I recall the words of Stokely Carmichael, also known as Kwame Ture, who said in 1973: “People are not clear on capitalism. Capitalism is a very vicious system. So, what it does is capitalism embroideries its viciousness with very illusive terms.”
My friends, when we allow the fictions of war and U.S. western imperialism to attempt to justify the triple evils of Militarism, Greed/Capitalism, and Racism/dehumanization, we do not usher in an era of liberation, we once again deny it.
These evils did not begin with President Trump, but were instead fostered over many decades by many U.S. Presidents. We can hold the current administration accountable while still refusing to engage in these harmful myths. The cruelty is systemic, the greed foundational.
A huge aspect of our UNESCO Collective Healing Circles work is calling for change and structural justice and activating our shared responsibilities.
We call on our members of Congress to activate their shared responsibilities beyond “strongly worded statements” and act as a co-equal branch of government; to limit the presidential powers of war, curtail these delusional abuses of power, and end this crusade for dominance in the region through every avenue available. We call on Congress to vote to pass the bi-partisan War Powers Resolution set forth by Sen. Tim Kaine and Sen. Rand Paul to block further military action without congressional approval.
We who long for freedom stand in an era where we deeply believe it is not time to pick up firearms, but it is time to put down fictions. If there is any resource we are to draw from our neighbors in the Americas, let it be the resource of recognizing our region is to be shared.
IofC USA will continue to advocate to bring an end to this attempted return of failed imperialist profit motives fueling our foreign policy. We will continue the work of defying fictions and uplifting the truth of shared humanity and global well-being that transforms the “foreign” into the familial across the Americas and across our world.
Yours in the movement,
Allan-Charles Chipman
IofC USA Team