Protests erupt in US cities over Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela

Protests bubbled up in several US cities over the weekend as people demonstrated against the Trump administration’s unilateral military intervention in Venezuela – even as many in the diaspora publicly celebrated the forced removal of president Nicolás Maduro.

Gatherings took place as crowds expressed opposition to a potential war with Venezuela and to declare illegal the US operation to snatch Maduro early on Saturday and bring him to the US to face drug-trafficking charges in court.

Maduro is due to appear in federal court in New York at noon local time on Monday.

Demonstrators marched down Market Street to United Nations Plaza in San Francisco to protest against Trump’s military actions in Venezuela, on Saturday. Photograph: John G Mabanglo/EPA

Hundreds of people came out to protest in large cities coast to coast, including Chicago, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Seattle.

“Whether it’s Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the Taliban in Afghanistan, Panama, Libya, you name it. Whenever the United States attacks another country like this, it’s the peoples of those countries who suffer the most,” Andy Thayer of the Chicago Committee Against War and Racism said to a local ABC affiliate at a protest that drew several hundred.

Others argued that Donald Trump did not have authority to launch such a strike on Venezuela, at least without approval from Congress. Senior Democrats on Sunday decried the US president’s bypassing his constitutional obligation to involve the congressional branch of government, as international leaders said the US had breached the United Nations charter.

At a protest in Seattle organized by a group called Answer (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), crowds held signs with statements such as “No Blood for Oil” and “Stop Bombing Venezuela Now!”

Protesters hold signs demanding the release of the Venezuelan leader outside the MDC Brooklyn federal prison, where Nicolás Maduro is being held, on Sunday. Photograph: Deccio Serrano/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

“We’re out here to show solidarity with a country whose sovereignty and self determination has been violated by our government using our tax dollars,” Taylor Young, an organizer with Answer, which staged protests in several other cities, too, told a Fox News affiliate.

“So the very least we can do is come out in Seattle and across the country to say we won’t allow you to do this while we just stand by,” Young added.

Republican lawmakers broadly continued to support Trump and praised his actions even as senior figures walked back the president’s assertions on Saturday that the US “will run” Venezuela during a transition to a new regime.

Congressman Tom Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota, said Sunday morning on Fox News: “God bless this president of peace, Donald J Trump.”

Protesters in Chicago gathered at the Dirksen Federal Building Plaza on Saturday to condemn US military airstrikes on Caracas and the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

But protesters also spoke out against the deportations of Venezuelans living in the country. “We’re creating wars, we’re creating chaos and then simultaneously abducting our neighbors and sending them back to the very countries that we’re destabilizing,” Olivia DiNucci, an anti-war organizer with activist group Code Pink, told WHYY, a public radio station in Philadelphia.

Despite bipartisan condemnation of Maduro as a dictator, some activists also called for his release.

Protesters gathered outside the detention center in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, where the captured president is being held and chanted: “Free Maduro right now.”