VENEZUELA — EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS
Popular power in the face of US attacks
Red Spark organised this public webinar to examine the current phase of US aggression against Venezuela through first-hand eyewitness accounts from those living and organising inside the process itself.
The discussion focuses on what has actually taken place on the ground, including the role of Venezuelan state institutions, communal organisation, and government responses to external pressure.
The speakers address how this risk-back operates in everyday life: from shortages and infrastructural strain to political destabilisation and militarised threats. The webinar also explores how communal institutions and popular organisation have emerged as collective mechanisms for managing, redistributing, and resisting this imposed risk, while continuing to defend popular power under siege.
The discussion situates these experiences within the broader geopolitical and military dimensions of US intervention, cutting through disinformation to provide grounded analysis rooted in lived political practice.
Speakers
Chris Gilbert is a professor of political studies at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela, a contributing editor at Monthly Review, and the author of Commune or Nothing!: Venezuela’s Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project (Monthly Review, 2023), among other books and articles.
Cira Pascual Marquina is a popular educator at the Pluriversidad, El Panal Commune’s educational initiative in the working-class barrio of 23 de Enero in Caracas. She is also a founder and member of the Communal Democracy Network.
Chair: Marley L (Sydney)