Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well. — Frantz Fanon (1961)
Community Movement Builders condemns in the strongest possible terms the criminal military aggression unleashed by the United States government against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela on January 3, 2026. This unprovoked assault, marked by bombings of civilian and military infrastructure, violations of Venezuelan sovereignty, and the unlawful seizure of the country’s elected leadership, constitutes an act of imperial war and a flagrant violation of international law.
We address this moment as a movement forged in struggle and shaped by global histories of resistance. Community Movement Builders emerges from interconnected geographies of Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean—lands bound together by conquest, enslavement, extraction, and rebellion. Our politics are rooted in collective refusal: refusal of imperial domination, racial capitalism, patriarchal violence, and the systems that render entire peoples disposable in service of profit and Empire. We understand our liberation as inseparable from that of oppressed peoples everywhere.
As Black people in the Americas living in the long aftermath of conquest and captivity, we hold the lessons of generations who survived Empire by fighting it. From anti-colonial uprisings to maroon communities, from revolutionary wars to popular movements for self-rule, our histories teach us that freedom is not requested—it is defended. We honor our ancestors like Queen Nanny, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Toussaint Louverture, who organized against Empire in their own time and terrain, recognizing that today’s struggles in Venezuela stand in continuity with centuries of resistance to foreign domination and imposed dependency.
We write to you from Turtle Island (the so-called United States), a settler-colonial empire whose global reach is enforced through military force abroad and state violence at home. The same government that surveils, cages, and polices Black communities now claims the authority to bomb Caracas and kidnap foreign leaders under fabricated pretexts. The language of “security” and “law enforcement” once again masks imperial violence, as warplanes and sanctions are deployed to discipline a sovereign nation that refuses submission.
Let us be clear:
This war is not about drugs, democracy, or human rights. It is about oil, power, and control.
Under fabricated pretexts and the shameless repetition of lies, the United States government has launched a military assault to seize Venezuela’s vast energy resources and impose regime change on a sovereign socialist nation. This attack follows years of economic warfare, sanctions, maritime seizures, covert operations, and political destabilization—each designed to break the will of the Venezuelan people and reverse their right to self-determination.
Latin America and the Caribbean have long been framed as “peaceful” only in the narrow sense that imperial violence is often waged without formal declarations of war. In reality, the region has remained a site of continuous colonial domination and imperial strong-arming by the United States—through occupations, coups, sanctions, embargoes, debt, and the installation of compliant regimes. From Puerto Rico’s ongoing denial of sovereignty, to Cuba’s decades-long blockade, to the perpetual destabilization of Ayiti, and the violent interventions in Chile, Guatemala, Grenada, Panama, and now Venezuela, U.S. power has been enforced by other means. Our parents and grandparents survived U.S.-backed dictatorships, disappearances, torture, and mass murder throughout the twentieth century. We refuse to allow these histories of domination to be rebranded as “peace” while sovereignty and self-determination remain under assault.
This aggression against Venezuela is not an isolated act. This escalation follows other recent acts of U.S. military violence, including last week’s bombing and attack on Nigeria, underscoring that imperial aggression is being waged across regions, not in isolation. This is part of a broader imperial strategy to crush any nation that dares to chart an independent path outside U.S. domination—to discipline the Global South, loot natural resources, and secure strategic advantage amid an escalating global crisis. It is meant to strangle Cuba by cutting off energy lifelines, intimidate regional governments, and prepare the ground for wider wars that threaten humanity itself.
An attack on Venezuela is an attack on all oppressed peoples.
We also recognize that imperial aggression is sustained not only through bombs and sanctions, but through narrative warfare. In the United States, sectors of the Venezuelan ruling class and opposition elites—many of whom have found refuge in places like Miami—are being mobilized to legitimize this violence, celebrating U.S. intervention while presenting themselves as representatives of “the people.” This mirrors a long-standing imperial playbook seen in Cuba and elsewhere, where exile communities shaped by class privilege, racial hierarchy, and U.S. patronage are elevated as moral authorities. Their stories of “dictatorship” and “liberation,” amplified through corporate media and state propaganda, play a central role in manufacturing public consent for war while obscuring the material realities of imperial destabilization.
When a people are denied their right to live, they have the right to resist. — Nelson Mandela (1964)
Community Movement Builders affirms the absolute right of the Venezuelan people to defend themselves against imperial aggression. International law recognizes this right. History demands it. No nation should be expected to surrender its sovereignty, its resources, or its future to an empire built on enslavement, genocide, and plunder.
We reject the criminalization of Venezuelan leadership by U.S. courts, the extraterritorial kidnapping of political leaders, and the use of military force as a tool of corporate extraction. The United States has no moral or legal authority to police the world—least of all from a position drenched in blood.
As Black internationalists, we stand firmly with the people of Venezuela, Cuba, Ayiti, Palestine, Sudan, Congo, and all nations resisting imperial domination. As Black feminists and queer liberators, we affirm that true peace is not the absence of struggle, but the presence of justice, dignity, and collective self-determination.
We call on people of conscience everywhere to reject U.S. aggression, oppose sanctions and war, and build active internationalist solidarity. Silence is complicity. Neutrality serves Empire.
¡Venceremos!
All power to the people.
¡Viva Venezuela!
No to imperialist war.
Yes to liberation in our lifetime.
