April 25
GUEST: Gloria La Riva, activist with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and twice PSL presidential candidate, talks to us about her month long trip through Venezuela in the midst of growing U.S. aggression.Eyewitness Venezuela National Speaking Tour
It is an honor and a pleasure to have someone like Gloria La Riva on Activist Radio. Her politics are left and she always speaks and writes the words she believes.
Those words are often in stark contrast to the narratives of empire. Of course, we live in the empire and don't notice that all our media and our politicians are saying pretty much the same things. Although we have some measure of freedom of speech, the spectrum of discourse is always very narrow.
Take Venezuela, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Does our media ever bring up the fact that these four countries are in that rarified group that own most of the planet's oil reserves? Would any U.S. politician dare to suggest that our economic war against Venezuela is to control their oil reserves?
Thankfully for our sanity, we have people like Gloria La Riva to point out our blind spots. She says things that we can't even think, living as we do in the belly of the beast. Yes, our country wants Venezuela's oil. But it also wants to topple Venezuela's socialist model as a warning to other Third World counties that might try to use their natural resources to better the lives of their people.
It may be right here in the empire that this battle of ideas is most important. We live in a racially stratified society, with Black people at the bottom. Whenever they make some progress, the white majority elects a Woodrow Wilson, a Nixon or a Trump to put them back in their ghettos. The U.S. has the largest number of billionaires in the world, yet our infant mortality rate puts us squarely with Honduras or Guatemala. What if Poor, Black mothers were given more healthcare, and some of the billions spent on vast mansions and penthouses were diverted to saving babies?
Put on your blinders back on if you get too uncomfortable.
