{ "article": { "title" : "Hike Clerb: The Earth Belongs to ALL Of Us", "author" : "Tiffanie Woods, Evelynn Escobar", "category" : "interviews", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/hike-clerb-the-earth-belongs-to-all-of-us", "date" : "2025-05-08 17:06:00 -0400", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/DSC05768-group-vista.jpg", "excerpt" : "From Hike Clerb’s inception as an impromptu hike with friends in 2017, Founder and Executive Director Evelynn Escobar has been led by her intuition, passion for the outdoors, and relationship with nature. In eight years, Hike Clerb has grown from a 10-person Meetup to a 501(C)(3) non-profit with over 45,000 members in Los Angeles and New York City.", "content" : "From Hike Clerb’s inception as an impromptu hike with friends in 2017, Founder and Executive Director Evelynn Escobar has been led by her intuition, passion for the outdoors, and relationship with nature. In eight years, Hike Clerb has grown from a 10-person Meetup to a 501(C)(3) non-profit with over 45,000 members in Los Angeles and New York City.On a beautiful sunny Saturday, I met up with Evelynn at Hike Clerb’s Earth Day hike in Malibu, California, to see firsthand how the Clerb has fostered such a close-knit, thriving outdoor community. As Evelynn gathered the hike attendees around a concrete picnic table, she announced that this would be her first and last hike of the season. Far along in her pregnancy with her second child, she joked about how long she’d be able to keep up with the group.Keeping the group together is part of the Clerb’s “no one left behind policy.” We were to wait for anyone who fell behind the larger group and help round up stragglers at stops along the way, where we gathered to learn about the different plants and wildlife we saw on the trail. Before our Clerb hike got underway, Evelynn asked attendees to take a moment to practice gratitude for the land and set an intention for the day.Before meeting Evelynn for the first time at the hike, I’d read her most recent newsletter in which she shared that she’d opted to have no contact with her mother. With her daughter growing inside her, Evelynn went through her own reparenting journey as she prepared to enter motherhood herself. She realized that she was never truly without a mother. It just wasn’t the one who’d birthed her. We shared a short but touching moment where I confided that I, too, was on my own reparenting journey. I let her know how her reflections had deeply resonated and inspired me.Tiffanie Woods: How has developing your relationship with the outdoors, with Mother Nature, helped in your reparenting journey of your younger self? How has it impacted you as a mother?Evelynn Escobar: I think just essentially awakening to the fact that I have to do the reparenting work. Especially during my first pregnancy, knowing I was going to bring someone into this world, and then not having the traditional support of a mother. Then I had this big realization that I’ve always been supported by a mother. Not in the traditional way… and that mother has been nature. Mother Earth is always holding me, and she’s helping me move through this moment. I am being held. I am being nurtured, I am being carried, but it’s not by the mother who gave birth to me. It’s our primordial mother who holds all of us.That really transformed the way I found solace in nature. I then integrated that into not only re-parenting myself but also parenting my daughter.Tiffanie: Did becoming a mom change the way you thought about your mission or Hike Clerb’s mission?Evelynn: It just actually made it make more sense if that makes sense. It was like, ‘Oh, this is primed and aligned for this reason, and now those reasons are being shown to me.’ Also, this is like a matriarchal journey. It’s not just a mother’s journey, and that really cemented that.Tiffanie: Sprouts is your initiative for children and families that you launched in 2024. Can you share the importance of this programming being incorporated into Hike Clerb?Evelynn: Historically, we have had a mentorship program. Our Building Inclusivity Outdoors (BIO) program, in which we partner with organizations that serve under-resourced youth and bring them out into nature for the day. Take them hiking, give them shoes, get lunch with them, just spend a day out in nature.Sprouts is a way to create a public-facing program in which kids, ages 2 – 10, in our community and their families could be a part of Hike Clerb. We created programming tailored to them that connects the outdoors with culture and the arts. We want them to experience and connect with nature in a new way.Tiffanie: How do you see that initiative tying into your mission of decolonizing the outdoors?Evelynn: It aligns with our mission to welcome people into the outdoors in a way that also decolonizes the way they think about the outdoors. We’re teaching them that they are inherently connected to nature, and we’re allowing them to explore their curiosities through different modules that speak to their interests and allow them to find their entry point. It’s setting them up with the ability to be the drivers of their own narratives, versus being filled with ideas of what it is to be outdoors and what those people who go hiking or exploring in nature look like.Tiffanie: Hike Clerb’s focus is on Black and Brown women decolonizing the outdoors. I saw that you guys lost a grant for Sprouts due to the current anti-DEI movement being pushed by Trump. How are you thinking about Hike Clerb now and in the future, and how are you going to move forward?Evelynn: I think there’s always a silver lining… it’s given me a chance to take a step back and really assess how we’re currently operating and what is feasible moving forward. And the truth of the matter is that we haven’t been operating sustainably, in the sense that we are making sure that we’re providing care for everyone, but at our own expense. We’re providing so much and making the impossible possible with the bare minimum when it comes to resources. When you think about the way Black mothers give so much… that is sadly normalized and becomes the standard, and it’s given me the chance to say enough of that! Moving forward, we are operating in a way that works for us. We’re taking our time and giving ourselves space to assess what we can accomplish with what we have, that is not coming at our own sacrifice or expense.Tiffanie: Has your vision for Sprouts changed? Is it a different iteration given that it lost funding?Evelynn: No, the vision is still the same. We are going to continue to engage families from this intergenerational approach. The first year, we did six programs. It culminated with a beach campout, and I feel like it was just a beautiful example of the power of what we’re doing. Especially seeing how empowered all the families were out there. The vision is to take this from LA, bring it to New York, bring it to the Bay Area, and continue to engage more families in this way. This is something we can bring to schools. We are rolling with the punches, but the mission remains. We will continue to serve families and connect with families, and open the minds of families in new ways.Tiffanie: Hike Clerb has been around since 2017. How do you feel the outdoor community has changed since?Evelynn: Well, the beautiful thing is that Hike Clerb was a cultural shift in the outdoors because it connected so much more than just the outdoors. When I think about my work, I know that I am an expander. I live in the visionary space, and it’s to expand people’s perspectives. And once you connect the dots, then people’s imaginations can run wild. Hike Clerb connects so many different worlds.Tiffanie: Where do you still see change needed in the outdoor community?Evelynn: Everything is political. It’s not enough to go out in your cute outfit and have a beautiful campout. If the land is something you love, then you also need to go deeper and take care of that land, and protect that land, and learn about that land, and have reverence and respect not only for it, but for every other living and non-living thing.That disconnection is still something that we see. It’s why we’re in the state that we’re currently in. It’s really hard for people to connect because we’ve been disconnected by design.There is still a lot of work to be done. I am grateful for people like Brittany Leavitt of Brown Girls Climb, Feminist Bird Club, and Molly Adams, who leads that. They are also doing the work to connect and be like, ‘We may be birders, we may be climbers, but also… free Palestine!’ And you know, we can help with initiatives or just even talk about things like immigration and things like that. There’s hope. There are people who do get it, but it’s definitely still a work in progress.Tiffanie: Do you feel like, because you decided to take these stances of decolonizing the outdoors and making Black and Brown women your focal point, that you’ve felt resistance to you and your work?Evelynn: Absolutely. All the time. Even when it comes to working with brands and other organizations. Because we have a very specific point of view and we are not afraid to use our voice, because we have this platform and it’s meant to be used, I go into these conversations, and if we’re doing a brand activation or whatever, I’m very clear about our mission and that it centers Black and Brown people. So the people that we’re going to be working for or creating this for are going to be Black and Brown people. We’re going to have to invite Black and Brown people. And I see the discomfort. I see that I’m also stretching people’s comfort zones.Tiffanie: As a Black Indigenous Latinx woman, the creator and Executive Director, you’re doing it all. It’s almost as if you never get a break from pushing the work forward. How are you taking care of yourself, especially as a mom?Evelynn: I am not willing to continue to sacrifice myself. Because at the end of the day, we talk about self-care, we talk about community care, but you have to take care of yourself to take care of the community. And I have been juggling that fine line of focusing on community care, but again, at the expense of my own self-care. And like I said, that’s just not something I’m willing to sacrifice anymore. The work I’m doing is expansive work. Visionary work. And if we don’t have the resources to support said vision, I’m not going to kill myself over executing it.This is a new phase of truly caring for ourselves first, and again, creating the worlds we want to live in. I want to live in a world where I can rest and have time for myself. Be present as a mother, while also being the mother of this community." } , "relatedposts": [ { "title" : "How to Resist “Organized Loneliness”: resisting isolation in the age of digital authoritarianism ", "author" : "Emma Cieslik", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/how-to-resist-organized-loneliness", "date" : "2026-02-13 15:11:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/American_protesters_in_front_of_White_House-11.jpg", "excerpt" : "Over the past year, many of us have encountered, navigated, and processed violence alone on our phones. We watched videos of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti being fatally shot and Liam Conejo Ramos being detained by ICE agents. These photos and videos triggered anger, sadness, and desperation for many (along with frustration that these deaths were the inciting blow against ICE agents that have killed many more people of color this year and last).", "content" : "Over the past year, many of us have encountered, navigated, and processed violence alone on our phones. We watched videos of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti being fatally shot and Liam Conejo Ramos being detained by ICE agents. These photos and videos triggered anger, sadness, and desperation for many (along with frustration that these deaths were the inciting blow against ICE agents that have killed many more people of color this year and last).While the institutions and people committing these crimes do not want them recorded, the Department of Homeland Security and the wider Trump administration is using “organized loneliness,” a totalitarian tool that seeks to distort peoples’ perception of reality. Although seemingly a symptom of COVID-19 pandemic isolation and living in a more social media focused world, “organized loneliness” is being weaponized to change the way people not only engage with violence but respond to it online, simultaneously desensitizing us to bodily trauma and escalating radicalization and recruitment online.Back in 2022, philosopher Samantha Rose Hill argued that the loneliness epidemic sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic could and would have dangerous consequences. She specifically cites Hannah Arendt’s 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, which argued that authoritarian leaders like Hitler and Stalin weaponized people’s loneliness to exert control over them. Arendt was a Jewish woman who barely escaped Nazi Germany.As Hill told Steve Paulson for “To The Best Of Our Knowledge,” “the organized loneliness that underlies totalitarian movements destroys people’s relationship to reality. Their political propaganda makes it difficult for people to trust their own opinions and perceptions of reality.” Because as Arendt wrote, “the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”But there are ways in which we can resist the threat that “organized loneliness” represents, especially in the age of social media. They include acknowledging this campaign of loneliness, taking proactive steps when engaging with others online, and fostering relationships with friends and our communities to stand in solidarity amidst the rise of fascism.1. The first step is accepting that loneliness affects everyone and can be exploited by authoritarian movements.Many of us know this intimately. Back in 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General flagged an already dire loneliness epidemic, that in combination with a transition of most interaction onto social media, changes the way in which we engage with violence and tragedy online. But it can be hard to admit that loneliness affects us, especially when we are constantly connected through social media. It’s important to admit that even for the most digitally literate and active among us, “organized loneliness” not only can occur but especially occurs on social media.Being susceptible to or affected by “organized loneliness” is not a moral shortcoming or a personal failure but acknowledging it and taking steps to connect with one another is the one way we resist totalitarian regimes.2. Next, take social media breaks–and avoid doomscrooling.Even before the advent of social media or online news outlets, Arendt was warning about how loneliness can become a breeding ground for downward spirals. She explains that the constant consumption of tragic, violent, and deeply upsetting news–and watching it unfold in front of us can not only be overstimulating but can desensitize us and disconnect us from reality.While it can be difficult when most of our social lives exist on social media (this will be unpacked later), experts recommend that people limit using social media to less than two hours per day and avoid using it during the first hour after waking up and the last hour before going to sleep. People can use apps that limit overall screen time or restrict access to social media at set times–the best being Opal, One Sec, Forest, and StayFree. People can also use these apps to limit access to specific websites that might include triggering news.But it’s important to recognize that avoiding doomscrooling does not give people license not to stay informed or to look away from atrocities that are not affecting their communities.3. Resist social media echo-chambers by diversifying your algorithm.When you are on social media, however, it’s important to recognize that AI-based algorithms track what we engage with and show us similar content. People can use a VPN to search without creating a record that AI can track and thus offer us like offerings, but while the most pronounced (and reported on) examples focus on White, cis straight men and the Manoverse, echochambers can affect all of us and shift our perception of publicly shared beliefs.People can resist echo-chambers by seeking out new sources and accounts that offer different, fact-based perspectives but also acknowledge their commitment to resisting fascism, such as Ground News, ProPublica, and Truthout. Another idea is to follow anti-fascist online educators like Saffana Monajed who promote and share lessons for media literacy. People can also do this by cultivating their intellectual humility, or the recognition that your awareness has limits based largely on your own experiences and privileges and your beliefs could be wrong. Fearless Culture Design has some great tips.While encountering and engaging different perspectives is vital to resisting echochambers and social algorithms, this is not an invitation to follow or platform any news outlet, content creator, or commentator that denies your or other people’s personhood.4. Cultivate your friendships and make new ones.In a time when many of us only stay in contact with friends through social media, friendships are more important than ever. Try, if you can, to engage friends outside of social media–whether it’s through in-person meet ups (dinners, parties, game nights) or on digital platforms that are not social media-based, for example coordinating meet-ups over Zoom or Skype. This can be a virtual D&D campaign, craft circle, or a virtual book club. While these may seem like silly events throughout the week, they help build real connection.It’s important to connect with people outside of a space that uses an algorithm to design content and to reinforce that people are three-dimensional (not just a two-dimensional representation of a social media profile). There are even some apps that assist with this goal, such as Connect, a web app designed by MIT graduate students Mohammad Ghassemi and Tuka Al Hanai to bring students from diverse backgrounds together for lunch conversations.Arendt writes that totalitarian domination destroys not only political life but also private life as well. Cultivating friendships–and relationships of solidarity with your neighbors and fellow community members–are the ways in which we not only resist the destruction of private relationships but also reinforce that we and others belong in our communities–and that we can achieve great things when we stand together!5. With this in mind, practice intentional solidarity with one another.While it’s likely no surprise, fascism functions to both establish a nationalist identity that breeds extremism and destroy unification and rebellion against authority. The best way to resist the isolation that totalitarian governments breed is to practice intentional acts of solidarity with marginalized communities, especially communities facing systemic violence at the hands of an authoritarian power.Writer and advocate Deepa Iyer discusses the importance of action-based solidarity in her program Solidarity Is, part of the Building Movement Project, and Solidarity Is This Podcast (co-hosted with Adaku Utah) discusses and models a solidarity journey that foregrounds marginalized communities. I highly recommend reading her Solidarity Is Practice Guide and the Solidarity Syllabus, a blog series that Iyer just started this month to highlight lessons, resources, and ideas of how to cultivate solidarity within your own communities.6. Consume locally and ethically, and reject capitalist productivity.And one way that people can stand in solidarity with their communities is to support local small businesses that invest back into the communities. When totalitarianism strips people of many platforms to voice concern, one of the last remaining power people have is how and where they spend their money. Often, this is what draws the most attention and impact, so it’s important to buy (and sell) based on Iyer’s Solidarity Stances and to also resist the ways in which productivity culture not only disempowers community but devalues human labor.At the heart of Arendt’s criticism of totalitarian domination is the ways in which capitalism, a “tyranny over ‘laborers,’” contributes to loneliness itself (pg. 476). Whether intentional or not, this connects to modern campaigns not only of malicious compliance but also purposeful obstinance in which people refuse to labor for a fascist regime but to mobilize their ability to labor as a form of resistance–thinking about the recent walkouts and boycotts that resist by weaponizing our labor and our spending power.Not only should people resist the conflation of a person’s value to their productivity, but they should use their labor–and the economic products of it–as tools of resistance in capitalism.Thankfully as Arendy writes, “totalitarian domination, like tyranny, bears the germs of its own destruction,” so totalitarianism by definition cannot succeed just as humans cannot thrive under the pressure of “organized loneliness.” For this reason, it’s a challenge to hold on and resist the administration using disconnection to garner support for the dehumanization of and violence against human beings. But as long as we do, we have the most powerful tools of resistance–awareness, friendship, community, and solidarity–at our disposal to undo totalitarianism just as it was undone back in the 1940s." } , { "title" : "A Trail of Soap", "author" : "susan abulhawa, Diana Islayih", "category" : "excerpts", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/a-trail-of-soap", "date" : "2026-02-13 08:40:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Trail_of_Soap.png", "excerpt" : "From EVERY MOMENT IS A LIFE compiled by susan abulhawa. Copyright © 2026 by Palestine Writes. Reprinted by permission of One Signal Publishers/Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon Schuster, LLC.", "content" : "From EVERY MOMENT IS A LIFE compiled by susan abulhawa. Copyright © 2026 by Palestine Writes. Reprinted by permission of One Signal Publishers/Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon Schuster, LLC.Illustration by Rama DuwajiI met Diana Islayih at a series of writing workshops I conducted in Gaza between February and May 2024. She was one of a couple dozen young people who traveled for hours on foot, by donkey cart, or in cars forced to crawl through the crush of displacement. They were all trying to survive an ongoing genocide. Still, they risked Israeli drones and bombs to be there, just to feel human for a few hours, like they belong in this world, to touch the lives they believed they might still have.Soft-spoken and slight, Diana was the only one who recognized me, asking quietly if I was “the real susan abulhawa.” Each writer progressed their piece at their own pace, and would read their work aloud in the workshops to receive group feedback. Diana’s was the only story that emerged almost fully formed, as if it had been waiting for language. She teared up the first time she read it aloud, and again, the second.By the third reading, the tears were gone. “I got used to the indignities,” she told me. “Now I’m used to reading them out loud.” She confessed that she struggled living “a life that doesn’t resemble me.” On our last day together, I reminded her of what she’d said. She smiled ironically. “Now I don’t know if I resemble life,” she said.What follows is Diana’s story, written from inside that unrecognizable life, bearing witness not through spectacle, but through one intimate moment in the unbearable weight of the everyday. — susan abulhawa, editor of Every Moment Is a Life, of which this essay is part.Courtesy of Simon & SchusterI poured yellow liquid dish soap into my left palm, which instinctively cupped into a deep hollow, like a well yearning to be a well once more. I would need to wash my hands after using the toilet near our tent, though the faucet was usually empty. Water had been annihilated alongside people in this genocide, becoming a ghost that graciously deigns to appear to us when it wishes to—one we chase after rather than flee.The miserable toilet was made of four wooden posts, wrapped in a makeshift curtain made from an old scrap of fabric—so sheer you could see silhouettes behind it. A blanket full of holes and splinters served as a “door.”Inside, a concrete slab with a hole in the middle. You need time to convince yourself to enter such a place. The stench alone seizes your eyelids and turns your stomach the moment it creeps into your nose.I thought about going to the damned, distant women’s public toilet. I hated it during the first weeks of our displacement, but it was the only one in the area where you could both relieve yourself and scrub off the dust of misery that clung to every air molecule.It infuriated me that it was wretched and run-down, and the crowding only made it worse—full of sand, soiled toilet paper, and sanitary pads scattered in every corner.“Should I go?” I asked myself, aloud.I decided to go, taking one step forward and two steps back. I’d ask anyone returning from the toilet, “Is there water in the tap today?” and await the answer with the eagerness of a child hoping for candy.“You have to hurry before it runs out!”Or, more often, “There isn’t any.”So we’d all—men, women, and children—arm ourselves with a plastic water bottle, which was a kind of public declaration: “We’re off to the toilet.” We’d also carry a bar of soap in a box, although most people didn’t bother using it since it didn’t lather and was like washing your hands with a rock.I looked up and exhaled, staring into the vast gray nothingness that stared right back at me. Then I stepped out onto the sand across from our ramshackle displacement camp—Karama, “Camp Dignity”—though dignity itself cries out in this filthy, exhausted place, choked with chaos and a desperate scramble to moisten our veins with a drop of life.The road was empty, as it was early morning, and even the clamor of camp life lay dormant at that hour. Still, I couldn’t relax my shoulders—to signal my senses that we were alone, that we were safe. My fingers remained clenched over the yellow dish soap, my hand hanging at my side to keep it from spilling.I crossed the distance to the toilet—step by step, meter by meter, tent by tent. The souls who dwelled in them, just as they were, unchanged, their curious eyes fixed on me. I passed a garbage heap, shaped like a crescent moon, overflowing with all kinds of empty food cans—food that had ruined the linings of our intestines and united us in the agonies of digestion and bowel movements.Something trickled from my palm—a thread of liquid that felt like blood dripping between my fingers, down my wrist in thickening droplets. My hand trembled, and my eyes blurred. I convinced myself—without looking—that it was all in my head, not in my hand, quickened my pace, my heartbeat thudding in my ears.At last, I reached the only two public toilets in the area, one for men and the other for women, both encased in white plastic printed with the blue UNICEF logo.Inside, I was met with the “toilet chronicles”—no less squalid than the toilet itself—unparalleled chatter among women who’d waited long hours in the line together.The old women bemoaned the soft nature of our generation, insisting our condition was a “moral consequence” of our being spoiled.Other women pleaded to be let into the toilet quickly because they were diabetic. They banged on the door with urgency and physical pain, like they would break in and grab the person behind it by the throat, shouting, “When will you come out?!”The woman inside yelled back, “I’m squeezing my guts out! Should I vomit them up too? Have patience! Damn whoever called this a ‘rest room’!”I looked around. A pale-faced woman smiled at me. I returned her smile, but my face quickly stiffened again, as if the muscles scolded me for stretching them into a smile. A voice inside me whispered meanly, What are you both even smiling about?A furious cry rang from the other stall, “Oh my God! Someone is plucking her body hair! What are you doing, you bitch? It’s a toilet! A toilet!”Another voice shot back, “Lower your voice, woman, and hurry up! The child’s crying!”Two little girls stood nearby, with tousled hair, drool marking their cheeks, their eyes half shut. They were crying to use the toilet, clutching their crotches, shifting restlessly in the sandy corridor where we stood.I was trying to push through to the water tap at the end of the hall, attempting to escape this tiresome, tragic theater. As my luck would have it, there was no water. I opened my palm. It too was empty. The yellow dish soap my mother bought yesterday was gone. All that remained was a sticky smear across my left hand and a long thread trailing behind me in the sand. Had it been dripping from my hand all along the way?I twisted the faucet handle back and forth—a futile hope for even a thin thread of water. Not a single drop came.My body sagged under the weight of rage, disappointment, fury, and a storm of unanswerable questions. I rushed through the crowded corridor of angry women, out into the street. I couldn’t hold back tears.I wept, cursing myself and the occupation and Gaza and her sea— the sea I love with a weary, lonely love, just as I’ve always loved everything in this patch of earth.I sobbed the entire way back. Without shame. I didn’t care who saw—not the passersby, not the homes or tents, not the ground I walked on. My grief rained tears on this land on my way there and back.But the land’s thirst is never quenched—neither with our tears, nor with our blood.My eyes were wrung dry from crying by the time I reached our tent. I collapsed on the ground, questions clamoring in my head.Can a homeland also be exile?Can another exile exist within exile?What is home?Is home the homeland itself, the soil of a nation?Or is it the other way around—the homeland is only so if it’s truly home?If the homeland is the home, why do I feel like a stranger in Rafah—a place just ten minutes from my city, Khan Younis?And why did I fear the feeling I had when I imagined myself in our kitchen, where my mother cooked mulukhiya and maqluba for the first time in six months, even though I wasn’t at home—in our house?That day, I said aloud, “Is this what the occupation wants? For me to feel ‘at home’ merely in the memory of home?”How can I feel at home without being there?How can I be outside of my homeland when I’m in it?I looked down at my hand—dry and cracked with January’s chill. The yellow soap liquid had turned into frozen white powder between my fingers." } , { "title" : "Venezuela should be neither dictatorship nor colony: An interview with union leader Eduardo Sánchez", "author" : "Simón Rodriguez", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/venezuela-should-be-neither-dictatorship-nor-colony", "date" : "2026-02-12 10:51:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Eduardo-Sanchez-rueda-de-prensa-diciembre-2024.jpg", "excerpt" : "", "content" : "Eduardo Sánchez is an important Venezuelan labor leader with decades of political and union work. He is the president of the National Union of Workers of the Central University of Venezuela (SINATRAUCV) and the Federation of Higher Education Workers of Venezuela (FETRAESUV). He is also a member of Comunes, an organization founded in 2024 that, in its founding documents, aims for the recovery of the legacy of the Bolivarian Revolution, which they believe the Maduro government has broken with, to the point of considering it a neoliberal and “anti-Chavista government.”Sánchez describes Comunes as “a grouping of left-wing sectors that propose an alternative to the polarization between the so-called reactionary left that rules the country, led by President Nicolás Maduro, and the fascist and right-wing sectors represented by the current headed by María Corina Machado. In other words, we are a third option, seeking to establish a political and social solution for the popular and workers’ movement, with the concept of the homeland as a fundamental element.” The following interview took place January 13.How would you characterize the events of the last few days in Venezuela, starting with the US attack?Since the early hours of January 3, the US aggression against Bolívar’s homeland, against Venezuelan soil, materialized. According to statements by US spokespeople themselves, more than 150 aircraft invaded Venezuelan territory to bomb specific areas of Caracas, Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira. This is an unprecedented event in Venezuelan politics, which has caused outrage because Venezuelan soil has been sullied by the insolence of an imperialist power that, abusing its military might, has taken it upon itself to intervene in our country and remove the president. Not that we defend the president as such, but we do not believe that anyone has given the US president carte blanche to be the world’s policeman and come and control our country. This is a problem for Venezuelans that we Venezuelans must resolve ourselves. Therefore, we condemn this aggression as a disgraceful act that we hope will not happen again in any of our countries on the continent.President Maduro has led an authoritarian government that arose from an unfortunate event, which leaves doubts about its legitimacy, given that he lost the July 28 elections and arrogated them to himself, generating a process of repression, imprisoning anyone who protested, and acquiring a dictatorial character, which today bears responsibility for what is happening with the current crisis. The gringos have intervened, taking advantage of the crisis and with the support of an anti-national sector of the country that called for intervention and is now very poorly regarded by Venezuelan society.What is the current situation on the streets?The situation on the streets of Venezuela is one of astonishing calm, as a result of the fact that more than 70% of Venezuelans did not sympathize with Maduro’s regime, in addition to its repression, imprisonments, and deaths, as well as the economic and social deterioration that has engulfed the Venezuelan working class, which has paid a high price for a crisis it did not create, which has impoverished its wages and plunged it into a state of critical poverty. Today, when the government sought the support of the working class and the people, the response was negligible, with only a small percentage mobilizing due to the general discontent that existed.This does not mean support for the intervention; everyone laments that more than 100 Venezuelans have died as a result of treacherous bombings against Bolívar’s homeland, and that the concept of homeland has been sidelined and the country’s sovereignty violated.How do you interpret Trump’s announcements that he will allegedly run the country and take over Venezuelan oil?For us, there is now a dilemma: republic or colony. Facing it, we are putting forward our proposals to unify the country, to unify the working people around the concept of the Republic. We cannot be a colony of anyone, much less of the gringos, who have been the most reactionary and recalcitrant imperialist power on the continent, responsible for interventions that have taken place since the beginning of the last century, and who now seek to arrogate to themselves rights they do not have in order to turn us into a protectorate.The call we are making to Venezuelan society and the workers’ movement is for unity and action, and to the interim government, which also lacks legitimacy, despite being the element with which they intend to make a transition, is that any solution that is proposed must be framed within the Constitution and the democratic process. Relations with the US from a commercial point of view must be within the framework of respect for the Venezuelan Constitution and laws, and not under the guise of a kind of protectorate where they are giving orders on the premise that if they are not obeyed, they will bomb again.We believe that the country has sufficient political reserves to achieve an independent, autonomous, democratic, and patriotic state that can lead this country and put an end to the attempt to impose a dictatorship by a government that claimed to be revolutionary but ended up being neoliberal and capitalist, and prevent us from becoming a protectorate of a foreign power. We consider it important for the country to move towards democracy, allowing us to elect our president in accordance with the Constitution and laws of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.What message would you give to workers in other countries who are closely following the situation in Venezuela?This situation is very unfortunate for the entire continent. It represents a wake-up call to the different peoples of the world, in the understanding that the gringos now consider that they are once again managing the region as their backyard, and from that point of view they simply intend to take our oil, our gold, our rare earths, turn Venezuela into a kind of protectorate or colony, and take over the wealth of our country.It is important that the peoples of the world see themselves in the mirror of the Venezuelan situation, which today stands at a crossroads between becoming a US colony or continuing on the path of the Republic. We call on the working classes of Latin America and the world to unite to avoid ending up in a situation like the one we are now experiencing. We call on them to fight the authoritarian regimes that have brought so much pain to the different countries of the American continent. The call is for unity as a class, with a perspective of struggle, not only for labor rights but also for the homeland, a fundamental and unifying concept of each of the countries that make up the Latin American homeland, which continue in the struggle for self-determination, to expand and develop democracy to place it at the service of the majority." } ] }