RCTV Protests Spread To Atlanta, San Francisco, Mexico City

Filed under: Venezuela

Venezuelan college kids, known as 'chamos', march in Sunday's rally in Caracas, forming the word 'libertad' or in English, 'freedom' with their bodies, as their rallying cry from the dictatorship of Hugo Chavez. It's the beginning of the end for that tyrannical sack of trash.
Source: El Universal

Venezuela's freedom protests are no longer about anything political - they are about freedom. Ignited by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez's shutdown of Venezuela's largest TV station, RCTV, they began with a recognition that if the biggest and most popular TV station, soap operas and all, could be silenced because it refused to stop criticizing a brutal dictatorship as a matter of conscience, then so could they.

Venezuelan freedom babe demands liberty at one of the humoungous student rallies around Caracas this past week
Source: AFP, via Yahoo! News

These protests are about more than beloved RCTV, though. They are about ideals and democratic principles, and full of young people, read: babes, and in that regard, these marches are full of democratic revolutionaries in a true democratic revolution. I've not seen anything with this powerful dynamic since I hung out on the barricades in the streets of south Jakarta in 1998 as a foreign correspondent.

The white hand with a sort of peace sign is a symbol of resistance to tyranny among the Venezuelan college kids, maybe it will be historic
Source: AFP, via Yahoo! News

Venezuela's young revolutionaries are known as 'chamos' and they are amazingly organized. Today tens of thousands of Venezuelans marched in the streets of Caracas, as well as the cities of the Venezuelan hinterlands, places like Puerto Cabello and further afield, and now abroad, in Atlanta and San Francisco and Mexico City, maybe other places, too, all condemning Chavez's flaming hypocrisy.

Venezuelans rally Sunday at the headquarters of CNN in Atlanta. Like RCTV, CNN has been threatened by the dictator. The kids want CNN to stay strong and not cave in. CNN would be wise to heed them
Source: Alexo05, no doubt a chamo, via Megaresistencia
See the whole album, here

The rallying cry is the simple word, 'freedom' in call for a principle applicable to all, not just the old elite or the chavista bolibourgeouisa one that's replaced them - the chamos want freedom for all. They want nothing to do with politics of either side. Politicians who've gotten into the act have been politely asked to leave. The kids have their own Web site here. They're led by student leaders with names like, I kid you not, Stalin Gonzalez, which, if anything, signals a pretty strong independent streak in the kid. His best friend is a guy named Nixon.

Venezuelan chamos protested in San Francisco on Sunday, the most famously progressive city in the U.S., calling for freedom there, too. Where are the hippies who claim to stand for as much?
Source: J. Reed, Reed Research
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Brave Globovision covered the rally, even though Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez crazily accused it of 'media terrorism' and vowed to shut it down. Against these threats, they only got braver. Media and students, together, leading the struggle for liberty in Venezuela, have not been seen since 1958, when this exact same dynamic along with sustained protests managed to topple another dictator. They're going on again. It's going to be a long hard slog and this dictator won't be dislodged easily. But they will keep marching until they get freedom.

Putting tape over their mouths to protest the gagging of the free press, Venezuelans protest at the Venezuelan embassy in Mexico City, a city where many have been drive to exile from Chavez's tyranny and economic ruin.
Source: AP, via Yahoo! News

Long live Venezuela's democratic revolutionaries!