Kevin Zeese, Embassy Protection Collective, May 6th 2019
We continue to live in the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, DC preventing an illegal entry and takeover by the Trump administration to stop their continued efforts to put in place a US friendly coup government. It has been a challenging week as we are surrounded by aggressive, violent extremists who seek to intimidate us so we leave the embassy.
I spoke to a reporter this week who has covered are activities for years. He came to the embassy for fifteen minutes and left saying that now he understood what we were facing. The vile hatred, racism, anti-female and LGBTQ prejudice of these violent people surrounding the embassy is scary. They are well organized, and have a lot of resources which they use to try and force us to leave.
With all of that, the people in the Energy Protection Collective remain in good spirits and united in our plan to continue to protect the embassy and stop the US coup against Venezuela. We were heartened this week by our allies turning out to show support. It means a great deal to us to know people on the outside are following our situation and doing what they can to support us. We have also been greatly pleased by the widespread thanks we have received from people living in Venezuela who appreciate US Americans putting themselves at risk for their embassy and country.
The Secret Service, the law enforcement agency responsible for the embassy, has sided with the opposition. We have documented their behavior, our lawyers have written to them and the State Department demanding they protect us and the embassy. They have received thousands of phone calls when we were under the most aggressive attacks by the violent extremists outside the embassy. There has been some modification of their behavior but they are still not doing enough to protect us or the embassy. It is evident they are under orders to allow the violent extremists to take actions that are designed to intimidate us and our supporters. They want us to leave because the Trump administration has no legal means to remove us. We are not violating any laws as we are here with the permission of the elected Venezuelan government who owns the building, entering the embassy to evict and arrest us would be illegal under international law. The US does not want to set a precedent that will put US embassies around the world at risk.
We describe the week and what is currently going on in our weekly newsletter. See https://popularresistance.org/embassy-protection-collective-were-still-…
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