On Tuesday 5th February the Manchester Hands of
Venezuela held a successful meeting with over 60 people attending. The meeting
was held jointly with the Green Party of Manchester to raise awareness of Venezuela,
discuss the revolutionary situation and look at changes and developments in the
country and more widely in South America as a whole.
There were two speakers, Edenis Guilarte a popular educator
from Venezuela and Darrall Cozens, from HoV. Edenis, using a PowerPoint
presentation looked at the developing examples of communities of working class
people taking power into their own hands at a local level; planning housing
developments and determining resources for the community. Darrall spoke about the
recent referendum and the need to move forward to socialist change, taking away
power of the old state bureaucracy and economic power of the capitalist class.
“The gains that have been made can still be lost, if the control of the state
and the economy remains in the hands of capital.”
This idea, along with what we could do in the UK, was taken
up by the audience in the discussion. The overwhelming consensus of the
meeting, including many individuals from the Green Party, was that the biggest
help the UK could give to the revolution in Venezuela was to work for a
socialist revolutionary change in Britain.
At
the end of the meeting a variety of people agreed to continue the work of this
successful meeting by building the work of HoV in Manchester.
To find out more about Hands off Venezuela in your area contact britain@handsoffvenezuela.org
