Via Instapundit, a report on an anti-Chavez demonstration in San Francisco

January 20, 2003

From the Instapundit a link to the The Corner of the National Review on the anti-Chavez demosntration in San Francisco:


when I arrived at the Civic Center (the site of the rally) there was already assembled a sizeable (100 – 200 people) anti-Chavez contingent off to one side. They were great; all festooned in colorful outfits, waving Venezuelan flags, banging on drums, and singing this wonderful song/chant about how “He must go!” I went over to talk to them and was happy to see that several of their signs said things like “Chavez = Communist,” etc. Just then the main anti-war march arrived at the plaza led, of course, by the hard-core Socialist Worker Party types who were the main organizers of the event. As they passed in front of the laughing, singing Venezuelans I saw some of the dour communists recoiling as they read the anti-communist signs of the anti-Chavez crowd. The Venezuelans, on the other hand, surged forward in warm solidarity with the marchers causing the SWP drones to go quite a bit out of their way to avoid contact with the ideologically un-clean. This deformation of the march only ended once the true-believer vanguard had passed and the marchers became more ordinary Bay Area lefties who were only too happy to greet and enjoy the Venezuelans. I don’t think the Anti-Chavez folks ever understood why they were at first shunned by their fellow demonstrators.


I am glad Venezuelans everywhere are keeping the spirit, mantaining the cheerfulness and friendliness that we are accustomed to. Imagine this multiplied by four or five orders of magnitude, we do it four or five times a week!

This entry was posted on January 20, 2003 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Venezuela.

Leave a comment