Below is the video and transcript of a speech given by Nandini from the  Red Anti-imperialist Collective at the Naarm / Melbourne “Hands off Venezuela” rally on January 4th. We are sharing this speech here as we feel it gives an excellent overview of how the Red Anti-Imperialist Collective views both imperialism and the way the Left needs to fight it. Note the transcript has been edited slightly for clarity. 

[Chanting: Yankee Go Home! Yankee Go Home! Free Venezuela! Free Venezuela!]

Hi everyone, my name is Nandini from Red Ant and I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of this land, the Wurundjeri and Bunurong people and recognise their land was stolen and their lives were stolen to build capitalism in Australia, to build wealth and prosperity for a few people in Australia and a few people across the world. 

Thank you so much to our comrade who just spoke from Camp Sovereignty. To continue what they said, The People United Will Never Be Defeated. And it’s not just “the people”, it’s the working people united who will never be defeated. That is one of the lessons of the Bolivarian Revolution.

[Chanting: The workers united will never be defeated! The workers united will never be defeated.]

Many of us today are miserable to hear the news from Venezuela, but we are not surprised. We are not just unsurprised because we saw over months and years the US aggression and the military build up in the region. We are not just unsurprised because we were there when they said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – as comrade Shelley mentioned before. 

We are unsurprised because we have been living in an imperialist world order for hundreds of years. That imperialism allows some some western countries, whether it was Britain and France, whether it was back in the day Spain and Portugal, right now whether it’s the United States and countries like Australia, it allows them to have okay lives at the expense of everyone else, at the expense of 85 percent of the world’s population. 

And the 85 percent, whether you are from Africa, Asia, or Latin America, are told your life is not dignified. You do not deserve dignity. It’s not just the bombs, it is not just when they fly in and kidnap your President, it is the everyday life you live without infrastructure on one dollar a day. You don’t have clean air, you don’t have clean water. You don’t have any of the amenities we have here. That is everyday imperialism!

And we should be so proud to see so many people here on short notice and we should thank all the people who have been working as part of the Venezuelan and Latin American solidarity network for decades to build this. But this is not enough. 

We need to stop showing up when bombs are dropped. Imperialism happens every single goddamn day of the year. It is not just about bombs. It is not just about when we can yell about genocide. It is more than that. It is every single day when everyone across the world, apart from a few people in the West, are not allowed to have dignity. And I can assure you that their street protests and that their trade union movements are so much bigger than ours. And yet they get nothing, just like the people of Venezuela.

So we should look at everyone here at the Melbourne Left and be so proud, but at the same time there is so much that we have to build. We cannot be small. We cannot be small anymore. This is it. The Palestine movement gave us the possibility to one day ultimately be able to talk to regular working Australian people and convince them that Maduro is not a drug trafficker. We have to be able to do that, that is our task to build a movement that is capable of that. Because they said that about 20 different air bases were used to deploy against Venezuela and to bomb Caracas. We will be one of those 20 air bases, and we are one of those 20 air bases.

Everyday imperialism occurs  when you open ABC news and you see an article about China, Iran and Venezuela and how terrible every single one of these countries are. We cannot be a part of this anymore. So that is what our task is, that is the task of everyone who is here today to prevent everyday goddamn imperialism from happening. To be able to build a movement that preempts the bombs. Because none of us were surprised. Not a single one of us were surprised when this happened. So we should see what will happen next and be there before the bombs are dropped. This is our task. And I know we can do that because we have got this far. Things are better. This rally is bigger than it was before. It better be bigger next time. 

And next time it will be before the bombs have dropped. We will disrupt the supply chains before someone gets killed. Before a genocide happens. Before the imperialist aggressions in our countries are perpetuated before we are another goddam airbase. We know that and we will do that because the working people united will never be defeated and that is who we are.

[Chanting: The workers united will be defeated. The workers united will never be defeated! Yankee Go Home!]