Fw: Travel to Venezuela w/ Global Exchange

[Guest guest]

wish i could go....-----Forwarded Message----- Global Exchange Mar 23, 2005 11:23 AM Global Exchange News and Action Updates Email List Travel to Venezuela w/ Global Exchange Dear Friends:Global Exchange invites you to join us on one of our upcoming Reality Tours to the unique country of Venezuela. Venezuela is badly misunderstood here in the US, with the Bush Administration and the major media outlets almost unanimous in their antagonism toward the government of Hugo Chavez. That’s why it is so important that US citizens travel to Venezuela to determine for themselves whether Venezuela is, as the Bush administration says, a threat to stability in Latin America, or an emerging model of how government can promote social justice and participatory democracy. Explore for yourself the reforms in this oil-rich nation that is trying to use its petroleum wealth to improve the health care and education of its citizens. Meet with pro-Chavez community groups and opposition organizations to hear all sides of the story in this conflicted nation. To learn more about our Tours to Venezuela, please visit:http://www.globalexchange.org/toursWe have tours coming up in April, June, August, and November covering a range of issues.For more about the changes underway in Venezuela, please read the article below from our Spring Newsletter. We hope you will travel with us to Venezuela and have an experience you will never forget. Thanks, as always, for your efforts on behalf of peace, social justice, and democracy. Global Exchange Venezuela: A Model for the Americas By Zack HurwitzSomething different is happening in Venezuela. The lives of millions of Venezuelans are improving as historic wrongs are being righted. The world’s fifth-largest oil producer, Venezuela has long been a country of contrasts: Despite its great wealth, 80% of Venezuelans live in poverty. Now, for the first time, millions of Venezuelans have access to education, job training, housing, land, clean water, health care, and something maybe even more precious—dignity. The August 15, 2004 referendum on Hugo Chávez’s presidential mandate reaffirmed the support of the Venezuelan people for the government’s social justice agenda. Community-based preventative health care missions are making health care a tangible human right, guaranteed in the popularly-approved Constitution. Educational programs are putting millions more children in new schools, while college scholarship programs allow youth to reach new horizons. Venezuelan elders are imbuing their citizenship with new meaning as over one million of them learn to read and write for the first time. Women, Indigenous peoples, and Afro-Venezuelans are gaining power and rights, while a high-profile land reform campaign sweeps the nation. Venezuela is also fast becoming a leader in regional integration in the hemisphere, particularly in the promotion of viable alternatives to corporate globalization and the derailed “Free Trade Area of the Americas.” The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) would prioritize local development, bilateral trade, and regional cooperation as a way to strengthen national economies. Venezuela is also working to create the first Latin American news channel, TeleSur, to offer an alternative to foreign corporate media, and to establish of PetroAmérica— the first fully integrated, Latin American oil company. These ambitious programs have distinguished Venezuela as one of the most progressive democracies in the world. They are also in marked contrast to the Bush regime’s efforts to slice college grants for the poor, leave 40 million people without health care, and transform Social Security into private insecurity. Nonetheless, the Bush administration—which endorsed the coup d’etat against Venezuelan democracy in 2002—continues in its efforts to discredit the government’s legitimacy. Soon after being sworn in as Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice called Venezuela a “negative force to the region” and a “threat to democracy.” In a heightening of tensions, Venezuelan government officials in March accused the Bush administration of plotting to assassinate President Chávez. The White House’s efforts to isolate Chávez have been resisted by other progressive governments of the region such as Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. While the Venezuelan government has ignited the interest of progressives throughout the world, the country is badly misunderstood in the US. Newspapers throughout the US are almost unanimous in their antipathy toward Chávez. That’s why it is so important that US citizens travel to Venezuela to determine for themselves whether Venezuela is, as the Bush administration says, a threat to stability in Latin America, or an emerging model of how government to promote social justice and participatory democracy. We invite you to travel to Venezuela with GX to dig past the headlines and explore the changes occurring in Venezuela, Latin America and the hemisphere as a whole. Meet with human rights activists, rural agricultural workers, labor unions, community activists, journalists, and government as well as opposition figures. At the crossroads of the Andean mountains, the Caribbean coast, the Amazon rainforest, and the Amacuro River Delta, Venezuela’s wondrous natural diversity and exciting role in reconfiguring global politics guarantee an exciting – and unforgettable – experience. I LIVE OFF YOU AND YOU LIVE OF ME AND THE WHOLE WORLD LIVES OFF OF EVERYBODY SEE WE GOTTA BE EXPLOITED