Shout Out to Boots Riley for Calling Out the CIA on Venezuela

February 26, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

While accepting an award for his film Sorry to Bother You for Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards on February 23, Boots Riley called out the CIA for “trying to have a coup in Venezeula....” While far too few artists with a platform are speaking out against the crimes of this government being carried out in our name, Boots used his platform to speak the truth and call on others to do the same: “We should all be putting our voices out there to stop the U.S.  from having regime change for oil in Venezuela.”

According to Indiewire, Boots continued speaking out backstage about the lies being told about this invasion and the history behind this kind of bullshit: “Obviously, the CIA, every time they targeted a country for regime change, they tell you the same things. They tell you the same things in Iraq, they tell you the same things that they did in Chile in 1973. They all say, ‘They’ve lost support, they’re dictators. We’re just helping people.’ We know. C’mon. Everybody knows that’s not true. Right now, under the guise of humanitarian aid, they’re doing the same thing the US did in Guatemala in the ’80s, which was sneak guns to right-wing forces in Central America through what they call ‘humanitarian aid.’ Now, when the Russians were trying to get ‘humanitarian aid’ into Ukraine a few years ago, the MSM out here correctly said, ‘Oh, we know they’re sneaking guns in that way.’ All of a sudden, nobody’s saying the same thing in the mainstream media. The people of Venezuela are the ones that should be deciding who rules them. The US has been working with opposition forces there for years.”