Preview of my current work with the PG Immigrant Rights Collective and in solidarity with Venezuela
Reflections on being the target of propaganda
Invitation to an online seminar entitled Study and Solidarity with Venezuela I’m co-leading, on the next three Thursdays: Feb 19, Feb 26, and March 5 2026
What I’m reading: Manufacturing Consent, Invisible Rulers, The Girl with the Louding Voice, Everything We Thought was True, Part of Your World
It’s been a crazy year so far. Scary, but also inspiring.
My two major areas of activism these days are Venezuela solidarity/anti-imperialism and supporting immigrant mothers whose partners have been abducted by ICE.
I have been working with the local Immigrant Rights Collective. Last year I participated in ICE-watch in my neighborhood near Washington, DC, where ICE has been terrorizing families, but I had to step back for some months to focus on my daughter and her illness ( see How Many Doctors Does it Take? and Desperately Seeking Diagnosis. Also Illness and Imperialism). Thankfully she is now much better, and I have been able to return to other work—though I still plan to write the conclusion to my series on our healthcare wrangles.
These days news and social media focus a lot, and rightfully so, on the courageous work of the people out on the street spotting ICE, sending out alerts and warnings, showing up to witness abductions, and sometimes stepping in to try and prevent them.
We’ve also seen reports, though not nearly enough, about the conditions in the detention centers and what happens to people locked up there for the “crime” of having darker skin and “looking like immigrants.”
What we rarely ever learn about from media is what happens to the families left behind when their family member, sometimes a wife and mother but usually a husband, father, and often major breadwinner of the family, has been snatched away. We don’t hear about the tremendous struggles of the mothers, who suddenly, in the midst of their shock and grief, must now maintain the entire family. In addition to covering all the regular expenses on their own, generally with low-wage and less than full-time jobs, plus shouldering the extra expenses and burdens of trying to aid their detained spouses: huge legal costs, commissary fees, outrageous phone charges, and more. And they must do all this while helping their bereft children weather the trauma of separation.
Nor do we see much information about the amazing communities of people who have sprung into action to support these families, or the remarkable systems that these volunteers have developed to provide food, supplies, emergency care, and solidarity.
Next issue I will write more about my experience with the PG Immigrant Rights Collective and about the incredibly strong and brave women I have been speaking with. For now, here is a link to the GoFundMe pages the PG Immigrant Rights Collective has been making, where you can see the family’s stories and contribute to their emergency support. Here also is the PGIRC LinkTree with more info.
Now, about Venezuela; specifically, the narratives about this country and its president and its revolution, which have been propagated so thoroughly that many of us have absorbed them without question. We either believe them because they seem reasonable, because we are not aware of the skewed ways in which Venezuelan reality has been presented to us, or we simply take them in without even noticing, like the air we breathe.
What are these narratives, where do they originate, and how can we resist them? I am assuming that you, as I do, prefer to piece together a picture of reality that is not twisted to fit the agenda of the country that for a century and a half has been imposing its will—that is, the will of a tiny minority of billionaires and those who serve them—on the world, endangering all of us.
Yet that twisted picture is widely disseminated, including by many sources we trust. Sources like major mainstream media corporations whose directors share those elite interests.
Generally we’re unaware of the distortions of reality surrounding us, the way in past times people accepted, without question, that enslaved people deserved their bondage, that women were incapable of anything outside homemaking, that God favored the extermination of indigenous people, or that the best way to educate children was to beat them.
I often remind myself of these past beliefs, which seemed so normal at the time. Yet even then there were people who did not believe those narratives and struggled against them, until eventually they, along with the system they sought to justify, were completely overthrown. That’s a big part of solidarity, and growing numbers of people are understanding and opposing interventionism and American exceptionalism, and resisting the propaganda that would have us support them.
In a way, it’s simpler now. The manipulative narratives are more bald and evident under Trump. But of course Trump did not invent this empire; it’s been rampaging around the world for at least a hundred fifty years, under liberal and progressive governments as well as conservative and right-wing ones. Narratives to justify it, to get us to support interventions abroad and repression at home, have been fabricated for as long as these have been happening, because the rulers know that if we knew, really knew, what was being done in our name, we would not tolerate it.
Among the many efforts to resist and to form a deeper, truer picture, that will help us act as equals rather than bullies in the world, is the interactive online course entitled Study and Solidarity with Venezuela, which I will be co-facilitating with Eleanor Hancock of Comrades Education, joined by Ricardo Vaz of Venezuelanalysis. Together we will study a variety of materials and discuss what it means to be in solidarity with Venezuela and other countries targeted by the US empire.
I would love for you to join me, along with Eleanor Hancock and Ricardo Vaz, in our upcoming online interactive seminar Study and Solidarity with Venezuela, an online community of Learning and Action, happening Thursdays Feb 19 and 26, and March 5, 8-9:30 pm Eastern Time.
Co-sponsored by Friends of Latin America and CodePink.
Study & Solidarity with Venezuela is an online course and learning community for anyone who stands against imperial aggression and for the right to self-determination. We welcome questions and the chance to dive into complexities, “unpacking” a range of resources (written, audio, video), prioritizing Venezuelan perspectives in each live discussion, to help us understand, interpret, and take action.
In a community of learning, concern, and engagement, we’ll cut through propaganda, delve into the nature of the Bolivarian Revolution and its communes, and bolster our capacity to act in solidarity with the Venezuelan people. We’ll discuss connections between the US attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of its presidential couple, and the militarized onslaught against immigrants and our communities in the US.
Study & Solidarity with Venezuela, an online community of learning & action
Facilitated by: Eleanor Hancock & Juliana Barnet, with guest teacher Ricardo Vaz of Venezuelanalysis joining us on Feb 26.
Begins Feb 19!
All sessions are recorded. Live attendance is not required. Registration fee is sliding scale, with no one turned away for lack of funds.
Manufacturing Consent, The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. Great insights on how propaganda works. Excellent for recognizing past patterns of media manipulation that repeat in the present.
Invisible Rulers, The People who Turn Lies into Reality, Renée DiResta. Creating versions of reality in the age of social media, examining the dynamics of influencers, algorithms, and crowds.
Everything We Thought Was True: a novel by Lisa Montanaro—a lawyer wrestles with the complexities of having a gay father and the implications for herself. Lisa is a fellow writer in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, one of my favorite groups that I belong to!
The Girl with the Louding Voice, Abi Daré, a fourteen-year-old girl confronts adversities of traditional rural Nigeria, and then perils of contemporary Lagos, with humor and an indomitable spirit.
Part of Your World, Abby Jimenez. A woman destined to continue a dynasty must decide what’s important in her life, and realize that she can suffer abuse even without physical wounds.
These are my own book summaries, not lifted from elsewhere—or AI generated!
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