I was not alone for long today. Within a few minutes, four people showed up to stand with me: Kelly, Heather, Brian and Sharon. It was great to have their enthusiastic company.

After sharing what was new in our lives, we talked about the untimely and tragic passing of the President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez. We discussed his incredible legacy of improving the lives of the poor and promoting democratic socialism.

I had just returned the night before from a trip to the United Nations in New York and recalled Chavez’s 2006 speech to the UN’s General Assembly. During his speech, Chavez held up Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance and urged everyone to read it. It was just on Monday night, two nights earlier, that I attended a lecture by Chomsky for the first time. He spoke at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan and his lecture was entitled The End of the Vietnam War and the Collapse of Empire?

Before the lecture, there was a reception and I got a chance to take a picture with Chomsky. I told him that I had come from Canada to hear him speak and he frowned and said “What a shame about your federal government.” I agreed and told him how our country is spending billions to build a new fleet of warships. “It’s the largest government procurement in our history”, I explained. He asked, “What’s the pretext?”. “Arctic sovereignty”, I replied. He started to talk about the melting ice and the natural resource wealth buried in the Arctic, but then was interrupted by another fan for a picture – this guy had Chomsky’s face tattooed to his arm!

Chomsky’s lecture was packed and a brief overview of the public lecture is here. In his speech, Chomsky reminded us: “War never ends for the victims” and spoke about the lingering effects of chemical warfare in Vietnam. He ended with a reference to Chavez and a message of hope: “Over 10 years ago, Latin America broke away from U.S. control. And look how it was the only region not to participate in the U.S.’s international program of rendition and torture”, he said. Venezuela and the other South American countries did not appear on the map derived from the Open Society Foundation‘s shocking report Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition. Chavez had often spoken out against U.S. foreign policy and its wars against Iraq and Afghanistan.

[If you haven’t seen the documentaries “The Revolution will not be televised” and “South of the Border” about the incredible progress in Latin America, please do so. If you are in Halifax, you can rent them from Video Difference on Quinpool Road. Watch as well Democracy Now’s coverage of the life and legacy of Chavez].Viva Chavismo!

At our warship protest today, we had 31 honks and 23 waves – another record! Only 3 fingers and 3 frowns.