Bay Area Protests US Involvement in Venezuela

By Luna Bichon, Erika Liu & Warren Su

RADICALIZED BY BASIC HUMAN DECENCY,” reads one woman’s cardboard sign, held out firmly toward the crowded, dissonant street. “DEMOCRACY NOT DOMINANCE,” is written on another sign, bobbing in a sea of homemade pickets. There are hundreds lining the streets that surround the Redwood City Whole Foods intersection. Many are dressed up in vivid costumes: international politicians, the Statue of Liberty, American flags. Dozens of protesters walk around wearing giant paper heads of President Donald Trump — his massive forehead defaced with a crossed-out crown. 

It’s not a unique scene: the protest, organized on January 17 by the progressive grassroots activism movement Indivisible, is only one of 40+ advocacy events hosted weekly across the Bay Area by Indivisible alone. This new wave of demonstrations comes as a response to Maduro’s highly contentious capture. The raid, carried out on January 3 following months of military strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats, resulted in the Venezuelan politician’s successful detainment in a New York prison, where he currently awaits trial on charges of narco-terrorism, conspiracy, and cocaine importation. 

With Maduro’s term marked by hyperinflation of up to 800%, as per some sources, and a poverty rate exceeding 94%, news outlets widely cite his administration’s mismanagement as responsible for the state’s current economic asphyxiation. Under his rule, the number of Venezuelan emigrants to the US jumped from 184,000 in 2010 to 770,000 in 2023. Of the nearly 8 million Venezuelans living in exile, 10% of these immigrants reside in the US. Thousands more are estimated to live in the Bay Area specifically. Many Venezuelans, bitter over the corruption of Maduro’s administration, have supported his capture, while Maduro’s supporters and those concerned over Venezuela’s political autonomy continue to view the raid in a more critical light.  

Oil Exploitation

With both Maduro and his wife detained and facing a slew of charges, Trump has taken the opportunity to express profound interest in accessing Venezuela’s oil reserves. “We’re getting oil proxies down, and we’re going to be giving money to Venezuela, which they desperately need,” Trump told the New York Times. Activists are concerned that this was the primary quest of the capture, lending US oil corporations further power.

“The scary thing is that he says, this is about drugs. It’s ridiculous. It’s about oil,” JoAnn Louland, primary organizer of the January 17 protest in Redwood City, said. A small, blue-haired woman, she donned an upside-down American flag for the protest — a statement on federal corruption in the US. “It’s not legal,” Louland said.

Venezuela, while having the largest oil reserves in the world, has historically failed to fully utilize its resources. Due to being classified as “heavy” and “sour,” Venezuelan oil is in part neglected because it is difficult and costly to extract. The industry is also hampered by restrictive US oil sanctions. Following Maduro’s extraction, the US has only tightened its grip around these resources. As of January 14, the US has begun to complete sales of Venezuelan oil, valued at up to $500 million according to officials.

Locally, discussion surrounding oil has fed into physical protests against local oil corporations, namely the gas company Chevron. As the only US-based oil corporation still actively refining and shipping extracts from Venezuela, Chevron would directly profit from increased US involvement in the region, protesters say. 

On January 10, a coalition of activist groups gathered outside Chevron’s refinery in Richmond, CA. Organizations like Bay Area Resistance and the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA), vocal critics of Chevron, were present to protest both the oil refinery and US’s involvement in Venezuela. Several hundred protesters arrived in droves on foot, holding banners and sounding off choruses outside of the police-barricaded Chevron headquarters.

“We are opposed to the idea that our government should be used as a weapon for the profit of corporations,” Ilonka Zlatar, an organizer for the Oil and Gas Station Network, said. Other protestors highlighted the company’s history of unethical practices within the region.

Chevron, Richmond’s largest employer, is also the city’s largest polluter. Richmond has historically resented the company’s presence, with public bitterness coming at an all-time high following the 2025 LA fires. That March, more than a hundred activists gathered at the front gates of the Richmond Chevron refinery as part of larger protests against fossil fuel companies and their role in promoting climate change. “Imagine if Chevron was charged for the destruction it’s caused in Richmond, to the Bay, to the entire state of California,” the executive director of Fossil Free California Quinn Eide said. Local activists echoed Eide’s same sentiments.

Former Richmond city council member and lead RPA organizer Melvin Willis highlighted how, ultimately, this common frustration had united the city’s residents toward action. “The community is saying this is not okay. This is illegal and needs to stop,” Willis said. “Keep the oil in the ground.” 

Political Implications

Many vocal activists denounced how the US’s aggressive posture toward Venezuela eroded democratic integrity within both countries. Coming at the heels of years of political unrest — with hundreds of thousands showing up for the anti-authoritarian No Kings protests a few months prior, and thousands more protesting the death of Renee Good, a bystander shot by ICE earlier in January of this year — anti-federal sentiment was at an all-time high. The protesters near Redwood City’s Whole Foods Market arrived with these same concerns. “When we attack another nation for any reason, that is not democracy,” protester Cindy Sears, a Portola Valley native, said.

Simultaneously, however, many Venezuelans and Latin Americans are celebrating  Maduro’s sudden capture as liberating. Maduro’s administration, regarded as illegitimate and highly unpopular, oversaw  years of political instability and economic catastrophe within Venezuela. Yet, the relief following his removal is tempered by fears of imperialistic encroachment from the US — Trump has repeatedly asserted that the US is “in charge” of Venezuela now, and has entertained plans of seizing or annexing other countries, including Colombia and Greenland, in the near future.

“We feel joy but also bewilderment,” one anonymous Bay Area Venezuelan interviewee said to KQED. “We’re worried for our families … [But Maduro] is paying now for what he has done to so many people,” the interviewee said. Another Venezuelan interviewee from San Francisco expressed abject fear to KQED. “I’m … horrified that we, as a nation, are paying for missiles and bombs to be dropped in another country,” she said.

“I think the people [in Venezuela] are very scared,” MSJ Spanish 4 instructor and Colombia native Ferney Sanchez said. “Two years ago, I had my first two Venezuelan students in a community that I was teaching … They would tell me always that their only wish was to be able to go back to Venezuela once the situation settled … It is sad that we have come to this point,” Sanchez said. 

Conclusion

As the situation continues to unfold live, Bay Area community members continue organizing for the change they want to see internationally. Advocacy organizations, from Bay Resistance to the Palestinian Youth Movement to the Peace and Justice Center, continue to fill the streets in public protests, lambasting federal actions in solidarity with local Venezuelans. On a broader level, rallies and demonstrations persist across the state, with thousands of protestors continuing to assemble in major cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento.

“I’m 77. I’ve been protesting since 1967,” Louland said. “It’s just so tiring. But I want people to know protests work … All the civil rights we got [were] because of protests. When people are out in the streets, it lets other people know, hey, this is important. Oh, you feel the same way I do. It lets people know we’re in this together, and we have to stay together.”