Issued on January 3, 2026

The Anti-War Action Network (AWAN) denounces the U.S. military attacks on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Maduro and First Lady Celia Flores on January 3, 2026. 

Venezuela is a sovereign country that the U.S. has no right to interfere in. The oil, gold, and other resources of Venezuela belong to the people of Venezuela, not to Wall Street corporations and not to Trump. Nevertheless, at today’s Mar-a-Lago press conference Trump threatened a “much bigger second wave” of military attacks. Trump also said, “We are going to be running Venezuela.”  

It is time for us to act. The Anti-War Action Network is organizing emergency protests. We want others to join us at rallies outside Federal Buildings and on busy street corners.  We are raising our voices against President Trump and his war plans. 

AWAN has many leaders who recently returned from a Peace Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela and they will be speaking at rallies across the country to say: 

 “No U.S. War on Venezuela!  Free President Maduro!” 

Recently millions participated in the “No Kings!” rallies against Trump’s attacks on immigrants, federal workers, and others. Trump’s illegal acts of war against Venezuela require the same response. Taking to the streets here, like millions of Venezuelans do in their country, is how we build a powerful anti-war movement. It is how we can expose the Trump Administration lies and force politicians to stop another war. 

Join us in building the broadest possible front against Trump, his illegal acts of war, and his outrageous kidnapping of President Maduro. 

AWAN repeats:  “No U.S. War on Venezuela!  Free President Maduro!”

Issued on December 10, 2025

Trump and Hegseth are committing murder and blowing up fishing boats and transport vessels near Venezuela. Nearly a quarter of all U.S. naval forces stalk the Caribbean with 15,000 military personnel, while scores of aircraft hawk the skies near Venezuela. With this in mind, the Nobel committee awarded their “peace prize” to someone urging Trump to use all those forces to invade Venezuela and violently overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution. 

Maria Corina Machado is from a wealthy family who scoffed at the popular, bottom-up mass movement that won the presidency in 1998 with the election of Hugo Chavez. Machado chose the side of history she wanted to stand on when she helped the U.S. carry out a coup against Chavez in 2002 and signed the Carmona Decree which destroyed all public institutions. 

This opportunist has supported vicious sanctions against Venezuela knowing it would create suffering for the people. Machado helps the U.S. to cheat and try to steal every single election in Venezuela since President Chavez took office. It has all failed, so now she threatens war and violence.

Machado is a vocal supporter of war criminal Netanyahu and the Zionist genocide of Palestinians. She is requesting Israel to help invade Venezuela to overthrow President Maduro. How is this person qualified to receive a peace award?!

She leads the Venezuela opposition and supports a Project 2025-style plan if Trump and Rubio are successful. She and the opposition aim to privatize all public institutions and rollback all the gains and achievements of the last 25 years. 

To lionize a bloodsucker is shameful and disgusting. 

AWAN stands in solidarity with the protestors in Oslo condemning the Nobel ceremony for a warmonger. AWAN stands in solidarity with the Venezuelan people and their government defending the Bolivarian Revolution.

Maria Corina Machado has blood on her hands. She has dirtied the Nobel Peace Prize. 

No War on Venezuela!

Posted December 1, 2025

The Anti-War Action Network denounces President Trump’s “No-fly zone” over Venezuela. It is a war move meant to intimidate Venezuelans and peoples across the Caribbean and Latin America. It is yet another attempt to strong arm Venezuela and its leader President Maduro. 

This “No-fly zone” escalation must be stopped, and U.S. military forces withdrawn. President Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth continue to brazenly murder people on fishing boats and transport vessels with no investigation, no evidence, and no mercy. The U.S. Navy doesn’t have the right to be judge, jury and executioner of boaters in the Caribbean. They are committing war crimes and Hegseth should be arrested and prosecuted. 

The U.S. used a no-fly zone during its war on Iraq.  While it sounds non-violent, it was the very opposite. The no-fly zone was a complete violation of Iraqi sovereignty. The U.S. bombed Iraq on an almost daily basis.  It meant that only US or US allied planes could fly in Iraqi air space.  The anti-war movement needs to see and treat Trump’s no fly zone as an act of war.

The U.S. Empire has been trying to overthrow the government of Venezuela since President Chavez was elected and took office in 1999. For twenty-five years now, Presidents Chavez and Maduro have faced coups, infrastructure sabotage, election interference, computer and system hacking, mercenary invasions, drone attacks, and painful U.S. economic sanctions. The Bolivarian Revolution has continually overcome these challenges from the U.S Empire, defeating them in every way, and now their economy has been growing, for 18 straight quarters.

Frustrated and angry that their cruel siege has not caused the regime change they desire, the U.S. is now turning toward war. President Trump says he wants to replace President Maduro. To do this, Trump and Secretary of State Rubio need to paint Venezuela’s leadership as bad guys, so they are claiming that a vast conspiracy of political and military leaders are involved in trafficking drugs. However, the UN reports that drug crops are not grown in Venezuela and very little is transported through their land territory. So even though Venezuela is not a threat to the United States, Trump and Rubio keep repeating the lies in an effort to make them seem true.

What Trump and Rubio want is their own lackeys in power. But the new leaders they choose will have only one job - to do the bidding of big oil corporations and Wall Street investors. 

Trump and Rubio are determined to defeat the Bolivarian Revolution where for twenty-five years Venezuela’s resources have benefited Venezuelans.  Food, housing, education, health care, and policing have all seen massive reforms and development that benefit working people by the millions. Foreign corporations either paid more taxes or were shown the door. Workers now run many enterprises themselves. New industries are springing up to make the country self-sufficient.  

Trump and Hegseth despise all that. They consider it government meddling in people’s lives. They want to go back to the old corrupt ways, with kickbacks and payoffs, where nearly half of children do not finish school and older people have no health care. Trump and Rubio are dreaming of stealing billions of dollars of wealth and resources from Venezuela. They are using the U.S. war machine to force Venezuela to negotiate for the benefit of U.S. oil and mineral companies.  

Join us in opposing President Trump’s no-fly zone.  Venezuelans want peace. They want us to visit their country, and be friends, not to make a war. 

No U.S. war on Venezuela!

Stop Trump’s Missile Attacks!

Yes to peace! No to Another U.S. War!  

Posted 10/10/2025

Israeli strikes killed at least 27 Palestinians on Thursday, October 9th. That same day, the Israeli government agreed to a ceasefire that, on its face, requires the Israeli military to fully withdraw from Gaza and finally end the ongoing genocide that just passed its second anniversary.

The Anti-War Action Network (AWAN) has not forgotten that Israel made the same agreement to end its genocidal rampage almost nine months ago. Sadly, that ceasefire did not bring an end to the killing, only a temporary respite. Even then, Israel murdered at least 112 more Palestinians within the first month of that “ceasefire.”

There is no ceasefire until Israel ceases firing on Palestinian homes, schools, and hospitals. Until the bombs have stopped falling and the guns have stopped firing, AWAN and its affiliated organizations remain committed to ending this heinous slaughter that has claimed over 67,000 lives.

U.S. war profiteers are responsible for these crimes. Companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Howmet Aerospace, Palantir, General Dynamics and Bae Systems, are little more than criminal organizations run by terrorists in boardrooms. Their war machines are fueled by Palestinian blood.

AWAN and its affiliated organizations call on all those who support Palestine to continue to campaign against these merchants of death. Stand with us during our Week Against Weapons, the week of October 20th, 2025.

We welcome a true ceasefire, but our work is not done until there is permanent peace, an end to apartheid, and Palestine is free.

End US Aid to Israel!

Arms Embargo on Israel Now!

Money for Human Needs, Not War!

War Profiteers Are NOT Welcome in Our Communities!

8/12/2025

The Anti War Action Coalition (AWAN) deplores Israel’s targeting of the Al Jazeera team in Gaza on Sunday, the assassination of Anas Al-Sharif, and the occupation’s blockade of life-saving aid, humanitarian workers,  and journalists. Exposing Genocide is not a crime!  It is a necessary means of resistance and the responsibility of all people of conscience.  

On Sunday, August 10th, Anas Al-Sharif was the target of an Israeli airstrike that killed him and four others on the Al-Jazeera team: Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa.

The Israeli military falsely claimed Anas Al-Sharif was a militant for months before this attack. But Israel only clings to a strategy of deceit and manipulation because the truth is not on their side. Anas Al-Sharif, who notably reported on the January ceasefire and the forced starvation of recent, has been a beloved voice from Gaza for the past 2 years. His assassination has been condemned by many news outlets and humanitarian organizations, and he will be remembered by the whole guilty world. 

The fact that this attack was orchestrated just hours after Prime Minister Netanyahu’s public commitment to admit “a lot” of foreign journalists into the Gaza Strip is a clear tactic of repression. Once again, Israel has flagrantly breached international humanitarian law and faced no immediate material consequences from the international community. Israel means to threaten anyone who dares witness and document the atrocities of their genocide campaign. 

Journalists –over 270 now since October 7th, 2023–are being killed because Israel is targeting them. Palestinians are starving to death because Israel has maintained an illegal siege for almost two decades now. And indisputably, Israel has the means to commit these crimes because of the support of the United States of America and the complicity of our elected officials.

Israel will not stop at some number of journalists assassinated or civilians forcibly starved to death. The white supremacist, apartheid regime has no limits because its goal is to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland. We must be the ones to draw a red line.

We ask our supporters in the U.S. to participate in AWAN’s national week of action to Break the Siege of Gaza.  Use our events to  honor Anas Al-Sharif and demand an end to Israel’s deadly siege. 

Killing Journalists is a Crime!

Arms Embargo Now!

End the Siege!

Let Gaza Live and Free Palestine!

July 2025

Anti-War Action Network (AWAN) was a co-convener of the People’s Summit for Korea on July 25-26 in New York City. This conference played a critical role in educating the anti-war movement of the geopolitical importance of the Korean peninsula to U.S. imperialism and our solidarity. As the U.S. intensifies its efforts to attack China, U.S. occupation of South Korea plays a critical role, effectively being the front line of U.S. imperialism in Asia.  The South Korean military is the one of the largest standing armies in the world, of which the U.S. retains command and control.

During the U.S.-Korean war, the U.S. resorted to  deliberate bombing of civilian centers in order to have any military success against the Korean People’s Army and allies. This resulted in the deaths of 4 to 5 million Korean people (nearly 30 percent of the population) and most of the North leveled — to the point that U.S. bomber pilots complained that there was nothing left to bomb. From the U.S. point of view, this conflict is over, but to many Koreans, it has continued since 1953. 

The U.S. and North Korea never officially ended the war (nor was it ever officially declared or authorized by Congress), and the U.S. has never left the peninsula. The U.S. has maintained a standing occupation force of about 30,000 soldiers in South Korea at 15 U.S. bases, with full access to dozens of South Korean military bases to threaten both North Korea and China. Every year the U.S. conducts joint military exercises with South Korea on the border, in the supposedly Demilitarized Zone, brandishing military might at North Korea. Every year the U.S. and its command of South Korean forces conducts large-scale joint military drills in March and August and smaller scale drills which have included “decapitation exercises” practicing the forcible removal of the leadership of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  While the U.S. characterizes these drills as a “routine defensive training event,” to North Korea and China they are clearly threatening provocations that practice a future reality desirable to U.S. imperialism.

Recently, in a thuggish extortion move, President Trump told South Korea that they needed to pay $10 billion this year for their own occupation and roles as a staging ground and cannon fodder in the U.S.’s efforts to provoke China into an active military conflict. The U.S. government and its corporate media lackeys persist in demonizing North Korea with propaganda of framing and selected images and a distorted, racist mythology of North Korean leaders. This is a particularly hypocritical stance to take for the world’s first and most unrepentant nuclear power, currently led by the unstable President Trump who has repeatedly threatened to use nukes on the North to “totally destroy" them. 

While solidarity with Palestine so far has been the focus of the Anti-War Action Network, we agreed at our founding conference that “AWAN is founded on the belief that the U.S. is the greatest purveyor of violence and injustice in the world today.” As anti-imperialists, we need to understand and respond to how U.S. imperialism affects the people of the world. We know that South Korea has sold arms and munitions to Israel as it carries out its genocide in Gaza. But would South Korea do this if it wasn’t occupied by the largest arms supplier to Israel? It’s up to us in the U.S. to build a movement that not only stops arming Israel, but also builds solidarity with the international efforts to close all U.S. bases around the world.

We support the People’s Summit for Knorea’s call for actions on August 15 to say NO to Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises and the US- South Korea (Republic of Korea) military alliance.  We encourage our supporters to participate in local actions and to call their members of Congress to say NO to U.S. military exercises in South Korea.