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Call Zone Media.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the show.

It's me, James, and I'm very lucky to be joined by Marianne today.

He's an outspoken member of the Venezuelan diaspora, a writer, photographer, and we're going to talk today

a little bit about our shared frustration with the left in this country talking about

Venezuelan people, but not two Venezuelan people. So thanks for joining me tonight.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, this is something that we've been trying to put together for a while,

and I'm really glad that we're finally doing it.

So I guess if I can just frame this discussion, we've spoken about this extensively,

so I'm sure we won't need much prompting.

I do not understand how people arrive at a position of identifying as being leftists

if they don't love and care about

other people. And if you love and care about other people, then you should listen to them. And I am

appalled at the discourse about Venezuela, which is happening without Venezuelan voices for the most part.

Where people will talk to Venezuelans at all in the US press, it's

far too often people in the diaspora who are talking to the right wing of media and highlighting

like what are sometimes recent objections to Maduro, sometimes which are completely insane.

But like, it's it's a complete failing of us on the left to not talk to people from Venezuela.

Maybe you could just share with us, like, how it's been since January.

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