YMCA cancels students’ Venezuela trip

[cal04]

Students protest, say ‘Y buckled under pressure’
University of Minnesota students who helped to organize a spring break trip to Venezuela are protesting a decision by the leadership of the YMCA to withdraw their support for the venture. The students, Carrie DuBois and Alondra Espejel, are trying to organize a community protest of the YMCA’s actions, which they attribute in a March 13 email alert to “...the work of a few, privileged individuals, with political access, time, and resources, working inside the United States for “regime change in Venezuela.”

Both DuBois and Espejel were participants in the University of Minnesota YMCA’s Immersion Program. According to a program brochure, the mission of the immersion program is to “Take an in-depth exploration of a social justice issue in another city in the U.S. or at an international destination.” The program provides assistance to participants in planning, logistics and organization for such immersion trip. Both DuBois and Espejel signed on as trip organizers. In exchange for their work in recruiting and organizing other young people on the trip, they would receive monies from the YMCA towards deferring their own travel cost.

According to the students, the trip was intended to “study first hand recent national changes, such as: agrarian land reform, race relations, health care reform, development of Afro-Andean relations, and alternative media. We have also been invited to participate in the first-ever International Afro-Venezuelan Youth Conference.”

The controversy began a few weeks ago when leaders of the U YMCA began to receive emails and phone calls from people raising questions about the students’ travel. These questions ranged from concerns over “living conditions and safety” to outright opposition to the government. In one email obtained by the MSR, the writer explicitly spelled out their political disagreement with the course of the current Venezuelan government as a concern: “I seriously question your representation of what is happening in Venezuela as a positive historic event... I would also appreciate an explanation as to the origination of the terms ‘democratic process and social justice’ as they would apply to the direction of the current Venezuelan government.”

http://www.spokesman-recorder.com/news/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=55637&sID=13

[MrPrax]

1. Too Bad...

The kids would have had a lot of fun...

So where are they going instead?

[John Q. Citizen]

2. If you read the story you will see they are going to

Venesuala anyway.

[John Q. Citizen]

3. Here's the url of the U of MN Y' web site

in case anyone feels like writing a nice e-mail and asking for some specifics as to the safety issues.

http://www.ymcatwincities.org/locations/universityY/universityY_Immersion.asp

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. How about cross-posting this in the Minnesota forum?

It sounds like some freeper types and rich Venezuelans got wind of the trip and decided to apply a little pressure.

[efhmc]

5. Well, that stinks. My daughter worked there for several years. It is a

wonderful place and much safer than the US in so many ways. I visited her there 4 or 5 times and was totally impressed with the people, the food, the culture, etc. The Y struck out big time.

[Demit]

6. 3 emails and 2 phone numbers! From "people"...

That's the only identification in this story of whoever objected. That's a disgrace.

'...the two students note that “The University Branch YMCA claims these inquiries contained safety concerns. Our delegation then requested documentation of these communiquès. We were at first denied access but, after repeated requests, were provided with copies of three emails and two phone numbers of individuals that communicated with the YMCA about our trip. We found these documents to contain no explicit safety concerns and to be primarily political in content.” '


And the Y stonewalling the students is a disgrace too.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Isn't it loathesome that right-wing busy-bodies have the time

to poke their gnarly snouts into events which couldn't concern them less, and use bogus reasons to obtain their goals?

Calling Venezuela's two elections of Hugo Chavez, and his winning over the right-wing "opposition" in Venezuela, during the U.S.-driven "recall" festivities an example of poor democratic practices is an outright lie. The Y should have set the e-mail writers straight in a hurry. Surely they weren't that ignorant of the facts.

Thank goodness the students won, in the end, even if it means they had to cough up additional funds to replace funds withdrawn.

Hope more Americans will start seeing the truth behind the propaganda in our lifetimes. It's a shame to keep so many people in the dark, even if you can pull it off. It's disrespectful to us, and to those maligned.