Large crowds gathered at Times Square Saturday to protest the overnight U.S. bombing of Venezuela and President Donald Trump’s intent to occupy the country. A coalition of activist organizations scrambled to put the demonstration together – alongside dozens of others across the country – upon the announcement late Friday night that the U.S. military had bombed Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, and kidnapped Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.

At least 40 Venezuelans were killed and just two American soldiers were injured in the attack.

Through speeches, signs and chants, demonstrators drew a throughline between the invasion of Venezuela and previous foreign interventions, from the Vietnam War to the Iran-Israel war in June.

Some demonstrators, like Blair Bertaccini of Stuyvesant Town, remarked that they had protested the Vietnam and Iraq wars as they were protesting this most recent raid. “Unfortunately it’s just the latest of invasions, unprovoked invasions,” he said.

Eva-Lee Blaird, 85, of the Upper West Side, compared Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric in the lead-up to the bombing to the Bush administration’s fable of weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq war.

“Our imperial presidents all come up with monsters that we have to conquer,” she said.

Still, the brazenness with which Trump and his administration spoke about the operation surprised some of the demonstrators. The Iraq War is widely known for privatizing Iraq’s petroleum reserves; the Bush administration denied it was a motivation. But in a morning press conference, Trump boasted about a U.S. occupation as an opportunity for American oil companies to “get the oil flowing the way it should be.”

“There’s not even a veneer of legality anymore,” Thomas H. of Brooklyn said as the demonstration marched up Broadway.

Sara Flounders, one of the organizers, was skeptical that the U.S. could occupy the Caribbean country, but called on demonstrators to mobilize in the following days in a “whole new level of unity.” She held tight to a flagpole carrying a Venezuelan flag, dwarfed ominously by the great L.E.D. display of an American flag stationed behind her.

The protest occasionally attracted ire from onlookers, including Sheilla Marquez, a young Venezuelan who lived under Maduro’s government before immigrating to the United States when she was 15.

“He’s a killer,” Marquez said of Maduro. She was supportive of the bombing campaign and Trump’s promise of U.S. occupation. “If this is the only way we’re going to have freedom, we’re gonna take it,” she said.

The U.S. government is holding Maduro in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. He is expected to face federal drug charges. 

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to suggest the United States could similarly destabilize Cuba.

“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least a little bit,” Rubio said.

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