Anti-Maduro Town Hall Meetings Are Popping Up Across Venezuela

Small, hastily organized town hall meetings are popping up all across Venezuela as the country’s opposition regroups around a new leader and works up plans to try to break President Nicolas Maduro’s hold on power. Largely dormant since a government crackdown in mid-2017, the opposition is coalescing once more and may have found a new leader in Juan Guaido, the freshly minted National Assembly president, who’s galvanized support by asserting that the constitution provides the lawful means to end Maduro’s strongman rule and establish a caretaker government. Fellow lawmakers and activists are fanning out to industrial cities and coastal towns to explain the idea and fire up a nation worn down by a collapsing economy and government oppression. On Wednesday, assemblies were held simultaneously in the capital and at least two other states, drawing crowds that numbered in the hundreds. More…