The Trump administration’s delay in sending real aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria is a distasteful display of colonialist racism. But it’s par for the course: our citizenship has always been second-class. “We’re American citizens. How can Trump turn his back on us?” This is one of the pleas I’m hearing over and […]
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The island has become a target not only for rapacious vulture funds but also for exponents of Katrina-style “disaster capitalism.” September 27, 2017 Hurricane Maria has created a humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico. Much of the capital city of San Juan is flooded; there is contaminated water in the streets, shortages of gasoline and […]
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August 31, 2017 The most recent meeting of Puerto Rico’s Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB)—known colloquially as “La Junta”—was held Friday, August 4, at the luxurious Hotel El Conquistador of Fajardo, a remote fishing town on the island’s northeast corner. Far from the urban milieu of protest in the capital city of San Juan, […]
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What’s revealed when two Puerto Rican MCs face off Beefs and clap-back answer songs are a tradition in hip-hop, from Biggie versus Tupac and Jay Z versus Nas all the way back to Roxanne Shanté versus The Real Roxanne. But the recent clash between Puerto Rican MCs Residente (a.k.a. René Pérez Joglar), formerly of the […]
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May 15 2017, 11:09 am ET In April I was invited to Yale Law School to attend a conference put together by the American Bar Foundation for their research initiative “The Future of Latinos in the United States: Law, Opportunity, and Moblity.” The gathering featured 50 “key stakeholders”: lawyers, academics, political activists, and members […]
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May 24, 2017 Last week, events in Puerto Rico continued to reach new levels of tension and emotion as the island’s bankruptcy proceedings began, the university’s month-long strike was threatened by court maneuverings, and the long-held political prisoner Oscar López Rivera emerged from house arrest to assertively spread an anti-colonial message to a people long […]
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Some $40 billion of the island’s debt could be illegal—so why is the government shutting down the audit commission? Aurora Muriente Pastrana, who is both a law-school student and adjunct professor in the humanities department at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), had come to the steps of Puerto Rico’s capitol building on April 18 with […]
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The Trump administration’s stance toward immigration enforcement and its clashes with sanctuary cities is stirring action on college campuses. In New York City, a coalition of students and faculty at New York University want the institution to officially declare itself a sanctuary campus, saying universities have to be clear about standing by their community. “I’ve had […]
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The campaign to free Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar López Rivera, a political prisoner confined in a US federal penitentiary since 1981, has dominated various sectors of Puerto Rican activism for the last decade. The demonstrators behind 34 Mujeres Por Oscar has been a fixture at Union Squre Park and other locations around New York for […]
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It’s a fairly widespread opinion, particularly in the privileged sectors of East and West Coast urban areas, that 2016 has been the “worst year ever.” And it probably was. I’m not referring to the pop cultural obsession with the various artist/celebrities that have passed away. While many of them were significant in their own ways, […]
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