Puerto Rico was in crisis before a hurricane devastated the island; Trump, though, seems only concerned with its debt. Labor organizer Javier Morillo and others have been fighting the island's unsustainable, predatory debt crisis for a while and he joins us to connect the dots between man-made and natural disasters on the island, and how the history of colonialism makes aiding the US citizens on the island after Hurricane Maria that much harder.

 

One of the things that I am really struggling with right now is that we don’t have a progressive or a Left shock doctrine, as Naomi Klein calls it. The Right has a program in place for how to take advantage of moments like this. What I am terrified about on the island right now is that I think, absolutely, when you look at what junta has done and everything else, that this is an opportunity for the wealthy 1% of the US and the global 1% to make Puerto Rico into a playground the way Cuba was in the 1940s and 1950s for the US rich and that we will have an island of Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans. To me, the question is: What do we do in the short and medium-term that is some semblance of a shock doctrine for our side? If we are going to rebuild Puerto Rico, how do we do it in a way that is right for the people of Puerto Rico? I have to weigh that with the very immediate concern of needing to get cargo containers with food and necessities that people have. Unfortunately, I don’t have a very good answer for how we do the short-term in a way that sets up the long-term. There are organizers on the ground. One affiliated with the Center for Popular Democracy in the US, who has set up a fund. It is MariaFund.org. They have been doing base-building work on the island for some time, especially in the poorer areas and the coastal areas that have been devastated now twice with Irma and now with Maria. That is who I have been encouraging people to donate money to because I trust the work that they do, that it is directed at the most vulnerable and actually at social transformation on the island, with a focus on the most vulnerable communities and the communities of African descent on the island.

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