🇵🇷 “For 128 years of U.S. rule, Puerto Rico has been a colony”
Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic nominee for Congress in New York’s 13th District, marked the 128th anniversary of the July 25, 1898 U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico by calling for an end to American colonial rule and declaring her support for the island’s independence.
U.S. troops landed at Guánica during the Spanish-American War, and Spain ceded the island under the Treaty of Paris without any input from Puerto Ricans. In 1900 the Foraker Act established that Puerto Rico “belongs to the United States, but is not the United States, nor a part of the United States,” a formula that has defined its status ever since. Congress imposed U.S. citizenship in 1917, months before Puerto Ricans were drafted into World War I, yet residents still cannot vote for president and have no voting representation in Congress.
Avila Chevalier pointed to widespread poverty, recurring blackouts, the federal response to Hurricane Maria and the unelected fiscal oversight board known as La Junta, which was imposed by Congress in 2016 to restructure the island’s debt and holds power over its budget above the elected government.
“I also support independence for the Puerto Rican people,” she said. “Because after 128 years, it’s the least the people on the island deserve.”
🎥 @DarializaforNY (via Instagram)
This is Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
He was fatally shot by ICE agents in Houston this past week, on Tuesday, after being profiled. DHS said he tried to ram his van into them - witnesses, undocumented, say that's not what happened. They have been detained by ICE and have now have received papers to self deport - they are the only people who can testify to what ICE did to Salgado.
If you know the names Alex Pretti and Renee Good - you need to know Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Keith Porter, a black man killed by an off-duty ICE agent on January Ist of this year.
ICE has the authority to kill anyone - they have complete impunity and they are showing it to us everyday.
Today is the birthday of the great Malcolm X.
His message is still relevant today because we still live under the same capitalist system that has to change for things to get better.
“You’re living at a time of revolution. A time where there’s got to be a change. People in power have misused it. And now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built. I will join with anyone, I don’t care what color you are, as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.”
The Israelis commemorated the Nakba by doing what they have been doing for 78 years - killing Palestinian children. Aligning oneself with any breadth of Zionism is aligning oneself with this.
this is caused completely by the US blockade of the island and not "authoritarian mismanagement." worth studying, because only solutions of a massive scope could hope to address this type of cruel intervention.
41 YEARS AFTER THE MOVE BOMBING IN PHILADELPHIA
Today marks the 41st anniversary of the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia, in the US state of Pennsylvania.
On 13 May 1985, 13 people lived inside the headquarters of MOVE (@themoveorganization on IG) at 6221 Osage Avenue, when nearly 500 police officers surrounded the building to execute arrest warrants for the charges of parole violation, contempt of court, illegal possession of firearms, and making t*rroristic threats
Ramona Africa, the only survivor of the bombing, recounts the horrors unleashed by the state on that fateful day.
Founded in 1972 by John Africa, MOVE often fought city authorities over alleged housing and zoning violations. As a Black liberation group, MOVE advocated returning to nature, environmentalism, animal rights, communal living, and resistance against white-supremacist and imperialistic systemic oppression. The name, MOVE, signifies their belief that 'everything alive moves,' emphasising active participation. Many members adopted ‘Africa’ as a surname.
When MOVE members didn't surrender to police on that fateful day, officers opted for a violent removal despite knowing children were present. The situation escalated into a gunfight, with police firing over 10,000 rounds before shocking the world by bombing the house.
The resulting fire k*lled six adults and five children. The fire later spread to more than 60 nearby attached rowhomes, leaving some 250 people homeless. Eyewitnesses reported that police shot at victims trying to escape the flames. Ramona Africa, then 29, and a 13-year-old boy, Michael Moses Ward, were the only survivors. No one from the city or police department was ever criminally charged.
Michael Ward died at age 41 in 2013, leaving Ramona Africa as the last living resident of the MOVE headquarters, still active in the Black Liberation cause. MOVE’s history continues to raise the question of sovereignty under a state apparatus that has bombed a neighbourhood in 1985 and has unleashed ICE in 2025.
Video credits: CBS Philadelphia (@cbsphiladelphia IG); NBC Philadelphia (nbcphiladelphia IG); VICE (@VICE on IG); ‘Let it Burn,’ George Washington University 2013
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