[News] Want democratic accountability? Look to Ricky Martin, not Robert Mueller.

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/07/28/want-democratic-accountability-look-ricky-martin-not-robert-mueller/?utm_term=.e6338b7164ed 



  Want democratic accountability? Look to Ricky Martin, not Robert Mueller.

By Dan Berger and Carly Goodman July 28, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Direct action, not endless hearings, is the key to real political
    change.

Seeds of discontent are growing in both the United States and in Puerto 
Rico. But while a democratic revolution blooms in the streets of Puerto 
Rico and produces real results — the governor finally agreed to resign — 
no equivalent appears on the horizon in the U.S.

Indeed, many Democrats and critics of the Trump presidency put their 
faith in Robert Mueller’s investigation to achieve justice. Yet while 
the investigation produced indictments and damning evidence against the 
president, without the political will to initiate impeachment hearings, 
it is unlikely to create political change or provide accountability. 
Those tuning into Mueller’s testimony this week to see democracy in 
action should have looked to Puerto Rico instead.

There, when leaders proved unable or unwilling to hold a corrupt 
executive accountable, the people took to the streets — repeatedly and 
with determination and joy. After 12 days of historic protest involving 
hundreds of thousands of people, the legislature initiated impeachment 
proceedings, leading Gov. Ricardo Rosselló to announce his resignation.

Even after his resignation was secured, the protests continue — because 
this uprising is about more than personnel change. For years, Puerto 
Ricans have been organizing in opposition to U.S.-backed austerity 
policies supported by the island’s conservative politicians. For 
Americans wanting to not just challenge Trump but the very social, 
cultural and economic structures that have emboldened him, Puerto Rico 
provides inspiration.

The Puerto Rican protests were ignited by the revelation of almost 900 
pages of crude and offensive texts between Rosselló and his 
inner-circle. They built on years of organizing in opposition to the 
austerity policies. But the real root of the protests actually dates 
back 
<https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807859544/puerto-rico-in-the-american-century/> 
to the United States assuming colonial control over the island in 1898, 
leaving the people of Puerto Rico both part of the U.S. and outside of 
it — a curious condition the Supreme Court once endorsed as “foreign in 
a domestic sense.”

Puerto Ricans can be drafted to the military but they can’t vote for 
president, and the island’s congressional representative can’t vote, 
either. The United States has used Puerto Rico as a laboratory of 
cruelty for military drills 
<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/vieques-invisible-health-crisis/498428/>, 
police surveillance <https://waragainstallpuertoricans.com/carpetas/> 
and austerity 
<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/puerto-rico-enters-a-new-age-of-austerity/559565/>. 
The U.S. has also overdetermined the island’s political economy, first 
through decades of outright military rule and then, since the island 
implemented a form of self-government in 1952, by holding veto power 
over it.

The U.S. transformed Puerto Rico into a monocrop sugar economy in the 
early 20th century; a few decades later the U.S. pharmaceutical industry 
<https://nacla.org/article/puerto-rico%252527s-pharmaceutical-fix> all 
but controlled the island’s economy. In addition to causing heavy 
pollution, pharmaceutical companies tested their products on Puerto 
Ricans — often involuntarily — which led to massive sterilization of 
Puerto Rican women, as scholar Laura Briggs 
<https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520232587/reproducing-empire> has 
written. The establishment of the PROMESA financial management board and 
the ensuing acceleration of austerity policies in 2016 was simply the 
latest reminder that control of the island resided in Washington, not 
San Juan.

Like the United States, Puerto Rico grapples with racism and sexism. But 
the severity of those problems and the divisions they exacerbate has not 
prevented people from taking united action against exploitation. Puerto 
Ricans have long shown that protest and other forms of collective action 
are key to overcoming injustice and callous disregard for their fates.

One such issue has been the U.S. military presence on the island. In 
1975, Puerto Rican activists forced the Navy to stop running bombing 
drills on Culebra. For the next three decades, a protest campaign 
resisted 
<https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/military-power-and-popular-protest/9780813530918> 
U.S. military use of Vieques, another island in Puerto Rico’s 
archipelago. A dramatic series of civil disobedience actions finally led 
the U.S. military to leave Vieques in 2003. As Puerto Rican fishers 
blocked military drills in simple dinghies, they showed that persistent 
sacrifice for the higher good can accomplish big changes. Nonetheless, 
unexploded munitions remain a toxic hazard on both islands, now popular 
tourist sites.

In the 1970s and 1990s, Puerto Ricans of all political persuasions also 
organized 
<https://nacla.org/article/more-25-years-puerto-rican-political-prisoners> 
for the freedom of Puerto Rican independence activists imprisoned in the 
U.S., resulting in presidential commutations for 21 people who had all 
served decades in prison. While Beltway pundits lament the absence of 
bipartisanship in Washington, the successful campaigns to free these 
political prisoners united erstwhile antagonists — statehooders and 
independence supporters — in service of a larger moral vision.

Hard hit by financial crisis in 2006, Puerto Rico’s debt grew 
<https://puertoricosyllabus.com/> rapidly. The island’s conservative 
government responded with steep budget cuts — unpopular and unsuccessful 
moves that the PROMESA board has accelerated since 2016. Opposition to 
austerity, imposed by U.S. banks and then by Congress 
<https://www.thenation.com/article/bankers-behind-puerto-ricos-debt-crisis/>, 
has brought Puerto Ricans into the streets 
<https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300170/policing-life-and-death> 
repeatedly in the past decade. In 2010-2011, and again in 2017, students 
across the University of Puerto Rico campuses went on strike against 
steep budget cuts, tuition hikes and layoffs.

In addition to cuts, the PROMESA board has also tried to privatize 
Puerto Rico’s power supply and reduce pensions and vacation time for 
public workers. In May 2018, students and unions joined forces in a 
general strike against PROMESA, known on the island as “la junta,” a 
term typically reserved for military dictatorships.

This long tradition of activism set the stage for the current uprising. 
The Puerto Rican people understood that they had the power to topple the 
governor, who has supported these deeply unpopular policies, as well as 
being plagued by accusations of self-dealing against him and his 
cabinet. But the protests have loftier goals: They aimed not just to 
depose Rosselló, but also to secure meaningful self-governance and 
social welfare for the people of Puerto Rico. Theirs is a call for 
justice long denied 
<https://nacla.org/news/2019/07/18/protests-puerto-rico-are-about-life-and-death> 
by both the United States and by self-dealing political leaders whose 
failure to address deep inequities have accelerated in the failed 
recovery from Hurricane Maria 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/style/feminist-collective-puerto-rico-protests.html?searchResultPosition=3>.

The marches in Puerto Rico this month have been as joyous as they are 
indignant. Popular musicians Bad Bunny, Calle-13, Residente and Ricky 
Martin helped lead the protests, which promised to “make the country 
unmanageable” 
<https://twitter.com/DavidBegnaud/status/1153072393579094016> unless 
Rosselló resigned. Martin, who is gay and was a target of homophobic 
slurs in Rosselló’s text messages, paused his career to join the 
protests. He can be seen 
<https://www.out.com/politics/2019/7/24/ricky-martin-joins-protests-against-puerto-rican-governor> 
waving a rainbow flag atop a truck, surrounded by Puerto Rican flags and 
people laughing, dancing and chanting. That joy, echoed in videos of 
Puerto Ricans watching 
<https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2019/jul/25/the-moment-puerto-ricans-learn-the-governor-will-resign-after-weeks-of-mass-protests-video> 
Rosselló’s resignation speech, was a reminder that even in hard times, 
collective action can be a joyous affair. In fact, it can supply the joy 
needed to survive hard times.

What’s happening in Puerto Rico, and among the Puerto Rican diaspora in 
the United States, is a reinvigoration of the 1960s slogan that 
“politics is in the streets.”

Americans, including elected officials, who are frustrated with their 
political leaders should follow the lead of Puerto Ricans. Rather than 
watching spectacle on television, they should be demanding action by 
taking action.

To be sure, Americans have taken to the streets in recent years in 
support of black lives and to resist the Trump administration’s excesses 
and cruelty. Mass protests and sustained advocacy have changed our 
political discourse and turned back some extreme manifestations of 
Trump’s will, such as the airport protests of his first Muslim ban and 
recent demonstrations 
<https://abcnews.go.com/US/thousands-protest-ice-cities-targeted-weekend-raids/story?id=64312657> 
to prevent deportations during planned ICE raids.

Yet Democratic leaders have hesitated to begin impeachment hearings 
against Trump, and the daily onslaught of news of American cruelty has 
left many feeling powerless. While demonstrations against immigration 
raids 
<https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/us/nashville-neighbors-help-prevent-ice-arrest/index.html> 
and concentration camps continue <https://www.neveragainaction.com/>, 
many people have turned their sights to the 2020 election in lieu of 
acting in the present.

Events in Puerto Rico, however, show that holding back is no recipe for 
change. There, concerted, consistent protest against a corrupt executive 
turned what may have been just another scandal into the governor’s 
resignation. This action not only laid the blueprint for removing an 
unfit political leader, but also for building the unity and energy to 
enact deeper societal change and prevent future such leaders. We in the 
United States need to learn a lesson from Puerto Ricans and rise up. Our 
democracy — and our humanity — is at stake.


-- 
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