[Ppnews] Message from Oscar Lopex Rivera on his birthday - On turning 70 years old

[Political Prisoner News]

*Message from Oscar on his birthday On turning 70 years old

www.boricuahumanrights.org . www.presospoliticospuertorriquenos.org
*
On turning 70 years old, I celebrate and give thanks to life for all 
it's given me and for all it's taught me.

I celebrate and give thanks for it's having taught me that life is about 
never-ending struggle, and that if I want to live, I must struggle, and 
struggle if I want to live.

I celebrate and give thanks for having experienced extreme material 
poverty and for daring to transcend it without envying or hating anyone. 
I celebrate and give thanks for having been exposed to experiencing in 
the flesh prejudice, discrimination and racism for being Puerto Rican, 
for my dark skin, for my size, for not knowing how to speak English, and 
even for speaking "broken" Spanish, so I could learn a gratifying lesson 
--- that the only race is the human race, and that all of us human 
beings are fallible and imperfect.

I celebrate and give thanks for having been exposed to war, so that I 
could walk in the shadow of death, feel the death of others as if it 
were mine, and without being conscious of it, become a sower of death, 
devastation and destruction of a people that could be my own people.

I celebrate and give thanks for having been permitted to survive war and 
dare to seek another path, a new way of thinking, and to find sublime 
ideals and new goals.

I celebrate and give thanks for being obligated to learn to think 
critically, to submerge myself in my people to understand that their 
marginalization, invisibility and lack of voice were things I also 
suffered, and to appreciate and love my identity and not allow those who 
hold the reins of power to define me.

I celebrate and give thanks for being offered the opportunity to serve 
the most just and noble cause I know --- the struggle for the 
independence and sovereignty of my Homeland and for a better and more 
just world.

I celebrate and give thanks for being permitted to serve this cause with 
much love and compassion for more than 4 decades. I celebrate and give 
thanks for being permitted to survive more than 3 decades in the gulags 
without deviating from my chosen path and with my spirit and will 
stronger than before going to prison.

I celebrate and give thanks for being a member of a precious and valiant 
immediate and extended family, for putting me at the side of those great 
human beings who are compañeros/as in the struggle, and for allowing me 
to have been born in beautiful Boriken/Puerto Rico --- that piece of the 
planet that has become the garden of Eden of America and the world.

I celebrate and give thanks because I can still fill my heart with love 
and compassion every day.

Much love to all.

In resistance and struggle, Oscar López Rivera
-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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