From Celebration To Inspiration

Avelino Libertad by vagabond ©

“The bars could not hold me 
Force could not control me 
They tried to keep me down
But Jah put I around“
- Bob Marley from the song Duppy Conqueror

The Puerto Rican independence movement has had an incredible track record of getting its political prisoner out. In 1965 the Puerto Rican independence movement was able to secure the release of Nationalist movement leader Don Pedro Albizu Campos, in 1979 President Carter released four Nationalists who had served 25 years in prison, in 1998 President Clinton released 11 more political prisoners who after served 20 years in prison. The latest US held Puerto Rican political prisoner to be released is Avelino González Claudio. On December 6th he’ll be allowed to serve out the rest of his sentence as probation in Puerto Rico.

The FBI first caught up with Avelino in 2008 arresting and charging him with taking part in the $7 million Wells Fargo Armored Truck Robbery of 1983 that was carried out by the Macheteros, a clandestine armed organization that used any and all means to free Puerto Rico from US colonial rule. Avelino had been living underground and working with the Department of Education in Puerto Rico when the FBI finally found him. In 2010 Avelino was found guilty and sentenced to seven years, he was 68 years old and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

The fact that Avelino is coming back home to Puerto Rico is a cause for celebration but it’s tempered by the fact that his brother Norberto González Claudio was just recently sentenced to five years in prison. Norberto was also a member of the Macheteros and a fugitive of the FBI until earlier this year when the FBI captured him and charged him with involvement in the same Wells Fargo Armored Car Robbery. So while there’s reason to be happy that a 70-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease, who’s been in prison since 2008 for a crime that was committed in 1983 in pursuit of gaining freedom for his country is out of prison… it’s ironic that as his prison sentence ends, his brother Norberto’s is just beginning. While this is all happening Puerto Rico still continues to be a colony of the US and Oscar Lopez Rivera the other US held Puerto Rican political prisoner of war has served more than three decades in prison for fighting to free Puerto Rico from US colonialism. So while this battle hard-fought battle has been won there is still much more work to do…

You can help with some of that work by printing and signing a letter to President Obama that asks him to grant Oscar Lopez Rivera clemency. The campaign has been started by the National Boricua Human Rights Network which is an organization that works towards the decontamination of Vieques, Puerto Rico, the freeing and supporting of Puerto Rican political prisoners and the independence of Puerto Rico. Over 100,000 signatures for Oscar Lopez Rivera’s freedom have already been collected and the deadline to sign the letter is December 15th. So it’s wonderful that Avelino is coming home but let’s use the celebration of bringing him home as inspiration to free his brother Norberto and Oscar Lopez Rivera and to one day see a free Puerto Rico…

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-SK

OLR 31

OLR 31 by vagabond ©

Oscar Lopez Rivera is a Puerto Rican revolutionary fighting to free Puerto Rico from US colonial rule. Puerto Rico has been a colony of the US since 1898. On May 29th of 1981 Oscar was arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy to overthrow the US government. As of today he will have served 31 years in prison. Below is a message sent by Oscar on his 31st anniversary. Below that are ways in which you can find more information on Oscar and the campaign to set him free.

OLR • May 29, 2012

Greetings with Much Respect and Love

i want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the Puerto Rican people in PR and in the diaspora for the support you have given me during the past 31 years. i also want to express the same gratitude to the freedom and justice loving people in the u.s. and in different parts of the world for the solidarity they’ve shared with me. The support i’ve received has been a fountain of strength that has helped me face and deal with the difficult challenges i’ve experienced in prison during the past 31 years, and to remain morally and spiritually strong to continue struggling and resisting.

The 31 years seem to have passed fleetingly. Many radical changes have occurred all over the world during this period of time. In Latin America progressive presidents rule in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Brazil and Argentina. In the last two countries the presidents are progressive women. And in Puerto Rico the us navy is no longer present in Vieques. Unfortunately, the most important change Puerto Ricans need has not taken place. Because colonialism seems to be more entrenched now than ever.

It was Jose Marti who said that for a people to be free they needed to be cultured. i believe Puerto Ricans are a cultured people. Yet we still are a colonized people. We are also a morally, mentally, spiritually strong people. But we haven’t been able to make Puerto Rico a free and sovereign nation.

It was Albert Einstein who said that by repeating the same experiment the results were always going to be the same. Doing that is nothing else than an exercise in futility. And Puerto Rican independentists have been repeating the same experiment for decades and obtaining the same results without being able to achieve their goal of an independent and sovereign nation. The celebration of plebiscites has been such an experiment. So why do we continue engaging in Sisyphean tasks? What should we do? Let’s pay heed to Einstein’s wise warning.

My proposal is a simple one. Let’s work on the problems we can resolve with the means and resources we have at our disposal. For example, let’s take one problem related to the health issue we are facing – obesity. To resolve this problem a simple change in lifestyle will do. Eat a healthy diet, exercise and create a support network. We can also start programs of urban gardening. There’s space for such a program in the 78 municipalities in Puerto Rico. And in those spaces we can grow healthy products that can help with a nutritional diet. We can look for alternative sources of energy and of transportation. Let’s start thinking of changes we can make in our lifestyles and we can resolve some of the difficult problems we face. Problems shouldn’t intimidate or scare us. They should produce ideas in our heads and challenge us to find solutions. Finding solutions to problems give us confidence, and help us transcend our colonized mentality. And that transcendence gets us closer to our goal of achieving an independent and sovereign nation and a better and more just world. We are intelligent enough to know what needs to be done. We can change lifestyles in Puerto Rico and in the Puerto Rican diaspora and by doing so we will grow stronger morally, physically, spiritually and mentally. We can make Puerto Rico a free and sovereign nation.

En resistencia y lucha,
OLR

WE CAN FREE OSCAR LÓPEZ RIVERA
JOIN THE MOVEMENT TO FREE OSCAR
Alejandro Luis Molina
alejandrom@boricuahumanrights.org
Skype: alejandromann

Coordinating Committee
National Boricua Human Rights Network
2739 W. Division Street
Chicago IL 60622
www.boricuahumanrights.org
Follow us on Twitter: olrcat

Comité Pro-Derechos Humanos
www.presospoliticospuertorriquenos.org

ProLibertad Freedom Campaign
http://www.prolibertadweb.com/

Shortlink: – http://wp.me/p1eniL-KK

Colonialism Is A Gun To The Head

Carlos Alberto Torres by vagabond ©

“I didn’t walk into prison and say ‘Hey, I want to be a political prisoner’ – you know, they put a gun to my head and said… ‘Let’s go’. – Carlos Alberto Torres 

Carlos Alberto Torres is also an artist & potter. You can check out his work at
http://cemiceramica.com/ 

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-Gd

Caught Between Torture And Resistance

El Espiritu Del Pitirre by vagabond ©

Oscar Lopez Rivera is a US held Puerto Rican political prisoner & prisoner of war. He has been in prison since 1981 and is serving a sentence of 70 years. Puerto Rico has been a colony of the United States since 1898 and Oscar is a part of a long history of resistance to US colonialism in Puerto Rico.

At the end of 2011 a book about Oscar’s life was recently published in Spanish in Puerto Rico and there is now an online campaign that’s been started to help raise funds to translate that book in English. The campaign is trying to raise $3500 and has been launched on a website called Kickstarter by Matt Meyer with Luis Nieves Falcon.

Educator-author-activist Matt Meyer has written and edited six books on contemporary liberation movements, with over twenty-five years of teaching experience to his credit. A leader of the Peace and Justice Studies Association and the War Resisters League, he is coordinating this project on behalf of the local anti-imperialist collective Resistance in Brooklyn, which will serve as co-publisher of the book along with the Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience Project and PM Press.

This work is being done under the direct supervision of world-renowned lawyer, psychologist, professor, and sociologist Luis Nieves Falcón. At the intellectual and activist forefront of every major modern campaign for Puerto Rican sovereignty, Dr. Nieves Falcón has served as chairman of the Puerto Rico Committee for Human Rights, the Puerto Rican PEN Club, and the International League for the Rights and Liberation of the Peoples.

Our goal is to publish, in cooperation with renowned human rights activist and author Luis Nieves Falcon, the English-language edition of the recently published book Oscar Lopez Rivera: Between Torture and Resistance (San Juan, Comite pro Derechos Humanos de Puerto Rico). It is the story of one of Latin America’s longest-held political prisoners, a Puerto Rican pro-independence activist who was convicted of the political “crime” of seditious conspiracy, not of harming anyone. Lavishly illustrated with photos of his life and artwork (he has become a painter during his now over thirty years behind bars), the book is an easily accessible introduction to U.S.-Puerto Rico relations and contemporary prison issues.

This book is part of a larger campaign for the unconditional freedom of Oscar Lopez Rivera. There are several organizations and resources listed below that are working towards the goal.

National Boricua Human Rights Network

Libertad Para Oscar Lopez Rivera

The Pro-Libertad Freedom Campaign

To donate to the campaign to translate Oscar’s Between Torture And Resistance go to Kickstarter… Any donations are greatly appreciated…

One Mans Terrorist Is Another Mans Revolutionary

Another Mans Revolutionary by vagabond ©

“One mans terrorist, is another mans revolutionary.”
- Moises Pagan Santos (my grandfather) 

“In our communique number 2 we warned the North American government that to terrorize and kill our people would mean retaliation by us. This was not an empty warning.”
- FALN Communique #3

“It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement of an element of the American “command and control infrastructure” in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a “legitimate” target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as announced in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but were nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more than “collateral damage”. If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these “standards” when they are routinely applied to other people, they should not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them.”
— Ward Churchill , Statement to Rocky Mountain News

A few days ago the NY Daily News ran an article describing the FALN bombing of Fraunces Tavern in 1975. It was yellow journalism at its best. Anemic on facts but obese on sensationalism. There is no historical context or background explanation on how or why “a tiny group terrorists bent on Puerto Rican independence” would strike at “corporate executives”, just the spectacle of terrorism in service to flimsy jingoism. A self-righteous tone of superiority trumps the facts in an effort to prop up the zombie of patriotic fervor that naturally assumes that the US government and her “corporative executives” have nothing to do with the colonization of Puerto Rico.

And so it falls on me (and others like me) to set this broken record straight. First things first. Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. The FALN – the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional, the Armed Forces of National Liberation were a clandestine armed force that operated in the US in the 1970′s and 1980′s and used any and all means at their disposal to rid Puerto Rico of US colonialism. Oscar Lopez Rivera was a member of the FALN. He was arrested in 1980 and charged with seditious conspiracy to overthrow the US government. He claimed a prisoner of war status and refused to take part in the trial outside of an opening and closing statement. He was found guilt and sentenced to 70 years.

The NY Daily News article places the responsibility of the deaths of the four businessmen on the shoulders of Oscar. However there was no evidence that linked Oscar to the Fraunces Tavern bombing. Oscar was never charged with the Fraunces Tavern bombing. Oscar is not in prison for the Fraunces Tavern bombing. This myth that Oscar had anything to do with the Fraunces Tavern bombing has been continually propagated as a rallying cry against the FALN. The FALN were at war with the US government in the same way that the American Revolutionaries were at war with the British. The targeting of Fraunces Tavern which played a prominent role in the American Revolution is not mere coincidence but a means towards making a bold statement about the origins of this countries colonialism and its battle for independence. Claiming that the Fraunces Tavern bombing is an act of terrorism is not much different from the British viewing the Boston Tea Party as an act of terrorism. But nothing blinds like one who refuses to see.

The FALN claimed responsibility for the bombing of Fraunces Tavern in retaliation to a CIA bombing of a restaurant in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico where two Puerto Rican independence supporters were killed and ten others were maimed including a six-year-old child. No one was ever prosecuted for that Fraunces Tavern bombing action. The irony of all this is that the yellow journalism being used by the NY Daily News is the same yellow journalism used to stoked the fires of the Spanish-American War of 1898. It was that war that led to the colonization of Puerto Rico by the US. Now all these years later it continues to haunt Puerto Ricans in our struggle to achieve independence.

When Oscar is released from prison and comes home to be received like the rightful hero that he is and Puerto Rico is free from US colonialism, there won’t be a newspaper large enough for the US government and the lackeys who supported it to hide their shame…

FALN COMMUNIQUE #3 January 24, 1975

 

A Mural For Oscar

OSCAR LUCHAR by vagabond ©

Oscar Lopez Rivera is a Puerto Rican political prisoner and prisoner of war. He’s been held in prison by the US government since 1980 for trying to free his country Puerto Rico from US colonialism. The crime he’s been charged with is seditious conspiracy to overthrow the US government. The ironic quandary of such a charge for Oscar and other Puerto Rican political prisoners and prisoners of war like Avelino Claudio Gonzalez and his brother Norberto Claudio Gonzalez is that they don’t recognize the US government as being a legitimate governing body in Puerto Rico. This inability to recognize the US government as a legitimate governing body in Puerto Rico makes Oscar and others like him political prisoners.

Under resolution 1514 of the UN charter Oscar was within his rights to extricate Puerto Rico from that colonial condition using any means possible, which is what Oscar did as a member of the FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacíon Nacionalista – the Armed FOrces of National Liberation. The US rewarded those actions with arrest, trial and imprisonment. Oscar’s mindset was that the US government in Puerto Rico was illegal and immoral and so he refused to recognize the US government and its legal apparatus as having any power over him and wanted to be treated as a prisoner of war according to the Geneva Convention. As a prisoner of war Oscar is supposed to be dealt with humanely but that has not happened. He has been denied timely medical treatment, tortured and is confined to solitary confinement which are all violations of the Geneva Conventions treatment of prisoners of war. Throughout all of that Oscar’s will remains unbroken and his dedication unwavering in the cause for Puerto Rican independence.

There is a campaign to try to free Oscar Lopez Rivera… The Revolutionary Artist Vanguard, an artists collective in Puerto Rico got together to paint a mural in honor of Oscar. This is a short video of the mural that was painted…

Join the Campaign To Help Free Oscar Lopez Rivera
Coordinating Committee
National Boricua Human Rights Network
2739 W. Division Street
Chicago IL 60622
www.boricuahumanrights.org
Follow us on Twitter: olrcat
Comité Pro-Derechos Humanos
www.presospoliticospuertorriquenos.org

A Mural For Oscar #nothingtobegainedhere
nothingtobegainedhere.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/a-m…—
vagabond (@vgbnd) January 03, 2012

A Gnawing Hunger For Justice

Oscar Lopez Rivera POW by vagabond ©

Oscar Lopez River is a US held Puerto Rican Political Prisoner and Prisoner Of War. He has been in prison since 1981 serving a 70 year sentence for seditious conspiracy to overthrow the United States government. Over twelve of those years have been spent in a solitary confinement in a cell specifically designed for sensory depravation. Oscar was a member of the FALN – Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacíon Nacional – Armed Forces Of National Liberation a clandestine armed organization that fought to free the island nation of Puerto Rico from US colonial rule. The FALN took the position that the US has no jurisdictional rights or power over Puerto Rico and under UN Declaration 1514 a colonized people have to right to use whatever means they choose to extricate themselves from colonization, including the use of armed force.

Despite the nature of his conditions Oscar has remained steadfast to his ideals and has remained both politically and artistically active behind the walls. So it’s no surprise to many of us who know about Oscar that he has been keeping up with the Occupy Wall Street movement. It’s no surprise that he sent this message just yesterday about his decision to begin a hunger strike in support of the occupy movement… It’s no surprise that all these years in prison have not broken him, it’s no surprise that he remains defiant “from the urns of hell”…

“I’ll be fasting on the 10th of December – International Human Rights Day.  i’ll start it the evening of the 9th.  i’m inviting every person who loves freedom and justice and believes that a better and more just world is possible to join me. The person can fast for as long as s/he can.  The fast is in solidarity with the OWS movement and the celebration of international  human rights day.  If we are indignados, who believe in the power of righteous indignation,  we should be supportive of the OWS movement.  This movement has been able to galvanize the people’s righteous indignation and has successfully activated and mobilized a mass force that has shaken the foundation (Wall St. and Washington) of the one per cent that controls the wealth and the political power at the expense of the 99 percent that doesn’t have any wealth or any control of the political power.  The one percent is already using its muscle to try to repress the OWS movement and to disorganize it.  Our solidarity is crucial.  If you aren’t an indignado or occupier there is no good reason why you shouldn’t share your solidarity with the OWS.  If you want a better and more just world then you have to dare to struggle to make sure it becomes a reality.  At this particular juncture OWS represents the possibility of a movement for a better and more just world in the usa.  Show your solidarity and use the power of your righteous indignation to struggle for a better and more just world.  Join the fast or be an indignado/occupier.  En resistencia y lucha, OLR.”

Join the Campaign To Help Free Oscar Lopez Rivera
Coordinating Committee
National Boricua Human Rights Network
2739 W. Division Street
Chicago IL 60622
www.boricuahumanrights.org 
Follow us on Twitter: olrcat
Comité Pro-Derechos Humanos
www.presospoliticospuertorriquenos.org

Oscar is not the only one who is making the connections between capitalism and colonialism… i’m working on a new film called PAWNSHOP DREAM that was inspired by another now former Puerto Rican Political Prisoner And Prisoner of War Dylcia Pagan. PAWNSHOP DREAM is an exploration of where capitalism and colonialism interest. Right now we have begun a campaign to try and raise funds to make the film… For more information on the campaign check out PAWNSHOP DREAM…

A Gnawing Hunger For Justice #nothingtobegainedhere @olrcat #PAWNSHOPDREAM #ows
nothingtobegainedhere.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/a-g…—
vagabond (@vgbnd) December 10, 2011