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July 26, 2019 Rebecca Capua Red Net 0

By Rebecca C

#RickyRenuncia

The massive marches happening now all over Puerto Rico were preceded by a series of failures of the local government and instances of graft and corruption, all of course under the long history of US imperialism and disaster capitalism, and the shorter history of the recovery of the island after Hurricane Maria:

 The sexist, homophobic, insulting and just gross texts written by Governor Rosselló seemed to be the final straw – the large demonstrations which have grown over the past two weeks began following their publication on July 14. (Demonstrations against corruption and other injustices had been frequent in Puerto Rico before this event.)

The hashtag #RickyRenuncia started on July 15 and has been used in Twitter coverage of the increasingly massive demonstrations:

Reporter David Begnaud of CBS has been the primary mainstream TV journalist on the scene, following his dedicated reporting during hurricane Maria. 

This is just a powerful image for the history books, showing demonstrators in the torrential downpour on July 22:

And another image capturing the size of the protests in San Juan:

This is Ricky Martin (one of the people mentioned in the leaked texts and an early celebrity calling for the Governor to resign) on a truck LIVING HIS GODDAMN LIFE:

And in NYC, the demonstrations continued with what looks to be a jubilant display of solidarity and the electric slide: 

Police have been firing teargas at protesters and enforcing curfews. Solidarity to camaradas boricuas – we are so inspired by you! Be safe:

Late addition:

NoTechforICE on Amazon Prime Day

On July 11 and 12, during Amazon’s Prime Day promotional sale and concurrent AWS Summits (I truly have no idea what that stands for and am too lazy to look it up) around the world at various headquarters, demonstrators showed up to protest Amazon’s business practices. In NYC, NYC-DSA Tech action and allied groups rallied against Amazon’s collaboration with ICE:

There was also a rally outside Palantir’s (another tech company that provides intelligence software and other technology to assist in apprehending undocumented immigrants) headquarters:

Thread from Never Again Action (@NeverAgainActn – you definitely need to follow them if you haven’t already) about collaborations between early technology companies, in this case IBM, and the Nazis:

There was also at least one worker strike at an Amazon warehouse:

Blackouts / Con Ed / Public Power!

After 2 major blackouts (one in which Con Ed deliberately shut off power to customers in Brooklyn in neighborhoods where people of color live to avoid taxing the grid)… 

De Blasio and Cuomo are both floating the idea of ending this whole private power monopoly thing:

We should presume a lack of seriousness on these pols’ part, but NYC-DSA Ecosocialists have a plan!

Pride

Check out this interview with Natalie James about the Reclaim Pride Coalition (you can read more about it in her article):

Nancy Pelosi vs. Freshman Dems

Nancy Pelosi had a nice little sit down with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and casually stabbed the four House freshman Democrats (now called “the squad” which I guess is something we have to go along with although I wish we could have voted on it) in their backs yet again, part of an ongoing attempt by Democratic leadership to neutralize the grass roots-based progressive activist wing of the party:

Accurate:

And we all know what happened next:

All so they could do what? What is the strategy? Oh create a worst case scenario for the next Democratic president? Wow – great leadership you have there, my dudes.

Odds and ends:

Couldn’t say it better myself:

And lastly, many congratulations to lying, incompetent dipshit Boris Johnson, long may he reign:

About Rebecca Capua 117 Articles
Red Letter spotlights editor, former MWG OC