Oscar López Rivera on U.S. Colonialism After Hurricane Maria

Oscar López Rivera has been called the Nelson Mandela of Puerto Rico. Indeed, like the South African legend, Rivera was imprisoned for his anti-colonial activism and spent decades in prison. But in January 2017, after serving 35 years of his 70-year sentence, President Barack Obama, as one of his last acts in office,

commuted Rivera’s sentence. In May 2017 Oscar López Rivera was a free man.

Oscar López Rivera has become a symbol of resistance to people the world over and became one of the longest serving political prisoners in the world. Among those who spoke out for his release were Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Pope Francis, Senator Bernie Sanders, playwright Lin Manuel Miranda and others. Organizers of the 2017 National Puerto Rican Day Parade designated him as

the National Freedom Hero.  Recently Lopez Rivera sat down with Building Bridges’ Mimi Rosenberg, to discuss his frustration and anger with the American government, detailing how Puerto Ricans have been treated since the Caribbean island became an unincorporated territory of the United States in 1898. He

lamented that Puerto Ricans “are still a colonized people 120 years later,” Lopez Rivera said, “Puerto Ricans didn’t ask for citizenship; we didn’t want it. Since being colonized, Puerto Ricans haven’t been treated as humans; we have been marginalized, exploited and used by the United States who wanted our sugar cane and to create military bases.”  Lopez Rivera said there are two things he knows how to do best- struggle and work. He stated multiple times that he has never advocated any form of violence and this “fight for independence” must be an act of love. “People who love freedom and justice should care about Puerto Rico,” Lopez Rivera emphasized. “We have the potential to be a free nation, but it’s up to us. We will struggle and do what needs to be done.”  Lopez Rivera also spoke at length about Hurricane Maria and the humanitarian crisis taking place. Although it struck September 20, 2017, there are still more than 400,000 people without power. More than 550 residents were killed, and others are still missing. Maria is considered the worst natural disaster to ever strike the area.

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The ‘two-state solution - did it ever mean more than an expanding colonial state, Israel ruling over a Palestinian Bantustan?
with
Jeff Halper Coordinator of the Israeli Committee against House
Demolitions and author of War Against the People: Israel, the
Palestinians and Global Pacification 


Jeff Halper provides a powerful indictment of the Israeli state’s “securocratic” war in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, drawing on firsthand research to show the pernicious effects of the sub-liminal form of unending warfare that was conducted by Israel, an approach that relies on sustaining fear among the populace, fear that is stoked by suggestions that the enemy is inside the city limits, leaving no place truly safe & justifying intensification of military action and militarization in everyday life. Halper shows, the integration of militarized systems—including databases tracking civilian activity, automated targeting systems, unmanned drones, and more—becomes seamless with everyday life. The Occupied Territories, Halper argues, is a veritable laboratory for that approach.  Halper goes on to show how this method of war is rapidly globalizing, as the major capitalist powers and corporations transform militaries, security agencies, and police forces into an effective instrument of global pacification.  


Halper is a supporter of the Boycott Divestment and Sanction Movement and the academic boycott of Israel, and considers Israel to be guilty of “apartheid” and of a deliberate campaign to “judaize” the occupied Palestinian territories.  He critiques the political and territorial viability of a ‘two-state solution’ and raises the mainly nonviolent strategies to solve the Israeli-Palestinian within one state.

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