The New Afrikan Peopleâs Organization and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement stand in solidarity with the decision to honor former Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar LopezRivera at this yearâs annual Puerto Rican Day Parade. For 60 years, the parade has been collective expression of pride and resilience for a nation unjustly held as a colony by the united states for 119 years. Initially created by and for those Puerto Ricans forced to abandon their homeland in the hopes of attaining refuge from the same state sanctioned
violence and debt slavery New Afrikans escaped in the South, the parade was a vibrant display of dignity for a people who took to 5th avenue year after year to reaffirm their Puerto Rican nationhood.
For 119 years the united states government has enacted a terror campaign on the Puerto Rican people, using them as lab rats for pharmaceutical experiments, cannon fodder for imperialist wars, murdering them for expressing their desire to be free and sterilizing their women against their will. Imposing American citizenship on a people who never asked for it, under the Jones Act of 1917, condemned Puerto Ricans to the role of perpetual second
class citizens.
Today, the country is crippled by a Wall Street-backed economic debt crisis that seeks to not only blame the Puerto Rican people for the collapse of their economy, but aims to make them give up their land and resources to american hedge funders and banks as a payment strategy developed by the corporate-backed Fiscal Control Board empowered to rule over the island.
For 36 years, Oscar Lopez Rivera was held captive by the United States for his involvement in the Puerto Rican Independence Movement. As a member of the Fuerzas Armadas de LiberaciĂłn Nacional (FALN) he joined his comrades in a global wave of anti-colonial struggle to liberate not only Puerto Rico, but the captive nations of the global south and those residing inside the united states. Serving time alongside our captive New Afrikan prisoners, Oscar Lopez Rivera demonstrated the mutual respect and solidarity that always existed between our two nations, a bond born out of struggle and blood, under the empire
of the united states.
As corporations such as Goya, AT&T, JetBlue, and the New York Yankees join the NYPD, Dept. of Corrections and New York Fire Department in pullingâ their support of the parade in protest to the honoring of Oscar Lopez Rivera, we call on all those New Afrikans committed to the liberation of all oppressed people to join the parade on June 11th and stand with Oscar and the people of Puerto Rico in an act of solidarity and a united call to free ALL political prisoners. From the bowels of the empire to the streets of occupied Puerto Rico we say:
Free The Land! Free The Land! Free The Land!
By any means necessary!
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