Over the weekend, I was thinking that the humanitarian disaster happening in Puerto Rico seemed to have fallen off the media’s radar, and even Daily Kos’s to some degree, as I hadn’t seen a PR diary on the rec list for a while.
Well, not surprisingly, Denise Oliver Velez remedied the latter with an entirely justified rant about how racism underlies the negligent response by tRUmp’s GOP.
But also, one of her sources was an amazing journalistic presentation by the Washington Post, posted on Dec. 14.
I’m diarying about this in case you missed it, because it is truly not-to-be-missed, a must-read… also a must-see, must-hear and pretty much must-feel.
It’s a series of videos with sound and short bits of factual text that you can scroll through on your own time.
Scenes from the lives of ordinary people as they are living now, thrust backwards in time technologically. Interviews with a teacher, a nurse, a male patient who served more than five years as a Marine, people who struggled to build a “zip line” to replace a bridge, people who had a successful restaurant who refuse to raise their prices even though they’re now barely breaking even, the mayor of a town that has been completely without power since the hurricane, a student who questions why God sent this disaster, and sometimes wants to scream out the pain locked inside.
It’s long, but riveting.
In words, video and sound you learn about how the people of Puerto Rico are suffering. How they’re enduring. How they’re always fixing generators. How they’re always hearing generators. How they’re injecting humour. How they’re innovating.
How they’re determined to never give up.
Elizabeth Ortiz, resident of Yabucoa, is quoted:
When will the power come back in Yabucoa? I wish it was today.
But I am not leaving my island.
Maybe rich people left because they are not used to this.
But those of us who are poor, who have seen this before and who were hit hard, we want to fight, to lift up our country.
We do not run.
Please, if you haven’t taken it in already, do so. It’s a good preventative against forgetting, because it’ll etch itself on your soul.
Here’s the link again.
