Thank you, Elizabeth Warren and Julián Castro.
Warren, the senator from Massachusetts who is running for president, just held a town hall in Puerto Rico. Castro, a former secretary of Housing and Urban Development who is also running for president, made the island his first campaign stop.
This is important because in the rapidly shifting mainstream news cycle, Puerto Rico has wound up in the “old and forgotten” news bin far too often. Raising mainland consciousness about the island, including the two smaller island parts of PR (Vieques and Culebra) has been an uphill—and often losing—battle. Lest we forget, in 2017, The New York Times reported, “Nearly Half of Americans Don’t Know Puerto Ricans Are Fellow Citizens,” and this was tied to attitudes about support for people on the island.
I was elated to see that early media interest in Democratic presidential candidates is also putting Puerto Rico back in the headlines.
Senator Elizabeth Warren told an audience in the US territory of Puerto Rico that Trump's 'cruelty is not accident, it is part of the plan' and received a standing ovation from the crowd in San Juan. She was highly critical of the President's notion that he could divert funds from the Hurricane Maria relief to his southern border wall.
(full video on facebook)
"Donald Trump won't even pay the people of Puerto Rico the courtesy of acknowledging the deaths of the people they love," Warren told CNN. "Now that he's caught in this fight to try to find funding to be able to build a monument to hate on the southern border of the United States, he looks over to Puerto Rico to see if he can take away unspent dollars that were designated for relief efforts.”
Warren is the second Democrat with presidential aspirations to visit the island, a US territory that will hold a presidential primary next year, in 10 days. Julián Castro, who was secretary of housing and urban development during the Obama administration, made Puerto Rico his first campaign stop. Warren's visit -- and the prospect of other hopefuls to follow -- underscores the island's growing importance to Democratic voters around the country, many of whom remain angry and frustrated over the Trump administration's post-hurricane response. "(Trump) announced that only a handful of people had died as a result of the hurricanes and, of course, congratulated himself on that," Warren said, recalling Trump's initial boasts over a death toll that, at the time, was believed to be in the teens
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In remarks later in the day at the Alejandro Tapia y Rivera Theater in San Juan, Warren called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency top official to step down. "If accountability means anything, Brock Long should take responsibility for his failures. He should resign as head of FEMA," she said. "And if he isn't willing to do that, he should be fired."
Warren on Tuesday also discussed her worries that the billions of dollars allocated by Congress for disaster relief would "work their way through the system and end up in the hands of the operators of vulture funds on Wall Street" -- an argument she returned to hours later -- effectively wiping out the island's already decimated poor and working class."Money that comes to Puerto Rico should be used only here in Puerto Rico," Warren told CNN. "It should be used to rebuild Puerto Rico. It should not be used to pay a bunch of Wall Street speculators while they try to cut services for the people of Puerto Rico."
In San Juan, Warren made a detailed list of things she wanted to do for Puerto Rico, including items that tend to take a back seat to hurricane recovery in national news reports but are front and center in the minds of locals.
For example, Warren railed against the austerity measures imposed by the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act, or PROMESA, the federally imposed board created to fix the islands troubled finances. She won applause when she hit a sore spot – taking money away from the University of Puerto Rico, considered an island jewel, in terms of public institutions, and using it to pay for other government programs.
And her knocks against Trump were reliable applause-getters.
Warren, of course, represents Massachusetts, a state that has a substantial Puerto Rican community.
In 2014, Massachusetts was the fifth state with most Puerto Ricans in the United States. In 2014, the Puerto Rican population in Massachusetts was 4.6% of the state’s total population. This represents an increase when compared to the years 2000 (3.1%) and 2010 (4.1%). Puerto Ricans were the largest national origin group among Latinos, accounting for 42% of Latinos in the state.
Post-Maria, many states like Massachusetts became the hosts of families fleeing the devastation of the hurricane.
I admit to being pleasantly surprised when I saw the news that Julián Castro had launched his presidential bid in Puerto Rico.
You’re in Puerto Rico right now. That’s pretty far from Iowa. Why start your campaign there?
I want everybody to understand that everybody counts in this country. The most basic tenet of government is protection. And this administration failed our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico by not protecting them after Hurricane Maria. I’m going to highlight that, and then we’ll let folks know that in the years to come everybody is going to count in this country, including the people of Puerto Rico.
Why Julián Castro's first trip in his 2020 campaign was to Puerto Rico, not Iowa
“During his visit, the newly announced presidential candidate highlighted the much-criticized federal response to Hurricane Maria and aimed to distinguish himself as the candidate of an increasingly diverse Democratic Party.”
In his inaugural trip as a presidential candidate, Julián Castro passed on the cornfields of Iowa and the small towns of New Hampshire for this oft-overlooked island, a U.S. territory that holds primaries but ultimately does not get a direct say in the final 2020 vote. With Puerto Rico still reeling from 2017's Hurricane Maria — and resentment still simmering over President Donald Trump's lackluster response to it — the symbolism was clear. And if it was not, Castro drove it home during a speech Monday morning to Hispanic political leaders. "I want the people of Puerto Rico to know this," Castro said. "If I'm elected president, I will work each and every day to make sure that not only will you recover but that you will thrive, to make sure that you are respected, to make sure that you count."
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In a preview of a conundrum all 2020 candidates will face, it was not long after Castro began his Puerto Rico trip that Trump hijacked the news cycle with his criticism of a delegation of congressional Democrats for already being on the island during the partial government shutdown. Speaking with reporters Monday as he prepared to tour Maria recovery efforts, Castro defended his fellow Democrats as doing "substantive work" on the island to learn about the recovery — and then issued a broadside against Trump for "not even doing a part-time job" as president.
The rest of Castro's visit to San Juan was far less politically charged. Accompanied by the city's mayor — Carmen Yulín Cruz, a fierce Trump critic — Castro toured a community center equipped with supplies such as solar panels and water filters that can be put to use after disasters. Then they walked through the surrounding neighborhood, surveying homes and businesses still bearing the scars of Maria. Afterward, Castro visited a group working to restore Caño Martín Peña, a channel that cuts through San Juan and the dredging of which has taken on new urgency after Maria. As he took in the impact of Maria, Castro cited his time at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, when he visited and worked with states after they were struck by natural disasters. He stressed the need for communities to rebuild in a resilient way, citing a competition he spearheaded at HUD to incentivize communities to do so. And at one point, he reached back to his tenure as San Antonio mayor to relate to a man frustrated with having to navigate the local government bureaucracy when it came to water problems.
Speaking with reporters in San Juan on Monday, Castro showed some fluency in the territory's issues while avoiding bold pronouncements. On whether Puerto Rico should be granted statehood — a perennial debate on the island — Castro praised the "self-determination" of Puerto Ricans and insisted the decision should be up to them.
We don’t often realize that yes, there are Puerto Ricans in Texas.
In 2014, there were approximately 177,448 Puerto Ricans living in Texas, making it home to the ninth largest Puerto Rican population in the United States. The number of Puerto Ricans in Texas more than doubled from 69,504 in 2000, but still accounted for less than 1% of Texas’ total population of almost 27 million.
Other Democratic candidates, like Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris, have a history of speaking up for the island, calling for and sponsoring legislation.
As more Democratic candidates officially enter the race, I’m going to be assiduously looking for their statements and positions on Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands as well.
I get up every morning at 5 AM and while I’m drinking my first cup of coffee, I sit and scan news sites for stories about Puerto Rico. I then head over to Twitter and do the same, while also checking The Daily News interactive site to get the count of how many days since Maria hit the island.
I tweet the stories I didn’t see on Twitter initially, and then I collect what I’ve found to post here at 7:30 AM in the Abbreviated Pundit Round-up (APR) comments section as a “Puerto Rico Twitter Round-up.”
Some days, the pickings are very slim. As the days and months go by, with one major crisis going on after another, nationally and internationally, and almost all of them overshadowed by the lunatic at the helm, it is hard to have any hope that the conditions on the island will get better and that people on the mainland will give a damn. Some time during the day, most days, I also talk to my adopted hermano on the island, Bobby (newpioneer), and he lets me know what the major news is there. His situation is dire and depressing and although I try to find ways to make him laugh, most days I really just want to cry.
After Democrats took the House in November 2018, many of them promising to raise the issue of Puerto Rico and investigate Trump’s failures, I saw a slight uptick in news coverage, scrunched in between all things Trump, including reactions to his latest outrageous spate of Twitter diarrhea.
Public figures with larger-than-life media profiles like Lin-Manuel Miranda and Chef Jose Andres are able to garner some attention, which we are all grateful for.
The good chef keeps on giving:
I’m now placing my hopes on the race toward 2020. The media attention Democratic candidates will garner on the campaign trail can reinvigorate dwindling media interest in conditions on the island.
While voters size them up, looking to see where they stand on a wide variety of issues, I want to know what they plan to do about Puerto Rico.
I also want to see the hearings Democrats have promised to hold.
May the best candidate to take on Trump (or Pence) win—and may Puerto Rico and the USVI get the help they still need.