New York, NY – Over 150 people gathered at the Holyrood Church in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City on October 27 for the International Peoples Tribunal on U.S. Colonial Crimes in Puerto Rico.

Fight Back! interviewed Jose “Cha Cha” Jimenez, the founder of the Young Lords. A Young Lords 50 Year Commemoration is taking place at DePaul University in Chicago, starting at 6 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 21. Jose “Cha Cha” Jimenez and freed political prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera will be speaking together on the struggle of the Puerto Rican people. Also, there is a Young Lords 50 Year Memorial Tour to honor the church people, Young Lords, and Black Panthers who died in the struggle, starting at noon, Saturday, Sept. 22.

Trump and Rosselló deflated official count to cover up scale of human disaster

The impossibly low official death count of just 64 people killed from Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico last September has now been shown to be a politically manipulated fabrication. Fight Back! challenged this official count in an article last October, a month after the hurricane, as did many other media at the time. But in the absence of a thorough and scientifically-sound review of post-hurricane deaths in Puerto Rico there was no other count to rival the government’s lowball number.

San Juan, Puerto Rico – On May 1, police in Puerto Rico responded to tens of thousands of people marching against austerity with serious repression including tear gas, pepper spray and arrests.

Preparations underway for strike on May 1

San Juan, Puerto Rico – On April 27, police pepper sprayed teachers in a protest led by the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation (FMPR) outside the Department of Education. The teachers were protesting the government’s plan to close hundreds of public schools as part of a massive ‘education reform’ plan to privatize public education.

The Puerto Rican Teachers Federation and allied teachers’ organizations in the Broad Front in Defense of Public Education (FADEP) have called a national teachers’ strike in Puerto Rico for March 19. The strike is in response to the Puerto Rican House of Representatives passing an education reform bill this week that would introduce charter schools and private school vouchers and that would close hundreds of public schools. The government is trying to opportunistically push through this sweeping attack while Puerto Rico is still recovering from the destruction of Hurricane Maria.

San Juan, Puerto Rico – In an escalation in their fight to stop the government from closing or privatizing public schools in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation occupied Education Secretary Julia Keleher’s office Nov. 7 in an act of civil disobedience. 21 teachers were arrested standing up in defense of public education in Puerto Rico.

_Pushing back against ‘disaster capitalism’ measures _

In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation (FMPR, for their initials in Spanish) has been warning for weeks that Department of Education Secretary Julia Keleher was going to use the crisis as an opportunity to try to close hundreds of Puerto Rico’s public schools. This is something that those in power have wanted to do for a long time but haven’t been able to due to resistance from teachers and communities defending their schools.

As of Oct. 25, the Puerto Rican government’s official death count from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico still stands at 51. Many people have been puzzled by this impossibly low, reality-defying number since Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico over a month ago, on Sept. 20. The official count of 51 deaths from Hurricane Maria is now starting to unravel.

Interview with Eulalia “Laly” Centeno

Eulalia “Laly” Centeno was interviewed Oct. 23 at the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation office in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Centeno is a teacher at the Salvador Brau Elementary School in Cayey and active with the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation. She talks about the danger of the government using the crisis of Hurricane Maria to impose massive school closings and privatize public education in Puerto Rico – as they’ve tried to do for years but have not been able to because of resistance from teachers and the community. She warns that the government is using the model that was used in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when public schools were closed en masse and changed to privatized charter schools. Interview and translation into English by Brad Sigal. Fight Back!: Can you tell us who you are and what’s happening with your school? Eulalia Centeno: I’m Eulalia Centeno Ramos, better known as Laly Centeno. I’m a teacher and affiliated with the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation (FMPR). I’m an elementary school teacher at the school called Salvador Brau, which is a K-6 school. In this difficult moment that the country is living through, the school where I work is in the best possible condition because it has electricity, it has water, and it’s clean because the teachers and workers of the school did all the cleaning. We got everything ready. We organized the program to welcome back students and start the academic process. All areas are ready to start classes.