Discussion of All Things Political

This morning, with good reason, much of the news in the twittersphere is focused on the popular uprisings in Egypt and the government’s harsh response by shutting down the internet, allowing for a mass cover up of violations of human rights. While it is easy to ignore what is happening in Egypt and the state response by dismissing it as something happening in a foreign land, tear gas canisters have also been opening over land currently occupied by the United States.
As we have been writing about, in Puerto Rico protests continue against rising fees in the university system but there are also protests against the violence being used against students and journalist attempting to do their jobs and cover the struggleMORE

Yesterday marked the second day of coordinated civil disobedience at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras as part of a strike that protests an $800 fee that some say is aimed at making the constitutional protected right to education in Puerto Rico a privilege.
Video from the first day of civil disobedience where at least 50 people were arrested. In one scene it looks as if about five police officers pile on top of one protester in order to arrest him. In the background you can hear a woman saying, “Ya, you have him already,” so that police will get off his back.MORE

Government crackdowns have become much more aggressive in the past few weeks.Assistant Superintendent of Field Operations, Leovigildo Vazquez, admitted to using pressure point compliance holds that many consider a form of torture. In protests last week, police used tear gas, pepper spray, batons, and Taser guns against students. One student was clubbed in the head and another hit by a car.

UPR serves about 65,000 students on 11 campuses, and is the largest university in the Caribbean. It is estimated that at least 10,000 students will drop out of the system as a result of the fee hike.

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Puerto Rican dramatist Roberto Ramos-Perea has just sent out this e-mail about events in Puerto Rico this afternoon. Twitter feeds and local television reports confirm the disturbances described here by Ramos-Perea. Here is his description of events followed by a video:
It is 5:00 of the evening of June 30, 2010, groups of students, teachers and citizens asked for entry to the House of the Laws and they were struck and tortured by the Police, there are numerous injured people, while the National Guard is mobilized towards the Capitol Hill. Violent shocks scatter for the whole zone of the Parliament and the repressions continue.

A constitutional coup has just been established in Puerto Rico.


After a year in which the present time government under the New Progressive Party (Partido Nuevo Progresista, that attempts to join the Island to the United States trough statehood) tried to and succeeded taking over many institutions that form the base of the democratic government of Puerto Rico, an atmosphere of hostility followed by many reckless actions that threaten public peace had climaxed in violent and aggressive actions of this government against the parties of the opposition, the organized student movement, the labor unions, the press, the environment, as against every area and institution of Puerto Rico’s civil society.

This constitutional coup springs from the Legislative branch of the government under the command of Senator Thomas Rivera Schatz, endorsed by the central government, under the dominance of the Secretary Governor, counselor Marcos Rodríguez Ema, with the obvious intent of having under their grasp and without opposition full control of every agency and organization that rule the judiciary, academic, economic and civil societies. Before this scenario, Governor Luis Fortuño operates without volition, has no opinion, appearance nor public responsibility.MORE