Pro Independence organizations in Puerto Rico and diaspora express support for communities protesting on U.S. streets demanding justice for George Floyd

For immediate release/ May 30, 2020

The organizations of the National Liberation Movement of Puerto Rico, signatories to this communiqué, express our strongest support to black American communities that during the past few days hold strong protests on the streets of the United States, demanding justice for George Floyd. We also joined the claim of arrest and immediate prosecution of the policemen who murdered him.

The murder of George Floyd, a young Black American worker, in broad daylight and in front of the cameras adds another affront, a direct attack on African-American communities and all oppressed communities in that country. The police and far-right forces have been emboldened by the sectarian policies of the racist president and the forces of America’s corporate-financial elite in power, who want to rewrite history by ripping off conquered rights, even if it means taking the American people back into a civil war.

Puerto Ricans, Latinos, Native Americans, and all oppressed communities, as an important component of the working class that moves the country’s economy, suffer daily from the injustices of a system based on the exploitation of work, racial, ethnic and gender discrimination, which, through oppression, seek to maintain the established order and privileges of a parasitic social class in power.

Our Puerto Rican communities (New York, Chicago, Newark, Connecticut, Florida) in exile in the U.S. and the Puerto Rican independence movement particularly know well the brutality of the state that persecutes and murders those who fight and resist oppression, discrimination, and exploitation. That’s why we stand in solidarity with African-American communities across the United States that are on the front line of defense against the fascist, racist, and sexist state. It is clear their struggles, ultimately, are also ours. We affirm that an oppressed people are always given the right to self-defense by refusing to continue to be the daily target of repression and murder.

Historically, we have denounced and evidenced at every moment of social confrontation, the role of the police and the state’s repressive forces in protecting the property and interests of the ruling political class, whose interests are antagonistic to the interests of the majorities of the people. Other repressive bodies such as the FBI, NSA, CIA and paramilitaries are trained as a tool to kill to achieve that end, wading war against all working communities.

In making our call, demanding justice from George Floyd and all those who have been victims of brutality and murder by the police and repressive forces, we remember that we are witnessing a sharpening of social class struggle, which deepens with the collapse of the capitalist model and its consequent rise in unemployment , lack of adequate medical services, extreme poverty, hunger and the expansion of misery.

It will take a radical change of the social contract to overcome the crisis. It is the hour of solidarity and the unity of the peoples.

Signatory Organizations:

A Call to Action on Puerto Rico (New York)
Comités de la Resistencia Boricua
Comité de Solidaridad con Cuba
Comité Solidaridad Diáspora Boricua (Massachusetts)
Frente Independentista Boricua (New York)
Frente Socialista de Puerto Rico
Grupo de Apoyo Personas con Discapacidad New York
Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario
Movimiento Nin Negrón
Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores Puertorriqueños (Macheteros)
ProLibertad (New York)
Puerto Rico Tribunal
Unión Patriótica Boricua (Florida Central)

Contact persons:

Manuel Melendez Lavandero / 347-993-0429
Milagros Rivera / 787-274-8587
Lorraine Liriano / 347-228-2214
Luis Cordero / 914-505-5482