‘Fight for workers power is road to independence’

Statement by Osborne Hart for the Socialist Workers Party at the UN Special Committee on Decolonization hearings on Puerto Rico, June 19 in New York.

Distinguished Chairman and committee members:

I am the Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of New York City. On May 17, I was in San Juan to join with many others welcoming Oscar López Rivera on his release from nearly 36 years of imprisonment by the U.S. government.

His freedom is a victory for working people in Puerto Rico, the United States, and everywhere, despite efforts by capitalist politicians and media to smear this courageous fighter. I joined others marching proudly with Oscar López in New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade.

My brothers and sisters here have described the brutal consequences of U.S. colonial rule and why independence is a necessity for the Puerto Rican people if they are to freely determine their future.

To this we should add an important fact: a successful struggle for Puerto Rico’s independence from Washington’s domination is also in the interests of working people in the United States.

We have common interests and struggles — to get the U.S. government and the capitalist ruling class it represents off our backs. It’s their system that’s responsible for the unprecedented world capitalist crisis we are living through. This disaster comes crashing down harder today on Puerto Rico’s working people and others because of its colonial bondage to Washington.

In the United States, workers and farmers also face attacks by the bosses and their government on our jobs, wages, health care, and pensions, as well as unending imperialist wars abroad.

As Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of New York, I have walked the picket line with striking workers at Spectrum-Time Warner Cable, many of them Puerto Rican. We have joined silver miners in Idaho on strike for safe working conditions and against union busting. I joined AT&T workers during their three-day nationwide strike for better wages and against increased health insurance costs.

Workers in the U.S. can understand, from their experiences, how the $74 billion debt crisis is being used to squeeze working people in Puerto Rico in order to pay the wealthy bondholders. My party finds a lot of interest when we tell workers, from big cities like New York to rural areas in Idaho and throughout the country, what our campaign learned in San Juan when I met with unionists, other workers and students. They are eager to hear about the big May Day union march, the two-month student strike at the University of Puerto Rico, and other actions against the cutbacks imposed by the fiscal control board.

We stand with the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Rican workers forced to migrate to the U.S. because of the economic catastrophe. We will find ourselves fighting side by side, and that will strengthen solidarity between workers in both countries.

The U.S. ruling class campaigns vigorously to convince Puerto Ricans that their survival depends on Washington — just as they try to convince working people here that we’re incapable of organizing society ourselves.

This year I visited Cuba and participated in the massive working-class march on May Day. I was part of a U.S. delegation that went to Guantánamo, sovereign Cuban territory forcibly held by the U.S. The fight to end U.S. colonial rule and to end U.S. occupation of Guantánamo go hand in hand.

Cuba’s socialist revolution shows us what workers and farmers can accomplish when we organize ourselves to take state power out of the hands of the capitalist class, transforming ourselves in the process. Along that road we can begin to reorganize society in the interests of the vast majority. Along that road genuine independence can be won. The Cuban Revolution is an example for working people in Puerto Rico, the U.S., and around the world to emulate.

Mr. Chairman, this committee’s condemnation of U.S. colonial rule over Puerto Rico serves the interests of people worldwide who struggle against oppression and exploitation and for self-determination.

Related articles:
Opponents of US colonial rule in Puerto Rico speak out at the UN
NY Puerto Rican Parade welcomes Oscar López

Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home