Statement by Joanne Kuniansky for the Socialist Workers Party to U.N. Special Committee hearing on the decolonization of Puerto Rico, June 16, 2025.
Distinguished chairperson and committee members:
My name is Joanne Kuniansky. I am speaking on behalf of the Socialist Workers Party. I am the party’s candidate for governor of New Jersey.
Since our party’s founding in 1938 we have championed the fight for the independence of Puerto Rico and all other U.S. colonies. Over the decades we have campaigned alongside independence fighters for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and bases from the island, for the release of independentistas from U.S. prisons, and for an end to the colonial plunder of Puerto Rico’s resources. We have joined in solidarity with the people of Puerto Rico defending their living standards and rights.
We stand alongside the unionists in San Juan who on May Day, several thousand strong, marched to the headquarters of the U.S.-imposed “financial oversight” board. The job of that Junta is to enforce measures to squeeze workers and farmers in order to guarantee tens of billions in debt payments to wealthy U.S. bondholders — by slashing jobs and pensions, closing schools, raising university tuition and much more.
We join our brothers and sisters to demand Washington cancel Puerto Rico’s debt now! It’s not the debt of working people — it’s the bondholders’ debt!
The unions demanded better wages and pensions, and opposed budget cuts and the privatization of public services. They condemned the long-term collapse of Puerto Rico’s electrical grid, where U.S. utilities like LUMA Energy rake in huge profits while the Puerto Rican people face higher utility rates and unending blackouts.
All these conditions show graphically what it means for Puerto Rico’s working people to be under Washington’s colonial boot.
In the U.S., workers face assaults by the same employer class, backed by its twin parties and government, who put the burden of the capitalist economic crisis on our backs. Millions are turning to their unions to fight for wage increases that are not wiped out by inflation, for safer job conditions, for work schedules that make it possible to be with and care for their families.
I’ve joined union actions in New Jersey by letter carriers and postal workers fighting for a contract. I’ve brought solidarity to striking train engineers at New Jersey Transit. I’ve joined protests against rising Jew-hatred, a life-and-death question for the working class worldwide. On May Day my party joined tens of thousands of workers at rallies calling for amnesty for undocumented immigrants: a necessity in order to unify our class.
Invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 witch-hunt law, the Trump administration has summarily deported hundreds of immigrants to a prison in El Salvador. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a sheet metal apprentice in Maryland, was among those denied due process. Kilmar’s union, SMART, led the fight to bring him back home, and now the fight continues against efforts to keep him in jail in the U.S. The current round of high-profile ICE arrests is part of the long-term bipartisan efforts of the U.S. employers’ government to keep millions of undocumented workers in a pariah status, seeking to divide and attack our entire class.
Likewise, in Puerto Rico, ICE has recently arrested hundreds of Dominican, Haitian and other immigrant workers. On May 8 ICE agents in San Juan, joined by the FBI, DEA, and U.S. Marshals, rounded up 53 Dominican-born workers at a construction site. I applaud my brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico who have denounced these ICE raids. My fellow fighters also know, from long experience, how Washington uses the FBI and other political police to go after Puerto Rican unions and the independence movement.
These sharpening class conflicts in Puerto Rico and the U.S. are part of the growing world capitalist disorder. Today, the largest land war in Europe since World War II threatens the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine. That, along with the Oct. 7 anti-Jewish pogrom by Hamas some 19 months ago, are products of mounting international capitalist competition for markets and profits. They portend even broader and more devastating wars.
In this world, workers in the U.S. and Puerto Rico face the same enemy — the capitalist ruling families and their governments. We have common interests and a common struggle. Working people in the U.S. have a vital stake in championing the fight for Puerto Rico’s independence. A successful struggle to free Puerto Rico from U.S. colonial rule will also strengthen the hand of our class in this country.
Can we win? Yes! We have a powerful example in Cuba, where working people in their millions carried out a socialist revolution. Led by Fidel Castro, they took state power in 1959, broke free from imperialist rule, and began to transform society in the interests of the big majority. For more than six decades, while extending solidarity to others worldwide, they’ve stood up to Washington’s relentless drive to strangle them. We join those demanding the U.S. government lift all its economic sanctions on Cuba — now!
Cuba’s revolutionary example shows the road to genuine independence for Puerto Rico. That freedom will never be granted — it must be taken.
I thank the committee for the opportunity to add our voice to those here today who are fighting for an end to Washington’s colonial domination of Puerto Rico.