Statement by Rachele Fruit for the Socialist Workers Party to U.N. Special Committee hearing on the decolonization of Puerto Rico, June 20.
Distinguished chairperson and committee members:
My name is Rachele Fruit, and I speak on behalf of the Socialist Workers Party. I am the party’s 2024 candidate for president of the United States, the most powerful — and the last — imperialist empire.
Since our party’s founding in 1938, we have championed the fight for Puerto Rico’s independence from U.S. colonial rule. 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 in support of unionists and other workers defending their living standards and rights.
Nothing exposes more clearly the colonial status of Puerto Rico than the “financial oversight” board imposed by the Obama administration in 2016. Since then, the Junta has enforced measures to squeeze workers and farmers in order to guarantee payments to wealthy U.S. bondholders on tens of billions in debt.
The rulers have used this debt as a club to slash jobs and pensions, close schools, raise university tuition, hike utility rates and much more. But workers say: “It’s not our debt!” On May Day, thousands marched in San Juan against pension cuts and the privatization of public services.
We join them to demand: Washington cancel the debt now!
In the U.S., workers and farmers confront the same drive by the employer class, backed by its twin parties and government, to put the burden of the capitalist economic crisis on our backs.
‘Workers are in mood to fight’
Across the country we find workers are in a mood to fight. Millions are turning to their unions, fighting 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.
In recent months I’ve joined picket lines and other union actions across North America — bringing solidarity to hotel workers in Los Angeles and Miami, brewery workers in Fort Worth, Texas, and warehouse workers in Montreal. I’ve joined protests against rising Jew-hatred, a life-and-death question for the working class worldwide. We’ve campaigned for amnesty for immigrant workers to help unify our class. We’ve received a good response to our explanation that workers need to break with the Democrats, Republicans, and all other capitalist parties, to form a labor party, based on the unions, that will organize all working people to fight for our class interests at home and internationally.
Assault on constitutional rights
The U.S. rulers are stepping up their assault on constitutional rights — freedom of worship and speech, presumption of innocence, freedom from arbitrary search and seizure, the right to due process. Washington has renewed the use of the Espionage Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the federal Insurrection Act, laws that have been used first and foremost against the working class and its organizations. Today such attacks are being used in the political witch hunt against presidential candidate Donald Trump. But history shows that what begins as a campaign against the government’s capitalist opponents will be used to undermine hard-won rights that working people need to defend our own interests.
Likewise, in Puerto Rico today, the FBI is using the prosecution of capitalist politicians on corruption charges to clean up its own image and justify the use of wiretapping and informers. My fellow fighters here know from long experience that Washington will use its political police, the FBI, to go after the Puerto Rican unions and the independence movement.
The sharpening class conflicts in Puerto Rico and the U.S. are part of a growing capitalist world 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 against Israel, portends broader wars. The opening guns of World War III are growing louder.
All this underscores that workers in Puerto Rico, the U.S., and worldwide have common interests and a common struggle. Through their struggles, working people here broaden their horizons. They can identify more readily with the working-class resistance and the independence struggle in Puerto Rico. A successful battle to end U.S. colonial rule in Puerto Rico will also strengthen working people here.
Can we win? Yes. In neighboring Cuba, working people in their millions, led by Fidel Castro, overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in 1959 and took state power. They broke free from imperialist rule, established a workers and farmers government, and began to transform society in the interests of the vast majority. For 65 years they have stood up to Washington’s brutal efforts to strangle them, while extending solidarity to others worldwide. The powerful example of Cuba’s socialist revolution shows the road to genuine freedom and independence for Puerto Rico. And it’s also an example for working people in the U.S.
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.
Email: socialistworkers2024@gmail.com
