Philly Boricuas with Vanessa Maria Graber & Justin Roig | Philadelphia Portal Ep. 3

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Philadelphia Portal. It's good to be with you, Sterling. How are you doing?

Sterling: I'm doing pretty well.

Speaker 1: Good to see you, Jake. good to see you too so it's been a little while we're trying to do one of these every month hyrum is in the chat already good to see you hyrum um and uh you know this week or this this episode this month we're doing an episode with uh philly boriquas i'll just take a minute and say just remind people what this project is because they may be watching it on millennials or killing capitalism and i was like hey what's this um so we've done three this is our third episode now uh we did one with you and Wiley to kind of start it off. Then the last episode, and in that one we talked a lot about SEPTA, which is the public transit system in southeastern PA, mainly the Philly area, right? And then in the last one we had on Christopher Rogers and we talked a lot about kind of histories of What do we say? I mean, it was like really kind of a history of Black folks within Philly in a kind of like long arc, right? Yeah. And so this one we're doing, we're working with, you know, collaborating with Philly Boriquas for this episode and looking forward to that. But like... You know, this is a Philly based project. We've been brainstorming it for years now. But but this is we've really recently just got kind of started with it. And we wanted to have something that is a local space to talk about Philly politics, Philly struggles in a little bit more detail than we often do in kind of nationally oriented discussions. And so we're kind of like piloting it or incubating it here on Millennials, basically. But I also think that it is something that obviously appeals to a Philadelphia-based audience. One of the people, Vanessa, that we're going to talk to today does a lot of work in the independent and community-based know radio and media sphere which you know we may talk about a little bit even though that's not the the subject necessarily of today's conversation but um so it's great to have those local outlets right that are not like mainstream corporate news um But on the flip side, I also think people in other parts of the country or the world also will be interested in this discussion. Obviously, we are kind of an international discussion today because we're talking about both Puerto Rico and Philadelphia and then kind of the experience of Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia as well. Right. But also because wherever you're at, you're struggling against maybe similar, maybe different versions of a lot of the same things that we'll discuss. And so I think getting into those particularities are important for people all over the place. So anyways, I just wanted to say that upfront to remind people. Is there anything you wanted to add before we move into the discussion?

Sterling: Just that, you know, it's I feel like I've learned a lot from these two and from people meeting in Philadelphia. So, you know, that's why I just thought it'd be great to have them on to just like talk more about like what Puerto Rico is and where it is that I feel like I know Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican people in my life. But I never thought about like, what's the citizenship status or what does it mean to be a part of America, but then not have many of the rights? Or what is the status of what was going on with Hurricane Maria and privatization on the island? And I feel like I get so much clarity on that. And yeah, Vanessa is awesome. Hopefully, you go over to Philly Hall Monitor, which is her program. You know, they do a lot of independent stuff. I mean, for me, especially over the last few years, somebody was mentioning how Philadelphia's newspaper is called The Enquirer, and they kept getting it mixed up with The Enquirer. And I just told them like, yeah, me too. Yeah, it's like basically just real estate gossip. It's like nothing substantive, no investigative journalism. I'm just kidding, but it's you know, it's like it's become that bad where there's like, you know, fear for people that we really like. But otherwise, there's not much truth being said over there. So, yeah, that's yeah, that's what I got.

Speaker 1: No. Awesome. Yeah. I mean, and we did like on our first episode when we were talking about the stuff, the Philadelphia Hall monitor was one of the only outlets that we could kind of use for reporting on stuff because there just wasn't anything you know, going on in other discussion about it that was like really serious and trying to dig into like, you know, the politics around all of it and why it was being handled the way it was. So let me just introduce our guests quickly. So Vanessa Maria Graber is an award-winning bilingual journalist, educator, and community organizer. She is the Director of Journalism and Media Education at Free Press, which I will just say is not the same thing as the publication that Barry Weiss started up. If anybody makes that confusion, it's not. There's a longer bio that includes a lot of radio work, also a lot of advocacy, like the New Jersey Civic Information Bill, which led to the creation of New Jersey Civic Information Consortium. um and you know the local community radio act right um and just working around like the prometheus radio project as well as philly cam uh and their community radio station wppm lp fm um where she was a station manager before doing repress um And as you mentioned, co-owner and reporter at the worker-owned Philadelphia Hall Monitor, which is an independent hyper-local news cooperative focusing on civic journalism, and is the co-founder of the local advocacy and mutual aid collective, Philly Boriquas, which is what we will be discussing today. And she has also taught journalism courses at Stockton University Temple and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and conducted media research projects, you know, Austria and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, and the US Virgin Islands. So yeah, so there's a full bio in the show description. That's just kind of a summary, but a lot of really amazing work. And Justin Roig is a community organizer based in North Philadelphia. a geography and urban studies undergraduate student at Temple University. They are particularly interested and focused on histories and geographies of displacement and urban renewal. They are a member of several organizations, including Philly Boricuas, Philly DSA, and Sustain SJ, and organize around issues such as self-determination for Puerto Rico and its people, in the archipelago and diaspora, transportation justice, political education, and environmental racism. So without further ado, thank you, Vanessa and Justin, for joining us. It's really great to be with you today.

Vanessa Maria Graber: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1: Yeah, great to host you. Looking forward to this conversation. Sterling, where did you want to start today?

Sterling: Well, I just wanted you all to just, you know, introduce Philip Boricuas just to start off with, you know, before we get into other stuff, just to introduce the organization.

Vanessa Maria Graber: Sure. So Philip Boricuas is a collective. We're a group of grassroots organizers and our mission is, you know, working to serve the diaspora Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia by educating, advocating and mobilizing our community to decolonize Puerto Rico, achieve self-determination and improve Puerto Rican's quality of life both in Philadelphia and on the island. And we're grounded in the conviction that solidarity with other movements will result in our shared liberation. So in addition to, you know, working with the Puerto Rican community and connecting the dots around the colonization of Puerto Rico, You know, I think the broader problem and picture is around U.S. imperialism, right, colonialism. And so it's really important that we collaborate and have solidarity for the global movements, you know, in these struggles and also locally, right, connecting all the dots around capitalism and white supremacy. which means we show up in a lot of other spaces, right? Because we believe that even though we're Puerto Ricans and we're super focused on this one thing, that our liberation is really connected and contingent on the liberation of other peoples. And just to give a little background, we formed in 2019, in the summertime, following weeks of protests against the governor of Puerto Rico at the time, Governor Ricky Rosselló, who was involved in many scandals, a corruption scandal, which, by the way, was uncovered by journalists, right, the Center for Investigative Journalism in Puerto Rico. and also some really damaging chats that were leaked by a former employee that showed over racism, homophobia, misogyny, and a disrespect for the thousands of people that were killed after Hurricane Maria. And so rightly so, Puerto Ricans took to the streets, went on a general strike for a short amount of time, and occupied the governor's mansion of Fortaleza in Puerto Rico, did all kinds of protests. And this eventually led to the governor resigning. And this is the only time in the United States when the people have ousted a governor in that matter. So it is possible, right, when we organize and engage in direct action, nonviolently, of course, too. And this also ignited people in the diaspora who also felt concerned and were angered by the disrespect and the corruption. So there were protests all over the United States in diasporic communities like Philadelphia. And so we gathered in Hunting Park And then afterward, people were like, well, what are we doing? We got all these problems here too. And so we decided to have a community meeting that was hosted by some of our elders. And Sterling knows that when we did this workshop at NKCDC, that was about displacement and housing, we had to go back and share the history of the displacement and a lot of the organizing our elders did. And so those same elders were wanting to pass the torch, if you will, and give us some guidance about, you know, some of the issues we should be facing or organizing around. And we had meetings for weeks and weeks and we decided to form this group a collective because we weren't really sure. Like a lot of us have not had good experiences with the Democratic Party or in the nonprofit industrial complex. So we were like, let's just be volunteers and see what we can do in a collective format where we're accountable to each other. And so we formed that collective in August, I believe, of 2019. And we've been rocking ever since. And we've engaged in all types of fundraising and mutual aid campaigns for Puerto Rico, advocacy campaigns here, because being that I'm a journalist and I work with the hall monitor, so many times we have no representation in these fights around resources and the budget, around the police, racist policing. And you'll see a lot of people from different organizations and movements come and testify and organize and protest. And the Puerto Ricans were always missing. So we really wanted to figure out a way to represent for our community, to teach people how to get politically engaged that doesn't involve electioneering or voting for the Democratic Party. Justin and I, you know, we've knocked on a lot of doors to understand how people feel in Kensington and North Philly. And there's an incredible amount of divestment, distrust, and disappointment. And so it has been an uphill battle to be able to re-engage people and to offer resources on how we can organize ourselves outside this very racist political system. And we believe that by doing mutual aid and free political education and that advocacy, putting together fact sheets, showing up to testify, defending families like Eddie Arizade's family. Those are the ways in which we can begin to build power. So we're a small group, but we're mighty. And we do this without a bank account and without any money. And so it just goes to show like, If they wanted to, they would, right? And that anybody can organize if they really want to. You don't need a 501c3. You don't need a title or a degree. You just have to have the determination. And Puerto Ricans, both in the archipelago and in Philadelphia, have proven that you don't need any of those things to make a really lasting impact on our community and the political landscape. Justin, feel free to add how you got involved.

Justin Roig: So it's kind of funny because I told this story at the NKCDC event, and I like telling people this story.

Sterling: See what NKCDC is. Say what New Kensington is.

Justin Roig: New Kensington Community Development Corporation. Yeah. So I like telling people this story just because who doesn't like a full circle moment? Hurricane Maria was very much a, I already started paying attention to politics a bit because the election of Donald Trump, but you know, just kind of the gross, neglect of Puerto Rico in spite against it. And then that's when you can start learning about empire and austerity and debt regime, et cetera. And when chat gate happened, which is, what Vanessa was referring to, if Ricky would have said, yo, I was very, very aggravated. And I saw that there was a protest in Hunting Park in North Philly, and I begged my mom, can we please go? This is our people. This is our country. She's like, I don't know. And then luckily, my stepdad kind of interjected, and he was like, we should go. We should go. And we drove up from Vineland, which is where I was raised, to Hunting Park, and we joined in, and it was a very formative experience in my political development. And then... here we are a number of years later, I'm part of the organization that was kind of born out of that protest. So I joined, I want to say what it was 2023, Vanessa, you kind of recruited me in and I've been here for about two going on, going on three years now. And this is where I always tell people my political home is when it comes to the organizations I'm part of. So we've been lucky to work with so many wonderful groups and organizations organizing. for Palestinian liberation, against anti-harm reduction legislation, you know, organizing for the Erizarry family, what have you. And yeah, that's, I think Eddie Erizarry was probably the political issue that was going on, at least most relevant at the time, by the time I came on.

Sterling: Yeah, I wanted I guess I want to go into that because first and then maybe you want to you want to wind it back. But first, just like, can you just talk about the current state of the idiot and like what happened with like the political situation in Philadelphia, you know, our new mayor, you know?

Vanessa Maria Graber: Well, for folks who don't know, Eddie Ifesade was a young Puerto Rican man who was murdered by a former police officer, Mark Dial, in Kensington. and apparently he was being followed, and he drove down a one-way street the wrong way, and that was the pretext for them shooting him. They did not... pull him over. They did not issue him a ticket. They moved immediately to shooting him. So literally seconds after he had stopped his vehicle, the officers jumped out of the car and began shooting at him. and that resulted in his death. They dragged him out of the vehicle, threw him in the backseat. They did not try to render CPR or stop the bleeding. And I say that because this really speaks to the brutality of the event and the punishment that was ultimately issued not fitting the crime. After all of that transpired, Mark Dial's partner and him fabricated a lie, a story where they alleged that Eddie Irizarry got out of the vehicle and, you know, lunged at them with a knife, of course. The surveillance footage on the street from different home cameras showed that that did not happen at all. He never left his vehicle. He was in his vehicle where the doors were locked and the windows were up the entire time. And also their body camera footage, which we really advocated and put a lot of pressure on the district attorney's office to release, showed that they fabricated the story. And what's crazy is that the rest of the police arrived very soon afterwards, and the two partners didn't talk to each other, but they already had a story fabricated. Almost as if, if this ever happens, this is what we're gonna say. And so that was really shocking. And I'm glad all of that footage, and shout out to Isabel Sanchez, my friend at Telemundo, who was the only Spanish speaking journalist that talked to the neighbors immediately because the other journalists didn't really do that. And she was the one who uncovered the surveillance footage from the homes and she uncovered eyewitnesses that disputed the police story. So they were the only network from the jump to say this is not adding up and people are reporting something else, which is why I'm a strong advocate of uh diverse media spanish-speaking media for this reason right because every other news outlet in philadelphia repeated that lie which is often the case right is that they promote a police narrative um they don't ever bother to correct the lies of the police um and so a group of you know concerned citizens uh family members of adidas and other organizations joined in a coalition to advocate for Eddie and his family. And one of the first things was advocating for the arrest of Mark Dial, advocating for murder charges, advocating for the body camera footage to be released. And all of those we were successful in getting. It's unfortunate that Judge Wendy Pugh initially dismissed the murder charges the first time they were filed. which is why we need to vote bad judges like that out. It's so important to do your homework on these racist judges that plague our court system. Um, and later on the charges were refiled by the district attorney again, because we had to keep advocating and keep, you know, keep the pressure on, like we kind of, and they ultimately filed, um, I believe second degree murder charges and, uh, voluntary manslaughter. He was ultimately convicted, um, you know, after a trial. Where the police, you know, lied, they packed the courtroom, they were very intimidating. These are the tactics that they use, right, to try to get the community to back off. And Mark Dial was ultimately given time served, which was probably less than a year, like nine months or something.

Sterling: Monterey manslaughter, yeah.

Vanessa Maria Graber: Right. So in some ways it's a victory because we never see any type of accountability. A lot of these fabricated stories persist today and that becomes the history on record. And sometimes we never see the body camera footage. Sometimes we never get charges against police. So this was the first time we really saw that. However, you know, the disappointing part is that we don't believe the punishment matches the crime of murder, right? And the loss of this innocent young man's life. was innocent of any crime. They didn't find any drugs or guns on him. This was, at worst, a traffic violation where he lost his life. And since then, many others have been brutalized by the same 25th district in the police, which is why we showed up at the police contract hearings and have written testimony and solidarity statements against continuing to reward and incentivize racist killer police, you know, when they have a pattern of continuing to terrorize our communities. And it's important that people are aware of these processes because this is where you can make an impact and say, these contracts are horrible. There's no accountability in them. They're basically allowed to keep their jobs when they're engaged in misconduct. And so that event really galvanized the community. We organized a march and a protest to the 25th district through North Philadelphia. And yeah, we've continued to try to bring attention to that case because it really does involve so many different things, you know, and stories of people being displaced from Puerto Rico, which is a colony of the United States, and then coming here only to be met with more racism disenfranchisement and displacement here in Philadelphia. And so that's why these things are connected because Eddie would have never been here to begin with if the systems of colonization were not impacting him in Puerto Rico.

Sterling: Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I don't know. I just want to take a beat. Like the organizing that you all did, you know, with coalition. I mean, that's the reason that we even got as far as she did. That's the reason. That's the only reason that we even have a conviction, which is, I don't know. I just want to take a beat for that. Like this whole system is like, it needs to be torn down, but a conviction for a police officer. Is that right? Yeah. I feel like you barely see that. And I don't know. I feel like that's even sometimes. like even the work that is being done it's like it's almost like they want that to be invisibilized some way i'm just wondering like how does like what's happening now for for the family and and um what are the feelings there

Vanessa Maria Graber: Um, Justin and I both were at the courthouse during those times. Um, Philly PSL organized some, some protests outside the courthouse and the family, you know, is still distraught, um, still experiencing unimaginable grief. And even though there is a conviction, this killer is still out on the streets. you know, and I feel as though justice was not served and I'm not speaking for the family in this current moment, but at the time, you know, after that conviction was issued, they felt as though justice was not served for Eddie. And so it's unclear whether they're moving forward or how they're moving forward with a civil lawsuit for wrongful death. And so that would be the next likely step that they would take. in addition to healing and processing the trauma and grief that comes along with an incident like this.

Justin Roig: And something important to acknowledge is that when you go through a trial like that, you're revisiting the footage, you're revisiting evidence, you're revisiting arguments, be it for or against your lost loved one, you're being re-traumatized continuously throughout the process whilst at the same time you have medical issues or, you know, family members not doing well. Life still carries on after you lose somebody. And when you lose somebody in that context, you still have to keep going through the world and you're being re-traumatized every week or every other week, multiple times a week, by the brutal death of your son, your brother, your cousin. It's very... It can be very demoralizing and make it just logistically and spiritually more difficult to keep it moving, to keep the fight going.

Vanessa Maria Graber: Yeah, I just want to add to that. It was the family of Eddie's eye that really led all of this. Um, you know, a lot of us, you know, how leftists can be, you know, had disagreements on, you know, how we feel about the police, how we're talking about the police. Um, but really all of us were there to support the family and take direction from them. And if it wasn't for his family, we would not have gotten this far. They're the ones who really. led the efforts with the district attorney's office. And so I just, I just want to be clear on that, even though we were supporting them, that it was his sisters, his cousin, you know, his parents, they were the ones relentlessly, right, fighting for Eddie Irizarry.

Sterling: Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, one of I want to get into some discussion of, you know, Puerto Rico and its kind of colonial status. But I think one of the other big current events right now that really, you know, kind of we could talk about as a way to get to move into this is the, you know, the use of Puerto Rico as a kind of staging and planning area around the, you know, whatever we want to call it, the encirclement of Venezuela, right, in this moment, the intimidation, the threatening, obviously, the killing of, you know, lots of, like, over 100 people, I think, have been killed at this point in the Caribbean Sea by these, you know, airstrikes and drone strikes that the U.S. government is doing, you know, against alleged narco traffickers, against, you know, an organization that is not, you know, even... acknowledged by the Venezuelan people as something that even exists. And obviously, this is a part of a very long campaign, which we've talked about on Millennials over the years quite a bit, just to kind of demonize Venezuela and to try different tactics, whether it's sanctions or you know, um, electioneering or whatever to try to, uh, you know, get the, the Bolivarian revolution and process or, or coup attempts, right. Things like this. Like, so there's a long history there, but Puerto Rico is, uh, is, of course, because of where it's located, is a staging area also that is being used right now. And so, you know, how are you all processing that? What are you hearing if you're talking to folks that are on the archipelago? You know, what would you want to say about this?

Vanessa Maria Graber: Well, first I'll say that we are hosting an event on this very topic next Wednesday, December 17th at 7 p.m. Eastern time. It's a virtual event very much like this one. And we have a panel that includes people who are in the archipelago. And shout out to our friend Berta, who's a long time Philly activist who was involved in the struggle in Vieques to kick the US military out after decades of bombing. And so we wanted to invite someone like her back you know, into this conversation because we're right back where we started again, right? Where there was this long struggle to get the US Navy to stop testing bombs in Puerto Rico. So, you know, she's gonna offer that history and perspective and we have some, oh, thanks. Yes, and we have Dr. Renato Abraham who his research is all about drug trafficking and narco-traficantes in Colombia and Venezuela. And this is where the U.S. corporate media goes into full drive, pushing forth a false narrative about this being about drugs and drug trafficking. So he's going to set the record straight on that. He's also part of Diaspora Pip, which is the diaspora chapter of the Puerto Rican Independence Party. And then we have Calvin Yohannan, who's been doing political education about this, giving updates every single day on Bud PR's social media. They're great, Boricuas United and the Diaspora. um and so yeah we we have been in a group chat very concerned and we were like what do we do what do we do and so we're doing what we do best which is to do political education and and to bring um you know clarifying information because there is a disinformation campaign in it's been in full effect you know around uh venezuela and cuba socialism right um also um a real omission of information around the way that US colonialism is impacting all of these countries and why Puerto Rico remains to be a colony. And it's really important that we dispel a lot of the misinformation that's being peddled out there right now. So people understand what's really going on. And so just to give like a little snapshot, I wrote this is like part of the notes of my introduction, which is that, you know, there are more and more troops landing in Puerto Rico, right? There's now more than 10,000 troops on the ground and more arriving every day in large ships. Pulling up to the beaches of Arroyo and Ponce in these little ships very much looks like the storming of Normandy. And this is to scare people and to intimidate. There's no need for them to arrive like that. There's cargo planes, C-130s arriving every day with military equipment. MQ Reaper drones. These are the drones that are being used to launch the strikes against the ships. And I'm not calling them drug ships or drug boats because there's no evidence it's been presented. And when we use that framing, we're continuing the false narrative. A lot of the locals are claiming that these are fishing boats and that these people have nothing to do with drug trafficking. There's also smaller attack drones that are flying around Puerto Rico and doing test runs, collecting surveillance, F-18 and F-35 fighter jets. um and they're all yes uh doing tests doing surveillance and using puerto rico as their you know satellite military base and um not just around puerto rico uh it's the wider caribbean that the u.s military has moved aircraft carriers um battleships and other military equipment such as drones. So, you know, I just want to also mention how the other Caribbean nations are also impacted by this, even though they're not at war or they have no beef with the United States or not part of the United States. And oftentimes those little island nations get forgotten about as well when we talk about the greater impact. And if stuff does pop off, You know, the environmental impact, of course, is one of the most concerning things because we know how horrible the environmental impacts were of just testing munitions in Puerto Rico, Vieques, for all those years. It resulted in people getting cancers and other debilitating diseases that they're still experiencing. And when you couple that with the lack of access to medical care and a public health system, it has resulted in many unnecessary and cruel deaths. And so, yeah, for all of those reasons, we're super concerned. Unfortunately, we have a governor, Jennifer Gonzalez, who is pro-militarism, pro-imperialism, pro-Trump. In fact, she was the chair of Latinos for Trump. She has campaigned for candidates like Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis, Governor Abbott in Texas. So those are the types of people that she's hanging around. So what does that tell you, right? Like this is the person who's supposed to protect Puerto Rico and advocate for them. And at the end of the day, they're all in cahoots because this is one big money-making scheme and they're all taking money and being funded by weapons manufacturers and fossil fuel companies. So when we dig deeper, this is really about access to fossil fuels and undermining any type of sovereign governance that does not give any political power to the United States, which is why they impose these sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela that strangle the economy and hurt and starve the people. And this is why we have had over 100 interventions in Latin America outside of Puerto Rico, interfering in elections, instigating coups, invasions, removing people from power, and the list goes on. And that doesn't even scratch the surface about the CIA involvement in international drug trafficking. So we're going to try to cover a lot of those topics to get people to understand what's going on. But one thing is true is that this is the reason why Puerto Rico remains a colony and will never be given statehood by the United States.

Justin Roig: And I'm going to add something on to that. You don't got to dig that deep to figure out. It goes back, amongst several things, goes back to the oil issue. Representative Salazar, who represents most of Miami, Coral Gables, that area, she said that in an invasion of Venezuela, she first starts talking about democracy, the this and the that, even though we're trying to overthrow a democratically elected government. And then she says it'll be good for our oil companies. Oh, the gas is expensive right now. We need the oil. They're very unabashed about that. why they are attacking Venezuela. And to speak to Vanessa's point about smaller island nations in the Lesser Antilles, a number of fishermen that have been killed haven't even been Venezuelan. They've been from Trinidad or they've been from communities along these islands, fishermen communities, have nothing to do with the drug trade. They have nothing to do with Venezuela even.

Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Sterling, did you want to... I saw you put something in the chat there.

Sterling: Yeah, I was... I was really interested in this connection. Constantly, there are people that are talking about the international. But, you know, you're in... You know, Philly is in the Kensington Fairhill area, which is like the center of the opioid crisis in the United States. Right. So I know there are just unique dynamics that I feel like maybe you could speak to about how things that are happening internationally show up on the ground and the fights that are being done and I don't know and also could you explain explain Kensington a little bit from from your your perspective I feel like people Puerto Rican people from Kensington never get to say never get to explain to me all these narratives about it out there so yeah yeah well I I grew up in Chile I lived in Puerto Rico as well when I was a kid and um but I mostly grew up in

Vanessa Maria Graber: the Lower Northeast Oxford Circle area. So I'm not from Kensington, but I am from District 7. I'm from the top of District 7, which is- Yeah, yeah, you have to be specific.

Sterling: Yeah, yeah, we're gonna be specific. Yeah, I'm not from Philadelphia, I'm from outside. Yeah, I know, yeah, yeah, you're right.

Vanessa Maria Graber: So I just wanna say, I do live in East Kensington. But I don't speak for Kensington Puerto Ricans. But I will say this, you know, I grew up in Philly, you know, in the 90s. My mom ran a methadone clinic and has been involved in drug and alcohol counseling and therapy like her whole career. And that was, you know, in North Philly, you know, where the drug market was really crazy in the late 90s. It was like, if you really want to see like unfettered capitalism, that was it. And at the same time, my dad... was working with impact services, doing advocacy for veterans. And one of the things he was passionate about and spent a lot of time was in getting them access to housing. So eventually he was running a supportive housing, a building for veterans who were experiencing co-occurring disorders. So people with mental health issues or injuries and or addictions. So I say that to say I've grown up with this my whole life and I've always seen the impacts of the drug war. And with my dad specifically, a lot of the veterans were from Vietnam and became addicted two drugs while fighting over in Vietnam and some afterwards after they were injured and were being administered morphine. My mom worked with people who were addicted to heroin. Of course, now we have fentanyl and many other drugs. But one thing that I started to do and as you do when you go down the rabbit hole is, you know, I worked for a long time on marijuana legalization and you start to go down the rabbit hole of why is why is cannabis illegal? What happens? And then you start to find out about the drug war. Right. And then you're like, oh, let's learn about, you know, the drug trafficking routes and drug like and ultimately you're left with the question is how do the drugs get here why are the drugs here why don't they do anything about it look at all the people being impacted by this And you realize it's intentional, right? Just like crack cocaine was intentionally put in black communities. It's intentional. And like I said this before, if they wanted to, they would stop it. There are many mechanisms that they could employ to stop drugs from coming into the United States. So it's important for people to research this, research the origins of Reagan's drug policy, all the various commissions and reports that the federal government themselves has offered around the root causes of drug addictions and drug smuggling. Watch the documentaries about Pablo Escobar and El Chapo and others, right? The US is very directly involved and connected to all of this, right? And so when we hear our local legislators propose solutions that places the blame squarely on drug users, and does not do anything to stop the drug smugglers from bringing the drugs into Philadelphia or the police that allow that to happen, you have to ask questions of them as well. Why are they overly focused on the people who are victims of the drug war as opposed to the drug lords and war criminals and cartels who are making billions of dollars from this. And it's something they don't want to touch. As a journalist, they do not want to answer this question. They do not have an answer for this question. They do not know how to connect the dots. about our interventions in Latin America, the CIA, the drug war. They are intellectually lazy when it comes to this issue. And that's why we get upset, right? Because it's not enough to just mass arrest people in Kensington and force them into treatment. That has been a complete failure, that wellness treatment center. It does not work. All the experts said that wasn't going to work. Providing drug treatment without housing, without mental health support, without medical care, without job training, without any of the things that you need to survive is going to fail. That is why it continues to fail. You know, every now and again they do a little drug bust and they put all the drugs on the table and they pat themselves on the back. But that is a pittance, you know, compared to the actual amount of drugs in this area that supplies drugs to a metro region. of four and a half million people. So even though we can celebrate the times when they do seize fentanyl and other drugs that are harming our community, when you look at the totality of guns and drugs and cartels and networks, they're really not doing anything to solve that problem. And so it's both a local problem, but it's also a federal problem, right? Because the way that we solve this is not by randomly dropping bombs on fishing boats in the Caribbean. And it's not by attacking countries that are not making fentanyl. So I think it's really important to look globally and look at where the drugs are coming from, the countries that are making them, and how a lot of the perpetrators of the drug smuggling are Latin American right-wing leaders as well that are working with the U.S. government in places like Ecuador and Peru. So it's like... I sound like a conspiracy theorist. Like, I know this is like a lot, you know, crazy, you know, bulletin board and back of me. But again, when you start reading this, it sounds it sounds not real because how do we wrap our minds around our own government? not just allowing this to happen, but facilitating it. And then at the local level, the police, how many police have been arrested in Philadelphia for selling drugs and for lying on people and being involved in narcotics operations? All the time.

Sterling: All the time. Yeah. Recently they had to throw out like how many like cases, like thousand cases or drug possession. There is like, I don't know. There's another case where people were arrested for like, for, for selling the drugs themselves from, you know, there's like when people say like, how, Oh my, my, my, uh, My family members are safe in jail. And I'm like, well, what about all the CEOs that are clearly selling drugs? And I don't know. Whatever it is, people are making money through sex work. But whatever happens, people have to survive. But generally, the CEOs are doing that stuff.

Justin Roig: I have seen a police officer offer a man in McPherson Square, 7 a.m., perks. Like, you got to get up. You got to get up. she's offering him drugs to leave on camera. She knew she was being recorded. Her body cam was on too. It's pretty out in the open. And if you want to hear some almost tinfoil-sounding takes that are actually true, on a local level, the reason Kensington is the way it is can be blamed on local officials at the time for making... Kensington was chosen... as the focal point for the strategy of containment. The strategy of containment, there's a reason. It's Temple Episcopal Hospital. It's right there. There's a reason you see it start there. And that's not inherently a bad idea when you have a giant opiate crisis if you do the next step. The next step is the harm reduction stuff. I said this in City Hall a number of months ago. Harm reduction is most of them will not pretend that it is the solution. It is a step. Well, you know what's better than, you know, cleaning needles, what have you? It's beds. We don't have enough treatment beds in this city. And Penn Presbyterian is a big responsible partner for that. They cut them and they said, well, it's just not as profitable. It's just not as profitable. We have other types of treatment that we give people that we make more money off. So we're just going to do that instead. And be it racist narratives against Puerto Ricans or people who live in Kensington for the crisis, be it, you know... Logically blaming wider systems that are bigger than even local officials or the federal government, international drug rings. To a degree, the same people who are now attacking some of the most vulnerable people in an already vulnerable and stressed area, their predecessors are people they worked under or people they're about one, two degrees separated from are the people that said, yeah, let's make Kensington, Lehigh. Let's make Fronton, Lehigh. Let's make Kensington, Somerset. the focal point where we're going to concentrate this. And then they never did the next step. They never did the next step. It turns out it's actually very profitable to have this area be the sacrificial zone for drug dealing, for drug use, because it's not in my neighborhood. It's not in my neighborhood. North Square Park, American Street, that used to be the needle park. That used to be burnout warehouses and factories that people would do drugs in. You go there now, barely any of that. You'll see a little bit, but there's no needles in North Square Park to the extent that people that lived in that community until about the early 90s would have saw. It went north. Now it's in where these, what were the letter streets, which were white holdout neighborhoods, even to the 80s and 90s. There was full out race and gang wars between the Irish and Puerto Ricans going on because the Irish didn't want the Puerto Ricans crossing B Street. And they said, ah, this should be a good area. This area, it's already on the decline. We're going to put the drugs here. And yeah, you talk about Puerto Ricans were also kind of placed in that area after a while because that's where they were given housing vouchers to move from neighborhoods like Spring Garden, from South Ward, from areas that they did not want them in anymore, too close to Center City. Let's move them out of the way, out of sight, out of mind. So when you look at Kensington on a local level, it is a manufactured crisis. It is a manufactured crisis. And I remember speaking to a man when I was canvassing, like Vanessa said, we knocked on hundreds of doors in that area. I canvassed a lot of the houses between 2nd and Allegheny, Somerset Street, Lippincott Street, all those little streets that you have there. And I spoke with a man that lives like a block off behind Kensington Ave by the Somerset L stop. And he said, as long, he was an old Irish guy. He's owned his house for 30 years. He said, as long as it's profitable for these people to be here, they will be here. The day that it isn't, they'll move. And now it's not as profitable to have them there because they want to gentrify along the L. So they're trying to move people. So you're seeing two kinds of forms of profit-seeking capital fighting each other with this one. The drug dealing and the gentrification are now in conflict. So that's where we're starting to see some tensions here. Because now the city and the council people are like, oh, well, we already have enough local support because people are tired and jaded from living around this. We've been able to reduce some empathy, even up from people that they'll be willing to look the other way when we disappear people.

Sterling: Yeah, disappear and kill people. That's what's been happening. People have been being grabbed off the street, put in the jail. And like how many people have died? And five, we know the names of, but like people of withdrawal from opiates, but also overdose inside the jails. Yeah.

Justin Roig: And some of which were Kensington residents. One of which was a mother who was a Kensington resident. She had a home. She lived in a house. She didn't live on the streets. We think the Kensington, there's actually, you know, a lot more of a, whilst it is true, a lot of people that are doing drugs in Kensington are not from there. There are also a lot of people who are, and that is a trauma that the community members who aren't deal with every day and increasing. That's why it's very hard to convince people in these communities, understandably, that harm reduction is a solution because they've been seeing it done for a while. And the problem is, like I said, we just haven't gotten to the next step and our leaders don't want to go to the next step.

Vanessa Maria Graber: and they have plans for for gentrifying the area like it's the only reason why they're arresting people and they they just did a raid yesterday to clear out the encampment you know not because the weather is cold and they're concerned about these people but again they it's part of their gentrification plan um they and you know not to like jump around issues but right now in philadelphia um you know, legislation, you know, has been debated around the mayor's home initiative, right? And the biggest point of contention is the majority of funds going to developers and that the affordable units were not going to the most vulnerable people, people who are on house, people that live below the poverty line, people that have been waiting on these lists. So it's just another time where the administration is showing that they are prioritizing developers and profit-making instead of meeting the basic needs of Philadelphia's most vulnerable people. And if they really cared, they would prioritize housing those people long-term beyond just a 90-day stint at a rehab. They built a wellness treatment center that's supposed to house people for a year. When I asked city officials what was the plan to house people and give them employment beyond a year, they said, we're still working that out.

Sterling: Yeah.

Vanessa Maria Graber: Which is not a surprising answer from them at all. It's right on brand. But they do not want to prioritize giving people access to health care. and giving people access to long-term mental health and substance abuse treatment and permanent housing. Because many of these people are also disabled as well. It's not as easy as just saying, oh, well, they have to go back to work, which is what they were saying.

Justin Roig: With all three of their fingers left, some of them.

Vanessa Maria Graber: There are people missing limbs and wheelchairs, exactly. So it is quite cruel. And just like the Trump administration, we see microcosms of this here. Cruelty, is the point right and and you know i hate to use all these cliches but profits over people is is what's driving all of the policies that we see being implemented in kensington

Sterling: Yeah. And it's, I mean, the way that Kensington worked, it's like, whether it's nonprofits or the healthcare or it's the drug sellers and people have to work for them. It's like, there's just exploitation. It feels like a hyper exploitation in like so many ways. It's like, and even if you're a part of a nonprofit and you try to like do it, it's you're just, you're usually a part of the exploitation. I don't even know what to say. It's like, I don't, it's like, How do we even break that? I'm not sure, but there are too many people.

Vanessa Maria Graber: Organize and build power and educate.

Sterling: Yeah. I'm just, it's like even the recovery, the recovery space, if your recovery homes used to be much more, um, like you know people weren't making money off of them they didn't have to make a profit but nowadays um you know you have to work immediately you definitely have to give over your food stamps like how you get actually get over get out of like poverty or something move on is like very hard you know you're constantly owing somebody oh I feel like that's the first thing when people get off the street before they can get can get off the street they're like I owe all these people so I gotta like have a few months my first job is like paying back all these people

Vanessa Maria Graber: Yeah, I mean, I think we talked before about a lot of our motivations at the Hall Monitor for our coverage is rooted in the desire to eradicate poverty in Philadelphia, because we really believe that all of these policies don't ultimately address poverty, right? And like the reason why we have crime, the reason why we have so many people with untreated mental health issues, with untreated medical care is poverty, right? The reason why the infrastructure is crumbling and people can't repair their homes and care, you know, start businesses is poverty. And in Puerto Rico, you know, people are, a large amount of the population is living under poverty.

Justin Roig: I'm going to say it's in the area of around 42 to 52% last time I checked. The 2025 figures say 40 to 42%.

Vanessa Maria Graber: And the child poverty rates are over 50%. And so this is more than any other state in the United States. And again, it's like the they're leaving the island or the archipelago to come here, to live in places like Kensington only to continue the cycle of poverty once more. And for the residents that are not drug users, who are just regular working people, when you are living under poverty and you are just trying to survive and you're experiencing all the things that are happening in in Kensington, right, which is this open air drug market, drug users on the streets, unhoused people over policing. It is entirely overwhelming for people to organize and to fight back and to have a say. And so I think there is a small, vocal minority of residents that work with city council, you know, this Kensington caucus to advocate for harmful policies in our opinion, but it's not reflective of the many people whose voices are not heard and who do not have a seat at the table.

Justin Roig: I'll say this much as well. If you ask a lot of people in those neighborhoods, do they support harm reduction they'll say no but then if you say to them oh do you support um programs to get these people in the housing or or do you support programs to do this and they say oh yeah that's a good idea they should be doing that already it's the same thing we can compare it to like we scare puerto ricans with the word independence but then you tell them oh should we do this policy and they're like oh that's a good idea so it's we've created a uh not a trojan horse but uh kind of boogeyman. We've created a boogeyman of terms to scare people into supporting things that, even if it's not directly in their interest in the long term or in their interest, because there's a lot of little Spanish Pentecostal ladies and little abuelitas in Kensington and Fairhill that are already doing harm reduction. That these bills, I said to city council, I was trying to address it directly to Kitsie Lasada, like, this does not reflect Puerto Rican values. If you're homeless in Puerto Rico... You may be the neighborhood borracho, you're the drunkard. People will be annoyed to hell about you, but they'll still feed you when you're hungry. They'll still give you a place to stay in a storm. And the same thing happens in Kensington. Many people will be like, ah, man, okay, this guy's doing this nonsense again. But they'll still help them. They'll still help them. And maybe they don't necessarily like the white saviors and some harm reductionists have. Maybe they don't like... you know, the idea of, well, you're just giving them the means to keep using drugs. How does that help? But at the end of the day, a lot of these people engage in some kind of harm reduction work. And that's what, even if they don't call it that, that's just kind of a cultural thing. That's who we are. And it's a beautiful thing. And that's why when you see Lasada and these politicians use their Puerto Rican identity to be like, I'm doing this for the Puerto Rican people because I love my people. I'm doing this for the poor people. Port Gideon is BS. It's complete and utter nonsense and a detachment from the reality of what's going on in that area. And not to go too much on the kissy train, but she don't live in Kensington anyway. She's from Hunting Park and she lives in Northwood, right on Roosevelt Boulevard. So she wants to say, oh, none of these harm reductionists live in Kensington. Neither do you. Neither do you. So pot, meat, kettle.

Sterling: yeah yeah i feel like this is a very similar conversation in the black community happens around like harm reduction if you ask if you blast like old black grandmas of like if they like harm reduction they're like no i don't know but like clearly they're like i feel like the leaders in the harm reduction um in terms of like the actions they do to like have their grandson stay a few days then you like say them out you know have some structure but then try to like support people regardless of like what they've done in the past so it's like i don't i don't know this is a conversation for later but like there's there is a real racism part of harm reduction right where like people will tell you tell seven-year-old women about their life they're like well do you know this and you're just like they're like yeah i freaking know i've been in the freaking abandos in kensington you know especially in philly people know So, yeah, I just want to support that, everything you're saying, because it's a little bit more complicated. It's a little bit more complicated.

Vanessa Maria Graber: Right. And that's why narrative strategy is so important, right? One of the things I've done for a lot of movements is we think about how are we messaging this, right? How are we speaking to people about these issues? Because there's certain terminology you know, that turns people off immediately. And the corporate media has no incentive to combat disinformation or to clarify or to do in-depth reporting, explaining to people what it is. And the majority of people still get their news and information from TV and radio. I'm increasingly now from social media where we have not just journalists, but lots of talking heads and content creators, many who do a really great job. And others are, as we call, charlatanes, right? Like they're peddling nonsense. So as organizers and educators, it's really important that we find the ways where we can meet people where they're at, and speak to them in a way that's understandable so that we can achieve alignment. And so when we're like, okay, we're not going to say harm reduction, but we're like, hey, do you think people should receive medical care? Their wounds should be treated? Or do you believe we should still do food distribution? Or do you think we should have people coming around to clean up the needles and make the spaces clean for people and give out coats for people. People almost always say, yeah. You're like, well, you know that's harm reduction. And they're like, what? And so we have to treat it as a narrative warfare.

Sterling: Like in Philadelphia, for people that don't know, there is a bill that was passed and signed by our mayor that says that people will be fined if they give out

Justin Roig: water any if i can three people order that's right but once i get four people order we are in trouble cops gonna rescue they can yeah right and it's it's very hard to police i really can't see any type of police enforcement around that which is you know you're gonna force against people they have personal beef with but other than that how are you gonna do that

Vanessa Maria Graber: yeah it's it's it's really quite ridiculous and when the police say they're under resourced and understaffed and then you're giving them more ridiculous work right more things to police it doesn't make sense but for people who don't know another thing that happened at council this week and that's why we'll be paying attention and monitoring is a extended the ban on mobile services and made it bigger, covering a wider area.

Justin Roig: And they want to bring it into the sixth council district in the Northeast now. They're trying to expand where this applies to.

Vanessa Maria Graber: Right. So if your council person is Mike Driscoll, you might want to contact him and let him know what you think about it. But this is impacting a lot of people. And again, without opposition, they're going to continue to spread this ban and push it as far as they can. But a lot of these things, all of these policies, just like Gaza and Palestine, they're experimenting on the most vulnerable people to see what people will allow. And once we permit those things to happen, they start to implement those policies in other places. So the things that we allow in Kensington, are things we're going to allow in North Philly and West Philly. You know what I mean? Same thing across like, oh, once people look the other way on genocide, we can go invade Venezuela because it's kind of like the worst thing. And the people permitted that. So now we're going to do this, you know, and the human rights violations you're seeing now here with immigrants, you know, the IDF. trains, Philly police, trains, ICE and law enforcement, right? The drones that were tested in Gaza are now being used in Puerto Rico against the boats, right? Those same bombs that were tested in Vieques were then used in Gaza. again, we always have to collect these things to imperialism and global struggles. And the people who are most vulnerable are often the ones who experience fascism and authoritarianism first to test people's, you know, willingness to oppose these things. And so for people that don't live in Kensington, it's really important that you oppose these policies in Kensington. Because if we allow them in Kensington, it's only a matter of time before this is going to happen in your neighborhood. Similarly, you know, Philly Boricua was organized against the 76ers arena in Chinatown, right? Because if they do this to our Asian brothers and sisters, they're gonna do this to us, right? And also giving tax breaks to billionaires is never a good idea if you're working class. So, you know, we have to really look at these things citywide, even though things are happening in other neighborhoods. Right. There is a widespread effect for people, working class people across the city.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, appreciate it. I want to go back to Puerto Rico for a minute to also talk about the struggles against data centers there. I thought that was really interesting. And Justin, I know you were talking about it a little bit even before we got on, before we went live. And, you know, we've done a lot of discussion with Dwayne Monroe here talking about, you know, so-called AI, right? Which like for us, Folks who haven't seen those discussions, the spoiler alert is that there's really no such thing as artificial intelligence, but there is digital computation that requires a ton of data centers, servers, and water, and electricity. Obviously, these are struggles that are going on all over the place of companies trying to move in a data center into communities, often doing it in very kind of shadowy ways, creating a new corporation, right? Or a new LLC that's just going to be the hub of this data center that is really actually owned by like Google or Amazon or Microsoft, right? And so I was interested to know that these struggles are going on in Puerto Rico and to kind of hear about, you know, how you all have, what you've seen with that and what's going on there with that.

Justin Roig: Yeah, I mean, I haven't heard too much about data centers being built in Puerto Rico. So I don't want to speak to something that I can't speak directly to. I can speak to the directly to the phenomenon of what's going on in my hometown in Vineland in South Jersey, where it's, I mean, I was joking with a friend of mine who he works for a flower farm between Vineland and Millville. And I said, Oh, Mike Trout, because they built a golf course, which takes up a lot of water. And then this data center is right next to it. So it's just a water table nuke. And I say, you got a free trip to the West Bank. They put an apartheid ball in front of your house where the woods used to be. And it kind of wherever you see these projects being put up, it's very much like a form of direct or depending where there's internal colonialism, in my opinion. And you see that they're getting tax abatements. And if you want to tie that to Puerto Rico, that's what the government did. They threw up factories and gave them the private corporations to that they could have run corporations of their own in for building the factory. And then they give them 10 years tax abatements. They don't pay taxes. They swap out the name in year nine. They start a new tax abatement. They steal your money and resources. But when it comes to the CAI thing, I think people should notice when Pete Hegseth says, I want you to use AI. And you see these Israeli firms that they're hiring for local police departments and for the military, for the FBI, for the CIA. There's a reason they're trying to expand data center capacity. And there's going to be a bubble. They're trying to stop it, but the bubble is going to burst the same way the dot-com bubble burst with artificial intelligence. And we're going to have a bunch of data centers that we're not going to have a use for. Data centers aren't new. AI isn't new. It's just a marketing rebrand. The chat boxes and all that, that's not all AI. It's a fancy new way to describe something we've already had, algorithms, computer algorithms. They're not new. But what is new is trying to use it to enhance the surveillance state enhance repression on political movements, and internally colonize post-industrial communities. You look at where I grew up. I call it the glass belts. Out there, it was all the glass mills and agriculture and textiles, and a lot of that's been stolen. And you have displaced communities or people that are from, say, where I'm from, from Puerto Rico or from other parts of the world, that they were displaced because of poverty. they end up there, they are able to climb the ladder, all that's stolen from them. And that, that they're, you know, they're desperate. So the leaders of those communities sell them out and they they'll take anything. And you can apply that model to the post-industrial United States. You can apply it to Puerto Rico. You can apply it to our neighbors in Camden, New Jersey and Chester, Pennsylvania with their incinerators. Um, the neo-colonial, uh, small-time oligarchs of those post-industrial communities will sell out their people in their most vulnerable communities gleefully. It doesn't matter that you're not going to be able to even gentrify that area if you want to. Who wants to live next to a data center? Who wants to live next to an incinerator? They don't care. They make a little bit of money, and that's all that really matters at the end of the day. That's all they care about. So when it comes to the increase of data centers, it's for the sake of empire. It's for the sake of empire, no matter how you spin it, because they know that the data centers are going to have a bubble burst. So what are they going to use this infrastructure for? Increasing the surveillance state. And they're already trying to manufacture consent for it as long as this new administration has been in office to try and enhance the surveillance state, to try and enhance the surveillance state against immigrants, against Antifa, against whoever they want. So it's a big crisis and we're seeing a lot of communities that otherwise would not have been radicalized or getting engaged in their local politics get very engaged very quick because they have a lot to lose their clean drinking water, clean air, what have you. So this data center stuff should be viewed as a form of internal colonialism on post-industrial and rural communities. wherever they're putting them?

Vanessa Maria Graber: Yeah, so in Puerto Rico, there is a very fragile and dysfunctional electrical grid, and it results in a lot of blackouts and reductions in the amount of power people can use. They're called the Apagones, Patani made a song about it. And so people live with rolling blackouts in Puerto Rico. This is also a problem in Cuba as well. The reason why there are not a lot of AI data centers is because they consume so much energy. And in Puerto Rico, it's very hard to build these things with the high cost of energy because Luma, a private firm from the United States, controls the electricity. In Puerto Rico, it's no longer a public utility. And it's very, very expensive. It has the highest energy rates of all of the United States. And so it doesn't become viable overnight. like places like Violin that have more stable energy infrastructure. However, another problem that persists in Puerto Rico is the arrival of the crypto colonizers or the crypto bros, right, who are benefiting from Act 60, which is legislation that allows Americans to come to the United States and start businesses and not pay taxes. And so that is why a lot of people involved in the cryptocurrency market have moved to Puerto Rico and have started building blockchain in Puerto Rico. And this is already showing people, the public, that it's consuming a large amount of energy. people don't want it there, right? Like not only are they making millions and not paying their fair share, but they're also building blockchain and using up a unreasonable amount of energy when the people of the United States, or sorry, of Puerto Rico already have limited access to stable electrical power. And at the same time, the government, is really opposed to incentivizing solar infrastructure and pouring resources into renewable energy like wind and solar. And Puerto Rico has endless amounts of sunshine. So why are we importing instead natural gas fracked from our state of Pennsylvania, putting it on ships? and sending it to Puerto Rico when we could be investing in solar infrastructure. Again, that would mean that Puerto Rico would not be energy dependent on the United States. The fossil fuel companies would lose a market. And so that is why they allow policies like Act 60, they allow these blockchain which is like another form of like a data center to exist on the island and why they're preventing innovators of solar energy from the expanding markets in Puerto Rico.

Justin Roig: Something very important to point out about Puerto Rico, too, is that it has a very delicate water cycle. The Carso, the Carse, in the north of the island, part of the town where Vanessa is from, actually, is integral to the entire island's water cycle. Puerto Rico is actually, can be a very dry place. And with climate change has gotten worse. The reason that it's, you know, it can be so lush and green is because of this karst, the underground water table. And if things like blockchain, things like these projects and the develop, even just residential development for these large millionaire homes, they're trying to build for your Jake and Logan Pauls and these other people that we don't need over there. take a lot of the water out. And when you factor the fact that we get less rain with climate change, that you are draining the water table and the island's ability to sustain itself very quickly. You turn very fertile, enriched agricultural land and soil, and you deplete the water and what have you. You're not going to be able to feed the people, you're not going to be able to sustain the island ecologically. And that very quickly turns into human disaster.

Vanessa Maria Graber: Yeah, one thing I'll just add is that for people that are not aware, President Obama signed a bill called Promesa, which instituted a fiscal control board which oversees Puerto Rico's economy. And they are not elected. Many of them are not Puerto Rican even. They initially started with Wall Street hedge fund owners.

Justin Roig: The same people who had the bonds in the Puerto Rican government that failed.

Vanessa Maria Graber: Correct. And this entity supersedes the local Puerto Rican government. And at times they are working together, but other times they are opposed and there's nothing that the local government can do to to change the policy and the austerity measures imposed by this fiscal control board. Oddly enough, Trump fired a bunch of the Democrat appointees and they are now, you know, these Wall Street executives are now suing Trump for the ability to rule Puerto Rico. But this is another form of colonization, right? Like how, in what state could you impose a fiscal control board of people not from that state to control all of the economic decisions of that state, right? You couldn't do that here. There would be madness. But that is exactly what they're doing in Puerto Rico. And this is the entity that has cut funding for schools and universities and, you know, cut funding for health care and many, many other social programs. And I think, again, it's important to see the governance structure so people understand, like, why are they doing this? Well, some decisions can be managed at the local level, but many, if not most, are superseded by the colonial government vis-a-vis this fiscal control board.

Sterling: I feel like you bring stuff up that I'm like, what? How? Really?

Justin Roig: It's very important to point out as much as we can think about the local Puerto Rican government being corrupt as all hell, even if people on the island somehow get over the voter suppression and the election rigging and the election stealing and elect a competent and well-run government. That'd be an improvement, but as long as the Fiscal Control Board exists... They can't re, I can't say nationalize, they can't bring back the electric utility back into public ownership. They would still be forced under this control board to switch it from Luma to another company. And as long as the fiscal control board says, you gotta privatize this, you gotta make these charter schools, as long as they're there, they can make that decision. And there's nothing the local officials can do about it under, as long as they're operating within that governmental framework. And as long as that's allowed to exist. So people can blame the Puerto Rican officials all they want, rightfully so, because they are very willing compradors to this arrangement. But even if we elect the good guys, the good guys aren't going to be able to do jack. And when it comes to Obama, Obama lost a lot of for the Democratic Party with Promesa because he was loved by Puerto Ricans. He visited Puerto Rico, the Partido Popular Democrático, who was elected in the time when he was running for office. They loved him. Puerto Ricans loved Obama. He came to visit. That was enough for them. A lot of presidents don't even visit Puerto Rico. And then threw that goodwill out almost instantaneously, as you were saying.

Vanessa Maria Graber: Well, it's not just Obama. There really have never been any policies championed by Democrats that leads to Puerto Rican sovereignty or ending its colonial status. There's not a single senator that supports either statehood or independence, for example. And there was opportunities in the Biden administration to repeal Promesa and many other policies. And a lot of people ask, you know, why don't you support the Democrats? Because under a capitalist imperialist system, both parties uphold colonialism for Puerto Rico, but also imperialism all around the world, right? Both parties parties are funding the U.S. military war machine, and both parties collaborate with the military industrial complex and fossil fuel companies, right? And so again, your favorite Democrat probably takes corporate PAC money from many of these bad actors that are doing really shady, detrimental, harmful stuff, both in your backyard and places like Vineland and in Puerto Rico and abroad. And I think that many times, even when we see Puerto Ricans like Nydia Velasquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others, we want to align with them so bad because we don't have representation. And anytime we see ourselves reflected in somebody, we really have this innate desire to connect with them. And there's a cognitive dissonance we suffer when we find out that they're actually, you know, part of the empire's machine. And it's a tough pill to swallow. And at the same time, there is a long history of terrorism and, you know, human rights violations towards all of the leaders in Puerto Rico organizing for independence and sovereignty. There are so many instances where people were arrested, disappeared and even killed for organizing for independence. A gag law was even passed that did not allow Puerto Ricans to even mention Puerto Rico's independence without being sent to jail. And so that is why the independence movement has been crippled in Puerto Rico. A lot of the things that are happening to immigrants now, that happened in Puerto Rico a long time ago.

Justin Roig: There was a saying that, you know, people say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. What happened in Puerto Rico didn't happen at all, too, because there was such a media blackout to the United States or even within Puerto Rico and in a coordinated effort to manufacture consent for these things that happened, to pretend they didn't happen at all or minimize them and make sure they didn't make news in the headline news in the United States because people would say, why are y'all just massacring people? That's interesting because then people start asking questions.

Vanessa Maria Graber: And yeah, the First Amendment did not apply in Puerto Rico, right? So that's another one of the ways in which people living in the archipelago don't have the same rights and privileges as Americans born in the United States. And that is why you see so many people that are pro-independence leave Puerto Rico and be able to organize in places like New York and Chicago and Philadelphia. because they were not allowed to. They were more at risk in Puerto Rico doing that work than they were here in the United States. And I guess, again, history is so important. I see all the books behind you. You know, The War Against Puerto Ricans by Nelson Dennis. I recommend people start there, although you should probably... you know, take it in bits and listen with your favorite music in between. Because it is shocking. It is very sad. But it's really important to know this history to be able to contextualize why we are here, why our people still continue to live in poverty, suffer gentrification, and have a lot of these other social problems that we still haven't solved. And And also when looking at other countries that are still impacted by colonialism, you'll see a lot of similarities. We've had some good conversations with our Filipino brothers and sisters because they were colonized by Spain as well. And so there is a shared history there and definitely a shared trauma of being colonized by these nations and then recolonized by the United States. And so there's a really great book called The Latinos of Asia, which document all of that and like why we have so much in common and why we should have that solidarity with one another.

Justin Roig: It's the reason we all got triangular flags. It's literally not an accident. Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines. It was from shared communication against Spanish rule in the 1890s and 1880s.

Vanessa Maria Graber: Yeah, we've covered a lot. Shout out to everyone in the chat making some really great points on YouTube. I'm seeing your comments. Keep it coming. We learn just as much from you all. So when we do education, we come as facilitators, but we learn just as much from the participants who teach us. And that is the beauty of having these exchanges. And a lot of the facts and insights people are putting in there are really, really great and learning so much. But, you know, because I'm a media activist too in my full-time job at Free Press, people kept asking, talk about the media's complicity. And again, we could teach a whole semester on this. But it really boils down to this simple thing, which is that media, even though I believe media can be a tool for social justice, media is also a tool of empire. and media consolidation control of the media as we're seeing all of these mergers happen right and these battles to control the message um is because it's it is a way to control the masses right there there is a direct connection you know like i said with these false narratives and you revisionist histories, they need to manufacture consent, right? So shout out to Noam Chomsky, wrote a whole book on the ways in which media and corporations work together to manufacture consent. And at the local level, It's really simple. White men control most of the media here and our newsrooms lack representation. There are very few journalists of color working in mainstream media. The people who work at the Inquirer, who work at 6 ABC and NBC 10 and all those corporate media, they are censored. And probably the biggest form of censorship is self-censorship because their contracts are being renewed. Their hours are being reduced because with all this media consolidation, there's more layoffs. They're transitioning people from full-time jobs. to part-time. And so people are really scared to say or do anything that's gonna cost them their job. And there's a huge amount of racism that's involved in the editorial process where headlines get rewritten, the captions are really shady. We saw recently a photo of a black woman who was a victim to a real estate scammer was posted on the inquires page. And everyone was like, why are you posting the victim with the headline that says that this is a predator? And that's the kind of stuff that they do all the time.

Speaker 1: All the time.

Vanessa Maria Graber: Right. And, you know, it's inherently racist. And that's because there probably are no black editors there. Right. Making that decision. And for a few years, I was president of the local chapter of the Hispanic Association or the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. I worked together with the Philly black journalists and the Asian American journalists. We were all experiencing the same thing, which is lack of jobs and opportunities. We weren't able to get promoted into leadership positions. We weren't able to make editorial decisions. Our headlines and our content was being rewritten to serve white audiences and that the majority of those white audiences are from affluent areas outside of the city. And so even our public media, and I hate to say this because there's some great friends I have at WHYY, but it's no secret that the majority of their members and donors come from the main line. And those are the people they seek to serve when they're creating content. People say, why don't you like NPR? Why don't you? I'm like, point me to the Puerto Rican program. And I'll tune in. Oh, there isn't one? Is there any Spanish language?

Justin Roig: Vanessa, I was going to say, rest in peace, the Puerto Rican panorama. That was all I was getting.

Vanessa Maria Graber: That actually was not on public media. It was on ABC. Right. And so... we don't have control and access to the media, which means we don't have control and access to the narrative. And a lot of these reporters who are especially, you know, there's a generational difference too, I want to say, these older veteran reporters have a lot of harmful practices. And that's because these journalism schools, and I say this having taught at places like Temple, create an entire curriculum that's training people to serve corporate media, to work in corporate media. And these Western ideas of journalism ethics are BS. They are for profit making. It is not about serving the communities, engaging the communities, being accountable to them, and even telling the truth. And when I traveled around the world doing that research, That is what I found out, is that our ideas of ethics that we impose on everyone through our development programs and U.S. aid are only meant to serve U.S. imperialism, right? They're trying to create corporate media all around the world. Guess who's working with people? I guess who's working with the US government in Venezuela? The white right wing corporate media owners. Look up Gustavo Cisueros, who owns most of the media there. So again, the media as it stands, the corporate media, does not serve us. Even though we're in a city that's majority black and brown, our media doesn't reflect that. And there is a real complicity, right? And also, a lot of people don't know this little factoid, but 6 ABC innovated the crime coverage. The reason why we have reporters chasing down the scenes of homicides and car crashes and things like that is because 6ABC did it first. They wanted to win the ratings war. So they started monitoring police scanners and racing to the scene as a crime. And that was extremely profitable. It continues to be extremely profitable. And there's a whole history and legacy of harm and exploitation against our communities, which they profited from. The very first news articles, which many of which were in Philadelphia, you know, thanks to people like Ben Franklin. But a lot of the newspapers that were first in the United States were here in Philly and the East Coast and Boston and New York. they were stories about uncivilized uh indigenous people right so the first opportunity they had to make media they used it to demonize the genocide of indigenous people Many of these papers that have been in existence for hundreds of years had articles demonizing Black people, had ads that were selling slaves in the marketplace. And so the very foundations of some of these institutions are inherently racist. And so it's going to be very hard, if not impossible, for them to break free from that when they've profited off our exploitation for more than 100 years. And for the longest time, women were not allowed to be in newsrooms or be journalists or be a part of anything. And so if you're wondering, like, well, why is the media fucked up today? Well, that's why. And that's why I became a media activist, because the lies that were being told about the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan manufactured consent and support for the war. It was considered unpatriotic to oppose those wars. And it was lies that the media was responsible for circulating. And for me, the light bulb went off. I was like, wait a minute. they're doing it on purpose, right? And the discomfort that you sit with when you're like, this is not what I thought it was. And so that's why we created WPPM, our community radio station. We're on the Pacifica network. We include the voices of marginalized people, working class people. That's why we started our own newsroom, the hall monitor. And that's why we do this political education. We recommend people watch books. We do a lot of documentary film showings. There's many different ways you can use media in order to learn that is outside of this system. And the number one way we learn is by teaching each other, right? Like the stories that we tell and the information that we share. But If you feel that the media in Philly is not representative, stop clicking on their stuff, stop sharing their articles, you know, stop subscribing, stop watching. Like you have to tune out. And one of the biggest resources we have is to boycott and to not continue to make it profitable for them to tell these lies and to share these racist narratives.

Speaker 1: awesome thank you so much this has been great and chat like you said shout out to all the folks in the chat there's been a lot of great discussion going on in there um a lot of great points made uh is there anything that you all kind of want to say as we wind down places people can connect with y'all i'll pull up the instagram again so people can see that um as we mentioned you do have an event next week um and sterling is there anything else you wanted to kind of say uh

Sterling: Yeah, I feel like there's some stuff around that we should come back to around the Puerto Rican Alliance. I feel like some of that stuff is like, you got to come back. But let's talk about some of the resistance in another time. But no, just thank you so much, Justin and Vanessa. This is amazing. This is really good. Really appreciate it. Yes.

Justin Roig: Thank you for having us on. There's one thing I want to comment, I want to highlight from, you know, He's pointing out the great migration of Black folks in the South, particularly the way World War II into the post-war era. Yep, right there. Happened the same time as the Puerto Rican, what we also call the Puerto Rican Great Migration, which we call the, we can discuss this another time, the second wave of migration, Puerto Rican migration to the United States after Operation Bootstrap. The same time a lot of people went for industrial jobs in the North and Midwest, the West Coast is when Puerto Ricans were moving to the Northeast and Midwest. And there's a reason why there is a big overlap in New York City, probably most of all, but even in Philadelphia between black and Latino and black and Puerto Rican, where you see that sometimes black and immigrant populations make it be combative towards each other. And that happens where you can see there is a big overlap in the city. uh, with black, with black and Puerto Rican communities and in this region. And it's very, there's a reason why it's because a lot of us came here at the same time together.

Speaker 1: Yeah, no, there's a, there's a lot more that we could cover, but yeah, go ahead, Vanessa. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa Maria Graber: I just want to thank you for the, for the opportunity for folks that missed the beginning. We have a virtual online panel on December 17th at 7 PM. Uh, the info is on our, our Instagram and our Facebook pages. You can follow us at Philly Bogequas. It's free to attend. It will be recorded. So if you can't attend then, you can check out the video in post. We're hoping nothing happens before then. But we really don't know. And I just want to say that these cross-cultural conversations are super important. And I don't want to be alarmist, but... Um, the events that unfolded in 2025 and like the, just the daily relentless attacks, um, on, on our immigrant brothers and sisters on, on journalists and on, on people organizing, uh, uh, for Palestinian liberation and environmental, the list goes on. Um, they're going to increase, they're going to intensify, right? Like we're, we're seeing late stage capitalism. We're seeing white supremacists do everything. in their power to cling on to control and as leftists we really need to put aside our bullshit and form up right we need to form up we need to get our ish together and and figure out how we're going to communicate and defend um against these attacks and uh if ice escalates their attacks and in philadelphia um you know philly body goes like we're going to be there for our immigrant brothers and sisters if the national guard comes to kensington like we have to really think about these things and and think about how how we can show up and be in solidarity in 2027 and even if we plan and and we kind of um come up with these And since you see plans and nothing happens, um, it will not be time wasted. It will be time well spent building relationships, building bridges, but only the community can save the community, right? Puerto Ricans know that better than anybody. So I look forward to forming up with you guys and staying in contact and, and working together to defeat the fascists and. to continue to have joy. Because one thing about Puerto Ricans is we're still gonna laugh. We're still gonna listen to music. We're still going to eat good food together, no matter what happens. So thank you so much for having this conversation with us.

Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. This was great. A lot of really good information shared and history and contemporary struggles. And so really appreciate it. Yeah, it's been great. Thank you.