Holi listeners! This is part two of the activist episode -- focusing on real-time movements happening on the island. In this episode, Becca speaks with writer, educator, and activist Beatriz Llenín Figueroa of the Defiende Cabo Rojo coalition and Hugo Delgado, a physics teacher, newspaper editor, and member of the Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadores. Figueroa connects environmental justice with feminist, queer, anti-colonial, and anti-racist struggles and details opposition to Esencia, an ultra-luxury “private city” proposed for about 2,000 acres in Cabo Rojo, including protected lands, endangered species habitat, and over 100 archaeological sites. Delgado discusses intensified colonial control under the fiscal control board, defunding and political intervention at the University of Puerto Rico, privatization and charter schools, rising tuition, weakened campus organizing spaces, student hunger, and calls for organizing and diaspora solidarity.

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SHOW NOTES:

• @defendpr
• @mikey.cordero
• @con.sentimientospr
• @alianamarga
• Unmasking PROMESA: The unelected board perpetuating colonialism in Puerto Rico (The Real News Network)
• What is Esencia and what will happen to Puerto Rico if this is constructed? (MR Online)
• @diaspo.rico
• About Law 82
• Defiende Cabo Rojo
• Sierra Club de Puerto Rico