As our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico still struggle to recover from last September's devastating Hurricane Maria, they're also in a struggle to maintain their public infrastructure, from schools to roads to their public electric system. Much like after Hurricane Katrina, opportunists -- "disaster capitalists" -- have descended on the island to try to privatize the most basic of local government services.
With the commonwealth's government, led by Trump coddler Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, either standing aside or partnering with these disaster capitalists, many are pessimistic about Puerto Rico's return to a semblance of "normalcy":
"Even when these residents get their power and clean water restored, the future doesn’t look bright for Puerto Rico. Among many changes for the worse, the government wants to cut retirement benefits, loosen pro-worker labor laws, and close schools.
And if that wasn’t enough, the Atlantic hurricane season begins in less than a month — on June 1 — and Puerto Rico is still far from getting the lights back on for the entire island. [snip]
Residents of Puerto Rico have demonstrated incredible patience over the past seven months since Hurricane Maria struck the island. On May 1, though, Puerto Ricans decided enough was enough. They protested the government’s botched recovery effort and the government’s proposed spending cuts on basic needs.
The residents — organized by unions, community, education, political, environmental, and religious organizations — also protested efforts to use the hurricane as an excuse to privatize government services on the island. [snip]
'The disaster capitalists, the Trump administration and even leaders in our own local government want to force the people of Puerto Rico to sell off our public assets in order to meet unjust debt obligations to international banks,' Jose Menendez, chair of the Puerto Rican chapter of the Sierra Club, said in a statement this week. 'We will not allow Hurricanes Maria and Irma to be used as an excuse to rob the people of Puerto Rico of our most valuable assets.'”This is happening in America, to our fellow citizens. It's disgraceful and it has to stop.
