Puerto Rico is Not for Sale - November Fundraiser

The people of Puerto Rico, the Virgin islands, Cuba, Dominica and Barbuda have been devastated by a series of hurricanes that are in fact, acts of climate violence, storms incubated by warming oceans, the result of reckless use of fossil fuels.  But we are no longer dying of hurricane. We are dying of colony.  As Carmen Yulín Cruz, brave and beloved mayor of San Juan told reporters, the aftermath of this storm “amounts to genocide.”

Six weeks after Hurricane Maria, most people in Puerto Rico still lack safe drinking water and electricity, and their jobs and crops have blown away, along with any illusion that US citizenship provides protection.  People are starving while donated supplies sit in warehouses, FEMA officials sit in hotel bars, and predatory speculators try to buy up broken property cheap from people who have lost their livelihoods.  The water is contaminated with sewage, dead animals, and chemical leaks from destroyed businesses and toxic waste dumps.  Flooded houses are now filled with mold.  Inadequate shelter, hunger, a lack of clean water to drink or bathe in, and the shock of so much loss is causing widespread health problems, but the medical system has collapsed.  Meanwhile, criminals are offered contracts to steal what’s left under the guise of rebuilding an unsustainable power grid nobody but the oil companies wants.

And in the midst of so much ruin, like a lamp burning on just a drop of oil, my people are building communal kitchens to share food and information. Farmers who planted root crops are digging them up to feed their neighbors. Neighborhood brigades are removing rubble, cleaning houses, planting gardens, and a portable solar theater is showing movies about possibility, projected onto broken walls. US Puerto Ricans and our allies fill planes and boats, meet our own shipments so they don’t disappear, load them into trucks and drive them ourselves into rural communities that have yet to see any other help.  And people are talking about planting food instead of cash crops, solar grids instead of power lines, about canceling the fake debt, abolishing the nefarious Jones Act, revoking the powers of the Junta of Fiscal Plunder established by the PROMESA Act, because enough is finally enough.  
             
Sometimes a drop of oil, or courage, or hope, is all it takes.   

Through the generous solidarity of Narrow Bridge Candles, you can add a drop of oil to our lamps. When you light your menorah, you will also be lighting solar lanterns in dark homes, and delivering water filters to thirsty communities. Water, light and a vision of possibility.  Isn’t that what Hanukah is all about?

-- Aurora Levins Morales

(Read more by Aurora on her website and support her work on her Patreon page.)

As part of Narrow Bridge Candles' commitment to liberatory ritual and decolonization, 100% of sales from all 6" Havdallah Candles ordered in the month of November will go directly to ISER Caribe, a Puerto Rican organization committed to building a sustainable and resilient Puerto Rico.