La Mesa Boricua:
Talking Points Memo

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La Mesa, a coalition of Florida non-profit and community advocates, wants you to be informed as to how our people are having an impact.

We are guided by Five Bold Steps to action: create a physical presence in every county with a large Puerto Rican community, increase political representation, develop a common issues platform for our community, control our narrative and develop leadership. Our goal is to build power for Puerto Ricans and Latinos in the state of Florida.

We’ll be updating you on some of the latest happenings catching our attention in the state and beyond, with a focus on how boricuas are having an impact. Here’s an update for the week of August 31.

In this issue

National News

Statewide

A federal court found denying Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico access to welfare benefits is unconstitutional. This is an assertion of citizenship rights well overdue in 2020.

Read More

National News

National

Progressive allies supported by our member organizations had a string of electoral victories last month. We are building power because our time is now.

Read More

Puerto Rico News

Puerto Rico

The Congress-mandated board that oversees Puerto Rico’s finances continues to face unsettling developments. Now is the time to ask hard questions about its future.

Read More

Puerto Rico News

Orlando

Seeing a lag in the count, Puerto Rican organizations are pushing hard for participation in the upcoming decennial Census. While fighting the battles in front of us, we are looking forward to the next ten years.

Read More

Puerto Rico News

Miami

In spite of brushbacks, at least one Puerto Rican chef in Miami is raising the flag against Goya. A White House effort to make this issue toxic does not take away from the fact that we demand respect.

Read More

Out of State

Out-of-State focus

Connecticut

Puerto Ricans are taking center-stage in demanding criminal justice reform and respect for Black lives. We are fighting this fight because if any communities are unsafe, we are all unsafe.

Read More

The latest

Statewide

Puerto Rican candidates and their allies, had a string of electoral victories last month that extended across the state. Central Florida remained a power base. But victories in Southwest and South Florida showed the impact we can have is growing.

Among others, Eliseo Santana won the Democratic primary for Pinellas County Sheriff and Marcos Lopez won the Democratic primary for Osceola County Sheriff. They are poised to become the first Latino sheriffs in Florida history. Alexandria Ayala, who won a seat on the non-partisan Palm Beach School Board, became the first Hispanic ever elected to that body and one of the first Latina elected officials in that county’s history. An ally of our community, Monique Worrell, beat out three opponents in a bid to take the State Attorney’s office in Orlando in a decisively progressive path.

Another strong ally, incumbent commissioner Peggy Choudry, battled two other Democrats and retained her seat in Osceola County. Boricua Emily Bonilla retained her non-partisan seat in Orange County. Former state representative Amy Mercado solidified a new career as a county property appraiser in Orange.

No notable Puerto Rican candidates won any Republican primaries. There are, however, other Puerto Rican candidates who ran unopposed in both Democratic and Republican Party primaries and will face the voters in November.

Talking points:

  • “We are building power because our time is now.”
  • “Decisive wins against entrenched, Establishment and incumbent candidates demonstrate we are able to build electoral coalitions and challenge the status quo. While the best is yet to come, we are at a level of political maturity in Florida way beyond what we could have dreamed of attaining a decade ago.”
  • “Countywide victories across various parts of the state show Puerto Rican candidates, and those who support our agenda, are no longer relegated to gerrymandered or provincial Puerto Rican-majority seats.”

National

A federal court in Boston ruled the long-held Congressional practice of providing lesser welfare benefits to the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico is unconstitutional. If it stands further appeals, the decision would bring parity to those on the island receiving supplemental Social Security income, food stamps, and healthcare subsidies.

Legal observers had seen the possibility of the court ruling in this manner as a long shot. It is likely the decision, and ongoing litigation, will ignite questions about Puerto Rico’s political status, and perhaps even the citizenship rights of those born on the island.

Talking points:

  • “This decision is an overdue recognition of Puerto Rican’s status as second-class citizens, which pervades our political relationships.”
  • “There is a historic relationship between racism and differential treatment. Because of the unique moment, we are living through, the courts are more likely to see that.”
  • “This is not an issue about Puerto Rico as a territory but about Puerto Ricans as people. Denying citizens who reside in one part of the United States participation in common social programs, even ones they have contributed to and that others have access to, is discrimination pure and simple.”

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rican candidates and their allies, had a string of electoral victories last month that extended across the state. Central Florida remained a power base. But victories in Southwest and South Florida showed the impact we can have is growing.

Among others, Eliseo Santana won the Democratic primary for Pinellas County Sheriff and Marcos Lopez won the Democratic primary for Osceola County Sheriff. They are poised to become the first Latino sheriffs in Florida history. Alexandria Ayala, who won a seat on the non-partisan Palm Beach School Board, became the first Hispanic ever elected to that body and one of the first Latina elected officials in that county’s history. An ally of our community, Monique Worrell, beat out three opponents in a bid to take the State Attorney’s office in Orlando in a decisively progressive path.

Another strong ally, incumbent commissioner Peggy Choudry, battled two other Democrats and retained her seat in Osceola County. Boricua Emily Bonilla retained her non-partisan seat in Orange County. Former state representative Amy Mercado solidified a new career as a county property appraiser in Orange.

No notable Puerto Rican candidates won any Republican primaries. There are, however, other Puerto Rican candidates who ran unopposed in both Democratic and Republican Party primaries and will face the voters in November.

Talking points:

  • “We are building power because our time is now.”
  • “Decisive wins against entrenched, Establishment and incumbent candidates demonstrate we are able to build electoral coalitions and challenge the status quo. While the best is yet to come, we are at a level of political maturity in Florida way beyond what we could have dreamed of attaining a decade ago.”
  • “Countywide victories across various parts of the state show Puerto Rican candidates, and those who support our agenda, are no longer relegated to gerrymandered or provincial Puerto Rican-majority seats.”

Orlando

Elected officials and non-profit groups in Orange County, where the Census is lagging in response rates, are sounding the alarm and asking for a concerted push to complete the decennial count.

La Mesa — and affiliated groups such as Latino Justice PRLEDF, the Florida Immigrant Coalition, and Del Ambiente —  have been messaging on this issue for months, addressing not just the language barrier that leads to lower response rates, but thorny questions about racial identification and legal marriage status that also affect our communities.

Here is an event held earlier this year to address many of these issues.

Talking Points:

  • “Time is running out. The Trump administration has done everything possible to shorten the count, in spite of pandemic concerns, which will negatively impact our communities the most.”
  • “We must tackle this issue in our communities and local governments, as the federal government clearly has no interest in having a fair count.”
  • “Identifying ourselves properly, in terms of ethnicity, is vital to visibility and power.”

Miami

A Miami and Los Angeles-based chef is taking the spotlight for her principled stand against using Goya products, after deeply offensive comments by the CEO of that company last month prompted calls for boycotts. Other celebrity chefs in Miami, including chef Jose Andres, have also joined calls against Goya.

Several member organizations of La Mesa have been messaging on this issue successfully. Calls for a boycott of Goya have been successful enough to merit a White House brushback.

Talking points:

  • “Praise for an administration that daily supports racist, deadly policies against Latinos is a betrayal by Goya of its customer base.”
  • “This is not the first time Goya decides to play hard-ball politics with our community. In 2017, they pulled out as a sponsor of the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York over political differences. Goya decided to put its brand in jeopardy by playing politics against the interests of its consumers. They brought this on themselves.”
  • “We are the ones who made Goya’s owners wealthy enough to share the stage with U.S. presidents. Our voice and values matter.”

Out-of-State Focus:

Connecticut

Latinos nationally back the Black Lives Matter movement.

But perhaps that is nowhere more poignant than in the streets of Hartford, Connecticut. With a significant number of Puerto Ricans living in that community and an active legislative caucus in the state House that deals with “Black and Puerto Rican” issues.

Talking Points:

  • Tu lucha es mi lucha. The struggle for equality and survival in a racist justice system is a lived experience for both Black and Latino communities.”
  • “Efforts will be made to divide us along ethnic and national origin lines. We cannot let that happen.”
  • “The fact conversations around healthcare, workers’ rights, policing and immigration are colliding is not a fluke. This is the natural result of oppressed people joining together in the struggle.”

Upcoming events

Workshop on Toxic Masculinity in Progressive Spaces

3:00 p.m.

Online

This workshop will address how toxic masculinity affects our movement directly and indirectly. The mission is to create a sisterhood within progressive spaces as we walk towards equality, identifying oppression even in the social justice movement. You can register for free here.

National phone banking day

All Day

From home and you can register free online


Leading into the third commemoration of the day Hurricane María struck Puerto Rico, those in the diaspora and our allied will take action to activate our community. We’ll be making phone calls to and texting current and eligible voters.

Next regular meeting of the Orange County School Board

4:30 p.m.

445 West Amelia Street, Orlando

La Mesa member Alianza has been leading an effort to champion Roberto Clemente’s name as a replacement for a middle school previously named after a Confederate general. Alianza is encouraging residents in Orange County to attend public meetings of the School Board to support this effort.

Our people in the media

Marcos Vilar of Alianza, advocating in the Orlando Sentinel to rename an Orange county school after Roberto Clemente

“The School Board should take the responsibility for renaming the middle school away from the advisory council and rename the middle school in a way that delivers a message of pride to our community: Roberto Clemente Middle School.

And the advisory council needs to sit quietly in the dugout of their own conscience and think about what they’ve done.

By so blatantly opposing the overwhelmingly popular choice of the community, students, and parents who they are supposed to serve, they are making many of us feel, in Clemente’s own words that “to the people here, we are outsiders. Foreigners.”

Frances Colon

Dr. Frances Colón, responding to President Donald Trump's reported comments calling Puerto Rican "Poor" and "Dirty" in the aftermath of hurricane maría.

“Este es un ejemplo más de cómo Trump deshumaniza a los puertorriqueños.

Para él, este grupo de ciudadanos estadounidenses es tan insignificante que se les puede dejar morir en un huracán, se les puede Ilamar obscenidades como “sucios”, y se les puede vender si le incomoda tener que brindarles asistencia.

Lospuertorriqueños están hartos de este trato despreciable y votaremos con el alma en noviembre, por nuestros seres queridos en la isla. Basta.”

Sami Haiman-Marrero

Samí Haiman-Marrero, CEO of diversity marketing firm Urbander, defending sen. Kamala Harris in the Orlando sentinel against racist attacks on her heritage

“Kamala Harris is as American as it gets — exemplifying the American Dream — while being told she’s not American” enough.

And that’s who I am, too, like every single American whose ancestor crossed an ocean to be here. All Americans, including those who have been beaten down and silenced and robbed of their identities, can see themselves reflected in her, except for a shrinking contingency of racists.

She’s the first Black female nominee for vice president. She’s also the first Indian nominee for vice president. And, to many Puerto Ricans like me, with a little DNA from everywhere, she’s the first Boricua nominee for vice president.”

Recently online

With COVID-19 still a significant concern in Florida, many of our allies have taken their advocacy efforts online. In case you missed them, here are some of the most recent ones. You can click on the tile for a video of the event.
Puerto Rico Video
Honoring Roberto Clemente
Cafecito Virtual
Explainer on the U.S. Electoral system
Red de Accion Boricua

Monday — Wednesday at 5 PM

Don’t miss the online broadcast of Red de Acción Boricua for the latest updates from La Mesa.