La Mesa Boricua:
Talking Points Memo

Joe Biden last week published the most comprehensive plan to address the issues facing Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans of any presidential candidate in history. 

The plan was the first campaign white paper in memory that presents a vision addressing fundamental issues around prosperity and economic growth in Puerto Rico. It seeks to restore the island to one of strong middle-class families, thriving business, an expanding population, and a positive outlook for the future.

School funding, Covid-19 relief, disaster management, infrastructure, energy policy, public assistance parity, and public debt relief were all given attention in the wide-ranging document.

Talking points:

• While attention to Puerto Rico has grown exponentially following Donald Trump’s disastrous response to the destruction caused by Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans are not defined by that tragedy. Presenting a comprehensive plan for Puerto Rico and an expansive set of promises, the Biden campaign showed it understands that, and understands our true needs, wants, hopes and dreams.
• Some detractors will point out the plan does not resolve the status issue definitively one way or another. But by putting forward a comprehensive plan that, if enacted, will raise Puerto Rico’s economy and standard of living to levels not seen this millennium, the plan could do more than any other promise to resolve that burning question in Puerto Rican politics once and for all.
• Puerto Rican voters in the mainland have been given the same potent emotion that prompted so many of us, and so many Latinos in Florida and elsewhere, to cast our ballots overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012: hope.

Roberto Clemente was celebrated this month by Major League Baseball, in a media campaign encouraged by Puerto Rican professional baseball players looking to honor the legacy of the civil rights, humanitarian, and sports icon.

In honor of Clemente, players were encouraged to wear his jersey number, 21, for one day. Calls to retire the number leaguewide afterward, as is the case with African-American Hall of Famer and civil rights icon Jackie Robinson, were heightened by the attention. 

The celebration of Clemente nationally coincided with the successful conclusion of a years-long campaign to rename one of Orange County’s 200 public schools after the sports hero. Alianza for Progress and allied organizations mobilized thousands of stakeholders in the community, overcoming a bureaucratic stalemate that had prevented a middle school named after Confederate general Stonewall Jackson from being renamed. 

A robust effort to turn out the community resulted in a unanimous nod by the School Board, changing Jackson to Clemente.

Coming at a time of heightened discussions about social justice from sports leagues, the attention has brought into sharp focus Clemente’s history of advocating for the socioeconomically disadvantaged and those held back by racism.

Talking Points:

• Roberto Clemente was not just a sports legend. He was a civil rights icon, veteran, and American hero. As an Afro-Latino breaking barriers in American society, he led the way for so many within and outside our community. His name is unimpeachable
• At a time where our diverse communities are finally erasing the stain of having monuments and institutions that honor the Confederacy, there is a supreme justice in renaming those institutions for civil rights icons. That is the justice we recently saw in Orange County.
• The names of our institutions are important to our community. They are a matter of pride. When our children walk into a school named by someone notable who shares their heritage, it makes a difference.

Made worse by the economic crisis around coronavirus, the housing situation of some of the most vulnerable workers in Central Florida, who live in slum conditions at run-down motels, is getting national attention.

The Washington Post recently profiled a Puerto Rican high school senior living in what it describes as some of the worst housing conditions in the Orlando area: a motel that had been abandoned by its owners, and is rife with mold, cockroaches, bedbugs, drug use, prostitution and even open sewage issues. With the Orlando-area unemployment among the highest in the state of Florida, vulnerable workers are suffering the most, including many Puerto Ricans laid off from the hospitality industry.

This is not a new experience for our community. In 2017, in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, many Puerto Ricans who arrived in Central Florida, spent months living in sub-optimal conditions in crowded motels, and saw payments to keep them from becoming homeless become a political football.

Talking points:

• The Covid-19 economic crisis has hit us worst than almost any other group. Because so many in our community are recently arrived and therefore might not have held a job for more than a few years, because so many of us work in hospitality, because our community’s core is in hard-hit Central Florida, our families have been exceptionally hurt by joblessness and want. This inequality in how the crisis has affected us versus other communities needs to be recognized and addressed.
• As leaders make promises in the waning days of the 2020 campaign to earn our community’s vote, we encourage them to look at the needs of the poorest amongst us, including the near-homeless workers living in slum and blight conditions in Central Florida
• It is not OK to consistently see our people relegated to unsanitary motels. We deserve better.

The closely-watched race for Pinellas County Sheriff was already an important one for Florida Puerto Ricans, who had known and supported Democratic nominee Eliseo Santana through previous failed efforts at public office. Now, coming in the midst of a national reckoning on racial justice, the contest is setting the pace on issues of national import.

The formidable nine-year Republican incumbent is not just well-connected in county and state politics, but has held firm on status quo arguments that minimize the importance of multicultural representation in leadership positions and deny that the police in the county ever use excessive force.

As a challenger, Santana is pushing a more progressive vision of policing that emphasizes respect for all cultures, use of body cameras, de-escalation, and community accountability.

Talking points:

• Eliseo Santana’s bid for county-wide office, having already won a contested primary, further solidify that Puerto Ricans running for office can and do appeal to wide constituencies. We are not just limited to running in heavily Puerto Rican enclaves or on Puerto Rican issues.
• Santana’s campaign has already had an effect moving the Sheriff’s office in a more progressive direction, including recent promotions that prioritized diversity and the reversal of previous policy on “no-knock warrants.”
• We have and can create wide coalitions with other progressive-policy-minded groups, including those with national impact.

Puerto Rican leaders in Miami and the top of Miami-Dade County’s political leadership took part in a rare Covid-era public event earlier this month to break ground on the site that will eventually house the Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce office’s. The project is over ten years in planning and expected to come to fruition next year.

In a prime corner within the ancestral boricua neighborhood of Wynwood in Miami, the project will not only be a home for an organization that provides economic empowerment and assistance to Puerto Rican business, but also a hub for culture and advocacy.

Talking points:

• As our community reaches economic and political maturity throughout Florida, it becomes vital to have a base of operations where advocacy, mutual assistance and promotion of pride in our culture can take center stage.
• Local leaders in South Florida now pay attention to our community because we have shown our clout, both in our numbers and the volume of our voices.