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The struggle continues, Rivera one of its victims. The web site prolibertadweb.com calls him and others like him:
"workers and professionals, students and teachers, community organizers, artists, mothers, and fathers of families. They are fighters (for) Puerto Rico's Independence and social justice." They reject colonization and exploitation. They're committed activists for justice, struggling to end it.
Each year for decades, the UN Decolonization Committee approved a draft resolution for Puerto Rican independence, the latest one on June 21:
"calling on the Government of the United States to expedite a process that would allow the Puerto Rican people to exercise fully their right to self-determination and independence, and for the General Assembly formally to consider the situation concerning Puerto Rico, which the world body had not formerly taken up since the Territory's removal from the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories in 1953."
"....a majority of petitioners expressed dissatisfaction today with the commonwealth's treatment by the United States, arguing that the administering Power was hampering Puerto Rican decolonization initiatives and those of civil society....(America) continue(s) acting as a colonizing Power over a country with its own cultural identity."
Background on Rivera
Born in 1943 in San Sebastian, Puerto Rico, he moved to America at age 12, then two years later to Chicago to live with his sister. A decorated Vietnam veteran, he returned home to his Puerto Rican community, plagued by unemployment, drugs, police brutality, and dire levels of healthcare, education, and other essential social services - issues he was determined to address.
He helped create the Puerto Rican High School and Cultural Center. He co-founded the Rafael Cancel Miranda High School (now called Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School). He worked for public school bilingual education, for universities to admit more Latino students and hire Latino faculty and staff, and for Chicago area corporations, like Illinois Bell, People's Gas and Commonwealth Edison, to end discriminatory hiring.
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