WAL MART smart robber barons

Su presencia y una carta de Noam Chomsky alegraron el plantón de jóvenes manifestantes

Los dueños de Wall Street, ladrones, gánsters y cleptómanos: Michael Moore

Los ricos ya son demasiado grandes para fracasar y hasta para encarcelarlos, dice el filósofo

Camino al trabajo, las personas pasan por entre los manifestantes que permanecen en plantón en una plaza cercana a Wall StreetFoto Reuters

Un joven manifestante descansa en la hoy llamada Plaza Libertad, donde se protesta contra la avaricia de los financierosFoto Reuters

David Brooks

Corresponsal

Periódico La Jornada
Miércoles 28 de septiembre de 2011, p. 25

Nueva York, 27 de septiembre. El cineasta Michael Moore visitó anoche a los participantes de Ocupa Wall Street, a quienes Noam Chomsky envió un mensaje de apoyo, sumándose a otras figuras que continúan dando un alto perfil a esta pequeña acción que se ha mantenido durante más de una semana en un parque a un par de cuadras de Wall Street.

Entre amenazas de que las autoridades expulsarán a losocupantes del parque, rebautizado Plaza Libertad, el arresto de más de 80 de ellos cuando realizaban una de sus marchas cotidianas, el pasado sábado –con excesivo uso de fuerza, que ya generó denuncias formales contra la policía de Nueva York– y una generosa cobertura de algunos medios masivos, incluso el New York Times, noticieros de televisión y radio locales, además de redes sociales y herramientas como el Livestream, la breve presencia de Moore y la expresión de apoyo de Chomsky alegraron y nutrieron a los jóvenes aquí.

En 100 años la gente recordará que ustedes llegaron a esta plaza e iniciaron este movimiento, declaró el cineasta ante unos 150 manifestantes. Sin megáfonos o sistema de sonido, las palabras de Moore llegaban a todos con la práctica que se utiliza en las llamadasasambleas generales, donde cada fila de personas repite en coro las palabras a los que están atrás, y como ola se trasmite el mensaje.

Han hecho algo muy histórico y muy importante, tenía que suceder en algún lugar, dijo Moore, y recordó que hace unos 11 años él mismo fue detenido frente a Wall Street cuando, junto con Rage Against the Machine, decidió lanzarse contra las puertas de la bolsa de valores.

Moore ofreció sus ideas a la lista de demandas que los manifestantes han estado elaborando en las diarias asambleas generales: Quiero ver a los responsables de la destrucción de millones de vidas esposados y llevados ante la justicia. Otra demanda, agregó, sería hacer que los ricos paguen, fijándoles altos impuestos. Acusó a los dueños de Wall Street: “son ladrones, son gánsters, son cleptómanos; han intentado tomar nuestra democracia y volverla una hipocresía.

No se desanimen por ser sólo unos cuantos cientos aquí ahora. Todos los grandes movimientos empiezan con unos cuantos cientos, afirmó. Lo que tenemos que hacer aquí es darnos cuenta de qué tanto más poder tenemos que ellos. Ellos creen que el poder deriva de sus cuentas bancarias, pero nuestro poder se deriva del pueblo; todo el pueblo, no 400 personas (ricas).

Los manifestantes también recibieron una declaración de apoyo de Chomsky. “Cualquiera que tenga los ojos abiertos sabe que el gansterismo de Wall Street –las instituciones financieras en general– ha causado un daño severo al pueblo de Estados Unidos (y del mundo). Y deben saber que ha sido así cada vez más a lo largo de más de 30 años, al incrementarse de manera radical su poder en la economía, y con ello su poder político. Eso desencadenó un ciclo vicioso que ha concentrado riqueza inmensa, y con ello poder político, en un sector muy reducido de la población, una fracción del uno por ciento, mientras el resto se vuelve cada vez más lo que a veces se llama ‘un precariado’: sobrevivir en una existencia precaria”, escribió.

Los más poderosos y ricos, añadió, “realizan estas actividades feas casi con plena impunidad; no sólo son demasiado grandes para fracasar, sino también ‘demasiado grandes para encarcelarlos”’.

Concluyó que las actuales protestas valientes y honorables en Wall Street deberán servir para llevar esta calamidad a la atención pública, y conducir a esfuerzos dedicados a superarla y encarrilar a la sociedad sobre un camino más saludable.

Podría haber más ocupaciones

A pesar de estar aquí desde el 17 de septiembre, no ha crecido el número de personas en este plantón, aunque los activistas informan que hay intentos de instalar otras ocupaciones parecidas en más de 52 ciudades, como un Ocupa Chicago, otro en San Francisco y más.

Las autoridades manifestaron su preocupación de que estalle algo de proporciones mucho más grandes que la actual demostración. Según el New York Times, la policía de Nueva York tiene como punto de referencia (algo que no parecen recordar los manifestantes, o por lo menos no hacen referencia a ello) las grandes manifestaciones altermundistas, como la de Seattle en 1999, o la de Londres en 2009 ante la reunión del Grupo de los 20. El Times reporta que en semanas recientes, comandantes de la policía habían examinado los motines de Londres en el verano, y evaluaron estrategias para enfrentar algo parecido aquí.

Por cierto, investigadores del Departamento de Policía y de la FBI monitorearon la convocatoria y organización de la llamada Ocupa Wall Street, realizada casi exclusivamente por Internet, desde agosto.

Pero por ahora, aquí todavía no se da algo parecido a los referentes de los manifestantes. La Puerta del Sol, el movimiento en Chile, la Plaza Tahrir de El Cairo.

Con las herramientas cibernéticas la protesta se difunde mundialmente, y a veces da la impresión de tener dimensiones mucho más grandes de lo que es por ahora.

Sin embargo, las autoridades temen, y progresistas por todo el país esperan, que esto sea tal vez el preludio de un movimiento popular masivo contra la avaricia empresarial, la cada vez más marcada desigualdad económica y las maniobras financieras que detonaron la peor crisis desde la gran depresión, fenómenos que anularon las perspectivas de toda una generación.

Para seguir la evolución de esta iniciativa en sitios de Internet, Facebook o Twitter y ver algunas escenas en vivo: occupywallst.org/;livestream.com/globalrevolution;adbusters.org/campaigns/occupywallstreet;readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/7468-occupy-wall-street-take-the-bull-by-the-horns.

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WALL STREET-Capitalist Capitol of the World....Occupied!

Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times

TO THE STREET Many downtown workers encountered demonstrators last week at Zuccotti Park, some with a group called Occupy Wall Street.

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Published: September 23, 2011

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By late morning on Wednesday, Occupy Wall Street, a noble but fractured and airy movement of rightly frustrated young people, had a default ambassador in a half-naked woman who called herself Zuni Tikka. A blonde with a marked likeness to Joni Mitchell and a seemingly even stronger wish to burrow through the space-time continuum and hunker down in 1968, Ms. Tikka had taken off all but her cotton underwear and was dancing on the north side of Zuccotti Park, facing Liberty Street, just west of Broadway. Tourists stopped to take pictures; cops smiled, and the insidiously favorable tax treatment of private equity and hedge-fund managers was looking as though it would endure.

Related

• City Room: 80 Arrested as Financial District Protest Moves North (September 24, 2011)

• City Room: Wall Street Protesters Broadcast Arrests on Social Media (September 24, 2011)

• Times Topic: Ginia Bellafante

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Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times

NOT FROM HERE It seemed that few of the demonstrators camped out at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan were from New York. Coming from many states, they had many causes. One said simply, “I want to create spectacles.”

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“I’ve been waiting for this my whole life,” Ms. Tikka, 37, told me.

“This,” presumably was the opportunity to air societal grievances as carnival. Occupy Wall Street, a diffuse and leaderless convocation of activists against greed, corporate influence, gross social inequality and other nasty byproducts of wayward capitalism not easily extinguishable by street theater, had hoped to see many thousands join its protest and encampment, which began Sept. 17. According to the group, 2,000 marched on the first day; news outlets estimated that the number was closer to several hundred.

By Wednesday morning, 100 or so stalwarts were making the daily, peaceful trek through the financial district, where their movements were circumscribed by barricades and a heavy police presence. (Various arrests for disorderly conduct were made.) By Thursday, the number still sleeping in Zuccotti Park, the central base of operations, appeared to be dwindling further.

Members retained hope for an infusion of energy over the weekend, but as it approached, the issue was not that the Bastille hadn’t been stormed, but that its facade had suffered hardly a chip. It is a curious fact of life in New York that even as the disparities between rich and poor grow deeper, the kind of large-scale civil agitation that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg recently suggested might happen here hasn’t taken shape. The city has two million more residents than Wisconsin, but there, continuing protests of the state budget bill this year turned out approximately 100,000 people at their peak. When a similar mobilization was attempted in June to challenge the city’s budget cuts, 100 people arrived fora sleep-in near City Hall.

Last week brought a disheartening coupling of statistics further delineating the city’s economic divide: The Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans, which included more than 50 New Yorkers whose combined net worth totaled $211 billion, arrived at the same moment as census data showing that the percentage of the city’s population living in poverty had risen to 20.1 percent. And yet the revolution did not appear to be brewing.

Most of those entrenched in Zuccotti Park had indeed traveled from somewhere else; they had come from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Missouri, Texas and so on with drums, horns, tambourines and, in the instance of one young man, a knee-length burlap vest, fur hat, ski goggles and tiny plastic baby dolls applied to the tips of his fingers.

One of the few New Yorkers I met, a senior at Bronx High School of Science, was stopping by in fits and spurts, against the wishes of his psychiatrist mother, who feared the possibility of tear gas and had chastised her son for giving his allowance to the cause.

That cause, though, in specific terms, was virtually impossible to decipher. The group was clamoring for nothing in particular to happen right away — not the implementation of the Buffett rule or the increased regulation of the financial industry. Some didn’t think government action was the answer because the rich, they believed, would just find new ways to subvert the system.

“I’m not for interference,” Anna Katheryn Sluka, of western Michigan, told me. “I hope this all gets people who have a lot to think: ‘I’m not going to go to Barcelona for three weeks. I’m going to sponsor a small town in need.’ ”

Some said they were fighting the legal doctrine of corporate personhood; others, not fully understanding what that meant, believed it meant corporations paid no taxes whatsoever. Others came to voice concerns about the death penalty, the drug war, the environment.

“I want to get rid of the combustion engine,” John McKibben, an activist from Vermont, declared as his primary ambition.

“I want to create spectacles,” Becky Wartell, a recent graduate of the College of the Atlantic in Maine, said.

Having discerned the intellectual vacuum, Chris Spiech, an unemployed 26-year-old from New Jersey, arrived on Thursday with the hope of indoctrinating his peers in the lessons of Austrian economics, Milton Friedman and Ron Paul. “I want to abolish the Federal Reserve,” he said.

The group’s lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgably is unsettling in the face of the challenges so many of its generation face — finding work, repaying student loans, figuring out ways to finish college when money has run out. But what were the chances that its members were going to receive the attention they so richly deserve carrying signs like “Even if the World Were to End Tomorrow I’d Still Plant a Tree Today”?

One day, a trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Adam Sarzen, a decade or so older than many of the protesters, came to Zuccotti Park seemingly just to shake his head. “Look at these kids, sitting here with their Apple computers,” he said. “Apple, one of the biggest monopolies in the world. It trades at $400 a share. Do they even know that?”

E-mail: bigcity@nytimes.com

TAKE OVER...occupy.. WALL STREET

Occupy Wall Street March Turns Violent

Posted by Philosopher Artists Saturday, September 24, 2011

Occupy Wall Street march September 24th 2011.

The peaceful Occupy Wall Street protest march turned violent as the NYPD corralled and pepper sprayed the participants. Mass arrests were made and loaded onto a NYC bus further locking traffic. The protest march took a route from Zuccotti Park to Union Square on East 14th Street. The protesters were marching back to Zuccotti Park when the NYPD turned violent. Hitting, arresting and forcing protesters into a small area. At that point a NYPD supervisor yelled shut up to one of the protesters and shot pepper spray into her eyes point blank range and hitting a half dozen protesters (including 3 police officers) when they had nowhere to go. The same supervising officer was seen (photographed) laughing after the arrests while looking at his text messages. The peaceful protest march started as 300 participants but rose to over 1,000 as the event stopped traffic in lower Manhattan. People spontaneously joined the march over a 2 hour period.

Occupy Wall Street NYPD Pepper Sprays

Occupy Wall Street NYPD supervisor Pepper Sprays young girl point blank

NYPD making brutal arrests

NYPD continued violence against Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street arrest

Occupy Wall Street - Arrests start early

Occupy Wall Street arrest

Occupy Wall Street arrest

Arrested for filming

Occupy Wall Street march of 1000 people

PBS correspondent arrested during Occupy Wall Street march

NYPD supervisor laughing after pepper spraying young girl

Occupy Wall Street arrested being stored on a bus

2 70 year old ladies arrested Occupy Wall Street march

Occupy Wall Street police arrests after march to Union Square

Occupy Wall Street is the first movement of many more to come. Even with Police violence. All rights reserved (copyright) by davidscameracraft

Execution of an innocent Man! Troy Davis

Troy was found guilty of murdering a police officer 19 years ago, based upon the testimony of 9 witnesses. Today, 7 of those 9 have recanted their testimony entirely, and there are enormous problems with the testimony of the remaining 2 witness accounts. There is NO OTHER EVIDENCE. The murder weapon was never found. There is no DNA to test. Troy is scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 21, 2011.

To All:

I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication to Human Rights and Human Kindness, in the past year I have experienced such emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith. It is because of all of you that I am alive today, as I look at my sister Martina I am marveled by the love she has for me and of course I worry about her and her health, but as she tells me she is the eldest and she will not back down from this fight to save my life and prove to the world that I am innocent of this terrible crime.

As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see first hand. I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with overwhelming, overflowing Joy. I can’t even explain the insurgence of emotion I feel when I try to express the strength I draw from you all, it compounds my faith and it shows me yet again that this is not a case about the death penalty, this is not a case about Troy Davis, this is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail.

I cannot answer all of your letters but I do read them all, I cannot see you all but I can imagine your faces, I cannot hear you speak but your letters take me to the far reaches of the world, I cannot touch you physically but I feel your warmth everyday I exist.

So Thank you and remember I am in a place where execution can only destroy your physical form but because of my faith in God, my family and all of you I have been spiritually free for some time and no matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many more Troy Davis’. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.

I can’t wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing,

“I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!”

Never Stop Fighting for Justice and We will Win!

Battle for Public Education (USA)

Revolution #245, September 11, 2011

"Save Our Schools" (SOS) and the Sharpening Struggle Around Education

From a group of educators and Revolution newspaper readers investigating the situation in the schools. In the near future they hope to write more extensively on education.

 

On Saturday, July 29, teachers, parents and education activists across the U.S. rallied in at least 12 cities, brought together by the major teachers unions under the name Save Our Schools (SOS). Washington, D.C. was the scene of the largest of the gatherings—3,000 to 5,000 teachers and allies demonstrated, spoke and marched. The rally was part of a four-day event including a two-day conference at American University with dozens of workshops, such as “Winning the Testing War” and "Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline." There was also a strategy session and film festival featuring a documentary called The Inconvenient Truth About Waiting for Superman, in response to the 2010 film, Waiting for Superman, which promotes charter schools and attacks public education and public school teachers.

 

This is a time of great turmoil and sharpening struggle around education in the U.S., and SOS is one response to that. In 2001 the George W. Bush administration, with overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans, passed the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation. NCLB came in the context of a decades-long process of undermining the legitimacy of public schools, the development and funding of alternative schools such as religious schools through the use of vouchers, and the creation of models for a new kind of privatized public school funded by corporations like Walmart and the Bill Gates Foundation operating on principles of business "accountability." NCLB greatly intensified the effort to reshape education to fit the needs of a more parasitic globalized U.S. capitalism, with its increased polarization of wealth, “runaway shops,” the abandonment of the inner cities, millions of youths, especially Black and Latino youth, cast into a pit with no future.

 

Under No Child Left Behind, standardized testing has become the new touchstone of education, ushering in an era of teaching to a script. Under NCLB and its successor, Obama's Race to the Top, schools, teachers, administrators are not judged by how well students learn about the world nor in how students develop creative, problem-solving or critical thinking abilities, but rather rote memorization and success in cultural and class-biased tests. Teachers who value their students and see their role as nurturing thoughtful and knowledgeable young people have long bridled at the straitjacket of testing and recognize its role in strangling real education and public education—one that recognizes education as a human right.

 

Many educators had put their hopes on the 2008 elections. "We had reason to believe from his campaign promises that Obama was going to reverse the damage that this law [NCLB, ed.] has caused," said Jonathan Kozol, a public education activist, author and participant in the SOS rally in Washington. "He has betrayed us. That's why we are here today." In fact, Obama's Race to the Top school policy is a marked intensification of the policies of the Bush regime with the addition of heavy attacks on teachers, tenure, seniority and teachers unions. NCLB reforms have failed to achieve even the limited and distorted goals of higher test scores. Rather, they have set off a competition among schools for limited funds which has resulted in widespread cheating and dishonest manipulation of statistics, not by students, but by those administering the tests. All the while teachers and teachers unions have become the scapegoats for this failure and a cover for slashing of public education funds.

 

At their rallies the SOS organizers handed out Guiding Principles that reflect some of the contentious issues in education, including such demands as equitable funding for all public school communities; an end to high-stakes testing; an end to school evaluation and public school closures based on test performance; teacher, family and community leadership in forming public education policies and an end to political and corporate control of curriculum, instruction and assessment decisions for teachers and administrators; and a well-rounded education that develops every student's intellectual, creative, and physical potential.

 

Several Bay Area teachers and supporters of Revolution newspaper traveled to Sacramento to join one of the Save Our Schools rallies. About 200 to 300 teachers, students, administrators and others came to Sacramento from as far away as San Diego, Fullerton and Chico. We went there to support this struggle, engage with fellow teachers and others rallying there, learn from their experiences and concerns and better understand the struggles around education.

 

We found a great deal of receptivity and openness—not only a willingness, but an anxiousness in many cases to talk about the state of education, its relationship to issues such as poverty, war, mass imprisonment, and racism, and even what education would look like in a revolutionary society. The following are some comments taken from conversations with teachers and students from Sacramento, and other comments gathered from press accounts from the rally in D.C., to give Revolution readers a sense of the concerns and thinking among educators and students.

***

A Cal State Fullerton student:

"The way the school system works, most people, minorities, are not allowed to learn their own culture—they have to learn a very Anglo, colonialist literature and understanding of the world, and through that we can really appreciate one another as humans, and the environment around us. And with all the major issues going on around global warming, the wars, poverty, hunger, racism, fascism, patriarchy—there are too many major issues to have them all shoved under the rug in the name of standardized testing, and standardization and math and science without really focusing on us, as humans. So that's why I am out here—not just on getting more funding but shifting the funding and the focus on education, and away from this very business model."

 

A preschool teacher from the Sacramento area:

"I've worked for the district about seven years. The reason why I came out here was to support my families—my students are the first time into education—their first school experience. For some of my families they are Head Start parents, low income, living in the Title One area—so sometimes school wasn't the most positive experience themselves. So I'm trying to show that (lack of) education is a double loss and in preschool we set the foundation. I want to say don't cut it, I wish that preschool was open to everyone in the state of California, no matter what your income. I hear people say teachers should be evaluated on what their children know. There's a whole different factor of where the child comes from. If there is no support at home how can you be evaluated on that student getting their needs? Why should that kindergarten teacher be evaluated because of the students who don't know their shapes, colors, how to spell their names because they never had the support at home. I just don't think it is fair."

 

Cal State Fullerton student:

"We're seeing the encroachment of the private sector on public education, specifically higher education.... Recently we had a 22% increase in tuition... When it comes to what the students are fighting for, I think that is one of the most fundamental issues at hand because it affects the students. But there is also that greater underlining issues of the structuring of education which starts at kindergarten. We have an education that focused in an ethno-centric kind of way—a lack of attention to critical thinking—and it is more about providing a worker for the workforce to make economic profit. It is not something that allows the citizenry to become critically engaged and make constructive, positive decisions."

From speeches at the DC rally:

Diane Ravitch, former head of the U.S. Department of Education and an opponent of school privatization:
"What we call 'accountability' now is just totally unreliable numbers that are meaningless in terms of the lives of children and the careers of teachers."

 

Cody Anthony, Oakland educator:

"Teachers are in an inescapable ethical bind. We know that the tests do not measure critical thinking... As a science teacher, I believe that the essence of science is the exploration of the natural world. It is all about inquiry: asking good questions, and then using all the tools we can muster to investigate and answer those questions."

 

Matt Damon, actor:

"I said before that I had incredible teachers. And that's true. But it's more than that. My teachers were EMPOWERED to teach me. Their time wasn't taken up with a bunch of test prep—this silly drill and kill nonsense that any serious person knows doesn't promote real learning. No, my teachers were free to approach me and every other kid in that classroom like an individual puzzle. They took so much care in figuring out who we were and how to best make the lessons resonate with each of us. They were empowered to unlock our potential. They were allowed to be teachers."

 

Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University education professor: 

"Our leaders seek to solve the problem of the poor by blaming the teachers and schools that seek to serve them, calling the deepening levels of poverty an 'excuse,' rewarding schools that keep out and push out the highest-need students, and threatening those who work with new immigrant students still learning English and the growing number of those who are homeless, without health care and without food. Are there lower scores in under-resourced schools with high-need students? Fire the teachers and the principals. Close the schools. Don't look for supports for their families and communities, equitable funding for their schools, or investments in professional learning."

ruben solis garcia 

Puerto Rico's Colonial Police ABUSE

Police Abuse and Civil Rights Crisis Congressman's Series of Floor Speeches This Year Warned Nation About Civil Rights Violations and Out-Of-Control Use of Force By Present Ruling Party (Washington) – The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division released a much anticipated report on police abuse of power and use of excessive force in Puerto Rico that paints a clear picture of systemic and sustained violations of constitutional rights of the Puerto Rican people. The report, dated September 5, confirms what Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL) has been warning the nation about with regard to Puerto Rico since he began making a series of speeches on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to call attention to civil rights abuses on the island.  "When I started speaking out about the civil rights crisis in Puerto Rico the Governor, the Legislature and everyone else in the ruling party said there was no crisis and that I should just shut up," Rep. Gutierrez said.  "But I kept speaking out because it was the right thing to do.  When those who are sworn to protect and defend you are instead beating you and spying on you, any sense of justice, security, or faith in democracy goes out the window." The Congressman, who started his series of speeches about civil and human rights abuses in Puerto Rico on the House floor in February (see below), earned an official act of censure from the Puerto Rican legislature in May of this year, which he proudly displays in his Capitol Hill office.  He continued to speak out about civil rights on the House floor and in Puerto Rico itself and received widespread criticism by the supporters of the current Governor and his regime.  The official response was that there was no civil rights crisis in Puerto Rico, that the Congressman was out of line and had no right to speak, and that in fact, he was being disloyal to his Puerto Rican heritage to suggest that there was a problem. "The ruling party in Puerto Rico can no longer pretend that the island is not facing a civil rights crisis.  It is now the responsibility of every Member of this Congress to make sure that immediate and effective steps are taken to protect the rights of the people of Puerto Rico and to stop the abuse of their rights," the Congressman said after reading the DOJ report.  The Congressman noted that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and the national ACLU were also extremely helpful in making sure the DOJ report was released in a timely manner and not watered down to put the ruling party in Puerto Rico in a better light. "For far too long, the ruling party in Puerto Rico devoted its time and energy condemning those who spoke out against abuses instead of stopping those who were being abusive to their own people," Gutierrez said.  "This report not only underscores that abuse was taking place, but that it was aimed at suppressing dissent and first amendment rights." The Congressman vowed to make sure that officials at every level of the federal government were made aware of the Department of Justice report. "I will make sure every Member of Congress gets a copy of this report, I will ask that the Judiciary Committee Chairman hold hearings and I will continue to stand up for the rights of the Puerto Rican people.  The DOJ report details the depths of this problem, and we all must work together to fix it now.  There can be no more pretending that the problem is those who are willing to stand up and speak out." The Congressman, who was born in Chicago to Puerto Rican parents, has lived and worked in Puerto Rico at various times in his life and currently owns a home and visits his family in Puerto Rico regularly. # # # Gutierrez speech to House of Representatives on the civil and human rights crisis in Puerto Rico: February 16, 2011 Gutierrez speech to House of Representatives on the civil and human rights crisis in Puerto Rico: March 2, 2011 Gutierrez speech to the Colegio de Abogados, San Juan, Puerto Rico, on the civil and human rights crisis in Puerto Rico (in Spanish):March 23, 2011 Gutierrez speech to House of Representatives on the civil and human rights crisis in Puerto Rico: July 7, 2011 Additional speeches by Rep. Gutierrez on Puerto Rico: http://www.youtube.com/user/RepLuisGutierrez ¡Qué la Paz Prevalezca en la Tierra!