"It is definitely very emotional to be in front of you all now after 19 1/2 years in jail!" Ricardo Jiménez told the crowd, which filled the garden of the Pedro Albizu Campos Monument site and overflowed into an adjacent lot.
The appearances of the ex-prisoners were staggered, since these fighters are not supposed to associate with each other under the conditions of their parole. Talks were interspersed with music and dancing over the course of five hours.
Cheers went up, and Puerto Rican flags waved, as each former prisoner was introduced.
Alberto Rodríguez and Alejandrina Torres each spent 16 years in jail. They plan to make Chicago their home and were surrounded by family members on the stage. The other two, Ricardo Jiménez and Luis Rosa, traveled on to Puerto Rico.
All four freed independentistas emphasized the importance of the fight for the release of those who remain behind bars.
Alejandrina Torres told the crowd, "We have fought inside and you have fought outside but there are still some in jail so we have more work to do. You can count on me in the campaign to bring them home."
José Torres, Alejandrina's husband, added, "They can jail us but they can't defeat us."
The government refused to offer parole to Carlos Alberto Torres, their son, who is still serving a 78-year sentence.
Lisa Torres, their daughter, said, "Most of my life my mother has been in jail. She has survived abuses in jail and always stayed loyal to the cause, always stayed strong, thanks to her faith and the years of work you've done."
Two prisoners, Oscar López and Antonio Camacho, rejected the government's onerous conditions and remain in jail. Juan Segarra Palmer signed an offer that will make him eligible for release in five years instead of serving a longer term. Haydée Beltrán, who is serving a life sentence, is pursuing parole separately. She and Jose Solís, who was framed up and sentenced to 51 months in jail last July, were not covered by President William Clinton's conditional release offer.
Clinton's August 11 "clemency" offer followed a years-long campaign for the release of the Puerto Rican political prisoners, most of whom have been jailed since the early 1980s on sentences ranging between 35 and 105 years in prison. In the month since Clinton's announcement, even larger numbers of supporters of the prisoners have marched in the U.S. and Puerto Rico calling for their unconditional release.
On the other side there has been a chorus of police and prison officials, capitalist politicians, and media editorials joining in a countercampaign, branding the independence fighters as criminals and terrorists and calling for the parole offer to be rescinded.
The day after 12 prisoners announced they would accept the offer and official steps were begun authorizing release, Democratic mayor of Chicago Richard Daley called a press conference September 8 to condemn the release and to publicly call on the FBI to subject the ex-prisoners to close surveillance.
The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution of censure against President Clinton's decision to grant clemency. On the House floor September 9, Republican Whip Tom DeLay accused the president of "coddling terrorists." Presidential contender William Bradley and other Democratic Party politicians also condemned Clinton's move.
The Senate passed a similar motion denouncing the White House by a vote of 95 to 2 September 14. That day Rep. Daniel Burton, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, issued subpoenas for several Clinton administration officials and FBI personnel to answer questions about the parole offer.
Committees of civil liberties lawyers have been formed in the United States and Puerto Rico to help protect the ex-prisoners against any FBI attempts to use alleged violations of parole as a pretext to send them back to jail.
At the rally, José López, director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, introduced and thanked the members of the clergy, politicians, and political activists who had played a part in the fight to bring the prisoners home. In reference to the stream of big-business press coverage labeling them as terrorists, he countered, "There has been a long history of violence against the Puerto Rican independence movement: the 1898 U.S. invasion, the 1937 massacre at Ponce, the 1950 bombardment, the [1978] Cerro Maravilla murders, and Cointelpro."
Josefina Rodríguez, mother of newly released prisoners Ida Luz Rodríguez and Alicia Rodríguez, had recently participated in a march of tens of thousands in Puerto Rico calling for unconditional release of the prisoners.
"The most important task is to raise consciousness that the U.S. has a colony called Puerto Rico," she said. "They ought to be free, to be decolonized, and then there would be no need for prisoners."
Michelle Morales-Gaunt, a teacher at the Puerto Rican cultural center expressed the view of many at the rally: "Even though four are still in prison and even though it's conditional, it's still a victory."
Irma Romero, a long-time activist in the Puerto Rican community, pointed to the big demonstrations in Puerto Rico against the U.S. naval occupation and bombardment of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as one of the reasons for Clinton's move. "The fight against the Navy in Vieques and that of the prisoners came together," she said.
Marvin García, director of an alternative Puerto Rican high school, spoke about the conditions the prisoners have faced while in jail — for Oscar Lopez Rivera lock-downs for 23 and a half hours a day, for other prisoners degrading body searches, assaults, isolation, lack of treatment for serious ailments and being kept far from their families.
Melanie Zimmer, an airline worker who attended the rally, said she felt she was seeing history being made. Afterwards, when she went in on the night shift, she told her co-workers, "This is a great day — some fighters got released." She said some argued what they had read in the press, that these were criminals. "I told them that the police lie, that these are fighters for a cause, for their country against colonialism, that their release is a win for all working people," she said.
Pattie Thompson is a member of the International Association of Machinists. Cappy Kidd is a member of the United Auto Workers. Betsey Stone contributed to this article.
BY ROSE ANA BERBEO
NEW YORK — The release of 11 of the 17 Puerto Rican political prisoners has been a big discussion among many working people in this city where more than 1 million Puerto Ricans live, most of them workers.
Dozens of people gathered at Kennedy Airport at midnight September 10 to greet and cheer Ida Luz and Alicia Rodríguez, who came from San Francisco en route to Puerto Rico. The next day several hundred people marched through the largely Puerto Rican neighborhood known as "El Barrio" on Manhattan's upper east side to celebrate the prisoners' release. A number of people at the march were also participating in activities to demand the release of framed-up Black rights activist Mumia Abu-Jamal.Esperanza Martell, a leader of Pro-Libertad, which has campaigned for years for the liberation of the prisoners, told those at the rally that while 11 of the Puerto Rican independence advocates were freed, there are still prisoners left in jail. She said a protest would be held at the United Nations on September 23, the anniversary of El Grito de Lares, when Puerto Ricans revolted for their independence against Spain in 1868. Ismael Guadalupe, a leader of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, also addressed the rally. Both the political prisoners and the people of Vieques, he said, are "prisoners of colonialism." In Vieques, Guadalupe said, "We live under the constant threat of being the victim of a U.S. bomb. It's a joke for them to say our prisoners are terrorists. They are the terrorists in Vieques."
Guadalupe and other activists from Vieques were visiting New York at the invitation of a group of New York City Council members who held public hearings on September 11 and 13 on the question of the U.S. Navy in Vieques. The council discussed a resolution not yet voted on, calling on the U.S. Navy to "vacate its training facility" on Vieques.
Several hundred people attended an ecumenical service for "peace and justice in Vieques" held at St. Cecilia's church September 12, the birthday of Pedro Albizu Campos, the central leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and the independence movement for decades. The keynote speakers were Democratic politician Jesse Jackson and the archbishop of San Juan, Roberto González. Dozens of Puerto Rican flags waved in the pews at every mention of U.S. colonialism. Jackson, voicing support for Puerto Rico's right to self-determination, defended Washington's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia as a supposedly similar cause.
Mike Maldonado, a meatpacker from Brooklyn who attended the September 11 rally, said he thought the release of the 11 prisoners "was due."
"I think it was a real frame-up by the FBI," he said. "Actually these people are not terrorists, they are struggling for the freedom of Puerto Rico." Maldonado, who has supported independence for Puerto Rico for more than 30 years, said he was glad to see the large number of young people taking part in the march. "We've got to make the young people aware of what's going on. Any country in the world, no matter how small, should be free."
Republican and Democratic politicians, cops, and the big-business media have waged a propaganda campaign to label the Puerto Rican independentistas as "terrorists."
Democratic senatorial hopeful Hillary Clinton jumped into the antiterrorist campaign by publicly opposing the White House parole decree. Her move backfired, however, as she came under fire both by Republican opponents of the prisoners as well as Democratic politicians who claim to speak for Puerto Ricans in New York.
"Party Time — Freed FALNers celebrate but New Yorkers fume" was the headline of the September 11 issue of the right-wing daily New York Post. In the same issue, the Post ran an editorial calling it "immoral" that U.S. Marines are being deployed without training in Vieques, adding that "Vieques has been used for this purpose for decades. And there's enough unexploded ordnance buried on the range to render it unusable for any other purpose."
A column in the August 25 Daily News by New York City cop Anthony Senft who was injured in a bombing in 1982, called the Puerto Rican prisoners "ruthless, cold-hearted bombers." He said that "Clinton's clemency offer is a slap in the face of law-abiding Americans," especially because "Americans … are experiencing a wave of terrorism in workplaces, schools and even day care centers."
Activists from Pro-Libertad and the Puerto Rico Collective, a pro-independence group, held a press conference September 7 to protest the slanderous nature of the big-business press coverage.
Rose Ana Berbeo is a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers.
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