By Ramón
Growing sectors within our country perceive the “difficult times we are living” as protests are becoming daily events in our lives. This is because those of us that depend on a salary find indignation in the abuses of life in the territory. We are on the verge of a time in which all these expressions of protest will be the order of the day like drops and streams that overflow during a rainstorm.
The question is whether revolutionaries, those that fight for socialism, will know how to connect all of this isolated indignation as part of a true process of general organization or if they will remain dispersed, fragmented, and dissipate like drops of water on land. And what’s more, the question concerns whether revolutionaries dedicate themselves solely to coordinating acts of indignation – in the midst of Wall Street’s full repression in the territory! – thereby evading our actual revolutionary tasks.
To the extent that Wall Street implements its PROMESA, increasing social layers of the people with the desire to struggle will join the resistance movement. Our politics and organization must take advantage of this opportunity to employ all these forces with revolutionary potential. This will only be possible with a socialist orientation. This orientation perceives the recent protests in San Juan as the origin, as yet sill immature, of new organs with a working class character in which we can begin to practice a kind of democracy that challenges the phony democracy of the territory.
The revolutionary forces in Puerto Rico, to live up to the demands of the moment, must disseminate throughout all corners of society the understanding that the crisis has its roots in the capitalist economy and extends throughout the political system, both within the territory and on the international plane. As such, the crisis cannot be resolved by a political group that defends the capitalist system. This means that these forces must assume the task of organizing the political struggle in multiple forms so that all sectors opposed to PROMESA can effectively lend to the struggle the help necessary to the extent that they identify with said fight. Our job is to make of the activists political leaders with a “new militant culture” able in each moment and place to express a socialist program of correct action.
We must unify the struggle on behalf of all the people, their general demands against Wall Street’s dictatorial regime, with the revolutionary education of the workers. This places on the agenda the development of independent organs of struggle and power, with authority in the hands of the majority, in order to put the political future of the country in reach of the working class. Revolutionaries are the only ones capable of fulfilling this task by safeguarding the political independence of the working class. This allows us to advance towards the construction of a society of workers, for workers, and eradicate the exploitative appropriation, be it private or bureaucratic, of the labor of others.