Puerto Ricans Take To The Streets Against Kamala Harris’s Visit

On Friday, March 22, Kamala Harris marked her first visit to Puerto Rico since becoming Vice President of the United States to attend a Democratic Party fundraiser and was met with mass protests.

In an embarrassing gaffe, Harris spent a moment clapping along to a protest song before quickly freezing up after an aide translated it for her. The lyrics called out the longtime U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico: “We want to know, Kamala, what did you come here for? We want to know what you think of the colony.”

Protests were organized by pro-Puerto Rican independence organizations such as Jornada: Se Acabaron las Promesas, Comuna Caribe, Boricuas for Palestine, and Communists Workers and Students for Social Change. “The world is going through a time of desolation and violence in which very powerful countries like the U.S. threaten world peace,” Yanina Arias, an activist with Jornada, told Peoples Dispatch. “It seems to us a horror and an absolute lack of respect that while millions of human beings are victims of extermination, the Vice President of the United States visits our island to continue squeezing her lackeys,” she said.

In the entrance to the old San Juan neighborhood, protesters took down flags of the U.S. and colonial Puerto Rico and replaced them with Haitian, Palestinian, and Puerto Rican independence flags. Protesters also hung banners that said, “Stop the bombing” and “Zionism is terrorism,” in solidarity with Palestine. Protesters concluded the action by burning the U.S. flags.