Puerto Rican Movements Show Up for Palestine

November 29 was the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Solidarity actions echoed around the world to commemorate the day.

As Grassroots International, we’ve taken heart by how movements across the globe, including many of our partners, have shown up in solidarity with one another, and in this moment, with Palestine. This includes many of our partners in another colonized nation: Puerto Rico. While the exact natures of their colonization, and their struggles against it, are different, both share a single, powerful desire: to be free.

It’s this thread that stitches slogans like “¡Basta ya genocidio!” (“Stop the genocide now!”) and “¡Que viva Palestina libre y soberana!” (“Long live a free and sovereign Palestine!”) to both Puerto Rican activists in the diaspora, and social movements in the archipelago.

Over the past year, our Puerto Rican partners and allies have centered Palestine as a key lodestone alongside their ongoing organizing efforts.

As the food sovereignty movement Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Ecológica de Puerto Rico wrote announcing a Climate Justice Alliance panel we both participated in last November:

As sacrifice zone environmental justice communities, we are answering the call to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people on the front lines of the genocidal war… A Just Transition must be liberating and transformative. The impacts of the extractive economy know no borders. We recognize the interconnectedness of our communities, as well as our problems. Therefore, our solutions require local, regional, national and global solidarity that confronts imperialism and militarism.

Likewise La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción has issued multiple statements and organized and participated in multiple actions. As they commemorated Indigenous Peoples Day as a day against imperialism, they wrote:

We, from Puerto Rico, will continue to build another life, responding to the international call to confront the empire, because there is no possibility of decolonization using the master’s tools. Nor will we participate in the genocide financed by the same government that has us subordinated…

Long live Free Puerto Rico! Long live Free Palestine!

Similar to universities in the US last spring, the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico had its own student encampment in solidarity and struggle for the Palestinian people. Our partner Comedores Sociales held a public discussion with the students and faculty on the use of hunger as a weapon of war against the Palestinian people and the parallels Puerto Ricans experience as a colonized people.

Comedores Sociales has gone beyond political education and formation. In collaboration with another Boriken activist on the ground in Gaza, they raised funds for “1 Million Meals of Love” for Palestinians facing starvation under the genocide.

The solidarity of the Puerto Rican people with the people of Palestine shows that even as the exact circumstances differ, colonized peoples are united in the desire to be free. Our strength is built from making connections between struggles and always widening the lens of our liberation.