american colony

Puerto Rico: the forgotten island. I say this because the average American often forgets that PR even exists... let alone the issues of independence. While in Humboldt Park this afternoon, I began to think about the forgotten people. The people that we give no dignity. All they want is to go home. So they don't invest here: this is a temporary situation until they can retire to PR. If we gave them a reason to stay, somehow, I think it might change the mindset. Until then, they will rent houses rather than owning. We give them no desire to build community here. Sounds a lot like the place we visited earlier today.

This morning we visited Centro Comunitario Juan Diego: a refuge of sorts for the people who we leave out. They can't speak for themselves here because we don't let them. We don't give them the resources to learn, then we throw paperwork at them (that they cannot read), and to top it off, we treat them like crap, like second-rate people because they are not living the way we would prefer. Ridiculous.

As we listened to Rosa, we learned about the significance of one Auto Zone moving into the neighborhood. Is it convenient? Yes. Do they have everything you could ever need for a car on-hand? Yes. Did they hurt the community? For sure. When Auto Zone moved in, taxes increased. When they were successful, a mechanic across the street went out of business. These seem like such simple, no waves kind of facts. But lives are affected. I don't know how to express the hurt on the community more effectively. Not to mention the fear: the more chains that move into the neighborhood, the higher taxes go. The higher the taxes, the less people can afford homes. This goes directly back to the fact that the people in the neighborhood often cannot read English: that means that they cannot fill out the forms to save their homes! This is a big deal. Big. And their alderman does not care. I rest my case for the injustice of this world.