Yes, Puerto Ricans Are Americans.

Millions of Americans are suffering without food, clean water or electricity after Hurricane Maria. But they don’t live on the mainland, therefore their struggles are being reported as if the were in a far-off, unrelated nation.

Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. We’ll say it again: Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. And many of them are questioning why the domestic response to the devastation there has been lacking.

How would it be different if Maria had devastated the continental U.S. on the same scale? What are U.S. lawmakers and leaders doing to help the island?

GUESTS

Yarimar Bonilla, Professor of anthropology and Caribbean studies, Rutgers University; author, Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment

Justin Vélez-Hagan, Founder, the National Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce; author, “The Common Sense Behind Basic Economics”

Tim Padgett, Americas Editor, WLRN

For more, visit http://the1a.org.

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