America's Guantanamo

I really, really want to tell you about the Rijksmuseum’s website, which has to be the most totally cool museum website around. Where else can you get a tab for “immoral women” and then see a collection of scandalous ladies—all right, women—from eight centuries of Western Art? Oh, and you can download these immoral women—quite a feat—and the resolution is high quality. No more blurry images. And best of all, the good Dutch have decided to give all away for free. So that means that if you want a tattoo of the night watchmen on your chest—and I’m very much considering it—you can go right ahead.

I also really, really want to tell about Amanda Palmer, who is following a parallel track with the Rijksmuseum. She has a band—a mixture of cabaret and something-or-other-else—and she has decided to give her music away for free. It seems her CD with a major label sold “only” 25,000 copies and that wasn’t good enough. So she cut loose from the label, and gave her music away. Why? Well, a fan approached her after the show, gave her ten bucks, and told her sheepishly that he had burned a copy of her CD from a friend’s CD. And he felt bad. So then Amanda decided to give her music away, but ask for donations. And guess what? It’s working!

In addition, I really, really want to tell you about a seriously unlucky or untalented guy working on ripping up the street in front of my apartment. What he is supposed to be doing is making six inch holes in the pavement. What he has just done is perforated a water main—for the second time in three days. Yes, last Friday there was a geyser of water spewing ten feet upward in the air; Puerto Ricans were merrily saluting him, tourists were snapping photos. Today, more ingeniously, he has covered the geyser with a plywood plank, and is using the jackhammer contraption on his tractor to hold it down.

As interesting as all this is—and you should definitely check out the Rijksmuseum website—I cannot, as a responsible blogger, neglect my duties. So here it is—a pop quiz of only one question….

1.     The country that has held a political prisoner for the longest period of time is

a.     China

b.     Nigeria

c.     Cuba

d.     The United States of America

And the answer is…

The USA. Yes, our country—OK, my country—jailed Oscar López Rivera, a Puerto Rican Vietnam veteran, 32 years ago for something called seditious conspiracy. And today, 54 minutes ago, the mayoress of San Juan got into a replica of the cell in which López Rivera currently resides. In this, she is joined by several other mayors, writers, entertainers, and noteworthy folk.

So what did López Rivera do to warrant 32 years in the can? After all, the average murder sentence is a bit over 10 years—so was he a multiple killer?

No. His crime was to be associated with FALN—the Puerto Rican nationalist group which yes, did over 100 bombings. However, López Rivera never was charged with any bombings, but was instead brought in on seditious conspiracy, armed robbery, and moving stolen vehicles across state lines.

He wasn’t alone—there were at least 14 Puerto Rican political prisoners who had received, in one case, 90 years in jail. That prompted Bill Clinton, in 1999, to offer commutation with parole to all of them. Twelve said yes, López Rivera and another said no. López Rivera’s sister explained that he felt that exchanging prison for parole was simply to move the prison outside.

OK—you can argue: he had his chance, he didn’t take Clinton’s offer, why feel sorry for him?

You can also say that it is totally unreasonable—no, let’s not mince words. It is outrageous and a heinous violation of human rights to be holding this guy in jail for 32 years for nothing more than armed robbery, moving stolen vehicles and—essentially—bad think.

Oh, and the sentence—how long will it last? Well, his next parole review will be in January of 2026, at which point López Rivera will be 83—not an age routinely associated with violent behavior.

Nor is it only the length of time that López Rivera has served—it’s also the fact that for twelve years of that time, he was in total isolation. The prison has also refused to let him speak to the press since 1999, and they have refused as well to allow him to attend the funerals of his father, mother, and sister. They even refused to let him purchase more telephone time so that he could be in contact with his family during the illnesses preceding these deaths.

Everything on this island is political. But today, members of all three parties are getting into cages built on town squares in protest against this outrageous jailing.

Well, you may be wondering, how long is his sentence? 70 years.

He’ll be 107 years old.

Still a Lot to Do

Somewhere in Puerto Rico, there’s an unhappy and confused twelve-year old girl.

In the grand scheme of affairs, that’s not too bad. Atrocious things are happening all over the world to kids—famine, abuse, displacement. The little girl, whose name no one knows, has two good parents, both professionals, and presumably all the comforts of the upper middle class. In short, she’s well-off, a nice kid living with her two parents who are…

…lesbians.

Ho-hum, you say, and what’s the big deal here?

Well, the mother who is not the biological mother would like to adopt her daughter. In short, she wants to be legally recognized as a mother. And the Puerto Rico Supreme Court has just said, in a 5 / 4 decision, no.

So what, you say. The couple has been together for 25 years, they planned the child together, the I-don’t-want-to-say unnatural mother was the first face the child saw when she was born. No one’s going anywhere….

Yeah? Do we know that? What if the birth mother (don’t know if that’s a term, but it is now) gets hit by a bus tomorrow? Does the Family Department have the right to come in and take the child and assign her to foster care?

There’s also something called divorce, in which case the non-birth mother would be out in the cold. A father could argue for every other weekend and two weeks in the summer, but the non-birth mother? She’d better hope for a good judge.

Predictably, the decision fell on political lines. Our former governor, who was / is a poster boy for the GOP (and implemented the same strategies two years before Scott Walker of Wisconsin) was rumored to be Opus Dei. There were, according to some, prayers—and by no means ecumenical—before meetings. So all of his appointees have dictated the fate of this mothered / motherless child.

The scene is looking potentially better in Washington, where the Supreme Court will begin deliberating on the Proposition 8 decision on March 26. As you remember, the citizens of California—funded liberally by the Mormons—voted against marriage equality in 2008. The decision was challenged, and eventually a federal district court ruled that the citizens didn’t have the right to determine who gets married and who doesn’t. Now, the Supreme Court is going to decide it.

In addition, the Defense of Marriage Act—signed into law by that devoted family man, that upholder of traditional values, that pillar of moral and sexual rectitude Bill Clinton—is up for deliberation by the Supreme Court. Curiously, the court is hearing the DOMA case one day after the Proposition 8 case.

It’s been a long road, this battle for the rights of LGBT folks. So long that it’s a little hard to see how much progress we’ve made in so—relatively—little time. I was born in the worst decade of the twentieth century, perhaps, for gay people—a decade where Joe McCarthy was flaunting a list of “homosexuals” employed by the government, which by executive order made it illegal to be gay and work in the federal government. Gay bashing was not speaking ill of gay people—it was literally assault on men leaving the bars at night. Families routinely invaded houses that two men and women had made homes for years after one partner died—and the legal battles weren’t easy or pretty.

So we’ve done a lot. There’s a reason so many fundamentalists are going crazy: they’re seeing their world vanish.

A lot, yes.

But still so much to do….