Thursday, Jan 25, 7pm, Hotel Caribe Hilton, Claridad Environmental Gala. Ricardo de Soto (shown at right) and I were generously invited by Don Wilo Vilá to sit at his table. The venue was beautifully appointed, the food delicious and you could feel the expectancy in the air. The guest speakers were Bobby Kennedy Jr., Edward James Olmos (via Satelite) and Rosie Perez. To my delight, Riki had invited Susan Ramirez de Arellano, the News Director for Univision, to join us. He had no idea we had been best friends as children, when we went to St. John's School together. It was wonderful to see her.
When I went up to speak to Bobby, shortly before he was to go onstage, I noticed how tired he seemed, as if he had been travelling non-stop for weeks. And yet, as he was introduced and he walked up to the stage, his whole demeanor changed. It's as if the tiredness drained out of him, and he was "on". He stood on the dias, without notes or a prompter, and told us the history of the law of the "Commons" from Justinian to today. He empahsized that for the poor, who have nothing else, they do own a share of the Commons: ownership and stewardship of communal land and the air and the water we all need to survive. And our right to enjoy that Commons is inviolate. He was amazing. He received a standing ovation.
After Bobby spoke, Rosie was asked to say a few words about her experience of being arrested in front of the UN while protesting the Bombing in Vieques. As a measure of Bobby's effect on the crowd, her first words were: "How can I follow THAT? She went on to tell of her childhood in New York, and how her aunt would instill in her a love for Puerto Rico which grew with every passing year. When she would visit the island her aunt would say: "See, this is YOURS. This is YOUR island", and she began to feel a certain pride of ownership towards the beautiful island. And when a friend dragged her to the protest in front of the UN to stop the Navy from bombing Vieques, she was surprised to find a handful of older women, doggedly chanting. She asked them how long they had been fighting for Vieques. One of them said thirty years. That opened her eyes, for she had no idea it had been going on that long. And when the police came to arrest them, Rosie, with just a smidgeon of chagrin, let herself be arrested. "Because,"she said, "you don't really own a thing until you fight for it". 
There was a simultaneous translator present, which allowed Bobby to hear what was being said in Spanish and have it translated into English.
Then it was Edward James Olmos' turn, and the curtain parted and a floor-to-ceiling screen appeared, and then his image appeared, and he began to speak. He recounted how Bobby Kennedy had called him one day while he was filming in Brazil, and asked him to come and get arrested with him in Vieques. And he thought that was irresistible, so he did. He found himself, after a twelve hour flight from South America, unceremoniously hanging over the edge of a small open fishing boat, seasick, while the skipper tried to reach the beach undetected, in turpid weather, and upon landing on Vieques immediately taking cover to hide from the Military Police. But he was so tired and so sick that he fell asleep. He was found a couple of hours after the MP's found Bobby and they were all taken to the federal prison facilities where a cadre of Puertorican activists welcomed them with open arms. He reminded Bobby of what he had said that first day in the "Big House", when they were strip-searching them: "As I bent over for my cavity search, I looked sideways towards Bobby, who was going through the same thing, and mouthed the words: LOSE MY NUMBER, BROTHER! and grinned." He ended by quoting Mariposa, a Nuyorican poet: "I did not grow up in Puerto Rico, but Puerto Rico grew in me". 
