“Actions speak louder than words” is not only a well-worn idiom, it’s a universal truth. Right now, there’s a humanitarian catastrophe happening in the U.S. Virgin Islands and the U.S. Territory of Puerto Rico. Our government and, more specifically, the Office of the President and the leadership of the United States of America have been woefully inept in their response to the very real and urgent crisis. The lack of urgent response and logistic leadership has turned these U.S. territories and our fellow Americans into a 3rd world apocalyptic disaster. Lack of clean water, food and medical supplies, and inadequate facilities coupled with no infrastructure or electricity have completely devastated these islands and the people who live there.  Days and days later the people are STILL waiting for help to arrive. Lack of leadership and administrative RED TAPE has thousands of shipment containers full of food and supplies sitting at the Port of San Juan. It’s absolutely astounding that this can be happening in the western world to citizens of the most powerful nation in the world? One can only deduce that there is a moral deficiency present in the people or persons who would allow that to happen while this catastrophe is being broadcast worldwide. It is shameful. 

The reality is that these black and brown people of the United States are being treated like 2nd class citizens. Once again, the man who is President demonstrates that he is incapable of recognizing that the United States of America is comprised of people of many ethnicities, colors, religious beliefs, nations of origin, sexual identities, classes, educational backgrounds, and so on. We are a colorful country E Pluribus Unum – out of many one nation. The President continues to sow seeds of dissension and racial animus daily, as he implies consistently that the people of color in this nation are somehow ungrateful for what we have been “given” and that we “owe” some sort of debt or part of our dignity as citizens of this nation to either the POTUS personally or to white Americans in general for the privilege of participation in this liberty and freedom we have been “allowed” to be a part of. Never mind that this country was built on the backs of enslaved Africans on ground stolen from Indigenous Nations.   

The people of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico have fought and died on battlefields in the name of the United States of America. They are entitled to ALL the rights and privileges that ANY citizen of the U.S. is entitled, and yet this administration continues to ignore their pleas for help and minimize the urgency of their NEED. Instead, the Trump Administration continues to “pat itself on the back” while, simultaneously, overlooking the fundamental dysfunction and disorganization that is painfully evident in the impotent response to this DISASTER, thus far.