You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Puerto Rican Students Strike Ahead of Looming Cuts to Education

HeadlineFeb 24, 2017

And in Puerto Rico, thousands of university students are on strike this week, protesting imminent cuts to public education amid an economic crisis. Puerto Rico’s governor has until the end of the month to submit a budget plan to a federally appointed oversight control board with sweeping powers to run Puerto Rico’s economy. The oversight board wants sharp cuts to public spending and a strategy to pay the debt to bondholders. If the demand is not met, the oversight board will make its own budget plan. On Thursday, thousands of students gathered in front of the Capitol and marched to the Governor’s Mansion. This is graduate student Loderay Bracero Marrero.

Loderay Bracero Marrero: “We’re here today in defense of the University of Puerto Rico, in defense of the country’s public education, in defense of the education of the working class of the country, for us to be able to have an accessible and public education. We understand that the different campuses have approved different shutdowns and strategies of action to be able to protect the University of Puerto Rico, that we know is decaying because of the plans of Wall Street and the plans of the government, that is a puppet of whatever the oversight control board says.”

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top