Amy Goodman

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we turn right now to my interview with the Puerto Rican mayor, Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor I spoke with on Friday. We sat down together in the Roberto Clemente Coliseum, where the entire mayoral staff is now living. I began by asking her how Hurricane Maria has changed Puerto Rico since it struck the island September 20th.

MAYOR CARMEN YULÍN CRUZ: I think September 20th changed the Puerto Rican reality forever. We live in a different San Juan and a different Puerto Rico, not because of what we’re lacking. The majority of the island is still without any power. Only about 40 to 60 percent of the population has water. That doesn’t mean that it’s good water. We still have to boil it or put chlorine in it to be able to drink it. Medical services are really, really bad because of the lack of electricity. The supplies in the supermarkets are not there yet, so people are having a lot of trouble getting the supplies that they need. But still, the fierce determination of people has not dwindled. And to me, that’s been a very—I would say, a big lesson to learn.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about this public power company, the largest in the United States? Do you think there’s an effort in this time, in the aftermath of the hurricane of—an effort to just privatize it?

MAYOR CARMEN YULÍN CRUZ: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: For it totally to fail?

MAYOR CARMEN YULÍN CRUZ: Yes, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think has to be done about that?

MAYOR CARMEN YULÍN CRUZ: It cannot be privatized. I am—and a lot of people—totally against, because we are a hundred miles long by 35 miles wide. That’s a monopoly. It doesn’t matter how you want to disguise it. It’s a monopoly. And what we’re doing is we’re putting in private hands the decision as to where our economic development is spread, where the sense of equality or inequality will happen. So, power isn’t just about the power grid. It’s also about the ability that the Puerto Rican people may have in the years to come to ensure that there is appropriate economic development and equally divided amongst all the 78 municipalities in Puerto Rico.

AMY GOODMAN: Disaster capitalism, what does that term mean to you? And do you think that’s happening here, using a crisis to accomplish something that couldn’t be accomplished otherwise?

MAYOR CARMEN YULÍN CRUZ: You know, I wish I had never been introduced to that term. Also the shock, shock treatment, right? Using the chaos to strip employees of their bargaining rights, rights that took 40, 50 years for the unions to be able to determine. That is something very important. And it just means taking advantage of people when they are in a life-or-death situation. It is the most—an absolute mistreatment of human rights. It means that the strongest really feed off the weakest, until everything that’s left is the carcass.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to Puerto Rico, where Governor Ricardo Roselló announced on Sunday that he was instructing Puerto Rico’s Electrical Power Authority, known as PREPA, to cancel its controversial $300 million contract with the tiny Montana-based company Whitefish Energy. The governor’s move came after enormous pressure and scrutiny of the contract to reconstruct Puerto Rico’s electrical power grid devastated by Hurricane Maria. Whitefish Energy is based in the tiny hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. The head of the private equity company that backs Whitefish, Joe Colonnetta, was a Trump campaign donor. Meanwhile, Whitefish CEO Andrew Techmanski argues his company’s ability to mobilize quickly was vital to winning the contract.

AMY GOODMAN: All of this comes as a leaked copy of the no-bid contract sparked even further outrage last week, when it was revealed that the terms barred penalties for work delays and prohibited the project from being audited by any U.S. government agency.

Well, Democracy Now! went down to Puerto Rico over the weekend, and I got a chance to sit down yesterday, on Sunday, with the head of UTIER, the Puerto Rico electrical workers’ union, Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo. We sat down in his office just as Governor Roselló was speaking. I began by asking him what he thought of the governor’s announcement that he will be canceling the contract, that he’s calling for the cancellation of the contract with Whitefish Energy.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. As many parts of the continental United States and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico recover from a devastating series of hurricanes—Harvey, Irma, Maria—we end today’s show with an update from one of the hardest-hit communities along the Gulf Coast: Port Arthur, Texas, a fenceline community with several massive oil refineries that flooded during Hurricane Harvey. Just last week, a fire at the Valero oil refinery in Port Arthur released nearly 1 million pounds of emissions into the air, prompting residents to stay in their homes for hours. Meanwhile, the 3,600-acre Motiva oil refinery in Port Arthur, that is run by Saudi Arabia, says it plans to continue a multibillion-dollar expansion of its facility, which is already the largest in the United States. This comes as hundreds of displaced Port Arthur residents, whose homes were flooded during the storm, continue to live in tents. And a number of Port Arthur residents who were renting and had to evacuate have been evicted.

For more, we’re joined by environmental justice activist Hilton Kelley, up from Port Arthur. He made history in 2011 when he became the first African-American man to win the "Green Nobel Prize," the Goldman Environmental Prize. Kelley is the executive director and founder of the Community In-Power and Development Association. His restaurant and home were both flooded during the hurricane. We last spoke with him on the phone just after the storm as he was helping save people. He joins us now in studio after attending a climate summit here in New York run by the Hip Hop Caucus.

Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to meet you in person, Hilton Kelley.

HILTON KELLEY: Thank you for having me, Amy. I appreciate being here.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you facing in Port Arthur?

HILTON KELLEY: Well, what we’re facing in Port Arthur, Texas, number one, is mass evacuations of our renters. We’re also facing Superfund sites. We’re also facing—

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what Superfund sites are.

HILTON KELLEY: Well, a Superfund site is an area that’s been deemed uninhabitable due to contamination of some type of toxin. And most of the time in our area, it’s petroleum waste or petroleum material that has been discarded in some shape, form or fashion, and it has rendered the land uninhabitable.

AMY GOODMAN: Keep going. What else?

HILTON KELLEY: And so, with that being said, many of our people are being displaced. I mean, there’s a lot of danger when you live in a situation like this. And also, we’re dealing with a situation with our elderly, in our community and in other communities around Port Arthur, Texas, where many people’s homes that were flooded, these folks were right at their 30-year mortgage payment, where they was about to be done with that. And now they’re having to start over because FEMA is offering them a loan instead of some kind of grant opportunity. And basically, most of the people in Port Arthur has been abandoned by FEMA. The Red Cross has reached its limit. And many people were in lines trying to get their $400 check, and now that’s gone. I mean, I’ve gotten thousands of phone calls and emails saying that "We need help now," to this day. And the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey is just starting to show its ugly head.