Julio López Varona on Puerto Rico's Disaster Capitalism

CounterSpin

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New York Times image (1/11/20) of Puerto Rico earthquake.

This week on CounterSpin: Recent media coverage of Puerto Rico has focused on the impact of earthquakes on communities that have already been through displacement and blackouts and shortages. But elite media seem keen to keep it a Mother Nature story—the New York Times keeps asking why Puerto Rico can't "catch a break"—and government corruption is listed alongside hurricanes as things that sort of "happened to" the US territory. But Puerto Rico's debt crisis is a "human" story, too (in cause as well as impact) -- and dry, business-page stories pondering why a ballyhooed plan to address the island's bankruptcy has been rejected are, so far, a missed opportunity to talk about Puerto Rico as a living lesson about climate disaster capitalism, the failure and cruelty of austerity, and the need for new ways forward. We'll talk about that with Julio López Varona, co-director of Community Dignity Campaigns at Center for Popular Democracy.

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Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent coverage of the coronavirus, the digital divide and the University of California strike.

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