Right to Democracy and Right to Self-Determine
In my life I have attended a number of events, whether in person or virtually, where representatives were gathered in solidarity from each of the current US territories. But in these spaces, there was usually just a single representative from different territories, owing to the distances or difficulties in physically bringing together people Guam, the CNMI, the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and American Samoa. One thing that made the recent Right to Democracy summit different for me, was the amount of people in attendance representing each of the territories, and how each community wasn’t reduced to a single voice, a single soundbite or a short presentation. The experiences of those in the current US territories was not on the fringes or the margins, which is the norm, but instead we were all centered. This summit focused on developing a network across the territories, with the aim of helping to dismantle US colonialism, created a lot more possibilities than usual and that was exc...