>>Good morning and welcome to Global Perspectives.

I'm David Dumke.

Today we're joined by Neil Weare the President and founder of Equally American welcome to the show Neil.

>>My pleasure to be here.

>>Neil tell us a little about Equally American and a little about your own background.

>>Sure.

Equally Americans, a nonprofit organization that advocates for equality and civil rights for the 3.6 million U.S. citizens who live in U.S. territories.

I myself grew up in Guam, which is how I got interested in these issues when I was in high school reading my U.S. history textbooks, reading my American government textbooks about the importance of voting, you know voting for president, having participation in the laws you follow.

And then when I turned 18, I had to register for the draft but couldn't vote for the president of the United States.

And that's something that really awakened in me, this idea that there was something a matter with the United States relationship with its territories, or you could even call them colonies.

And for the last ten years, I've been working to address these issues through the courts, through Congress, and through other advocacy.

>>When we're talking about the territories, you're you're talking you're referring to Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands and American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas, correct?

>>Yes.

So there's five populated US territories, as you said, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands here in the Caribbean close by.

And then in the Pacific, you have Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and in the southern hemisphere, American Samoa.

Together, you're talking about 3.6 million U.S. citizens.

Now, that's a population equal to the five smallest states.

But unlike those five states that have ten U.S. senators, 15 electors in the Electoral College and five voting members of Congress, if you move to a U.S. territory, you have zero representation in Congress and can't vote for president based simply on where your zip code is.

So people living in Florida, if you move to Puerto Rico, you immediately become disenfranchized.

And so those are some of the issues that we try to address as an organization.

And looking at how to talk about these areas, Are they are they territories?

Is it appropriate to use the word colony?

It's just a factual description.

This is a group of people who are required to follow laws that they have no say in making, who are disenfranchized from a political process.

If something goes wrong, as happened in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, with the recovery and the FEMA funds there, there's no mechanism for political accountability to hold elected officials accountable.

That's the definition of a colony.

One way to think about this, too, in thinking about the relationship in each of these territories and trying to connect that to people living in Florida or other states is what would be acceptable in your community.

So if you lived in a community in the United States that couldn't vote for president, that didn't have any voting representation in Congress that was discriminated against, and federal benefits programs like Supplemental Security Income or Medicaid, would that be acceptable to your community here?

And universally, the answer I get back is that, no, that wouldn't be acceptable.

Everyone should have a say in the decisions that impact their lives.

But that's not acceptable here in Florida.

Why should it be acceptable and why should the United States view it as acceptable just because someone lives in Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands or Guam?

>>When you talk about, you know, US colonies, I think, first of all, the word itself is jarring to a lot of Americans who have a tradition of being an anti colonial place by our very origin.

Are people surprised when you're describing some of these discrepancies in the law about treatment of people under the American flag?

>>Yeah, I think I think most Americans aren't even necessarily aware that the United States has territories or colonies today or that the people that live in these areas are disenfranchized or don't have the same political say.

I think there's just a lot that we as Americans take for granted.

You know, voting equal treatment under the law.

These are bedrock American principles that when you go beyond the borders to a place like Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands or Guam, the rules suddenly change.

And the reason for that is a series of Supreme Court decisions known as the Insular Cases decided by the same court that decided Plessy versus Ferguson, that established this doctrine of separate and unequal status for the people who lived in these areas based on the color of their skin, the language they spoke and their culture.

So the same kind of discrimination that was the bedrock of the Jim Crow era and Plessy versus Ferguson, that the United States has worked pretty intently to turn the page on continues to be the governing colonial framework and racist framework for the 3.6 million people who live in these areas, who are 98% people of color.

So there's there's a legal framework behind this.

There's a racial element to this.

And in 2023, it's as we're approaching 125 years under this relationship since Puerto Rico, Guam and other territories became part of the United States in 1898, it's really important for folks to start taking a fresh look at this and becoming more aware that this situation even exists at all.

>>Why has it taken so long through the court system to change this?

You're talking about, you know, cases that literally are over 100 years old.

Why?

Why are these still stand?

>>Yeah, I wish I had a better answer to that.

Otherwise, we would have probably been more successful in trying to get them overruled.

We've brought a number of cases raising issues about whether the Constitution follows the flag to U.S. territories, whether principles like equal protection apply the same to residents of the territories, whether either even something as basic as citizenship by birth on US soil applies in US territory.

And time and time again, the Supreme Court has avoided or dodged addressing these issues even as they have taken up other issues, saying that, for example, this last year in a case United States versus Vaello Madero, the court 8 to 1 said it's okay to discriminate against residents of Puerto Rico and deny them participation in the SSI program based simply upon where they happen to live.

So if you live in New York or Florida, you get these benefits, you change your residence to Puerto Rico, you're the same person, you have the same disability, you have the same income.

You don't get these benefits.

So this is all part of highlighting a broader problem, both in the courts and in the political branches of a lack of recognition that a problem even exists that needs to be solved.

And until the United States officials and the United States general public recognize that there's a problem that needs to be solved, it's going to be very difficult to change this racist colonial framework in ways that will benefit not just the residents of the territories who are most directly impacted by this, but the United States as a whole, where, as you said, we're a country that prides itself as the greatest democracy in the world, and yet we have 3.6 million citizens who are disenfranchized.

Democracy and colonialism are incompatible.

But until there's a broader awareness that this situation exists and then a recognition that it needs to change, we may well be stuck in this for more years to come.

>>Each of these territories you're talking about has different histories to a certain degrees and different needs.

And so what are some of the commonalities between them, number one?

And then you have situations like in Puerto Rico where there's been a longstanding debate over status issue.

I imagine the status issues different in different different places, different territories.

So what are the what brings them together and what what differentiates them?

>>I think there's a number of of things and really more things that unite people in the territories than maybe make them different from each other, although they each have, you know, different historical context, different cultures and in some cases speak different languages.

One of those most central things is just not having a say in the laws that they're required to follow, not having voting representation when it comes to different federal benefits programs.

It's actually interesting.

Certain programs like SSI apply in some territories, but then not others.

Others, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Food stamps apply in other territories, but not not different ones.

It's this arbitrary framework that almost requires a law degree just to understand what your rights are based on where you live, which is not the way it's supposed to work.

And a place where on the Supreme Court it says equal justice under law.

And so that's that's one kind of challenge that these areas have in kind of coming together.

And then another piece is just as there's a lot of lack of awareness about the different territories in the United States writ large.

The same is true in each of these areas.

So if you ask people in Puerto Rico about Guam or American Samoa, you're likely to get the same kind of blank stares as if you ask somebody in Florida that same question.

So one of the things that we've been working on as an organization is trying to bring these areas together to recognize that while important, significant differences exist at a fundamental level, there really is a lot more that draws us together.

And then even more broadly than that, framing these issues in a way that the average American can relate to them, whether they live in Florida or Iowa or Georgia or Michigan, that the United States, simply put, there shouldn't there should not be colonies and the United States there should not be second class citizens.

These are things that we can all agree on, even as there may be differences of viewpoint in different territories about what the ultimate status goal should be.

You know, should a territory become a state of the United States, should a territory, the people the territory want to become independent or have some kind of treaty relationship with the United States?

Those are all important conversations to think about and have.

But until there's a fundamental understanding, both in the territories and at a national level, that there's a problem that needs to be solved.

Those questions on exactly what should happen in each jurisdiction or what the people of each jurisdiction might want are almost premature.

And we really are trying to focus a lot of our work and just getting that bringing people together around this idea that there is a problem that needs to be solved today.

>>One of the course tenants from, you know, the founding Fathers was representation and no taxation without representation.

You see a case right now that's working with the Cherokee Nation, fighting for a seat in Congress.

And if they would win that case, what does that mean for other territories who are non-state actors or what could it mean?

>>Yeah, I think it's a good example of, you know, where representation in Congress is not inherently limited to states of the Union.

You know, you have even through constitutional amendment, residents of the district of Columbia, not a state able to vote for president because of the 23rd Amendment recognition that there are other groups of folks in the United States, like Native peoples, who would benefit from having more specific representation in the federal government.

And, you know, again, this is kind of going back to our history.

You have from very early on the very beginnings of the United States in its constitution, a recognition that we the people was not just the states united, it was we, the people of the United States, which Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in a prominent Supreme Court decision included the states, the territories and the District of Columbia.

So while that understanding and kind of people's public understanding of what the United States means has shifted as territories have become more marginalized and more pushed to the periphery over time, the original understanding of the United States and the role of the territories within that was well understood that there was not any inherent difference for the people who lived in these areas based on whether they lived in a territory or a state.

And there always was the understanding that territorial status was meant to be very temporary until such time as that territory could either have full participation in the state or perhaps go separate and be independent.

The problem now is that you have these territories which have transformed into colonies and is now lasted almost 125 years.

That's more than half the time that the United States has had a written constitution.

So more so for more than half of the United States constitutional history, there has been the existence of colonies that fly in the face of that very document.

And so those are some of the things we're trying to work on changing and raising visibility at all levels of government and different communities across the United States.

>>Is this is a see you yourself for a lawyer.

You you you went to Yale, you're writing a casebook on territorial law, as I understand it.

And you're working you're actively working on the legal angle of this.

How much of this is a legal problem as opposed to a political one or an educational one, or is it a combination of all three?

>>I think it's all three.

And one of the motivators for me to go to law school was really looking at other civil rights movements that other marginalized groups who are politically disenfranchized how have they worked to build power and agency within structures that were weighted against them?

And so, you know, the one that is kind of most prominent is the African-American civil rights movement.

And you had, as with the territories, you had Supreme Court precedent and Plessy versus Ferguson established this doctrine of separate but equal that essentially justified the Jim Crow framework of that era.

And while Congress certainly could have acted, notwithstanding Plessy to dismantle Jim Crow, the both the political incentives and kind of the cultural understanding was that racial segregation in America and Jim Crow did not present a problem that needed to be solved.

That started to change and change pretty quickly in the 1950s and sixties, when you had the Supreme Court and Brown v board say separate but equal is inherently unequal, that racial segregation and conflicts with America's foundational notions of equal justice under law, and having the court make those statements when combined with social mobilization through activist communities both in the African-American community and beyond, and with the education that that provided to the American population of just what Jim Crow meant and the harms it made not only on African-American communities, but the country on a whole in terms of making the whole country weaker, then led to creating a political space where in the 1960s you were able to achieve results like the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s, 1965, or the Voting Rights Act.

So similarly here, the legal structure of the Insular Cases serves as an obstacle to addressing these underlying issues.

Because so long as the Supreme Court says it's okay, it's much easier for the political branch to say, well, there's not a problem that needs to be solved here.

So by challenging the Insular Cases, by working to dismantle that colonial framework combined with organizing in communities and social movements and a broader education movement, it could be possible to recreate some of the benefits we saw with dismantling the Jim Crow framework to the work that we're trying to do today to dismantle the colonial framework that continues to exist in 2023 in the United States.

>>So you're talking about education and the politics being very important, you know, mobilization going on along in the time period of these these monumental cases in the fifties and sixties and but you have a situation like in Puerto Rico, September 2017, where you have Hurricane Maria, you have over 3,000 people killed after the hurricane.

You have examples that Congress has looked at of corruption, of contracts that shouldn't have been given mismanagement, not just from the Puerto Rican side, but also the federal agencies serving the situation.

And you had the American public paying attention because it's been covered by the media and in many cases horrified, because it's a shameful thing to see someone under the American flag, people under American flag being treated that way.

This is not to be a pessimistic question, but it's a challenge to you if you have that situation and it hasn't resulted in the change that you're talking about, you're working towards what gives you reason to believe that it's going to happen?

>>Yeah, I think one thing that I bring to this work that folks sometimes joke with me about is that I'm always an optimist.

So I'll whenever I have a setback, I'm always someone who's able to find silver linings.

And we actually had a case before the Supreme Court earlier this year that many Supreme Court watchers thought the Supreme Court would take up to address and overrule the insular cases.

And they ended up not taking that case, much to people's surprise and chagrin.

And, you know, people afterwards asked me, you know, Neil, weren't you just devastated that this thing you've been working so hard on, this opportunity wasn't materialized?

And my response to that, almost half jokingly, was, well, I'm very used to setbacks.

What I wouldn't have known what to do with is if we actually started having some real success in this area.

But what Hurricane Maria and some of the tension that flowed from that has generated is an awareness in the United States that these areas even exist at all and that they face discrimination and disenfranchisement.

So that's an important piece of the beginning of this work, just for people to recognize that Puerto Rico's party, United States, the people who live there, are U.S. citizens.

They've been historically denied self-determination.

Some of these basic facts that are becoming more common among the general population, but also among folks in media or folks in political decision making positions.

And so we can work with that.

These aren't the kind of issues, you know, just as racial segregation and trying to end Jim Crow.

It's not going to turn on a dime and suddenly change.

The work we're doing with community partners, with other organizations, with different leaders, is really trying to change the culture around these issues to where this kind of colonial framework is recognized as being unacceptable under the US flag, that democracy and colonialism are incompatible.

Until we're able to create more of that kind of cultural shift, just as it was needed to create that cultural shift that Jim Crow and racial segregation is incompatible with democracy.

Or analogize to another issue marriage equality.

So many years of advocacy in the courts, outside the courts, raising awareness about these issues.

And then in a relatively short period of time, there was a shift in the cultural understandings around these issues where there was broader support and recognition of something like marriage equality.

So this is another situation where advocacy inside the courts, outside the courts, through social mobilization, community organizing and through engaging with folks in the media and and political actors, over time, you can start to shape that culture by continually pressing the facts on the ground and the relationship the United States has with each of these areas against America's own principles and values.

And so when you see the president of the United States, President Biden, just this last week issued a very important executive order combating racial discrimination and promoting racial equity, listed all kinds of different groups that would be focused on and that this would that this, this or this activity would benefit.

One, the groups not listed was the 3.6 million people living in U.S. territories.

So on the one hand, that's a setback.

On the other hand, it's an opportunity the president hasn't taken while he's done a lot of things that benefit the people of Puerto Rico in terms of some of the the challenges this framework has created from disaster recovery to health care and, you know, climate issues facing the territories.

He has not yet focused on these issues by looking at the root of the problem, which are the Insular Cases and this colonial framework.

In fact, the president has actually, through the Department of Justice, opposed calls to the Supreme Court to overrule the Insular Cases.

And so when I see the president leaving out the territories in something as important as this executive order, on the one hand, I'm disappointed.

On the other, I look at it as an opportunity for the president to take further action, particularly as we approach the 125th anniversary of the United States having these formal colonies that are in such conflict with who we are as a country.

>>You're talking about solving the root problem, though, and you look at Puerto Rico and of course, there's a lot of an excuse given by Washington saying we would love to help Puerto Rico, but the Puerto Ricans can't tell us what they themselves want because you have statehood, you have independence, you have commonwealth and variations thereof.

So until they do that, you know, we'll just be sitting here helping you.

You seem to only be treating symptoms, but not root causes.

Is that the case or what?

What can be done?

>>Yeah, I think people in Washington are always happy to look for an excuse not to do something for the territories.

That's one of the challenges, is that there's a lot of status quo is just really is the default the default is towards inaction on these issues.

People love to different debates or controversies, disagreements within the territories or among the territories as an excuse not to act.

But ultimately, this is a problem that the United States itself created.

Puerto Rico didn't ask to be a colony of the United States.

The United States acquired Puerto Rico in 1898 as a spoil of war.

The people of Puerto Rico have not been giving a meaningful opportunity to exercise self-determination by get by being given a range of options to choose from.

There are some developments in Washington where this last year, different factions of the Puerto Rico status debate actually did come together to get legislation passed in the form of the Puerto Rico Status Act, which there was still some controversy around.

But it was exciting to see there start to be more of a consensus driven process among both folks within Puerto Rico and in the broader Washington community.

And then also having a process that was a binding plebiscite.

So having, you know, asking someone what they want without assuring them that if they give an answer, they will get it.

That's not going to.

That's not meaningful self-determination.

People need to know what their choices are and know that what they choose, they will actually get in order to have a meaningful engagement on these issues.

And so while we're still a long ways from kind of getting to that point, there have been some incremental steps in the right direction that with some leadership from folks like President Biden and folks in each of the territories, I again, forever the optimist.

I think that there are some real opportunities, even just in this next year as we have the 125th anniversary, to start fundamentally changing the conversation around these areas into one that recognizes that there's a colonial framework that exists and that that needs to end for the United States to live up to its ideals as a country and also for the residents of each of these areas to be able to exercise meaningful self-determination and to live up to their own best interests and and best future.

>>Neil Weare I admire your optimism and I wish you the best as you keep working on these very important issues.

Thank you for joining us.

>>Thank you.

>>And thank you for joining us.

We'll see you again next week on another episode of Global Perspectives.