{"id":5084662,"date":"2017-11-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ctlatinonews.com\/ct-puerto-ricans-to-play-major-role-at-sundays-unity-march-for-puerto-rico-in-washington-d-c\/"},"modified":"2017-11-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-17T05:00:00","slug":"ct-puerto-ricans-to-play-major-role-at-sundays-unity-march-for-puerto-rico-in-washington-d-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/2017\/11\/17\/ct-puerto-ricans-to-play-major-role-at-sundays-unity-march-for-puerto-rico-in-washington-d-c\/","title":{"rendered":"CT Puerto Ricans To Play Major Role At Sunday's Unity March For Puerto Rico In Washington D.C."},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nBill Sarno\/CTLatinoNews.com
\nLin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of Broadway’s “Hamilton,” and Carmen Yul\u00edn Cruz, the spirited mayor of San Juan, will contribute their celebrity to Sunday’s Unity March for Puerto Rico in Washington, D.C., but Connecticut’s Puerto Ricans \u00a0also will be playing major roles.
\nSeveral hundred marchers from the Constitution State plan to join thousands of their fellow Boricua from at least 13 other\u00a0 states on the National Mall in an effort to convince the nation’s leaders to lift the Jones Act shipping regulations and other laws, which the event’s organizers state “have been systematically oppressive and crippling to the people and the socio-economic growth and sustainability” of Puerto Rico.
\n“We want to make it clear that there are a lot of Puerto Ricans in the United States who want their island treated fairly,” said Jason Ortiz, president of the Connecticut Puerto Rican Agenda, a statewide advocacy group, and one of three people with state connections on the march’s organizing committee.
\nWildaliz Bermudez, the Working Families Party’s minority leader on the Hartford City Council, has been chosen to speak Sunday along with Miranda, Mayor Cruz, U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and other prominent Puerto Rican leaders. She is also a member of the Connecticut Puerto Rican Agenda, a statewide advocacy group.
\nMiranda also has a Connecticut connection in that he is an alumnus of Wesleyan University. The New York City native also is working with the Hispanic Federation, a national Latino advocacy organization.
\nThe Federation’s\u00a0 Connecticut office, under the direction of Ingrid Alvarez, is paying for a bus to Washington from the Hartford area. Yanil Teron, executive director of the Center for Latino Progress, is bus captain.
\nOrtiz, who was born in New London to Puerto Rican parents from A\u00f1asco and Caguas, is joined on \u00a0the Unity March’s organizing committee by Ana Valentin-Jackson, a Hartford activist who is the march’s national manager of operations, and Eva-Marie Quinones, a doctorate candidate at Yale University, who is head of national youth engagement.
\nIn Connecticut, the people coordinating participation Sunday include Ortiz, Quinones, Valentin-Jackson along with Antonio Torres, named state leader by the national committee, Milly Guzman, who is the bus captain for the Hartford contingent, and Tiana Ocasio, the membership chair of the CT Hispanic Democratic Caucus.
\nOrtiz, under the banner of the National Puerto Rican Agenda, \u00a0also will play a role in Saturday’s national Diaspora Summit sponsored by Hunter College’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies. He said that the scheduling of this “full day of strategizing” by an array of advocacy groups on the same weekend as the Unity March was a fortunate coincidence.
\nOn Saturday, he said, “we will decide what we want to ask and on Sunday we will show why we should get it.”
\nOrtiz said, “There is no illusion how easy it will be to “move Congress to act” on the issues that are vital to Puerto Rico, adding, “We have needed to come to come together, to respond on a national level and to network.”
\nThe United March is scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. in front of the Capitol Building with an opening ceremony and then proceed to the Lincoln Memorial with keynote addresses that will serve as “a call to action to the leaders of the nation.”
\nThis “bill of grievances,” Ortiz said, is likely to resemble the five demands set down recently by the Hispanic Federation, which focus on “economic recovery and transparency and accountability in the delivery of aid to the hurricane ravaged commonwealth.”
\nThe Federation’s demands are:<\/p>\n