JANUARY 22, 2026
Harry Belafonte:“My responsibility as an artist is to uplift, to inspire, to motivate, to provoke, to agitate, and to liberate; artists are the gatekeepers of the truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.”
Lolita Lebron:“Before God and the world, my blood claims the independence of Puerto Rico. I give myself for the freedom of my country. This is a cry for victory in our struggle for independence. The United States of America is betraying the sacred principles of mankind in its continuous subjugation of my country.”
Bad Bunny’s cultural impact is undeniable. Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio has leveraged his global platform to awaken millions to a fundamental truth: Puerto Rico is a colony under siege by the United States, and it is long past time that we were freed from 128 years of United States colonization. He has shifted the consciousness of the Puerto Rican diaspora and the world in ways that organizers have struggled to achieve for decades, a significant accomplishment deserving of profound gratitude.
Bad Bunny excluded the United States from his world tour, explaining to i-D magazine that he feared his Latino fans would be subjected to immigration raids. As he told The Guardian, this decision stemmed from genuine concern about ICE targeting concert attendees. He made the deliberate, principled choice to hold his residency in Puerto Rico so that undocumented fans could attend without risk of ICE arrest, understanding how the state’s power can be weaponized against the vulnerable. This makes the Super Bowl decision even more confusing, particularly given Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s announcement that ICE will conduct enforcement operations at the Super Bowl itself. When asked by right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson whether there would be “ICE enforcement” at the event, Noem replied, “ICE officers will be all over the game,” adding that people should only attend if they are “law-abiding Americans who love this country.” Reports also indicate that ICE commercials will run throughout the broadcast.
Another troubling contradiction is his multi-year partnership to “develop” Puerto Rico by creating the “comPRa Local” storefront for Puerto Rican goods and to build schools in Puerto Rico. Amazon has faced criticism for its treatment of workers and retaliation against employees who attempt to unionize. Amazon Web Services provides cloud infrastructure for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, hosting databases that enable tracking and deportation operations. AWS supports ICE systems, including those from data analysis firms such as Palantir, which store biometric information and process vast amounts of data for immigration enforcement. Jeff Bezos could not care less about the people of Puerto Rico; this deal is to assert a foothold on the land and exploit both the land and the people, because that is what colonizers do. Amazon will not change the material conditions of the people of Puerto Rico; only independence will.
If it wasn’t clear before, it is now. The last three weeks have demonstrated that Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice, President Donald Trump, and his administration are the domestic terrorists.
- December 31: Keith Porter—a Black father, son, neighbor, and community member—stepped outside his front door to celebrate. He fired his gun in the air to celebrate the coming of 2026. ICE agent Brian Palacios, who lived in the same complex, went inside his own unit, put on his tactical gear, grabbed his ICE-issued firearm, stepped back outside, and shot him dead in front of his own home.(BLACK LIVES MATTER GRASSROOTS)
- January 7: The world watched as ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot three times and murdered Renee Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
- January 19: The Pentagon ordered 1,500 troops to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota, a threat President Donald Trump has made in response to the unrest, and two battalions of the 11th Airborne Division were placed on prepare-to-deploy orders in case he does.
- January 21: DHS launched Operation Catch of the Day in Maine, targeting Somali Immigrants.
- January 22: (today, early morning) “Two people were arrested on Thursday morning in connection with a controversial protest at a Minnesota church on Sunday.” Pam Bondi posted on social media that Nekya Levy Armstrong and Chantell Louisa Allen were taken into custody on Thursday. Charging papers were not immediately available, and the Justice Department did not immediately return a request for comment. “Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP,” Bondi said in a post on The White House, and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, celebrated Armstrong’s arrest on social media and posted a picture of her being detained. Armstrong was being charged under a statute that makes it a crime to conspire to block someone from exercising their civil rights.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/22/two-arrests-minnesota-church-protest]
The American empire is crumbling, and unfortunately, there will be more casualties, and those casualties will mostly be Black and Brown people. The Super Bowl upholds the empire. It is more than a football game; it is a display of American nationalism, militarism, imperialism, and patriarchy. The NFL, as an institution, has historically profited from commodifying the bodies of Black and Brown players. Bad Bunny cannot claim to stand against U.S. colonialism while serving as halftime entertainment for the most visible celebration of that dominance. To take that stage is to provide a veneer of cultural and political progress. Bad Bunny, Benito, has a choice to make; this is the moment where his words meet the politics of now. Choose the movement over the spectacle, the community over the corporation, liberation over celebrity. Choose the people and tell the NFL to **** off. Trust me, you will be remembered more for your decision not to perform than for the performance itself
Rosa Alicia Clemente is an award-winning organizer, speaker, political commentator, producer, independent journalist, scholar-activist, and former Vice-Presidential candidate (2008, Green Party). The Bronx-born Black-Puerto Rican is frequently sought out for her insight and commentary on Afro-Latinx identity and Black and Latinx liberation movements. Creator of Know Thy Self Productions, under which she has organized multiple national tours; PR on the Map, an independent, unapologetic, Afro-Latinx-centered media collective founded in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria; and the Black Diasporic Organizing Project, a nonprofit dedicated to combating anti-Blackness within the wider Latinx community. Recently, she was also an associate producer on the 2021 Oscar-winning biographical drama film Judas and the Black Messiah. She is currently completing her PhD at the W.E.B. DuBois Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
