It seems that as more sponsors become aware that the organizers of this year’s Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City have decided to honor a convicted terrorist trained by Cuba’s terror-sponsoring Castro regime, the less they want to be associated with the event. Traditional sponsors of the parade are pulling out in droves as organizers refuse to cancel their homage to Puerto Rican terrorist, Oscar Lopez Rivera.
More sponsors pull out of New York’s Puerto Rican Day parade
NEW YORK — More sponsors are dropping out of a New York City parade that is honoring a Puerto Rican nationalist who served decades in prison for his involvement in a group that claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings.
NBC, Telemundo, Coca-Cola, AT&T and JetBlue became the latest sponsors to skip the June 11 Puerto Rican Day parade along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. New York has the largest Puerto Rican community off the island. Goya Foods already dropped out but said it was a business decision.
Oscar Lopez Rivera spent more than 35 years in prison before his sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama. He was a member of the Armed Forces of National Liberation, or FALN, which claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings around the U.S. and Puerto Rico in the 1970s and 1980s, including a blast that killed four people at New York’s historic Fraunces Tavern in 1975.
Dallas-based AT&T Inc. said it celebrates Puerto Ricans and “their rich heritage” but would be withdrawing support from the parade this year.
JetBlue said the debate was dividing the community and it would instead redirect funds to support student scholarships.
“We did not make this decision lightly and hope all sides will come together to engage in a dialogue about the parade’s role in unifying the community at a time when Puerto Rico needs it most,” New York-based JetBlue Airways Corp. said in a statement.
The Coca-Cola Co., headquartered in Atlanta, said representatives wouldn’t march, but it would honor the financial support to the scholarship program.
The New York Yankees said they wouldn’t participate this year but would continue to fund scholarships. The team has an afternoon home game the day of the parade.
Hispanic societies in both the Fire Department of New York and the New York Police Department have said they would not be sending delegations this year, and the police commissioner said he wouldn’t march. Law enforcement officers were among those injured in the FALN blasts.
Parade organizers stand by their decision to honor Lopez Rivera as “Procer de la Libertad” — National Freedom Hero. Supporters rallied around the organizers at a news conference Monday.
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It’s practically incredible that getting an undeserved presidential pardon wasn’t enough, and presuming to shove this SOB in people’s faces as some kind of hero is beyond swinish. He is clearly unrepentant, which means he deserves zero consideration or sympathy, and neither do his partisans. Qué mierda de gente.
That’s U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez at the murderer’s left rounding out the ugliness.
Serrano must have been busy elsewhere.
It is missing the point to focus on scumbag politicians, because the real problem is the voters who put and keep them in office. I always felt that way about Obama, whom I essentially ignored in and of himself–as far as I was concerned, he was like a hologram, a projected image, not a real entity. A slimeball like Serrano signifies one thing and one thing only: slime rises because there are enough people to enable it, and they are responsible for the consequences. I repeat: Qué mierda de gente.