Jesse Lava is a Summer Fellow with the Hauser Center’s Justice & Human Rights Domain and a Masters in Public Policy student at the Harvard Kennedy School. This summer Jesse is conducting research and organizing in Vieques, Puerto Rico, with the faith-based NGO, the American Values Network.

Bob Rabin is a tough guy to miss in Vieques.  He’s only 5’10ish, but with his unruly curly hair, some of the biggest eyebrows I’ve ever seen, and a swagger befitting a legendary community activist, his presence fills a room.  He serves as director of the local museum on this 9200-person island that serves as a municipality of Puerto Rico.  Every day when Bob drives home from work, people wave to him from the streets, sometimes holding a fist in the air to honor Bob’s status as one of the island’s preeminent rabble-rousers.

About 10 years ago, there was an awful lot of rabble-rousing going on in Vieques.  The U.S Navy had been using the island as a live bombing range for six decades, testing toxic munitions like napalm, Agent Orange, and depleted uranium.  The population got literally sick of it, as the rates of cancer, diabetes, and heavy metal poisoning became staggeringly high for island residents.  A vibrant international movement developed to push the Navy out of Vieques.  And Bob Rabin was at the center of the storm.

Vieques activist and museum director Bob Rabin examines island records from the 19th century.

He tends to downplay the role he had in the effort, but Bob, along with his longtime partner, Nilda Medina, were primary leaders in a four-year campaign of civil disobedience and international advocacy.  They set up “peace and justice camps” inside the bombing area to keep the Navy from completing its exercises.  They saw an ecumenical council of church leaders emerge to speak out against the immorality of the Navy’s presence.  And due to the civil disobedience, over 1000 people were ultimately arrested.  The U.S. media covered nearly every minute of it, keeping the pressure on decision makers to do something about the problem.

Happily, the campaign succeeded, leading the Navy to leave Vieques in 2003.  “We won in spite of ourselves,” Bob says.  “The people of Vieques were pushing for action, so we [the activists] couldn’t let internal politics and petty grievances stand in the way.”

This summer, I’m living with Bob and Nilda in their home in Esperanza on the southern coast of Vieques.  I’m in the house that this activist couple has occupied for the past 30 years, soaking in the activist artwork and lefty bumper stickers that adorn their kitchen walls.  I’m here as a community organizer with the American Values Network, a faith-based advocacy group that wants the U.S. Navy and Congress to help pay the health care bills of the population here.  After all, studies suggest these bills would be much lower if not for the contamination left by the Navy.  Helping the population heal its wounds, both literally and figuratively, seems the least that the federal government can do.

And yet for now, the government is refusing to do even that.  About 7000 Vieques residents have signed onto a class action lawsuit against the Navy, hoping for some kind of relief and support given what they’ve suffered.  But the Navy insists on claiming a defense of “sovereign immunity.”  The Navy claims, in other words, that the king can do no wrong.  The lawsuit is now working its way through the courts.

Besides this civil suit, activists are working to pass a bill in Congress that would put a real hospital and research facilities on Vieques.   Today the island has only a clinic, and an ill equipped one at that.  Residents who want specialized care have to take a long ferry ride to the main island, make their way to San Juan, sit in a waiting room for two hours, and then return to Vieques.  Whether a new hospital materializes or not, there is a consensus that something more needs to be done to help the population of Vieques overcome the health problems it faces.

But here’s the rub.  Winning these kinds of victories requires a fight.  And for now, the island does not have the energy and momentum that it enjoyed 10 years ago.  The U.S. media is no longer paying much attention to Vieques, and there is no full-time organizer working on the issue.  Activists like Bob and Nilda have to scrounge up what little time they have just to do periodic conference calls.  An injection is needed to juice up the movement here.  And that’s where I come in.

Specifically, my role here in Vieques is two-fold.

First, I’m working with churches to explore the possibility of doing advocacy around the lawsuit and legislation.  To recapture the attention of the U.S. and the world, a clear, moral voice will have to swell up from Vieques.  Churches are uniquely positioned to provide that voice.  The credibility that comes from impassioned, soulful advocacy is difficult to overstate.  And so I’m working to help develop the capacity for faith-based advocacy on this island — including identifying potential leaders who can carry the ball forward when I leave.

Second, while the lawsuit and legislation run their course, I’m seeking to lay the groundwork for the island to receive better health services in the short run.  One option is to organize medical mission trips to bring specialists to the island.

Viequenses wait for the one and a half hour ferry to the Puerto Rican mainland, which is the usual means of transportation for specialty medical services.

Another is to see if resources can be found to make it easier for residents to go elsewhere for specialized care.  Additional ideas abound, but for now, I’m interviewing medical professionals and other leaders on the island to see what they have to say on the subject; I don’t want to assume that I already know what’s best.  When I finish my interviews, I’ll produce an inventory of the resources available, the resources needed, and the various options for tackling the problem.  Today, no such report exists, and it should be helpful both for figuring out how to improve health care in the short run and for providing Congress and the courts with evidence of Vieques’s needs.

Ultimately, though, the key will not be what I do, but what the population of Vieques does after I leave.  Success will require a reinvigorated sense of energy and renewed spirit of cooperation.  Is it possible?  No one here seems to be 100% confident, but a conversation I had recently with a local Catholic deacon named Justino Lopez gave me hope.  He told me about the period when the Viequenses were fighting to get the Navy out.  “It was a beautiful time,” he said, “a time where the churches put aside their different interpretations of the Bible and we were all one.”  One event in particular made a mark on Justino:

“I remember a day when we were very close to the impact area.  There was a Presbyterian minister there and a Methodist pastor too.  And I was in a tent.  It was a stormy night, and the wind blew away the tent of the minister of the other pastor, and so they came into my tent.  Can you imagine a deacon and these people from different religions all in the same tent?  It was a beautiful experience, and we came together to give Vieques a voice — a voice that was heard around the world.  When it was over, they asked me, ‘Is this bonding between churches going to continue or not?’  I told them, in the sacrament of marriage, there is a part that says, what God has put together, let no man put asunder.  If we are already united, let’s stay that way.”

Justino isn’t sure where those ministers are today.  Bob Rabin says he doesn’t know either.  But the struggle — “la lucha” — continues.  It’s the struggle of Bob and Nilda, of Justino, and indeed of everyone who seeks justice, accountable government, and basic human rights for dispossessed people.  And maybe the people of Vieques, all of us, can win again.