Recent talks by top U.S. officials over acquiring Greenland — a Danish territory — have led advocates for territorial rights to hold talks of their own in recent days. Leaders of the group Right to Democracy invited the public to join the conversation at a breakfast gathering held Friday on St. Thomas.
Right to Democracy cofounders Neil Weare and Adi Martinez-Roman hosted a dialogue at Bluebeard’s Castle Hotel with a group of about a dozen residents. Organizers saw that as a chance to update supporters on current topics before them.
The invitation billed Friday’s event as a chance to share information about efforts to confront territorial challenges occurring in Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands. “We tried to get them here before work for breakfast to be able to talk to them about the work we’ve been doing,” Martinez-Roman said.
Over the three years since Right to Democracy first took shape, efforts have been made to hold listening sessions in the different territories and create strategies to address some of the issues that came from those sessions, the cofounder said.
Lawyers active in the group’s leadership then took some first steps in court to address inequities found in the system created by the U.S. government, many of which are found in a 20th-century body of laws called the Insular Cases. Two of the group’s board members — both of them attorneys — raised separate topics likely to stir cross-territorial concerns.
Attorney Charles Alai-Lima told the story of an American Samoan family charged with election fraud in Alaska; Attorney Jackie Turlogie raised the topic of U.S. government plans to pursue deep seabed mining along the Tonga Trench in Samoa.
In April of last year, the White House issued an executive order creating policies they hope will make the U.S. a world leader in deep-seabed mining pursuits.
Given the presence of other deep-seabed areas between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, Martinez-Roman said similar scenarios may appear here. “That is why we think this deep-seabed mining might be a menace to the Caribbean,” she said.
For those and other reasons, the group raised money to create environmental fellowships for each territory. Imani Daniel of St. Thomas was chosen as the V.I. fellow. Efforts by members of the group have also led to the creation of a cross-territorial coalition that meets virtually.
But the cofounder said it may still take more time to form durable bonds among the five territories to advance what’s described as “a movement across the territories to confront the colonial framework that affects all of us in many ways.”
“We do have a presence; we are striving to maintain it, and we swear we are going to get the resources to be able to maintain this presence in each of the territories,” Martinez-Roman said.
