P.R. ‘hero’ hailed
Controversial FALN figure welcomed in Bronx
FORMER FALN leader Oscar Lopez Rivera received a hero’s welcome Thursday in the Bronx — his first appearance in New York since setting off a firestorm surrounding the Puerto Rican Day Parade.
Supporters showered Lopez Rivera, wearing white from head to toe, with red flowers and chanted his name during an appearance at Hostos Community College.
The inclusion of the Puerto Rican nationalist in Sunday’s festivities led to sponsors and participants pulling out of the parade.
“I want to express my profound gratitude to that committee,” Lopez Rivera said of the organizers of the march. “For one reason they did not succumb or run away from the challenge. They did not allow certain corporations to blackmail it or dictate what it should do.”
The 74-year-old was was just released from prison for his leadership role with FALN, a terror group responsible for deadly bombings across the U.S. — including one that killed four at the historic Fraunces Tavern in the Financial District in 1975.
Initially, parade organizers planned to honor Lopez Rivera as a “National Freedom Hero,” but the designation was met with derision.
“No Puerto Rican should allow themselves to be dictated how to live,” Lopez Rivera said.
City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito offered Lopez Rivera a warm welcome.
“Oscar, enjoy all the love and warmth that you’re getting here tonight,” she said. “It is incredibly overdue and it is the least that we can do for you.”
Not everyone in New York shared the speaker’s sentiments.
Mayoral candidate Bo Dietl said Mark-Viverito should resign and “go back to Puerto Rico” over her support for the former FALN leader.
“I’m really angry. She should resign. I’ll tell you what. I’ll give her two tickets if she wants to go visit Puerto Rico — let her go back to Puerto Rico. I mean that,” Dietl said at a press conference outside City Hall Thursday.
“The odds of Melissa resigning are about as good as the odds of Bo Dietl being elected mayor,” her spokeswoman, Robin Levine, shot back.
Mayor de Blasio, who plans to march in the parade Sunday, said the Lopez Rivera situation unfortunately overshadowed Puerto Rico’s fiscal crisis.
“It’s a parade. It’s not an actual thing. It’s a parade,” he said. “An actual thing is health care. An actual thing is an economy that’s failing3
Dietl lost his appeal Thursday to get on the Republican or Democratic Party lines — because he voided his voter registration by checking boxes to be both a Democrat and an Independent.