PR center’s funding points at Viv revenge
The Center for Puerto Rican Studies lost more than half its City Council funding last year after its leaders refused to support convicted terrorist leader Oscar López Rivera’s starring role in the Puerto Rican Day Parade.
Critics charged that former Council Speaker Melissa MarkViverito — a big booster of López Rivera — was behind the sudden slash from $960,000 to $400,000.
Well, Mark-Viverito is gone and the new city budget not only restores the money the nonprofit lost but adds $140,000 for a total grant of $1.1 million this year.
“I thank God for having Mr. Corey Johnson, an Irishman, as our City Council speaker, and ironically not a Puerto Rican like Melissa Mark-Viverito,” said Bronx Councilman Ruben Diaz Sr., a native of the island.
The Post reported on the controversy last year, coming just weeks after the turmoil surrounding the Puerto Rican Day Parade because of López Rivera’s presence.
López Rivera was a leader of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional, or FALN, terror group in the 1970s and 1980s that was responsible for more than 100 attacks in US cities, including a bombing that killed four people at New York’s historic Fraunces Tavern.
He was convicted of seditious conspiracy in 1981 and sentenced to 55 years in prison. He served 35 before his sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama — and was then invited to the 2017 Puerto Rican Day Parade, leading some sponsors to withdraw.
Bronx Councilman Rafael Salamanca, who served on the council’s budget negotiating committee, said, “I wanted to right a wrong. There was retribution because the staff at the Puerto Rican Institute didn’t want to get involved in the parade controversy.”
He said he brought the matter to Johnson’s attention. The Bronx delegation was a key bloc in delivering Johnson the votes to become speaker.
“Corey said, ‘ Salamanca, we’re going to take care of this.’ ”
Salamanca said the Center is needed now more than ever to provide data and reports to aid hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.
Edwin Melendez, director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, was on the island Tuesday preparing for a conference oof its recovery efforts — and applauded the restoration.
“It was a wrong,” he said. “I’m so happy it has been righted.”
Mark-Viverito told The Post she wouldn’t respond to Diaz Sr.’s comments because “it seems the reverend has an obsession with me — but I don’t think much of what an anti-LGBTQ bigot like him has to say anyway.”