• Right to Democracy is a non-profit organization that is building a movement to confront and dismantle the undemocratic colonial framework that impacts over 10 million people – 3.6 million in U.S. territories and over 6 million more in the territorial diaspora. Our vision is that people in U.S. territories should have power and agency over the decisions that impact their lives. We approach all our work through the shared values of building common ground, respecting differences, provoking change, staying focused, and avoiding toxicity. Together with a diverse Cross-Territorial Coalition, we use participatory advocacy, narrative and cultural change, and ecosystem building to advance democracy, equity, and self-determination in U.S. territories. Working across traditional partisan and ideological divides, we do not take a position on status outcomes. But we believe it is time for a reckoning: U.S. colonial rule is real, wrong, and needs to end now.

  • No, Right to Democracy does not favor any particular status option over another, other than to reject the undemocratic colonial framework that currently governs U.S. territories. We are careful in our work not to put a “thumb on the scale” of any status result. Our core belief is that the future political status of each territory must be determined by the people of each territory.

  • Right to Democracy and the Cross-Territorial Coalition we coordinate includes people and organizations whose views on political status range the full spectrum from pro-Statehood to pro-Independence and options in between. While we are exclusively a non-partisan organization, our work brings together people who identify as both Democrats and Republicans and includes people from the major political parties in Puerto Rico. The fact that Supreme Court Justices with as different views as Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor both reject the colonial framework governing the Territories highlights how these issues are not partisan or ideological. 

    We work across partisan and status differences for two reasons. First, our core values include building common ground, respecting differences, and avoiding toxicity. This means working collectively with people from diverse perspectives to improve understanding, co-create new meanings, and leverage collective power to achieve a common objective. It also means listening with an open mind, empathizing with lived experiences, acknowledging power dynamics, and treating everyone with dignity. Second, a key lesson we have learned over the course of dozens of listening sessions with people from across all five territories is that there is much more that unites us than what separates us. Internal divisions over political status or partisan ideology have historically been used as an excuse for continued inaction by the federal government on issues of democracy and self-determination in U.S. territories. We believe people can respectfully differ on solutions while sharing a deep underlying common understanding of the problem and the need for change. From this shared foundation, we can work together in true solidarity and community towards a reckoning that U.S. colonial rule is real, wrong, and needs to end now.

  • The undemocratic colonial framework governing people in U.S. territories today was established by all three branches of the federal government following the Spanish-American War and continues in full force until today. It is grounded in the idea that the United States has the power to unilaterally govern the people of island territories without their say and without their consent. Justice Neil Gorsuch has labeled this relationship “American colonialism.” The legal foundation of this framework is the Insular Cases, a series of controversial Supreme Court decisions Justice Sonia Sotomayor has called “odious and wrong,” and Justice Gorsuch has declared “deserve no place in our law” because they “have no foundation in the Constitution and rest instead on racial stereotypes.” This colonial framework is also characterized by the legal doctrine of “plenary power,” where the Supreme Court has described the power of Congress over people in the Territories as “absolute and undisputed.” Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Clarence, recently questioned this doctrine, explaining that  “[the Territories] Clause, rightly understood,” does not “endow the federal government with plenary power even within the Territories themselves.” 

    Based on these legal doctrines, the federal government claims sweeping power to govern every aspect of life in the Territories, including the power to ignore the will of the people in the Territories and their calls for democracy, equity, and self-determination. Right to Democracy believes it is important to challenge both the Insular Cases and the Plenary Power Doctrine to confront and dismantle the undemocratic colonial framework governing people in the Territories.

  • We believe that to bring an end to U.S. colonial rule over people in U.S. territories, it is important to engage at both a domestic and international level. The denial of political rights, federal benefits parity, and unequal treatment in many federal programs are civil rights injustices that no community in the United States should have to accept. At the same time, the ongoing denial of self-determination and Indigenous rights to people in U.S. territories violates fundamental principles of international law, including international agreements like the United Nations Charter that the United States has fully adopted. Both domestic and international law are also grounded in a shared concern for what are sometimes called “fundamental” or “natural” rights, or as the U.S. Declaration of Independence explains them, the idea of “unalienable rights,” the “consent of the governed,” and of “all created equal.” Right to Democracy approaches its work with the belief that advocacy seeking to confront and dismantle the undemocratic framework governing U.S. territories is most powerful and effective when it leverages both U.S. domestic and international law.