For any inadvertent visitor, there were plenty of street festivals going on in Puerto Rico on Thursday. Very loud music played on enormous loudspeakers, people were chanting and dancing in the streets and a very joyful ambiance was felt everywhere. 




It wasn't a carnival happening in Puerto Rico though—it was the one day General Strike that mobilized around 150,000 workers and citizens to protest Governor Fortuño's massive layoffs. "It was tremendous. I've been in the labor movement for 44 years and this was the most impressive event I've ever seen. It was up there with the immigrant mobilizations of 2006," said International Executive VP Eliseo Medina of the assembly of Puerto Rican workers. "It was one of the most diverse events that I've ever seen in a society. Lawyers, workers, students, psychologists, priests and minsters and nuns and everyday people. It was truly an amazing sight. It was pretty clear, our rejection of Governor Fortuño's policies."

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