Cassandra Lopez Fradera is a communications strategy consultant, multi-genre writer, and grass-roots organizer for the decolonization of Puerto Rico with a focus on healing justice. Raised in the northeastern U.S. and Puerto Rican diaspora, her work as a writer, speaker, and strategist is centered on providing resources and strategies for healing and self-determination. Through her reporting of local news on Café con Cass, a public access television show founded in 2014, she conducts interviews with civic leaders, multidisciplinary artists, mental health specialists, and change makers in video, print, and podcast.
I was waiting to move to Puerto Rico to be an artist in residence at La Rosario in September 2017 when an unexpected surgery delayed my departure and Hurricane Maria made landfall. I write about this in a piece called the Puerto Rican Diaspora is Emotionally Flooded that was published on NPR Latino and Rest…
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We have theories in the diaspora of what it would be like to come home, and there are theories in Puerto Rico of what is it like to live in the states, and a migration in between that is connected by physical and metaphysicals threads. We create hubs and spaces, but it wasn’t until I…
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We are more than beaches or the white man’s imagined Guam or West Palm. We are more than sexualized stereotypes and two genders. So are our island siblings of the Antilles. In a not so distant past, we lived without borders, until colonizers enforced them versus integrated with the land and its children.
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On my last day working as a Staff Assistant at African and African American Studies, Professor Mugane, Director of Harvard’s African Language Program told me, “Leave the feeling of being overlooked behind you.” I thought about those words today, in the wake of rebranding and a blog reboot for an amazing client that I am working with.…
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Stephen Hawking, visionary physicist and humanitarian, has died at the age of 76. I am taking pause to remember his life and the brief time I spent with him while working at Harvard Physics. In the words of Neil Degrasse, “His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake. But it’s not empty. Think…
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“You have a fierce way of moving through the world that is both gentle and soft, full of fire,” are words I received from my amigx during my interview process for the Seed + Root + and Bloom Apprenticeship. It is with great excitement that I answer the call to be in community to work…
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Bomba has evolved through centuries, it was originally created by the merging of Taino/Arawak Native peoples of the island, enslaved Africans brought to the island, and the Spanish that sailed there during the 16th and 17th Century.
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Join ‘Raíces Borikén Collective’ on Sunday, December 17th at 1:00 P.M., to continue the movement to decolonize Puerto Rico. We will start in Betances Plaza, located in South End’s Villa Victoria neighborhood, to share stories, healing, art, and education before marching (con political paranda y mas) to Copley Square. We are hoping to end with…
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Independent journalist Micaela Kimball invited me to the Podcast Garage, a community space in Allston, M.A. for budding multimedia journalists and all things podcast oriented. Here’s the scoop from Micaela herself: “Today I did my first podcast with my friend and indie journalist, Cassandra from Café con Cass. We talked about intersections between the journalism…
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NPR’s Latino USA and Rest for Resistance by: QTPoC Mental Health have published my latest, “The Puerto Rican Diaspora is Flooded,” on their online platforms. QTPoC Mental Health empowers the community through knowledge and compassion, with the ultimate goals of creating online & offline spaces for LGBTQ2IA people of color to be comfortably, unapologetically their…
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