RINCON, PR: Roll out your mat with me once a month for a Community Yoga Practice. These monthly meet-ups are intended to help build, grow and bridge the local + visiting yoga communities, as well as to help raise awareness and donations for local organizations and people doing positive things in the community. Donations are not mandatory, and everyone is welcome to join the practice.
Rincon Community Yoga
Sunday, May 5th from 9:30am-11am
El Faro de Rincon
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Bring a yoga mat or towel,
drinking water,
and an open heart.
This month’s class will be dedicated to the Salva Rincon!, a community-based, grassroots organization directed by Puertorrican professionals, with support of Rincoeños with generational roots and the english-speaking community in Rincón, Puerto Rico.
Via SalvaRincon.org: “For many years, Rincón has seen growth, some would say uncontrolled growth, to accommodate the ever growing demand for space in our town. The latest attempt is the announcement in late 2018 that Rincón was targeted for a 200+ room hotel and casino. Coupled with pre-existing development in the marina area (PR-413, Km 1.0) and possible environmental crimes, the initiative NO! al Mega Hotel y Casino Propuesto en Rincón using Facebook as the communications tool was begun. It went viral and within a few days, it became an all-consuming, exhausting passion for some of us.
Our small group took a deep collective breath and initiated the chore of talking to people, investigating interesting things and tips related to this project, using our professional backgrounds to guide us, we collected photographic evidence, contacted local and federal authorities, and set about to the task of gathering information to keep people aware, and to prepare for any future legal actions.
As things developed and the tasks became too many or too expensive, we reached out and many came through, financially and with sweat equity. But we have made do, we chat through social media (privately), sometimes we meet in the parking lot of a beer convenience store to share information. We now have volunteers collecting signed petitions, organizing fundraisers, organizing demonstrations (whose time is coming). Our approach throughout has been to use verifiable information (not rumors), keep politicians or comments about politicians out of the discussion except to make claims directly to them, and to keep it clean.
The time has come to pull all of this together and start making some noise. The actions to be taken are identified, but cannot be shared publicly yet, in order to not hand our opponents the tools to bring us down.
Salva Rincón! was organized as a legal means to collect funds to make ours a winning battle. We are inscribed in the Puerto Rico Department of State as a non-profit. We are currently accepting donations through Paypal or by visiting the bank directly, and are pursuing 501(c)3 status.
Any funds left over after the megahotel and casino process is completed will be transferred to Amigos de Tres Palmas. These funds will be available to fight off other penetrations from developers, as seed money for a Tres Palmas Land Trust, or to continue Amigos de Tres Palmas’ efforts at proper management of the marine reserve.
Salva Rincón! is not opposed to progress and development. In fact, quite the contrary. We want to foster and encourage environmentally-responsible, appropriately scaled development in Rincón, adjusted to neighbor concerns.
Salva Rincón! is well aware of the situation that Puerto Rico is in and do not want to interfere with Rincón’s contribution to a better Puerto Rico, but we are fast-approaching the point of no further growth being realistic without being accompanied by improvements in infrastructure.”