Puerto Ricans must claim our power. The Eddie Irizarry verdict can be a turning point.

This isn’t the column I expected to write while waiting for the verdict in the trial of former Philadelphia Police Officer Mark Dial in the fatal shooting of Eddie Irizarry.

Dial, a white officer, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the 2023 killing of Irizarry, a Puerto Rican man who was shot six times in the first six seconds of a traffic stop in Kensington.

When the jury started its deliberations, I was steeling myself to write about how the system had let us down — again. I was relieved to be wrong.

To call the guilty verdict remarkable doesn’t begin to capture the surprise I felt that justice truly can be delivered for those who usually cannot count on it.

In a city where police officers accused of serious misconduct, up to and including murder, have not only walked free but collected back pay, this outcome — reached after a two-and-a-half-day trial and eight hours of deliberations — felt like something different. It felt like accountability. Like justice.

The lies didn’t hold because the community wouldn’t let them.

Dare I say, it felt like a small miracle; one that could finally ignite our Puerto Rican community’s collective consciousness.

No, Dial wasn’t convicted on the most serious charge: third-degree murder. But the fact that he was held criminally responsible — the second officer in less than three years to be convicted of voluntary manslaughter for an on-duty killing — is a huge deal.

And that didn’t happen by chance.

It happened because a family refused to accept the same tired narrative: That a disposable victim was to blame. That a heroic officer, doing a job in neighborhoods Dial’s lawyers called “war zones,” feared for his life. That there was nothing to see or do, and nothing to question.

This time, the facts were too stark to ignore. Police claimed Irizarry, 27, lunged with a knife. But video showed him seated in his car, windows up, holding a knife, but never leaving the vehicle. Dial claimed he saw a gun, but testified that “there was a glare … I couldn’t see much.” His partner, who Dial said screamed “gun,” testified he actually shouted “knife.”

While testifying on his own behalf, the 29-year-old former officer was emotional. He’d been on the police force for five years before he was fired for refusing to cooperate with an internal investigation into the shooting.

But the lies didn’t hold because the community wouldn’t let them.

Irizarry’s friends and family, advocates and activists, demanded answers. They marched. They protested. They pushed back when a Municipal Court judge initially dismissed all charges against Dial at a preliminary hearing in 2023. They fought for accountability and got some.

And now that there’s a sliver of justice, the question is: What do we do with this moment?

Because we’ve seen what usually happens here. There’s a flicker of fairness. A few headlines. A news conference. And then — nothing.

That’s been our reality, even though Latinos make up 16% of Philadelphia’s population. That’s been our reality because Puerto Ricans, who constitute the largest Hispanic group in Philadelphia and the second-largest stateside Puerto Rican population after New York City, are still all but invisible in this city.

Because here’s the truth: This city is full of us, of our families, our labor, and our stories. And yet, where’s our representation, our leadership, our power?

We’re in the data and the headlines, we’re in conversations about migration, immigration, poverty, survival. But we’re hardly ever in the rooms where the real decisions about real issues that affect us get made, where our futures are shaped and decided.

Why are we included when there’s a battle to fight, but forgotten when the spoils are divided?

Why are we still the firsts (and too often the onlys) — in schools, in city offices, in boardrooms, and yes, even in newsrooms?

Why does our City Council still only have one sitting Latina?

Lancaster city, a fraction of Philadelphia’s size, is on the road to electing a Puerto Rican mayor — something we’ve never managed to do.

Why, oh why, do so many of my fellow Americans, in the year 2025, still fail to understand that Puerto Ricans are not only American citizens, but have long histories stateside?

Who or what is standing in the way of our visibility, our progress?

And what’s it going to take to break through?

These aren’t new questions — journalists and scholars have addressed many of them in scores of articles and books. I’ve carried a lot of them since growing up in New York City, which has the largest Puerto Rican population outside the island, in the 1970s and ‘80s. I asked them while living and working in Hartford, Conn., which is also home to a large Puerto Rican community.

And here I am asking them now, even if I have often wondered if I’m the right one to ask, if I even have the right.

I was born and raised in New York City. I’ve only visited Puerto Rico a handful of times. I’m a “No Sabo” Nuyorican who, at certain shameful stages in my life, has (unsuccessfully) tried to downplay my ethnicity, and who still catches side-eye from mi gente for how I speak Spanish — or don’t.

But I am asking anyway, and in the next few months I hope to keep asking. So if sometimes you see a little less of me on these pages, it’s because I want to dig into the lives of Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia. I want people to better understand who we are, where we stand, and the vital role we’ve played in a city where we’ve long deserved greater recognition.

When Irizarry’s family and community took to the streets after he was killed, they were following a well-worn path of resistance and change.

In 1953, a false accusation prompted a white mob to break into a Puerto Rican home in Philadelphia. The outrage led to the city’s first official study of our community and the formation of the Puerto Rican Affairs Committee.

In 1985, after Philadelphia Police Officer Thomas Trench was killed, coincidentally the day after Memorial Day 40 years ago, more than 100 Puerto Ricans were swept up in unconstitutional raids. They fought back. They won in court, and it was considered one of the largest police abuse cases in U.S. history.

In 2012, a Black officer punched a Puerto Rican woman during the Puerto Rican Day Parade. The video went viral. The officer was fired, then reinstated. But the city had to pay up.

Even in Hartford, where I was the first and only Latina columnist, one of the examples most often used to demonstrate the transformational power of pain was the death of Julio Lozado. The city mandated hiring bilingual emergency personnel after the 12-year-old was crushed in a garage collapse in 1979 while first responders failed to understand his Spanish-speaking family.

Tragedy has always been our catalyst.

Maybe this time, it can be our turning point.