200 Miles to Freedom 2nd Annual Freedom Walk: Terre Haute, IN to Chicago, IL

In response to the 30th year of incarceration of Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera, the National Boricua Human Rights Network (NBHRN) would like to announce the Freedom Walk. Members of the NBHRN have committed themselves to take up the physical and mental challenge of walking over 200 miles in 10 days, from the Terre Haute, IN (location of prison where Oscar is being held) to Humboldt Park, Chicago (Oscar’s community). The group will leave Terre Haute, IN on May 19th at 9am, and on May 28th they will be joined by 30 more freedom walkers who have committed to walk a symbolic 30 miles in honor of the 30 years Oscar has been incarcerated.

The entire group will arrive at Lincoln Methodist Church (2242 S. Damen Ave. Chicago, IL) on May 29th at 3pm., where there will be a Ecumenical Service for Oscar’s freedom. Following the service, the walk will continue on to Paseo Boricua at La Casita de Don Pedro, 2625 W Division St. to be met by a group of freedom cyclists from Glenview, IL, where Oscar was arrested in 1981, for a culminating celebration. The walk is part of an ongoing international campaign demanding the release of Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera.

Oscar López Rivera was arrested on May 29, 1981 and accused of seditious conspiracy. Serving a sentence of 70 years, he spent 12 years in total isolation. He has maintained his dignity and integrity in the face of difficult conditions, which were calculated to break his spirit. May 29th, 2011 marks his 30th year as a political prisoner.

The National Boricua Human Rights Network is an organization composed of Puerto Ricans in the US with 3 main concerns: (1) The decontamination of the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico; (2) The release of the remaining Puerto Rican political prisoners; (3) An end to the continuing political repression and criminalization of the Puerto Rican community.

If you want to participate in the walk or bike ride, please contact Peter Vale at peterv@boricuahumanrights.org.

Please continue to call, fax and mail letters to the USPC. THERE ARE NEW VERSIONS OF THE PHONE SCRIPT AND LETTER. Please make sure you use those.

This decision ignores the express will of the Puerto Rican people and those who believe in justice and human rights, counting tens of thousands of voices supporting his immediate release, the Commission ignored the evidence establishing that Oscar met all the criteria for parole, and also ignored its own rules in the process. Among these many ignored voices are members of legislatures including the United States Congress; the state legislatures of New York, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania; the city councils and county boards of many locales in the U.S. and Puerto Rico; the mayors of many towns in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, including the Association of Mayors of Puerto Rico; bar associations including the Puerto Rico Bar Association, the National Lawyers Guild and the American Association of Jurists; clergy and religious organizations, including the Ecumenical Coalition representing every religious denomination in Puerto Rico; human rights advocates, academics, students, artists, community organizations, and workers.

Oscar and his attorney Jan Susler will meet next week to discuss the decision. Meanwhile, the National Boricua Human Rights Network in the U.S. and the Comité Pro Derechos Humanos in Puerto Rico will continue the campaign to express to the Parole Commission the depth and breadth of support for Oscar’s immediate release.

Oscar, his family, his attorney, National Boricua Human Rights Network in the U.S. and the Comité Pro Derechos Humanos in Puerto Rico want to express our deepest gratitude for the vast support for his release.

Saludos cariñosos a todos(as). Deseo para todos(as) un Nuevo Año feliz, de paz, amor y muchos logros. Después de más de 29 años preso a veces creo que muchas de las experiencias que he vivido han sido sueños o pesadillas por su propia naturaleza. Creo que el reto principal que al llegar a la penitenciaria tuve que enfrentar fue como aclimatarme a un medio ambiente toxico y hostil y poder definir lo que tenía que hacer diariamente para aprovechar al máximo el tiempo. Sabía que el tiempo no lo podía desperdiciar ni permitir que los carceleros se apoderaran del. Porque era irrevocable, y por ende, lo más valioso. Poco a poco aprendí a navegar en un medio ambiente que podía deshumanizarme y convertirme en un zombie institucionalizado. Todos los días, desde que despertaba hasta que me acostaba, tenía una agenda de tareas que pretendía cumplir y así aprovechaba mi tiempo. Siempre había algo nuevo para aprender y para nutrir el cerebro. Leía, escribía, tomaba clases, hacia ejercicios, socializaba con presos con los que compartía afinidades, y mantenía contacto a través del teléfono con seres queridos afuera.

Lo más interesante era que por mucho que me mantenía ocupado el día nunca me daba para cumplir todas que deseaba cumplir. Y durante los 29 años y pico que llevo preso nunca lo he logrado. A veces he creído que lo he logrado y de momento aparece algo que no hice y tengo que dejarlo para el próximo día. El hecho que he podido mantenerme ocupado haciendo cosas que me gusta hacer o cosas que me piden que haga aunque no sean mis favoritas ha sido y sigue siendo lo más que me ha ayudado a lidiar y a sobrevivir las experiencias de todos esos años. Pero ese estilo de vida no es muy diferente al estilo que llevaba cuando estaba en el mundo de afuera. Y todos los días me acuesto dando gracias a la vida por haberme dado tanto y me despierto dando gracias por haber sido bendecido para seguir pa’lante tratando de aprovechar el tiempo al máximo. La vida es una bendición y es lucha toda. Fuertes abrazos a todos(as).

In November of 1984, Helen was part of the Silo Pruning Hooks action. She went to a Missouri nuclear missile silo along with Larry Cloud-Morgan, Fr. Carl Kabat OMI and Fr. Paul Kabat OMI. With sledgehammer and jackhammer, the group followed the biblical mandate of Isaiah to turn swords into plowshares. They were convicted and received a varied number of years of prison time for their action. With the exception of a few days, Helen has been in prison ever since. (A couple of times in past years when released, she immediately engaged in an action that resulted in arrest and being returned directly to prison for violating parole.)

She is scheduled to be released in September of 2011 after 27 years behind bars. Helen is looking forward to getting out, and at the age of 67 and with health issues, has decided to now retire from activities that might return her to prison.

Since the beginning of the nuclear age, many thousands of people in the U.S. and around the world have been arrested for anti-nuclear civil disobedience, and hundreds have spent time in prison for these actions. None of these people (not even long-imprisoned Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu) have spent more time in prison than Helen Woodson.

From his family, to his hometown, San Sebastian, from the Mayors of 10 towns in Puerto Rico, to the Archbishop of San Juan, from political figures from the statehood, commonwealth and pro-independence parties in Puerto Rico; from national religious leaders in Puerto Rico and the US; from state and local elected officials in San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, from the tens of thousands of supporters across the world who celebrated the release of the Puerto Rican Nationalists in 1979-Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irvin Flores Rodríguez, Oscar Collazo and Andrés Figueroa Cordero- to those who celebrated the release of the Grand Jury resisters, of Pablo Marcano Garcia, of Felix Rosa, to those who celebrated the release of the patriots in 1999 and finally, of Carlos Alberto Torres in 2010, all of whom have united in one voice with one message: we want Oscar home!

This means that we have one more week to gather signatures, call-in and send faxes. Please call, fax and mail! Download the letter and get involved in the campaign.

Avelino González Claudio, #09873-000
FCI ASHLAND ,
P.O. BOX 6001 ASHLAND , KY 41105

En vista celebrada el pasado 4 de enero en Terre Haute, Indiana, un examinador de la Junta de Libertad Bajo Palabra federal recomendó que el prisionero político Oscar López Rivera, cumpla 15 años más en prisión además de los 30 años ya cumplido. El Comité Pro Derechos Humanos denunció de inmediato el asunto en conferencia prensa. Hoy el organismo sigue convocando al pueblo de Puerto Rico a que apoye nuestro pedido de que la Junta de Libertad Bajo Palabra no acepte la recomendación del oficial examinador y que cese la injusticia de su encarcelamiento.

Como parte de las actividades que realiza el Comité, un grupo de amigos y miembros de nuestro organismo colocó una pancarta el jueves 3 de enero de 6:00 a.m. a 9:00 a.m. , durante la hora pico del tapón mañanero, en el puente que comunica la Ave. Barbosa con la 65 de Infantería. La misma captó la simpatía de la mayoría de los miles de conductores que transitan esa vía durante esas primeras horas del día. Se escuchó el toque de bocinas en apoyo a Oscar.

El Comité continuará realizando actividades educativas y de apoyo en toda la isla y a nivel internacional hasta lograr su excarcelación.

From NY Times

CHICAGO — At a cafe in the heart of this city’s exuberant Puerto Rican community, in the neighborhood of Humboldt Park, a waitress serves up favorites from the island: café con leche, rice and beans and guava pastries. On the counter, a framed photograph of a white-haired man sits next to a stack of petitions calling for his release from prison.
The petitions are posted at more than a dozen businesses in the neighborhood, where the campaign to free 68-year-old Oscar Lopez Rivera has deep and stubborn roots: he is the last remaining member of the radical group known as the F.A.L.N. (Spanish initials for Armed Forces of National Liberation) still in prison among more than a dozen convicted in the 1980s.

Volunteers in the neighborhood, on the city’s northwest side, have increased efforts in recent weeks to collect signatures outside train stops, grocery stores and churches.

Mr. Lopez Rivera, who has been in prison for almost 30 years, is viewed by some as a political prisoner and others as an unrepentant terrorist. Since he applied for parole last year, both sides have been lobbying the four-member United States Parole Commission, which is expected to make a decision soon.

The commission has received three large boxes of letters in support of his parole and many calls against it, said Johanna Markind, assistant general counsel for the commission. The response has included passionate requests from prominent leaders, a letter supporting parole from four Puerto Rican members of Congress, and a letter against parole from Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago.
Mr. Lopez Rivera was convicted here in 1981 of numerous charges, including seditious conspiracy, a charge used for those plotting to overthrow the United States government. He was sentenced to 70 years in prison.

President Bill Clinton offered Mr. Lopez Rivera and other members of the F.A.L.N. clemency in 1999, a decision that stirred an emotional debate. Mr. Clinton said their sentences were out of proportion with their offenses.

While 12 prisoners accepted the offer and were freed, Mr. Lopez Rivera rejected the chance to reduce his sentence because it did not include all the group’s members, his lawyer, Jan Susler, said. If he had accepted the agreement, she said, he would have been eligible for release in 2009.
In January, a hearing examiner for the Parole Commission recommended that Mr. Lopez Rivera should not be paroled, according to several people who were at the closed hearing.

The F.A.L.N. was involved in more than 100 bombings in New York, Chicago and other cities, according to federal officials. A bombing at Fraunces Tavern in New York in 1975 killed four people, including Frank Connor, a 33-year-old banker.

His son Joseph has been a consistent voice against parole for any members of the F.A.L.N. When Mr. Connor testified at the parole hearing, he said he had hoped that Mr. Lopez Rivera would apologize or show some sense of contrition.

“He wouldn’t take responsibility for anything,” Mr. Connor said in an interview.

Although Mr. Lopez Rivera was not charged specifically with the Fraunces Tavern bombing, Mr. Connor said that he blames Mr. Lopez Rivera for his father’s death because he was a leader of the group that took responsibility for the bombing. Mr. Connor has written about the case for various Web sites and has encouraged friends and family to call the commission.

Ms. Susler said Mr. Lopez Rivera had no involvement in the Fraunces Tavern bombing. “It was very impactful, moving testimony from people who had terrible losses,” Ms. Susler said, “but it had nothing to do with Mr. Lopez.”

Since the hearing, the National Boricua Human Rights Network, which is active in Puerto Rican issues, said it had gathered more than 4,000 signatures supporting parole in Chicago. The city has the second-largest Puerto Rican community in the country, after New York.
The group has argued that Mr. Lopez Rivera poses no threat to the public and that others who were released have lived productive lives without getting in trouble again. It is an opinion shared by many in Humboldt Park.

On a recent afternoon, the owner of a barbershop in the neighborhood, Reinaldo Oquendo, sat at a table with a group of men playing dominoes.
“I think it is about time they let him out,” Mr. Oquendo said without looking up from his game. “Thirty years is a lifetime. Nobody deserves to be in prison for that long.”

The parole case still resonates here because his family continues to work in the neighborhood and many here have an interest in Puerto Rican history, “which is very much a part of their lives,” said Ana Ramos-Zayas, an associate professor of anthropology at Rutgers University who has studied the community.

Many people here knew Mr. Lopez Rivera, who worked as a community organizer in the neighborhood after serving in the Vietnam War. His younger brother Jose Lopez is the longtime executive director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, which runs a day care, an AIDS clinic and a youth center in the neighborhood.

There has been a concerted effort to establish Humboldt Park as a cultural and economic hub for the Puerto Rican community in Chicago, which numbers about 113,000 people, compared with more than 750,000 in New York, according to Census Bureau figures.

Crowds flock to several annual parades and festivals along a portion of Division Street known as Paseo Boricua, where two huge, red and blue steel flags extend over the road at both ends of the business district. The neighborhood is filled with Puerto Rican murals, restaurants, record shops, and bookstores.

Recently, Jose Lopez walked down the street greeting people and checking on the cultural center’s many projects. He was particularly excited about the opening this spring of a new Institute of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture in the neighborhood.

Mr. Lopez said that his brother’s absence had taken a great toll on his family. Their parents and a sister have died while he was in prison.
“It is a continual punishment for our family not to have Oscar here for these moments,” he said.

Mr. Lopez Rivera still believes in Puerto Rican independence but he does not talk about the F.A.L.N., his lawyer said. At the federal prison holding him, in Terre Haute, Ind., he spends his days reading about current events, working as an orderly, and painting scenes of Puerto Rican life and leftist leaders like Fidel Castro. He sells them online to benefit the National Boricua Human Rights Network.

He could remain in prison for 15 more years if the commission denies his request for parole. But if Mr. Lopez Rivera is released, there is likely to be another celebratory rally in Humboldt Park as there has been for prisoners in the past.

Epifanio Velez, who opened a restaurant on Paseo Boricua four years ago, is looking forward to his return.

“He has done his time,” he said. “I want to meet him.”

Saturday, January 15 from 05:30 PM to 7:00 PM

Resist Art Collective at 2708 West Division Street, Chicago

Hear a report back on Oscar’s case from Jan Susler. Alejandro Molina will discuss the second phase of the campaign. Learn how you can help. ¡Qué salga ya!