NYTimes.com | Puerto Ricans in Chicago Push for a Prisoner’s Parole

By EMMA GRAVES FITZSIMMONS

Published: February 10, 2011

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.

Continue Reading Puerto Ricans in Chicago Push for a Prisoner’s Parole – NYTimes.com.

To support and learn more about the Oscar Lopez Rivera Freedom Campaign, visit: http://boricuahumanrights.org/