Beginning on April 28th, 2012 Humboldt Park in Chicago was witness to a group of 31 people spending 24 hours in a makeshift prison cell at Café Teatro Batey Urbano to simulate the 31 years Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera has spent in prison for struggling for the independence of Puerto Rico.
 

31 Days for 31 Years Project

The ambitious joint effort of the Latin@ Coalition, Batey Urbano and NBHRN included participation of guards and caterers, letter writing to Oscar, as well as an open exhibit of Oscar's paintings in Batey. Cliick on the image to view video.

The project culminated in a major event commemorating his arrest and 31 years of imprisonment on Tuesday, May 29, 2012.

For more information please visit boricuahumanrights.org 

NPR's "Eight-Forty-Eight" 

features Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School greenhouse

Place Matters: Cook County is a study recently published by the Health Policy Institute aimed at discerning which neighborhoods would be the rich soil in this metaphor and which would be nutrient-poor. It's the first study of its kind, according to Dr. Linda Rae Murray, Chief Medical Officer for the Cook County Deparment of Public Health, that goes into such a small gradient with this data. What they found is that in some neighborhoods in Cook County, where you live can take up to as many as ten years off of your life.

The Place Matters team in Cook County is heavily focused on food policy right now because there are so many basic solutions available to us. Dr. Murray, a practicing physician, says she once saw a diabetes education group become advocates to the grocers' association for putting more fresh fruits and veggies in corner stores. In Philadelphia, not only are healthier foods in local stores subsidized, but so are things like coolers for keeping them fresh. And then there are urban agriculture programs, like the collaboration between Pedro Albizu Campos High School and the Puerto Rican Cultural Center near Humboldt Park in which students work to grow food for their otherwise food-insecure community.

The central finding of Place Matters: Cook County - that segregation leads to poverty which leads to poor health which shortens life spans - is probably not surprising to anyone. The study is an essential tool for those advocating for greater health equity, a mission that the World Health Organization made central to its goals in 2008. "Poor health is no fault of the individuals that live in these communities," said Dr. Brian Smedley of the Health Policy Institute. He and Dr. Murray joined Eight Forty-Eight last Tuesday morning and explained not only why we should be surprised by the findings of this study, but also what community leaders and legislators can do about it.

Listen to the show here.

De Jesús hopes this will be a brief interruption to the journey that he ias undertaken with the end of calling international attention to the case of Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera, convicted of seditious conspiracy in 1981. Read the entire article in Spanish here.The National Boricua Human Rights Network extends its most sincere condolences to Tito Kayak on the passing of his father last week. Tito embarked on a kayak journey last June 21 whose mission is to call attention to the campaign for the freedom of Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera.

Since departing from Venezuela, he has visited Trinidad and Tobago, Granada, Granadinas, San Vicent, Santa Lucía, Martinica, Dominica, María Galante, Guadalupe, Monserrate, San Cristóbal and Nevis, San Eustaquios San Bart and San Martin, among others.