Three Kinds Day Celebration Cancelled Due to Weather

The annual Three Kings Day Celebration was cancelled on January 6th due to weather conditions. DSBDA, LAMA, Alderman Maldonado, Alderman Moreno and State Representative Cynthia Soto will deliver toys to area schools during the next week.

 

"Still Dreaming": Available at Puerto Rican Cultural Center

Autographed copies of "Still Dreaming: My Journey from the Barrio to Capitol Hill" by Congressman Luis V. Gutierrez, are still available. Contact Alejandro: 
alejandrom@prcc-chgo.org
Thank you, NBHRN!
Greetings Alejandro and the other compañeros/as of the NBHRN.

I apologize for not communicating earlier, but I've been very occupied with the holidays. We hope that the New Year brings health and great achievements.

We wanted to thank you for the Network's donation this year, as in past years to Norberto's comissary.

This year we hope that Norberto will be released to finish his sentence on probation. We hope it is the year of Oscar's freedom.

 
Paseo Boricua Apartment Listing

Augusta & Kedzie

2BR $850

773-697-4474

 

2515 W. Division

2 BR $850

773.297.4131

 

Kimball & Wabansia

1BR $875

312-508-3131

 

2957 W Division

1BR $900

773-269-1450

 

Fairfield & Wabansia

2BR $950

773-697-4474

 

3603 W. Le Moyne St

2BR $1100

773-619-5615

 

Hamlin & Augusta

3BR $1100

312-479-8449

 

1438 N Kedzie

3BR $1200

773-963-3989

 

1402 N. Maplewood Ave

2BR $1200

815-558-6289

Centro Infantil 

Consuelo Lee Corretjer

Open Registration * Day Care Program * Head Start

We offer:

* Full day, Day Care for children 15 mos. to 3 yrs.

* Full day Head Start for children 3 to 5 yrs. 

* Research based curriculum

* Family involvement

* Nutritional Meals

* Parent workshops

Download the leaflet here.

 

Los Tequis
PRCC Slideshare content among most viewed in 2013!

Exciting news! The PRCC's slideshow "The Role of Social Capital in Community based Organizations and Community Health Improvement"   is among the TOP 5% of most viewed on SlideShare in 2013.
Visit our Social Media
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Twitter
(PRCC) #jacprcc
(PACHS) #albizucamposhs
(NBHRN) #free_olr

 

 
Las manos en el cristal: Serie de Cartas de OLR a su nieta Karina
  

Puerto Rican Independence Party Leadership Delegation Visits Paseo Boricua

Last Friday, January 10th a delegation of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) Leadership spent the day visiting Paseo Boricua before visiting Oscar López Rivera in Terre Haute, Indiana. The delegation included Senator Lourdes Santiago and Juan Dalmau, Secretary General of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, as well as Adrian González, Municipal Legislator and Calixto Negrón, Press Secretary. The delegation visited various landmarks on Paseo Boricua including the Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School, La Casita de Don Pedro and La Casa de Don Oscar y Doña Blanca. The day culminated with a dinner at Nellie's Restaurant. Over 80 people gathered to hear Senator Santiago and Secretary Dalmau speak about the PIP's unwavering support and their continuing efforts to ensure the release of Oscar López Rivera. View our Flickr set.

PRCC Executive Director José E. López named to CPS Latino Advisory Committee

PRCC Executive Director Jose López, along with other prominent Latino leaders and educators, was named by the CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett to be part of her Latino Advisory Committee. The purpose of the committee is to work with the CPS CEO on issues faced by Latino students in the Chicago Public Schools.  During the first meeting of the CPS Latino Advisory Committee on Monday, January 13th Mayor Rahm Emmanuel stopped by to stress the importance of the committee's work. He stressed how important the success of CPS Latino students, the largest growing student population in CPS, was to the future of the Chicago Public Schools. 

Meet your local Affordable Care Act PRCC Navigators!

 

We are excited to announce the opening of our new office in the Hermosa Community! The office is located at 4046 W. Armitage Ave. 2nd floor, and will be open Monday to Fridays from 8am to 6pm.  We will be having a special Martin Luther King Jr. event this Saturday, January 18th from 10am to 3pm. Visit us to enroll in the ACA! If you enroll in the Marketplace, you can likely have health insurance for the month of January. 


Now that the Affordable Care Act is in full effect, the Puerto Rican Cultural Center has expanded to help the community enroll with health insurance.  State certified assistors (called Navigators) have completed rigorous and extensive training classes to understand the law.  Navigators have been specifically trained to meet the needs of its community and make themselves available to educate everyone.  Furthermore it is these assistors duty to locate the underserved and hard to reach populations and provide the Puerto Rican Cultural Center's services conveniently.   This means that you can find Navigators helping at local lib raries, community centers, churches, laundromats, schools, and hospitals.

 

 

You can now find William Rivera, one of the educated Navigators, located at Presence St Mary St Elizabeth Hospital on the first and third weeks of the month. While at the hospital, William engages visitors to learn about the Affordable Care Act's new laws.  When someone arrives to the hospital for care and they don't have insurance, William is nearby to help the individual enroll in health insurance.  Don't wait until an emergency happens to visit the hospital without health insurance, see your local navigator today!

Presence St Mary St Elizabeth Hospital is located at 2233 W Division Street. Please call 773.227.7794 for more information on finding your local Navigators and be on the lookout for the next convenient location to learn of the Affordable Care Act. 


Clemente HS artists to Display at the 
School of the Art Institute!

Senior Shavonne M. will have her artwork displayed for the 2014 All City Senior Portfolio Exhibition. The Senior Portfolio exhibition is an opportunity to showcase the work that graduating seniors have accomplished during their time in high school, and students who participate are eligible for scholarships with higher education arts institutions. Shavonne is interested in attended Columbia College in Chicago.

 

She says about her artwork:

"For the last 7 years, my thoughts have been consumed entirely by fictional characters. Not a day goes by that an artistic idea does not cross my mind. These ideas lead to the further fabrication of my stories. Tales full of melancholy and morbidity, meant to tickle the spine of the readers, and the characters involved.  My girls, appearing as sweet and delicate as they do, none would expect their obscured nature.  There is an exaggeration shown in my style; a beautifully twisted, Gothic portrayal of human beings.  And as expected, when I first began so many years ago, I had no intentions of developing such a style. I simply drew. Spontaneously designing characters that would later become my most treasured creations. 

Over so many years, I've spend an unfathomable amount of time giving depth to these things. Months spent fleshing out empty skeletons with complexity; histories, personalities, real reasoning behind every psychotic or aggressive tendency. So that every character is thought of as a person. A person living through tragically bizarre, or sadly absurd stories.  All of this to create an experience, in hopes that people will feel the same intensity seeing and understanding my characters, as I do creating them."

 

Students, staff, and parents are invited to attend the opening reception of the CPS All-City Senior Portfolio Exhibition this Friday, January 10th, from 4:00pm-7:00pm. The exhibition is located at the LeRoy Neiman Student Center & Student Union Galleries at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 37 S. Wabash Ave. The exhibition will continue to be on view from January 11-17, 2014. 

 
Generation L Expands Collaboration with 
"Noche de Fiestas"

"Noche De Fiestas" is a collaboration between the three Latino Mpowerment Programs: Generation L from Vida/SIDA, The C.R.U. from Project Vida, A.C.E. from CALOR, and Project PrEPare from The CORE Center. The night is geared to bring HIV prevention awareness to the Latino LGBTQ Community of Chicago. It will be a night of dancing, a drag show, food, games, and many memories as we pay homage to our Latino roots. There will also be hIV testing by the four organizations collaborating in this event, It is for all ages and FREE entrance to everyone who attends. This event will take place at Latin Rhythms Academy of Dance & Performance 210. N Racine Chicago, IL 60607

 

Centro Infantil Corretjer Opens Enrollment

By Hope Poirier, Centro Infantil Corretjer

 

Founded in 1980, the Consuelo Lee Corretjer Day Care Center is a full day bilingual program offering quality childcare services for children 15 months to 5 years of age. The Center was founded in response to the need for bilingual-bicultural programs in the community. We place special emphasis on Puerto Rican, Mexican and Latin American culture. 

 

We offer:

 

* Full day, Day Care for children 15 mos. to 3 yrs.

* Full day Head Start for children 3 to 5 yrs. 

* Research based curriculum

* Family involvement

* Nutritional Meals

* Parent workshops

 


 Lanny works with bunny Legos as she also refines her hand-eye coordination.

El Rescate Transitional Housing Celebrates Holidays: Opens Enrollment

LGBTQ? HIV+? Homeless? Couch-Surfing? Don't Know Where You Will Spend The Night? Apply Today at El Rescate! 2703 W. Division St. (872) 829-2494

Looking for a high school?
Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School is for you!
Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School is currently accepting applications for the new semester which begins on January 27. Apply now. Applicants must be between 16- 20 years old. PLEASE SHARE!

2nd Annual Heels on Wheels raised $2,500

West Town Bikes' 2nd Annual Heels on Wheels fundraising event, planned and organized by Girls Bike Club, was a great success. About 100 were in attendance. The event raised $2,500 for the Girls Bike Club trip to the Youth Bike Summit at the New School in New York City. The event was held on Saturday January 11, 2013 at Greater Good Studios and had local sponsors such as Juko, Jerry's, Chrome, Abus, Intelligentsia, Divvy, Sugar Fly, Handlebar, Ciclo Urbano and Logan Square Movie Theatre. The sponsors all donated items or gift certificates for the silent auction and raffles.
 
Hundreds Celebrate Oscar's Birthday with Family in San Sebastian, Puerto Rico
By Araceli "Babbi" Lugo, Oscar's niece
On Jan. 4, 2014, we celebrated Oscar's 71 years with the "Promesa de Reyes" for his excarceration. The same took place at Coliseo Luis Aymat in San Sebastian.  The program began at 1:00pm and lasted until 6:00pm. We were accompanied by 300 personas.  The program began with an invocation by Oscar's cousin, Millo Mendez, followed by a third of the rosary sung by friends and family of Barrio Aibonito of San Sebastian where Oscar was born. We continued with the musical contributions of fellow townspeople Gary Aquino and Miriam Perez followed by Tony Mapeye, Benito de Jesus and Chabela Rodriguez.

The Reyes Cantores Isabelinos closed the program which included singing to Oscar honoring his birthday. During the program The Honorable Javier Jimenez, Mayor of San Sebastian, Clarisa Lopez, Oscar's daughter, Eduardo Villanueva, spokesperson of the Puerto Rican Human Rights Committee and the former political prisoner, Rafael Cancel Miranda. 

It was an emotional moment for Oscar who had the opportunity to be delighted by our music and was able to speak to family members and friends whom he had not heard from in years. He was able to call on three occasions without being interrupted. The audience was moved and some members wished out loud that the occasion be repeated next year with Oscar accompanying us.
Oscar's Letters to his Granddaughter Karina now Available in English
Oscar with his daughter Clarisa, left, and
granddaughter Karina

The series of letters by Oscar Lopez Rivera to his granddaughter Karina published online by El Nuevo Dia are slowly becoming available in English. The first 9 of the 14 published thus far are available on the National Boricua Human Rights Network website, with the rest to be available early next year.
Orlando Network Chapter Celebrates Oscar Birthday

Capilla del Barrio and NBHRN Celebrates Oscar's 71st Birthday: A Call to Renew and Redouble Efforts to Free Him

La Capilla del Barrio and the National Boricua Human Rights Network celebrated Oscar's birthday Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, braving over 18 inches of continuous snow and rapidly dropping temperatures. The birthday celebration and Three Kings Mass, in its 6th Annual Year, began with Pastor Windsor's welcoming and the invocation. The Capilla kids performed an original Three Kings skit. Then a delegation from Adalberto Methodist Church read a gift, a message from Rev. Coleman, which Tanya Coleman Lozano read, "Just as in the time of Jesus, a government kills and locks away in prison those who refuse to compromise with injustice because they fear their example will inspire an oppressed people also stand on their Today, we remember that Joseph acted on faith when he married a single mother. We recall that Mary acted on faith when she received the gift of a child that would come to save her people. And we recall that they risked their lives to protect this child. So today we honor those who struggle in faith to form the family of families, the communities in resistance, from which will come a new generation of struggle, a "messiah" generation, which will inspire the world to stand against injustice and oppression. Malcolm said, we are all in prison and all of us will continue to live in the shadow of the compromise of human potential as long as we submit to a system in which Puerto Rico is denied self-determination, as long as 11 million people and their families are denied equality under the law, as long as Latin America is kept in dependency - for these are all just symptoms of a diseased society that refuses the Kingdom of God, offered freely to those who will open their hearts.

Yet those who stand on their faith, who walk in the footsteps of Jesus, who accept the mission to organize communities of resistance so that a Messiah generation can be born, - these are living already in the Kingdom of God. Like Oscar, they are already free. No prison walls, no borders, can separate those bound together in faith and freedom. Today we are with Oscar - today we are free!". 

 

After the worship song, NBHRN member Michelle Morales read the 8th of Oscar's 14 letters to his granddaughter that have been published in the Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevo Dia, translated into English and posted to the Network website. Michelle read the letter entitled In the Face of Fear, "...My mother was sick and elderly. She was the one who had kept me informed about my brothers and sisters and the rest of the family in Puerto Rico. The most painful was not being able to talk with my daughter, who was then a child. Since she barely knew me, she related little to me over the phone. When I had visits, they kept me from having physical contact with my family. I even remember the first time my mother visited me, your great-grandmother, who broke out in tears when she saw me shackled on the other side of the glass. I told her then that she had to be strong and contain her tears so as not to let the jailers know that this program had affected the whole family. From then on, when she visited me, I saw her press her lips together and contain her tears. She did not let one more tear fall in my presence. She was a brave Puerto Rican woman."

 

As the celebration drew to an end, Pastor Windsor called the youth present to gather around the birthday cake La Capilla had made for Oscar, and the crowd sang Happy Birthday to Oscar. José E. López, Oscar's brother and Executive Director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, closed the event by bringing forth the memory of our heroic Irma Romero, who passed away Jan. 11, 2013 and her activism in our communities, her solidarity with Oscar and the struggle of the Puerto Rican people, her decades-long struggle with cancer, and her unceasing, optimistic outlook. Pastor Windsor then invited everyone to partake of the birthday cake and said he hoped he would NOT see us next year! Short video available!


CD Tribute " La Lucha es Vida Toda" to Oscar López Rivera Chosen as Outstanding 2013 CD

The recording "La Lucha es Vida Toda" in which over a dozen artists pay tribute to Political Prisoner Oscar López Rivera, was chosen by the National Foundation for Popular Culture as the outstanding musical production of 2013. The CDs theme is Oscar's childhood in Puerto Rico and Chicago and other stages of his life.

2013- Unprecedented Efforts to Free Oscar López Rivera

Jan 6- Chicago, Philadelphia, Florida, San Sebastian HAPPY BIRTHDAY OSCAR


 Jan. 10- NYC Panel discussion and book-signing on Between Torture and Resistance, NYC

Read on...

President Puerto Rican Senate Bhatia reiterates his call for the freedom of Oscar López Rivera

 

Yesterday, Jan. 1, the president of the Puerto Rican Senate, Eduardo Bhatia, once more advocated for the freedom of Oscar López Rivera, the political prisoner who turned 71 Monday, Three Kings Day.

 

Bhatia made the statement on Saturday during the Three Kings Day in Juana Diaz by the Windy Hill front of the Capitol, where dozens of families shared the ocassion. 

 

"The people of Puerto Rican, aside of political lines, of thought and party, are all in agreement that Oscar López Rivera must be free. On Three Kings Day, Oscar will turn 71, so our prayers, should contain to bring him home in 2014", Bhatia declared in a press release.

 

López Rivera was sentenced to 70 years in prison for the charge of "seditious conspiracy" , of which he has served 32. The majority of the political prisoners were pardoned in 1999 by then President Clinton, but López Rivera declined the offer because at that moment Carlos Alberto Torres and Haydée Beltrán continued as prisoners, but were subsequently freed.

 

Leaders of a political stripes and diverse sectors have urged President Barack Obama to release Oscar López Rivera, after the Parole Board refused to release him.

Líderes del PIP visitan a Oscar López

WASHINGTON - Líderes del Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (PIP) se reunían al mediodía, hora de Puerto Rico,  con el prisionero político puertorriqueño Oscar López Rivera, en la cárcel de Terre Haute, Indiana. En el encuentro participaron la senadora María de Lourdes Santiago y el secretario general del PIP, Juan Dalmau.

Ayer, los dos políticos del PIP tuvieron reuniones con líderes de la comunidad puertorriqueña de Chicago, familiares de López Rivera y su abogada Jan Susler. 

Li­deres del PIP visitan a Oscar Lopez
Li­deres del PIP visitan a Oscar Lopez

"Ha sido para nosotros una experiencia conmovedora sentir, aquí en Chicago, la perseverancia de nuestra nacionalidad y de la lucha por la independencia de Puerto Rico en las condiciones más adversas", indicó la senadora Santiago.

Dalmau, por su parte, sostuvo que espera "que esta visita sirva para fortalecer y reafirmar aún más nuestros vínculos con los compatriotas acá en Chicago". Vea video de univision.