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Vol. 79/No. 8      March 9, 2015

 
May 30 NY march to boost
fight to free Oscar López
 
BY TOM LEWIS
NEW YORK — Fifty people, including carloads from Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, gathered at Hostos Community College in the Bronx Feb. 14 to plan the next steps in the fight to free Oscar López Rivera. López, a Puerto Rican independence fighter, has been imprisoned in the U.S. on frame-up charges, including “seditious conspiracy,” for more than 33 years, many in solitary confinement. The meeting focused on building a May 30 march in New York City demanding López’s release. López was arrested May 29, 1981.

Conference participant Maria Kercado, a vice president of Service Employees International Union District 1199, told the Militant that the health care workers union “has been committed to this case for a long time.”

In Puerto Rico, support for freeing López is widespread. The two largest political parties in the government — sister parties of the Democrats and Republicans — have called on President Barack Obama to release López, as have numerous labor unions and leaders of the Catholic and Methodist churches on the island.

“We need to keep Oscar in the limelight,” his brother, José López, director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago, told the meeting. “The May 30 mobilization is key. Everyone counts that day.”

There will also be activities in New York at the end of April to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Pedro Albizu Campos, López announced. Albizu Campos led the fight for independence for Puerto Rico from 1930 to the 1950s and spent many years in U.S. prisons because of his intransigent opposition to U.S. colonial rule.

The May 30 march will gather at 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. at 11 a.m.

For more information or to get flyers and buttons, visit www.freeoscarnycmay30.org  
 
 
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