Bowling to support university scholarship students in Cinquera, Chicago’s sister city in El Salvador!
Students return to the community to share their new skills in agriculture, business, teaching and organizing.
Children welcome! Special lanes for kids.
Register as an individual for $25 or bring $50 in pledges to bowl FREE!
More info at 773-561-4208 or jimmyishere@hotmail.com
In “Deported to Danger: United States Deportation Policies Expose Salvadorans to Death and Abuse,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) shares the results of its investigation into what happens to Salvadorans seeking asylum who are nevertheless deported back to El Salvador. Here’s a quick summary of what they found:
Here is the link to the full report: https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/02/05/deported-danger/united-states-deportation-policies-expose-salvadorans-death-and
The U.S. now has a cap on the number of refugees allowed into the country, and much lower percentages of them are actually receiving asylum in response to their petitions.
We had a very short timeframe–2 days–to get U.S. Representatives from Illinois to sign a letter asking the Department of Homeland Security to end the mis-named Migrant Protection Protocols, which forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexican border cities indefinitely until their court cases come up. Now the deadline to sign has been extended until tomorrow, February 7!
Thanks to your calls, 9 Representatives from Illinois have signed on so far: Rush, Kelly, Garcia, Quigley, Danny Davis, Krishnamoorthi, Schakowsky, Foster, and Bustos. Please call and thank them if they are your Representative. Rep. Schneider’s staffer has contacted CRLN to say that they will have an opportunity tonight to put the letter before him, and they expect he will sign. We will keep you posted on his action. If your Representatives are Lipinski, Casten, or Underwood, or any of the Republican Representatives, please call again and emphasize that it is horrific that our country is forcing people who fled danger once to wait in areas without sanitary facilities, access to food and water or proper shelter, and where they are subjected to violence, extortion and kidnapping by organized crime.
When CRLN made calls from our office, many Congressional staff people thanked us for flagging the letter in what was a very busy week full of other nationally televised events: the Iowa Caucuses, the State of the Union Address, and the final day of the Senate impeachment trial.
Now we need to make an effort to get these same Representatives and more to sign onto H.R. 2662, the Asylum Seeker Protection Act, which would defund this cruel “Remain in Mexico” policy. So far, only Garcia, Schakowsky and Schneider have signed. If you are represented by one of these 3, please call and thank them. If not, please call your member of Congress and ask them to co-sponsor H.R. 2662.
The so-called Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) implemented by the Trump administration since January 29, 2019 have been in place for a year, and we have seen the disastrous results. We are alarmed that 60,000 people,having fled life-threatening situations in their home countries and having experienced trauma on their way north, have attempted to seek asylum in the U.S., only to be told that they must fend for themselves in Mexican border cities until their court case comes up, usually 6-8 months later. Organized crime, which has preyed upon migrants for years, poses a grave danger for these asylum seekers. In addition, they live in precarious conditions, with little access to food, water or shelter; no sanitation services; very few doctors available on site to provide medical care; and no access to U.S. lawyers who could represent them in their asylum cases.
A Congressional delegation went to the Texas-Mexican border to provide oversight of the MPP. Click here to read what they found.
We must act to end this inhumane and dangerous policy! Please call the U.S. House Switchboard at (202) 224-3121, ask to be connected to your Representative’s office (If you don’t know the name of your Representative, click here), and ask them to co-sponsor H.R. 2662, the Asylum Seeker Protection Act, which would defund the MPP. Leave your phone number or email address and ask the office to let you know whether the Representative has signed or not. Let them know you are tired of hearing politicians portray all migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers as murderous criminals, and that you see them as community members, neighbors and friends.
If you receive a response from your Representative’s office, please call the CRLN office (773-293-2964) or email shunter-smith@crln.org to let us know. We will be following the progress of this House Resolution.
We are proud to celebrate 30 years of effective education, action, accompaniment and advocacy on Latin America and work on justice for immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers with our members and partner organizations. We have accomplished a lot–and yet, there is still a long way to go to achieve our vision of peace, justice and well-being for all.
For CRLN’s 30th anniversary, we are planning a very special celebration! A buffet dinner will be served while selected photos from 30 years of our history are projected. The program will feature a video of short interviews with people about key events in our history and a speaker from Latin America. And, of course, come for great fellowship with our wonderful members!
Date: Saturday, November 2
Time: 6:30 – 9:00
Location: Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (use Greenwood Avenue door to get to the reception space for the JKM Library), 1100 E. 55th Street Chicago, IL 60615
Parking: Available in the underground lot for $5. Access lot from the driveway north of the building.
Tickets: $80 Regular
$72 Member discount
$50 Low-income (some donated tickets available on a first-come first-served basis–call us for availability at 773-293-2964)
Send a check to CRLN, 4750 N. Sheridan Rd., #429, Chicago, IL 60640-5078, or pay online at https://crln.org/?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm%2Fcontribute%2Ftransact&reset=1&id=15
This film, according to its website, “illuminates the risks people of faith are willing to take to protect the human rights of those fleeing violence, and the struggles and triumphs of undocumented immigrants and refugees as they resettle in the United States.” Featured in the film are two Chicago-area refugees and one of CRLN’s Immigrant Welcoming Congregations, Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ, as well as Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church and the Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants.
Date: Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Time: 5:30pm Reception 6:00 pm Screening begins. Screening followed by panel discussion of DePaul faculty, staff and students and an open question and answer session with the audience.
Location: DePaul Student Center, Room 314AB, 2250 N. Sheffield, Chicago, IL (corner of Sheffield and Belden)
Writer and producer Debra Gonsher Vinik will attend.
Hosted by DePaul’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
CRLN is a member of the Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN), a decentralized network of approximately 30 organizations from across Canada and the United States that are committed to demonstrating and advocating for solidarity with the Honduran social movements. Here is the statement put out by HSN in response to the narco-trafficking trial of President Juan Orlando Hernandez’ (JOH’s) brother Tony, himself a former Honduran Congressman:
JOH Must Go!
Stop US and Canadian Support for Honduras’ Narco Dictatorship!
Honduras’ narco-dictatorship installed through a US backed coup MUST GO! For ten years, since the US backed coup in June 2009, a crisis of the rule of law, constitutionality, and democracy has deepened as a blatantly criminal neoliberal dictatorship has sunk its teeth into Honduras.
The 2009 coup, subsequent fraudulent elections, official corruption, and impunity and violence by the state against its people are reasons enough to call for an end to the regime. Now the public exposure of the depths of criminal activity and narco-perversion of the entire state of Honduras by the dictatorship confirms what many Hondurans have denounced for years.
The details are emerging in a US federal court in New York City, where Tony Hernandez, brother of current Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH), went on trial starting October 2nd. The testimony against Tony Hernandez in just the first days of the trial include information that narcotics traffickers, including El Chapo, gave $4 million to the presidential campaigns of National Party politicians Pepe Lobo and Juan Orlando Hernandez. Pepe Lobo was installed in office through the farcical elections of November 2009, which simply aimed to whitewash the illegal coup. JOH took power in 2013 (the year he got the “donation” from El Chapo) after highly questionable elections, and then he declared himself the winner in a blatantly fraudulent election in 2017. Beyond money, evidence being presented shows that Tony Hernandez was also directly
involved in murders.
All of these crimes were never prosecuted in Honduras. Witnesses who were involved in the crimes have even stated that they knew that any investigations in Honduras would be blocked by the Honduran government. Meanwhile, the Honduran justice system focuses on arrests and imprisonment of people participating in protests against the
narco-dictator: small farmers recuperating land and indigenous communities protecting land and water from mining and other extraction industries.
Throughout this post-coup history, both Democratic and Republican administrations in the U.S. and administrations in Canada have upended Honduran democracy and supported dictatorship while diligently advancing the interests of large corporations engaged in the exploitation of labor and resources in Honduras. In so doing, they have aided in the theft of the lives, property, freedom, and rights of the Honduran people.
The Honduran Solidarity Network supports the demand of the Honduran people and their organizations that JOH immediately leave office and be held accountable for all of the crimes he and his government have committed. Hondurans want a process to renovate democracy and constitutionality that involves the social movements, opposition political parties and society as a whole and works on solutions for the economic, social and political destruction that has taken place since the 2009 coup. This means support for dictatorship from Canada and the US must end now!
October 13, 2019
The Honduras Soldarity Network co-coordinator, Karen Spring will be observing the Tony Hernandez trial in New York City and publishing reports on HSN Facebook, twitter@HondurasSol and in the blog Aqui Abajo.
The Peace Accords in Colombia are in trouble. While the FARC demobilized according to the peace plan, the Colombian government has not implemented its part of the agreement. The Colombian government has failed to protect hundreds of human rights defenders and community leaders from being murdered in the 2 1/2 years since the Accords were passed. In addition, 138 FARC members have been killed in the same period of time. Recently, in response to this situation, several high-level FARC leaders announced they were returning to their armed struggle.
The United States must encourage the Colombian government to fully implement the Peace Accords. Click on the link below to sign onto a letter to the new U.S. Ambassador calling on him to make a just and lasting peace in Colombia his highest priority:
CRLN member Kathy Siegenthaler asked us to publicize this event, which will commemorate events of 50 years ago concerning the murder of a pastor and his wife who opened their church to house programs–a free daycare center, health clinic and breakfast program–sought by the Young Lords for their neighborhood. You can read more about these past events by clicking here for an article that quotes the Rev. Martin Deppe, another CRLN member, who knew Rev. Johnson personally. The current event will also call for an investigation into this and other unsolved murders.
WHO: The United Methodist Church, Young Lords and public remember the unsolved murders of Rev. Bruce Johnson and his wife Eugenia 50 years ago, and also remember Young Lords Manuel Ramos, shot by police, and Jose (Pancho) Lind, beaten and killed by a white mob.
WHAT and WHY: 50th Anniversary memorial service and protest march to call for further investigations.
WHEN: September 29, 2019 – 10:30 AM
WHERE: Parish of the Holy Covenant, 925 W. Diversey Pkwy, Chicago, IL 60614
