Human rights activist and former political prisoner Ricardo Jimenez will be speaking at the UPenn.  Ricardo Jimenez began organizing as a high school student for Latino-relevant curriculum in Chicago area schools and universities. He also organized against drugs and gentrification in Puerto Rican communities. Arrested in 1980, he spent almost twenty years in prison on charges of “seditious conspiracy” for his involvement in the Puerto Rican independence movement. He was one of eleven independence activists granted presidential clemency in 1999. Since then, he has been an educator, lecturer, and AIDS activist.

Jimenez will be in Philadelphia as part of an East Coast speaking tour to build support for the campaign to free the remaining Puerto Rican political prisoners, Carlos Alberto Torres and Oscar Lopez.  

This event is sponsored by the National Boricua Human Rights Network Philadelphia Chapter, Casa Latina and Students Confronting Racism and White Privilege