Salvadoran human rights worker to speak

Pedro Juan Hernandez, a longtime human rights worker in El Salvador, will speak at 7 p.m. Friday at the Ridgefield-Crystal Lake Presbyterian Church, 8505 Church St., Ridgefield (north of McHenry County College, Crystal Lake). He will address critical issues facing the poor of El Salvador, including the effects of neo-liberal policies that accompany globalization, and the threat to freedom of speech and the freedom to organize.

Hernandez has been an active participant and leader of the movement for social justice and democracy in El Salvador for the past 30 years. He was a leader of the Salvadoran student movement at the University of El Salvador and later taught there as a professor of economics.

Hernandez has been one of the most outspoken and articulate critics of the implementation of neo-liberal and free trade policies in El Salvador and participated in the construction of alternative economic, environmental, and social policies. He is currently a full-time leader in the grass-roots organizing and coordination of the social movement.

He is one of the main architects of a new coalition of the seven main grass-roots movements dubbed the "G-7".

The public is invited to attend the program sponsored by Friends of Chilama, a McHenry County-based sister city to the village of Chilama, El Salvador. For information, call (815) 455-3683 or e-mail lib4paz@comcast.net.