Event / Rally / Protest

Sheridan Circle Memorial Service

Please join us as we honor two advocates of equality and justice, to renew our efforts in their memory.

Until September 11, 2001, the car bombing on Massachusetts Avenue was the most infamous act of international terrorism ever to take place in our nation's capital. On September 21, 1976 agents of the Augusto Pinochet regime planted a car bomb at this location which brutally took the lives but not the memory of two IPS colleagues, who fought for equality and justice through reason, not violence.

Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt were colleagues at the Institute for Policy Studies, where Letelier had become one of the most outspoken critics of Pinochet. Moffitt was a 25-year-old development associate. For more than three decades, the pursuit of justice for their murders has been a symbol of hope for victims of tyranny everywhere. Every year the human rights community, friends, family, colleagues, and supporters gather in remembrance of these tragic assassinations.

Speakers:

• José Miguel Insulza, Secretary General, Organization of American States
• Jimena Ryan, cousin of Orlando Letelier
• Alexander Wilde, Senior Scholar, Latin American Program, Woodrow Wilson Center
• Julia Sweig, Senior Fellow and Director for Latin America Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
• His Excellency Felipe Bulnes, Ambassador of Chile to the United States

Invocation: Reverend Whit Hutchinson, former pastor of Wesley United Methodist Church

Music: Son Cosita Seria

This program will take place outdoors at the site of the assassination and end with a laying of flowers on the Letelier-Moffitt memorial across the street from Sheridan Circle. Please bring flowers.

Also join us October 17th, 2012 for The 36th Annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards Ceremony.