Noche de Cultura Latinoamericana - Fundraiser for Victor Toro's Legal Defense

Noche de Cultura Latinoamericana
To benefit the legal defense of Compañero Victor Toro

*** Music...tamales...theater...and a transcontinental conversation with Victor ***

WHEN: Friday, September 28, 2007 at 7:00 p.m.

WHERE: 522 Valencia St. (at 16th), San Francisco - 2nd floor (near 16th & Mission BART)

ADMISSION: $5.00

Many people in this area got to know Victor when we were organizing for the May Day march and rally in San Francisco. But Victor Toro has a long history as an activist. In his native Chile he was organizing poor and working people since the 1960s. After the fascist General Pinochet seized power in a US-backed coup on Sept. 11, 1973, many thousands were murdered or disappeared by the new regime. Victor and his wife Nieves were jailed and tortured as political prisoners. In 1984 they came to the United States and settled in New York City, founding La Peña del Bronx, a cultural and political community center serving immigrants and homeless people in the South Bronx.

This past July, Victor Toro was returning to New York from California on an Amtrak train when ICE immigration agents raided the train, profiled certain passengers as immigrants, and pulled 35 people off the train, carting them off to jail. Toro was one of them. Released on bail, he faces the threat of deportation back to Chile, where elements of the Pinochet-era death squads are still out there. He has filed a request for political asylum in the U.S.

You are cordially invited to an evening of tamales, theater, solidarity and song for Victor Toro - Friday 9/28 at 522 Valencia.

Honoring Victor Toro