Blog - La Peña Cultural Center

March 12, 2020

La Peña Cancelling All Programs Through March 31st

Dear La Peña community,

La Peña is taking precautions to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

As this is a rapidly changing situation, we have made the decision to cancel ALL PROGRAMS at La Peña through March 31, 2020, effective immediately, including ALL classes, rehearsals, community gatherings and events.

We have followed City of Berkeley recommendations to cancel larger events, and now we are relying on various new reports that urge social distancing to slow down community transmissions to make this decision, such as: Berkeley Unified School District school closures, San Francisco Public Schools closures, UC Berkeley & other Universities Cancelling In-Person Classes, and WHO Declares Pandemic.

Under California law, parents can take up to 40 hours of leave from work in the event of a school closure. For more info on your rights, visit: https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/2019-Novel-Coronavirus.htm.

We will email you as we continue to have updates. Sign up for our email list here: https://lapena.org/email-list/

In the meantime, we wish you all the best and encourage you to take care of yourselves and to be considerate of others by staying home if you feel sick, working remotely when possible, getting plenty of sleep, eating healthy foods and washing your hands often.

The La Peña staff is working on more long-term strategies to keep our communities safe and the culture going! Stay tuned!

If you have any questions please fill out our Contact Us form here: https://lapena.org/contact/

In solidarity,

The LP Team

February 27, 2020

Oscar López Rivera Inducted to La Peña’s Hall of Fame

Pictured: Bianca Torres (left) and Natalia Neira (right), La Peña Cultural Center Co-Executive Directors, with Oscar López Rivera in front of La Peña’s Hall of Fame Plaque. Photo Credit: Scott Braley

It was a joy and an honor to co-present former Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera (OLR) with Boricuas in Berkeley and UC Berkeley’s Alternative Breaks Puerto Rico last Saturday, Feb. 22, 2020 at La Peña. The event included a reception to present Mr. López Rivera with his induction to La Peña’s Hall of Fame, offerings of music and dance by the Bay Area Bomba y Plena Workshop, poetry by Rico Pabon, a talk and Q&A with the community, anda book signing. The event, which was part of OLR’s North West Speaking Tour, raised $2,165 toward the OLR foundation Fundación Libertá. You can donate to the Foundation’s Papal here.

Pictured (from left): Oscar Lopéz Rivera with Carlos Herrera, Fernando Torres and Jaime Salazar – former political prisoners from Chile. Photo Credit: Oscar López Rivera Official

Oscar López Rivera served 36 years in prison, Oscar López Rivera is the longest held Puerto Rican political prisoner in the history of Puerto Rico’s struggle for independence, regarded as the “Nelson Mandela of the Americas.” In 2017, as the result of a broad human rights campaign, Pres. Obama commuted his sentence only days before leaving office.

Since then, he has continued to energetically advocate an end to U.S. colonialism, and resumed his role as an organizer, deepening his relationship to the municipalities of Loiza and Comerio and working to establish a community center in Rio Piedras, from which to train organizers to develop the capacity for community self-reliance, mutual aid, and self-governance.