Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America

The "BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS"
AWARD
has been granted to
Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America
on October 18, 2005

Responding to the call of Latin America's poor majorities, CRLN is an interfaith information and action network that mobilizes religious leaders and congregations in Illinois to advance peace, justice & human rights in our hemisphere. Founded in 1989, CRLN seeks to convert denominational resolutions that support Latin Americans' struggle for justice into effective action and interfaith public witness. CRLN's current 600 members include lay leaders, pastors, rabbis, bishops, denominational executives, seminary professors, and men and women religious. Most have traveled to Latin America. Others have associates there.

Through speakers, workshops, monthly membership updates, advocacy action initiatives, visits to Latin America, and meetings with U.S. policy-makers, CRLN engages religious leaders to speak out for more just U.S. policies in our hemisphere. As such, CRLN advocates for human rights and demilitarization of U.S. policy in Colombia, seeks an end of the unjust U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, promotes global fair trade and organizes to close WHINSEC, better known as the U.S. Army's School of the Americas.

CRLN also goes to Latin American each year to meet personally with people (at their invitation) who are marginalized by unjust political and economic structures but who actively struggle against oppression. To train human rights activists for the future, the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America maintains longstanding partnerships with Lutheran Volunteer Corps and DePaul University Center of Community Service Learning to place interns for 10 weeks.

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