Please join us to remember Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt, who were assassinated on this site in 1976 by agents of the Pinochet dictatorship. We will also pay tribute to Saul Landau, a long-time IPS Fellow and winner of the Chilean government’s Bernardo O’Higgins Award for his pursuit of justice for Orlando and Ronni and other victims of human rights violations around the world. Saul died on September 9.

Featuring:

• Maria del Solar (aunt of Orlando Letelier) and family

• Miguel L. Cordova, founding member of the Chilean music group APARCOA who performed with Joan Baez and Pete Seeger at the September 10, 1976 Madison Square Garden event where Orlando Letelier gave his last major speech.

Poetry: Phil Brenner, Professor, American University School of International Service, will read a poem penned by Saul Landau shortly before his death. (Saul has
contributed a poem to this event every year.)

Music: Joe Uehlein, a well-known performer of songs of work, hope, and freedom and leader of the popular band The U-Liners.

His Excellency Felipe Bulnes, Ambassador of Chile to the United States

Emcee: Manuel Perez-Rocha, Institute for Policy Studies

Invocation: Jean Stokan, Sisters of Mercy

Background

On September 21, 1976, agents of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile detonated a car bomb on Washington, DC’s Embassy Row, taking the lives but not the memory of Institute for Policy Studies colleagues Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt.

Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the United States, had become one of the most outspoken critics of the Pinochet regime. Moffitt was a 25-year-old IPS 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.

On the Sunday closest to the date of this tragic event, human rights activists, friends, family, and colleagues gather in remembrance of Letelier and Moffitt and to reflect on the ongoing struggle for human rights around the world.

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.

IPS 50th Anniversary and Saul Landau Celebration

You are also invited to IPS 50th anniversary events from October 11 to 13, which will include an “Ideas into Action” Festival, a Ticketed Dinner, and a Gala. As part of the festival, we will host a celebration of the life and work of Saul Landau from 6-8:30 pm on Saturday, October 12, at the Liaison Hotel, Metropolitan Ballroom, 415 New Jersey Avenue NW. You’re also welcome to share your thoughts through the IPS Saul Landau tribute page.

Please join Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman and other progressive leaders, including Harry Belafonte, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Amy Goodman, and Barbara Ehrenreich, for these events. Ariel will also be joining IPS Board Chair E. Ethelbert Miller for a discussion of “The Role of Artists in Social Change” on Sunday, October 13, 9:30-11 am.

Because of all this activity, we won’t be holding our annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards ceremony this year, but will resume the awards in 2014. For more information: www.ips-dc.org, tel: 202 234-9382.