Guest Speaker: Roy Bourgeois

Roy Bourgeois will speak about Latin America. He will attend the following film screening of Pink Smoke Over the Vatican at 12:30 p.m. in the Multicultural Center.  All are encouraged to attend both events.

Bourgeois is a former Catholic priest who was recently excommunicated for his participation in a women’s ordination ceremony in August 2008. He is a leading human rights activist, advocating for the ordination of women and supporting gay rights. In 1980, Bourgeois became an outspoken critic of U.S. policy in Latin America after four American churchwomen were raped and killed by a death squad. Subsequent investigations have shown that the perpetrators of this crime, as well as of many others in Central America, were trained at the School of the Americas (SOA) in Fort Benning, Georgia. In 1990, Bourgeois founded the School of the Americas Watch (SOAW). The SOAW is an independent organization that seeks to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas, and calls attention to the use of U.S.-taxpayer dollars for crimes against humanity. Throughout the past two decades, Bourgeois has spent over four years in prison for crossing into Fort Benning to protest the SOA.

Sponsors: The Center for Peace and Social Justice, the Peace Studies Program, and the following CLA departments: Anthropology, Religious Studies, Women Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Chicano and Latino Studies

Additional co-sponsors and contributors will be graciously accepted.

For more information: Ronald.Loewe@csulb.edu