Leader of a Terrorist Group Honored in New York Parade

Corporate sponsors are dropping out of the line-up of supporters for the NYC National Puerto Rican Day parade that is set to honor a leader of a terrorist group!  That’s right folks, right here in the streets of the United States, people will be celebrating with a parade in honor of a convicted terrorist.

Oscar Lopez Rivera, who will be marching in the parade as an honored guest, has been associated with The Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), a group responsible for bombings that claimed the lives of civilians in the 1970s and 80s.  The worst attacks committed by the terrorist group took place at Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan in 1975, in which four people were killed and many more injured.  Although no one was charged in that incident, Lopez Rivera, now at the age of 74, spent 35 years in prison for a conviction of transporting weapons and explosives with intent to kill or injure.

Rivera was the co-founder of the FALN.  This same terrorist organization engaged in over 120 bombings.  Mayor Bill de Blasio said he will still be marching in the parade despite the controversy.   While the parade is a very important part of honoring the Puerto Rican community, Rivera’s involvement with a terrorist group that was responsible for more than 100 bombings in the U.S. and Puerto Rico casts an ominous shadow over the entire event.

Rivera has been defended by a large community of supporters who say he had no involvement in any type of violence.  President Obama did pardon him after all, but a member of the FALN testified that he instructed members on how to make bombs.  Also, during his incarceration he was sentenced to an additional 15 years for plotting an escape.  Rivera was convicted on multiple charges that included seditious conspiracy, or plotting to overthrow the U.S. government.

Lopez Rivera was offered clemency by President Bill Clinton in 1999, but Rivera rejected it because it would not include all of the imprisoned associates. 

In the wake of the Manchester bombing and the ruling against President Trump’s temporary ban on immigrants traveling to the U.S., the honoring of Lopez Rivera in a parade within the very city that he was once an alleged conspirator in a bombing is an insult to us all!! We didn’t even mention that Rivera also had a street named after him in Chicago!

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