For media inquiries, please contact:
Howard Jordan, “The Friends of Ramon J. Jimenez Project,” 646-210-8489


On March 24, the Bronx-based collaborative, “The Friends of Ramon J. Jimenez Project,” will celebrate the movement that helped keep the doors of Hostos Community College open 40 years ago.
 
This 40th anniversary event will bring together community activists, elected officials, clergy, students, and faculty from all over the city for a screening of the recently completed documentary, “Hostos: the Struggle, the Victory,” to be screened in Hostos’ Center for the Arts & Culture’s Main Theater at 7:00 p.m.

The event also will recognize the contributions of Ramón J. Jiménez, a Harvard educated Bronx attorney and Hostos supporter, who is widely recognized as a leader in the movement to save the institution during the city’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s.
 
Jiménez is the co-producer of the documentary, along with Hostos alumnus Félix Romero. Jiménez, who has been fighting a long battle with cancer, will be seeing the official version of the documentary for the first time.
 
“I am glad to have helped put this important piece of history in documentary form for those who have, out of their pain and protest, engendered an educational revolution that changed the lives of so many young people in the Bronx,” Romero said. “My brother Ramon, through his strength of spirit, was able to join others in showing us the right to a quality education is the indispensable link in the struggle for liberation.”
 
Jiménez’s daughter, Laila Jimenez-Roman, said she is looking forward to celebrating her father with her extended family.
 
“I hope the people of the city will join me and my father on this special evening.  It is only this continued caravan of love and support that has kept dad going during these turbulent months and I hope la familia will say presente that evening.”
 
Among those in attendance will be:
  • David Gómez, Hostos Community College President
  • Marcos Crespo, Chair of the Bronx Democratic Party
  • José Rivera, NY Assembly (District 78)
  • Charles Barron, NY Assembly (District 60)
  • Educators, including Professors Gerald Meyer, Ana López, Héctor Soto, Hostos Behavioral & Social Sciences Department Chairs Howard Jordan, Miami Dade College Behavioral & Social Sciences Department Chair (and Hostos alumnus) Victor Vázquez
  • Ed Figueroa, from “The Friends of Ramon J. Jimenez Project”
  • Reverends Danilo Lachapal and Raymond Rivera
This event is free, but you must obtain a ticket through the Box Office by calling: 718-518-4455.