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Luis Javier Rodriguez | |
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| Born | Luis Javier Rodriguez 1954 (age 71–72) El Paso, Texas, U.S. |
| Occupations |
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| Known for | Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. |
| Political party | Green |
| Other political affiliations | Justice |
| Los Angeles Poet Laureate | |
| In office 2014–2015 | |
Luis Javier Rodriguez (born 1954) is an Americanpoet,novelist,journalist,critic, andcolumnist. He was the 2014 Los AngelesPoet Laureate.[1] Rodriguez is recognized as a major figure in contemporaryChicano literature,[2] identifying himself as a nativeXicanx writer.[3] His best-known work,Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., received theCarl Sandburg Literary Award and has been controversial on school reading lists for its depictions of gang life.
The founder and co-founder of nonprofit organizations includingTía Chucha's Centro Cultural,[4][5][6] Rodriguez has been active in politics. Rodriguez was the2012vice-presidential nominee of theJustice Party.[7] In2014, Rodriguez ran as theGreen Party of California's candidate forGovernor of California[8][9] and received 66,872 votes (1.5 percent of the vote) in the June primary.[10] He ran again as candidate in the2022 California gubernatorial election, endorsed by the Green Party and thePeace and Freedom Party.
Rodriguez was born in theUnited States-Mexico border city ofEl Paso, Texas. His parents, natives ofCiudad Juárez,Chihuahua, had their children on the US side of the border to ease the transition there, where they had intentions of relocating.
In Ciudad Juarez, his father was a high school principal, but in Los Angeles he worked in a dog food factory, a paint factory, in construction, and selling pots and pans and Bibles. He retired as a laboratory custodian at Pierce Community College in Woodland Hills, California, a wealthier neighborhood in Los Angeles. Luis's mother, who is descended from theRaramuri, a peopleindigenous to Chihuahua, was a school secretary in Mexico, but in Los Angeles she worked cleaning homes and in the garment industry when she was not taking care of the children.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Luis was an active gang member and drug user[11] inEast Los Angeles, developing a longrap sheet. However, his criminal activity did not preclude his participation in theChicano Movement, and he joined the 1968East L.A. walkouts and took part in the August 31, 1970Chicano Moratorium against theVietnam War.[12][13] At the moratorium, he was brutalized and arrested along with numerous other peaceful protesters.[13]
However, unlike other arrestees, Luis with four other "cholos" (Chicano gang youth) was held briefly in the Murderer's Row of the Hall of Justice Jail and threatened with charges in the three persons killed during subsequent rioting after law enforcement attacked a mostly-peaceful crowd.[14] He had a cell next toCharles Manson.[14] He was later released with no charges filed.[14]
Luis found a mentor through the John Fabela Youth Center, part of the Bienvenidos Community Center in South San Gabriel, who recognized Luis' capacity as a graffiti writer and community leader. With this mentor's help, in 1972 Luis painted severalmurals in the San Gabriel Valley communities ofRosemead andSouth San Gabriel. Although Luis dropped out of high school at 15, he later returned and graduated fromMark Keppel High School inAlhambra, where he led school walkouts and became president of To Help Mexican American Students (TOHMAS).
He got arrested for "assault with intent to commit murder" at 17 in an incident in which four people were shot, but witnesses failed to identify him and he was released. He later attendedCalifornia State University, Los Angeles briefly from 1972 to 1973, becoming a member of theChicano activist groupMEChA but eventually dropped out.[5]
The two currents in his life came to an inevitable head when at 18, a sentence imposed for a criminal conviction in a case in which Luis had tried to stop the police beating of a young Mexican woman, who was handcuffed and on the ground, was mitigated by letters of support from community members who saw his potential. Feeling a sense of indebtedness to those who had helped him, Luis decided to quit heroin and other drugs and gang life, dedicating himself to Marxist study and revolutionary community organizing.
In 1980, he began attending night school atEast Los Angeles College and working as a writer/photographer for several East Los Angeles area publications. That summer, he attended a workshop for minority journalists atUC Berkeley, after which he covered crime and other urban issues for theSan Bernardino Sun. At the same time, he continued to be active in East Los Angeles, leading a group ofbarrio writers and publishingChismeArte, aChicano art journal,[15] out of an office atSelf Help Graphics & Art. He began facilitating writing workshops and talks in prisons and juvenile lockups in 1980 starting in Chino Prison. In the early 1980s, he also worked for theAmerican Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in public radio, and as a freelance journalist, including covering indigenous uprisings in Mexico and the Contra War in Nicaragua and Honduras, until he moved to Chicago in 1985. There, he was editor of thePeople's Tribune, linked to the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, for three years, then a typesetter for the Liturgy Training Publications of theArchdiocese of Chicago, and a writer/reporter for WMAQ-AM, All News Radio. Luis became active in the Chicago poetry scene, birthplace of thePoetry Slam, and founded Tia Chucha Press to publish his first book. "Poems Across the Pavement." and the books of leading Chicago poets, later doing the same on a national level. His readings and talks extended to prisons around the country as well as homeless shelters, migrant camps, Native American reservations, public & private schools, colleges, universities, libraries, and conferences.
In 1993,Curbstone Press ofWillimantic, CT published Luis's first memoir,Always Running as acautionary tale for his son Ramiro, who joined a Chicago street gang at the age of fifteen.[12] The following year, Touchstone Books/Simon & Schuster released the paperback. In 1994, Luis became a poet/teacher for men's conferences sponsored by the Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, founded by mythologist/storytellerMichael Meade, and co-founded Youth Struggling for Survival (YSS) to work with gang and non-gang youth and their families. His son Ramiro and his daughter Andrea were also founding members. In addition, Luis began Native American and Native Mexican spiritual practices in 1995 with elder/teachers among the Lakota, Navajo (Dine), Mexica, and Mayan nations. However, Ramiro began state prison terms at age 17 for various violent acts, eventually serving a total of fifteen years, including thirteen and a half years for three counts of attempted murder. Ramiro was released in July 2010.[16]
In 1998, Rodriguez received theHispanic Heritage Award for Literature.[17] He has been awarded other prizes for his writing and community work, including the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award,[18] three PEN Josephine Miles Literary Awards,[19] a Lannan Poetry Fellowship, a Poetry Center Book Award of San Francisco State University,[20] a Paterson Poetry Prize,[21] and a Get Lit Players Ignite Award. Over the years, Luis received other recognition, including a writers "Walk of Fame" signature and hand print on cement at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, CA; the Spirit of Struggle/Ruben Salazar award from InnerCity Struggle, "Hero of the Community" from KCET-TV and Union Bank, "Hero of Nonviolence" by the Agape Christian Center, and as an "Unsung Hero of Compassion," presented by the Dalai Lama. In 1993, Luis also received aDorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize in Journalism with photojournalist Donna De Cesare to cover Salvadoran gang youth in Los Angeles and El Salvador.[22]
In 2000, Luis moved his family, then consisting of his third wife Trini and their two young sons, Ruben and Luis, to the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles. His daughter Andrea and his granddaughter Catalina later joined them. In 2001, Luis helped create Tia Chucha's Cafe Cultural in Sylmar CA with his wife Trini and their brother-in-law Enrique Sanchez, and in 2003 the nonprofit Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural and Bookstore with Angelica Loa Perez and Victor Mendoza. In 2005, he brought Tia Chucha Press, now a renowned small press with more than 50 books of cross-cultural poets, to Los Angeles.
In 2012, Luis was co-editor with Denise Sandoval ofRushing Waters, Rising Dreams: How the Arts are Transforming a Community (Tia Chucha Press), which in 2013 won an award from the Independent Publishers Association at the annual Book Expo gathering in New York City. He was also co-producer of the documentary of the same name, written and directed by John F. Cantu. The film and book were shown across the country, including in San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, Pasadena, the Napa Valley, East L.A., and other cities.[6]
Beginning in 2014, Luis served as a script consultant on three TV shows: Fox'sGang Related, Hulu'sEast Los High, and FX'sSnowfall. He became Grand Marshall for the Latino Heritage Parade in Pasadena, CA and the Mendez High School Parade in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. In 2019, Casa 0101 Theater in Boyle Heights, produced the full staged version ofAlways Running, co-adapted by Luis J. Rodriguez and Hector Rodriguez, selling out every weekend since August 31 and extended three times.
In October 2011, he became a co-founder of the Network for Revolutionary Change in Chicago, dedicated to bringing together revolutionary leaders, thinkers, and activists from throughout the United States to plan, strategize, and organize social justice, equity, and peace through cooperation, imagination, and meaningful actions. In 2018, he became active in the National Poor People's Campaign, spearheaded by the Reverend William Barber and the Reverend Liz Theoharis.[citation needed]
On October 9, 2014, Rodriguez was named the second Los AngelesPoet Laureate by MayorEric Garcetti, succeedingEloise Klein Healy. "During his four-term, he is expected to compose poems to the city, host at least six readings, hold at least six classes or workshops at public library branches and serve as a cultural ambassador," according to theLos Angeles Times.[1]
Luis ran for Los Angeles School Board in 1977 in a "Vote Communist" campaign after the California Supreme Court validated the right to run such campaigns based on the First Amendment. In addition, he worked as a bus driver, truck driver, in construction, a paper mill, a lead foundry, a chemical refinery, and a steel mill, learning the millwright trade, carpentry, maintenance mechanics, and welding. At the same time, Luis helped with various gang peace truces and urban peace efforts throughout the Los Angeles area.[5]
TheJustice Party was organized in November 2011 by a group of political activists including formermayor of Salt Lake CityRocky Anderson as an alternative to what they saw as aduopoly of thetwo major political parties.[23] Anderson was the party's first presidential nominee. In July 2012, Anderson selected Rodriguez to be his vice presidentialrunning mate.[7]
Rodriguez and Anderson were officially on the ballot in fifteen states and achieved recognized write-in status in twenty-five more.[24] The 2012 ticket received 43,018 votes, equal to approximately 0.03% of the total.[citation needed]
In 2014, Rodriguez was endorsed by theGreen Party of California to be itsGubernatorial candidate in the"Top Two" primary election.[25] It was the first California governor's race using the new top two system in which the top two vote-getters advance to November's general election, regardless of party.[26] Rodriguez received 66,872 votes for 1.5 percent of the vote. He came in sixth—first among independents and third party candidates, but did not advance to the November election.[10]
Rodriguez's positions included a focus on clean and green energy and jobs, developing aSingle-payer health care system, imposing aseverance tax on oil companies, ending the California prison system, and ending poverty in California.[27] A key concern for Rodriguez, economic inequality, is described in his campaign document "A New Vision for California":
There have always been two states – one ripe for developers, corporations, financial institutions, and robber barons. The other state consists of the working class and poor, including immigrant whites and Asians, African Americans, natives, Mexicans, and refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Armenia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere. ... Here is the California story we can't cover up or push aside: increased job eliminations, evictions, [and] home foreclosures as well as cuts in welfare and needed services in the face of a deepening poverty-creating economic crisis. Which way for California? Which way for the country?[28]
Rodriguez cited failures by incumbentJerry Brown, stating, "with Governor Brown's budget cuts, his stand on prisons, the ensuing growth of poverty under his watch, he's just another bead on a long string of unresponsive pro-corporate politicians."[28] In an interview withTruthout, in May 2014, Rodriguez also criticizedBrown's policies on incarceration, stating:
Governor Brown has proposed a $10 billion prison budget. I would stop warehousing people (and generating better criminals at taxpayers' expense) and provide rehabilitation,restorative justice practices, alternative sentencing, mental and drug treatment, healing circles, the arts, training and jobs. As proven around the country and world, this is far cheaper and more effective.[29]
Rodriguez ran for Governor of California as a Green Party andPeace and Freedom Party candidate in 2022.[30] In the June primary he received 1.8% of the vote with the support of 124,456 California voters.[31]
