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 the Raramuri, a people indigenous 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.
Legal issues
During the 1960s and 1970s, Luis was an active gang member and drug user[11] in East Los Angeles, developing a long rap sheet. However, his criminal activity did not preclude his participation in the Chicano Movement, and he joined the 1968 East L.A. walkouts and took part in the August 31, 1970 Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam 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 to Charles 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 several murals in the San Gabriel Valley communities of Rosemead and South San Gabriel. Although Luis dropped out of high school at 15, he later returned and graduated from Mark Keppel High School in Alhambra, 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 attended California State University, Los Angeles briefly from 1972 to 1973, becoming a member of the Chicano activist group MEChA 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.
Career
In 1980, he began attending night school at East 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 at UC Berkeley, after which he covered crime and other urban issues for the San Bernardino Sun. At the same time, he continued to be active in East Los Angeles, leading a group of barrio writers and publishing ChismeArte, a Chicano art journal,[15] out of an office at Self 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 the American 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 the People's Tribune, linked to the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, for three years, then a typesetter for the Liturgy Training Publications of the Archdiocese of Chicago, and a writer/reporter for WMAQ-AM, All News Radio. Luis became active in the Chicago poetry scene, birthplace of the Poetry 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 of Willimantic, CT published Luis's first memoir, Always Running as a cautionary 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/storyteller Michael 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 the Hispanic 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 a Dorothea 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 of Rushing 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's Gang Related, Hulu's East Los High, and FX's Snowfall. 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 of Always 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]
Los Angeles Poet Laureate
On October 9, 2014, Rodriguez was named the second Los Angeles Poet Laureate by Mayor Eric Garcetti, succeeding Eloise 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 the Los Angeles Times.[1]
Politics
Early political activities
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]
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 the Green Party of California to be its Gubernatorial 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 a Single-payer health care system, imposing a severance 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 incumbent Jerry 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 with Truthout, in May 2014, Rodriguez also criticized Brown'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 and Peace 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]
Rodriguez, Luis. J (2005). My Nature is Hunger: New & Selected Poems, 1989-2004. Curbstone Press/Rattle Edition. ISBN1-931896-24-0.
Rodriguez, Luis. J (2016). Borrowed Bones: New Poems from the Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press. ISBN978-0-8101-3364-8.
Rodriguez, Luis J. (2011). It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing. New York, NY: Atria Books. ISBN9781416584179.
Rodriguez, Luis J. (2019). From Our Land to Our Land: Essays, Journeys, and Imaginings from a Native Xicanx Writer. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press. ISBN9781609809720.
Zoot Suit is a play written by Luis Valdez, featuring incidental music by Daniel Valdez and Lalo Guerrero. Zoot Suit is based on the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial and the Zoot Suit Riots. Debuting in 1979, Zoot Suit was the first Chicano play on Broadway. In 1981, Luis Valdez also directed a filmed version of the play, combining stage and film techniques.
Blood In Blood Out is a 1993 American epic crime drama film directed by Taylor Hackford that has become a cult-classic film among the Mexican-American community. It follows the intertwining lives of three Chicano relatives from 1972 to 1984. They start out as members of a street gang in East Los Angeles, and as dramatic incidents occur, their lives and friendships are forever changed. Blood In Blood Out was filmed in 1991 throughout Los Angeles and inside California's San Quentin State Prison.
Emilio Ernest Delgado was an American actor best known for his role as Luis, the Fix-it Shop owner, on the children's television series Sesame Street. He joined the cast of Sesame Street in 1971 and remained until his contract was not renewed, in late 2016, as part of Sesame Workshop's retooling of the series.
Daniel Anthony Olivas is an American author and attorney.
Alberto Baltazar Urista Heredia, better known by his nom de plume Alurista, is an American poet and activist. His work was influential in the Chicano Movement and is important to the field of Chicano poetry.
Chicano poetry is a subgenre of Chicano literature that stems from the cultural consciousness developed in the Chicano Movement. Chicano poetry has its roots in the reclamation of Chicana/o as an identity of empowerment rather than denigration. As a literary field, Chicano poetry emerged in the 1960s and formed its own independent literary current and voice.
Northwestern University Press is an American publishing house affiliated with Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. It publishes 70 new titles each year in the areas of continental philosophy, poetry, Slavic and German literary criticism, Chicago regional studies, African American intellectual history, theater and performance studies, and fiction. Parneshia Jones is director of the press. It is a member of the Association of University Presses.
Stanley Russell "Spoon" Jackson is an American murderer and poet serving a life without the possibility of parole sentence. Currently incarcerated at California State Prison, Solano. Jackson was convicted of the stabbing homicide of Denise Holzman, 23, in Barstow, California. Holzman, the first female switch operator for the Santa Fe Railroad, moved to Barstow five weeks prior to the murder. Jackson was incarcerated in 1977 and has served time in more than six California state prisons.
Juan Felipe Herrera is an American poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. He is a major figure in the literary field of Chicano poetry.
Carlos Cumpián is an American Chicano writer who examines American realities absent from mainstream poetry. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Cumpián has planted firm roots in the Midwest.
Alfred Arteaga was a Mexican-American poet, writer, and scholar. He was noted as an important poet of the Chicano Movement, who also contributed to the foundations postcolonial and ethnic studies.
Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural is a non-profit cultural center and bookstore in Sylmar, California. It was founded in 2003 by noted Chicano author Luis J. Rodriguez, his wife Trini Rodriguez, Angelica Loa, and Victor Mendoza of El Vuh. Tia Chucha's provides arts and music workshops and events to the culturally underserved Northeastern San Fernando Valley.
Harry E. Northup is an American actor and poet. As an actor, he made frequent appearances in the films of Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme and Jonathan Kaplan.
Tim Z. Hernandez is an American writer, poet, and performer. His first poetry collection, Skin Tax (2004), received the 2006 American Book Award, and his debut novel, Breathing, in Dust (2010), was awarded the 2010 Premio Aztlán Literary Prize, and was a finalist for the California Book Award. In 2011, Hernandez was named one of sixteen New American Poets by the Poetry Society of America. In 2014 he received the Colorado Book Award for his poetry collection, Natural Takeover of Small Things, and the 2014 International Latino Book Award for his historical fiction novel, Mañana Means Heaven. In 2018, he received the Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano Letters administered by UC Santa Barbara, and in 2019 he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.
Tino Villanueva is an American poet and writer. His early work was associated with the Chicano literary renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s, and Villanueva is considered to be a primary figure in that literary movement. More recently, Villanueva's work has treated themes from Greek mythology.
The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards are a pair of American prizes based at Claremont Graduate University. They are given to poets for their collections of poetry written in the English language, by a citizen or legal resident alien of the United States.
The Satanas Gang is a Filipino American street gang in Southern California, founded in 1972. It is believed to be the oldest Filipino-American street gang in Los Angeles.
David A. Romero is an American spoken word artist, poet, and activist from Diamond Bar, CA. Romero is a graduate of the University of Southern California (USC) and is the second spoken word artist to be featured on All Def Digital, a YouTube channel from Russell Simmons.
The 2022 California gubernatorial election was held on November 8, 2022, to elect the governor of California, with the statewide top-two primary election taking place on June 7, 2022. Incumbent Democratic Party Governor Gavin Newsom was re-elected to a second term after surviving a recall election in 2021, during his first term.
Ricardo Sánchez was a writer, poet, professor, and activist. Sometimes called the "Grandfather of Chicano poetry," Sánchez gained national acclaim for his 1971 poetry collection Canto y Grito Mi Liberacion. Incarcerated in his twenties for stealing money to feed his struggling family, Sánchez read extensively and even learned Hebrew while at Soledad Prison in California. Upon his release in 1969, his poems were included in a poetry anthology. In 1971, his first solo collection of poetry was published, establishing Sánchez as one of the nation's most important Chicano poets.
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