Luis J. Rodriguez

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.

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]

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]

The Justice Party was organized in November 2011 by a group of political activists including former mayor of Salt Lake City Rocky Anderson as an alternative to what they saw as a duopoly of the two major political parties.[23] Anderson was the party's first presidential nominee. In July 2012, Anderson selected Rodriguez to be his vice presidential running 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.

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 (1989). Poems Across the Pavement. Tía Chucha Press. ISBN 0-9624287-0-1.
• Rodriguez, Luis. J (1991). The Concrete River: Poems. Curbstone Press. ISBN 0-915306-42-5.
• Rodriguez, Luis. J (1998). Trochemoche: Poems. Curbstone Press. ISBN 1-880684-50-0.
• Rodriguez, Luis. J (2005). My Nature is Hunger: New & Selected Poems, 1989-2004. Curbstone Press/Rattle Edition. ISBN 1-931896-24-0.
• Rodriguez, Luis. J (2016). Borrowed Bones: New Poems from the Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press. ISBN 978-0-8101-3364-8.

• Rodriguez, Luis J. (1993). Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press. ISBN 1-880684-06-3.
• Rodriguez, Luis J. (2001). Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press. ISBN 1-58322-263-4.
• Rodriguez, Luis J. (2011). It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing. New York, NY: Atria Books. ISBN 9781416584179.
• 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. ISBN 9781609809720.

• Rodriguez, Luis J. (1996). América is Her Name. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press. ISBN 1-880684-40-3.
• Rodriguez, Luis J. (1999). It Doesn't Have to be This Way: A Barrio Story / No tiene que ser así : una historia del barrio. San Francisco, California: Children's Book Press. ISBN 0-89239-161-8.
• Rodriguez, Luis J. (2002). The Republic of East L.A.: Stories. New York City: Rayo. ISBN 0-06-621263-4.
• Rodriguez, Luis J. (2005). Music of the Mill: A Novel. New York City: Rayo. ISBN 0-06-056076-2.