Los Angeles author and activist vies for Governor’s office as Green Party candidate

LOS ANGELES, CA – Nationally renowned author Luis J. Rodriguez has announced his intention in running for California Governor under the Green Party in 2014. The Green Party of California will nominate its June 2014 Gubernatorial candidate this November at its bi-annual statewide General Assembly. As a newly registered Green Party member of California and the 2012 Vice-Presidential Nominee for the Justice Party alongside running-mate and former mayor of Salt Lake City Rocky Anderson, Luis’s plan is for a campaign aimed at the wellbeing of all Californians – for meaningful and livable jobs; education/training into the new digitally driven technology; green, clean and healthy neighborhoods for everyone; and peace and safety through restorative, transformative and healing urban peace models.

“I’m for a vision of a new California – one that takes care of all its hard working residents, including those that now find themselves without work and even homes, and that strives for the long-range sustainability that is possible in the wealthiest and most resourceful state in the country,” says Mr. Rodriguez. “I am inviting all progressives, labor leaders, community organizers, and, of course, regular folk – across the political spectrum – to unite around a broad movement for a California worthy of each of us. We need to make sure everyone is included in the immense possibilities inherent in people’s imaginations, in their labor, in the technology, and with respectful relationship to our bountiful earth.”

Luis J. Rodriguez is author of 15 books in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature. His most well known work, “Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.,” has been called one of the most checked out books in libraries and schools – and perhaps the most stolen. The book has also been named one of the 100 most censored books in the U.S. and was the center of controversy in some California school districts. Yet Luis has received hundreds of letters from youth over the past twenty years addressing how the book inspires and changes young peoples’ lives.

For more than forty years Luis has also worked in gang peace, neighborhood arts, youth development, a labor organizer, a journalist, and in social justice. He has spent 33 years visiting prisons – including Chino, Lancaster, San Quentin, Soledad, and Folsom – and juvenile facilities throughout the state and across the U.S. He has also talked in public and private schools, colleges, universities, libraries, conferences, and urban and rural poor communities. He has 20 years as a Native Mexican/Native American healer working mostly with troubled youth, addicts, formerly incarcerated, battered women, and others.

Along with his wife Trini and others, Luis helped create the nonprofit Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. This unique space includes workshops and performances in the visual arts, music, dance, theater, writing, indigenous cosmology, Open Mics, author readings, film nights, community dialogues, a youth empowerment project, a mural collective, and more – as well as the only annual outdoor literacy festival in the San Fernando Valley: “Celebrating Words: Written, Performed & Sung.” And he’s founder/editor of the award-winning small press, Tia Chucha Press, which in 25 years has published more than 50 books of poetry, chapbooks, an art book, and a CD.

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Contact: Luis J. Rodriguez 818-898-0013