Gubernatorial Candidate to Visit Napa Today

Nationally renowned author, Luis J. Rodriguez, has launched a grassroots campaign for Governor of California and is seeking the nomination of the Green Party in 2014. He will be visiting Napa on Tuesday, October 29th.

Rodriguez is author of 15 books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature. His most well known work, “Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.,” 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.

However, Rodriguez has received hundreds of letters from youth over the past 20 years addressing how the book inspires and changes young peoples’ lives.

Rodriguez will be spending time with students in Vintage High School's LEGACY program, which works with gang-involved and gang-associated youth, from 1 to 2 p.m.

There will be a "Meet and Greet" with Luis Rodriguez later that evening at 6 p.m. at the Slack Collective Art Studios and Gallery located at 964 Pearl S., Suite B, Napa.

The "Meet and Greet" will be open to the public and is endorsed by the Napa County Green Party and Napa Valley College Campus Greens.

 Taqueria Rosita will be providing non-genetically engineered appetizers, and the Teeny Tiny Coffee Company will be serving its organic, fair-trade coffee.

Other speakers at the "Meet and Greet" will include Carlos Hagedorn, Napa Valley Unified School Board Member; Elizabeth Skylar, Community at Large Representative of the Napa County Local Food Advisory Council; Mark Lucas, Chair of the Napa Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission; and Alex Shantz, At Large Representative of the Napa County Gang and Youth Violence Commission.

As the 2012 Vice-Presidential Nominee for the Justice Party and now a newly registered Green Party member of California, Rodriquez’s plan is for a gubernatorial campaign aimed at the well-being 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.

Rodriguez’s platform calls for ending poverty in California, investing in clean and green jobs and energy, establishing single payer health care, and reforming the prison system by establishing restorative justice practices as well as training and educational opportunities for the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated.

For more than 40 years, Rodriguez has also worked in gang peace, neighborhood arts, youth development, and social justice, and as a labor organizer and journalist.

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, the formerly incarcerated, battered women, and others.