ADVISORY BOARD

---

I was born into a migrant farmworker family of 15 in central California. We worked the fields, the campos everywhere. I was a champion cotton picker. 

I was a high school dropout, pushout, in Fresno, but received my GED at 20 from Tustin High School while in the Marines, Vietnam Era. Then I lived in East LA, attended college there, then at USC, graduated, but also served with MEChA.

Post graduation I drove buses, worked in car businesses, and later earned a teacher's Credential/License from Cal Lutheran U in Thousand Oaks in Ventura County.  

My 42-year teaching career includes 22 years of day and adult school in central LA at Belmont High School, the most crowded high school in the USA (1990--2000). Here I organized MEL (Movimiento Estudiantil Latino), and other events, including 1,000 student, motivational/ educational/cultural assemblies. I also taught adult ESL(ELL) and USA citizenship at LA City College. I now teach part time in LA, and live in Ojai, Ventura County, 805.

Currently I'm organizing 50 years of prose, theater(plays) and performance art/poetry. Since 2022 I've been a regular performer at the Ojai Library Poetry Series, where I've also been the featured poet. In addition, I've presented work with Oxnard's Teatro de Las Americas during Day of the Dead events, 2022 and 2023. I've read at the Elite Theatre, Ventura and Santa Paula Libraries and in other venues, such as the Camarillo Arts Center and the Veterans for Peace Annual Conventions. In LA I've presented work in various places.

A current project is grassroots writing workshops with Friends of Field Workers (Companeros Campesinos) of Ventura County, 805.  My work fuses trilingual, USA American English, Mexican -Spanish and calo, Mexican American slang, which has its own dictionary.  I am a Freirean educator with a firm conviction of writing that engages and is a force for democracy.