“We cannot close our eyes if we are not getting what we need,”
says Luis Avelar, who has spent the last 30 years keeping his eyes open
on behalf of East Palo Alto’s Spanish-speaking community. Whether
police brutality, quality education, affordable housing, or community
safety, Avelar has been at the table representing the Hispanic community
on almost every issue they have confronted. In his calm demeanor, many
in the Hispanic community find both the wisdom and the resolve that are
needed to tackle intractable difficulties.
Avelar was called on as a community representative early on in his life in California. It was back in 1974, when he was living in an apartment building filled with friends and relatives from his native Zacatecas. The police would regularly raid the building looking for illegal immigrants to deport. After one particularly brutal incident, Avelar was chosen as the group’s spokesperson in a lawsuit against the authorities. Because of his involvement with an immigrant rights organization in San Jose, he had both connections to the legal community and the respect of his community. The ultimately successful lawsuit became his entrée into community leadership. “I learned that we all have rights, and that’s what has motivated me to keep striving,” he said.
In representing his community in church coalitions and countless community boards, Avelar crosses cultural boundaries to work with African Americans and other minority groups. Since becoming involved in the 1970s, he has seen dramatic improvements in community security as well as improvements in other areas. As a board member of Peninsula Interfaith Action, he also has been part of successful efforts to secure more funding for low-income housing. And he counts reformers’ recent takeover of the local school board as one of his community’s greatest successes. “It felt as though we had changed a part of the world,” he noted.
The school board victory illustrates Avelar’s wisdom: Seeing the pitfall of making himself indispensable, he sees a major part of his mission as cultivating the next generation of leaders to take his community farther and deepen their connections with the broader East Palo Alto community. “We need to concern ourselves with having more representation in politics. The representatives from our city and county will decide our future. When I invite someone to join a cause, I try to do it without self-interest, only for the good of everybody.” In a testament to his sincerity, he is rarely turned down.
Avelar became a Wildflowers fellow in 2003.