The Pleasurable Pursuit of Justice
A Conversation With Renegade Organizer Magdaleno Rose Avila
In her book Pleasure Activism, adrienne marie brown asks, “How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life?” If anyone can answer these questions, it would be Magdaleno Rose Avila. I met Magdaleno in 1992 when I got a grant to document migrant farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley. Magdaleno introduced me to farm workers and union organizers and helped me gain access to labor camps and fields. He had an easy rapport with everyone, a deep repertoire of jokes, and was perpetually late because he was delivering food or shoes to someone or deep in conversation with a stranger. He was hellbent on securing living wages and humane working conditions for migrant laborers, especially undocumented workers who, if they advocated for themselves or their co-workers, risked retribution or worse, deportation. Magdaleno knew first-hand the toll of working in the fields, the indignities of having no toilet access all day and the health risks of working with cancer-causing pesticides.
Magdaleno is one of twelve children born to Marcos and Carmen Avila, Mexican immigrants who lived and worked on a farm in Colorado. At age 11, he was working alongside his father in the onion fields. He made his way to college at the height of the civil rights movement where, after Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination, Magdaleno was thrust into the spotlight as a public speaker, poet and activist.
By age 23, he was organizing farm workers in Colorado. It was then that he received the first of many death threats. A foreman trying to break the strike held a rifle to his head and demanded that he leave. Magdaleno stood calmly and told the man, “I’m non-violent. You are not my enemy.” Shaking with rage, the man pressed the gun into Magdaleno’s skull. He remembers being surprised by what came out of his mouth next. “You don’t need to kill me,” Magdaleno said. “ But, I must tell you that I will be out here picketing tomorrow.” Magdaleno repeated his words until the man, still shaking with rage, put the rifle down and walked away. In the ensuing five-decades, Magdaleno has continued to organize farm workers and travel the world speaking about non-violence, racism, and justice. While working for Amnesty International, Magdaleno partnered with Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, to work to abolish the death penalty. In an already full career, Magdaleno has also collaborated with former gang members, taught college, worked on voter registration, opened a bookstore, and worked as a Peace Corp Director in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Paraguay and Micronesia. His poems and stories have been shared around the world.
After the documentary project, we stayed in touch. Magdaleno always has a story about an interaction that could have gone very badly— a gang member ordering a hit on him, a stalker threatening his life— but ended up with everyone laughing and sharing tacos. He’s now living in Stone Mountain, Georgia. I spoke with him by phone recently.
TPR: Pleasure is so often equated with hedonism but what has always struck me about you is how you find so much pleasure in some really challenging places.
MRA: Right now I’m working with refugees on the border. When I go to Tijuana, people think it's dirty work and a difficult city full of crime. But, man, I'm having a ball. I’ve been there when a veteran was reinstated with his citizenship. I got to be there for that moment! I’ve been with Dreamers’ moms when they had Thanksgiving dinner. I got to deliver, on two different occasions, several suitcases of new braziers and underclothes for women and children. You have never seen women happier to have new clean underwear. The kids and the women love this because they flee with little or nothing. And it's nice for them to have something that's good and well-made.
For me, it’s all about relationships. I love taking time to share a meal or a coffee or a soft drink and sit there and just converse. But you know, even though I take a lot of joy in my work, I don't take enough time to do things that really give me pleasure.
TPR: adrienne marie brown writes about how activists need to prioritize pleasure and self-care so they don’t burn out.
MRA: That resonates for me. Social movements can be just as bad as capitalist movements. We run over people, we have agendas and egos that go beyond what we believe.
In the farmworkers’ movement, everybody was competing to see who could outwork the other, who could put in the extra hours, and it was the same with Amnesty International. It was often a question of whose candle was brighter.
TPR: How do you define pleasure?
MRA: Whether it's a poem I wrote, or a speech I gave or a ride I give someone, what makes me happy is knowing I made someone else happy. I think pleasure is helping people feel better about themselves in whatever situation they are in. What people want is to give. That's what I found working for farmworkers. I would go into very modest houses and people would want to give you the best meal that they could and, no matter what it was, you ate it and you were happy. That's an important part of pleasure.
TPR: How do you decide which projects you're going to get involved with?
MRA: Did you ever see that Tom Hanks movie Forrest Gump? It's about a guy who just shows up somewhere and things happen to him. That's how it happens for me. I'll give you an example.
My wife Carolyn was working in El Salvador. I'd worked with a lot of Salvadorans and with gang members in LA. Carolyn didn't have any staff who could go to this conference on violence. I went and met these guys who had recently been deported from LA. I got really interested and I asked one of the gang members if I could go and visit him the next day. I went out to the gang neighborhood where these deported guys live and they knew the same taco stands and hamburger stands that I went to in LA. So we had a lot in common. I just hung around with them for 90 days. In the process, we did the best demographic study on gangs ever done and eventually formed Homie Unidos, an organization that works to end violence and provides alternatives to gang involvement in El Salvador and the US.
None of that was planned. Life interrupts you. I think a lot of people get interrupted and never get affected by it. For me, interruptions have led me to the next thing. I get a lot of pleasure from that.
TPR: You’re talking about prioritizing being with people, prioritizing relationships, taking care of yourself. It's hard to do that in this world where I think there's this kind of perpetual anxiety about survival.
MRA: I haven’t had an income for two years. We sustain ourselves on Social Security and a couple of small jobs. People send me money or pay for my gas or they’ll send me a box of clothes to bring across the border.
I always seem to have what I need. I worked on GMO issues in Oregon in 2014 and I visited Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap company. I asked them if they would give me soap donations so, once every six weeks, they load me up with about $10,000 worth of soap and I take it across the border. One day, I saw they had a van out in a parking lot that they weren't using. I told them that the van was perfect for my missions and, as I saw it, there were two options. I could take it. Or they could give it to me.
TPR: What is bringing you pleasure these days?
MRA: I take great pleasure in reading. It is better than any drug I took in the 60s. Every night, I turn off the news, I get in bed and read fiction. In the morning, between four o'clock till about eight o'clock, when people started waking up and interrupting me, I have about four hours to myself.
I take pleasure in going out to see my chickens and talking to them. My rooster PJ walks around with me. He taught me how to flap my wings, because you know, you forget you need to flap your wings. And he taught me that I needed to stretch my neck and crow.
And organizing, of course. If I wasn't doing this work, I think I'd dry up and die.
SJJ: In the big picture, what is the problem and how do we fix it?
LRA: People think that you need everybody to make change. You don't need everybody, you just need the right ones. Martin Luther King Jr., about two weeks before he was assassinated, was on some national program doing an interview. And they said, “Well, there's a lot of dissent in the black community over the tactics you're using.” He says, “Yeah, I know that.” And they said, “How can you say, you represent black people when you don't have all the black people with you?" And Martin said, “Well, I think I never said I needed all the black people. I just needed the right ones.”
We're all anxious about what is going to happen and what we need to do to prepare. When I was a young farm worker, I didn't know a lot of the problems in the world. And what's worse is that I didn't know that I could make a difference. In some ways, despite all the racism and economic poverty, I was much happier once I added that responsibility to my life.
TPR: You are an incredible connector of people. What’s your secret?
The secret is just to participate with people a little bit in what they're doing and have enjoyment in it.
When we lived in Miami, people thought we were Haitian because we had so many Hatian kids in our swimming pool in the back. Now we have a lot of Congolese kids hanging out with us.
When we moved here, we didn’t know many people. But we soon got involved with NAACP doing voter registration and were very active with that.
Last year, we hosted a Dia de Los Muertos festival in our yard. We honored all the people lost due to COVID and we honored all the people lost to police violence. Friends and family made their own altars and it was really a moment of reflection and celebration. It brought us closer together.
We attracted white folks and a lot of black folks and Latinos. They all came and talked about their loved ones. I think we have forgotten how to socialize. Most people don't know their neighbors. Our rooster used to go into everybody's yard so we had to go around and meet everyone. A lot of people just stop by now. I haven't lived in a house where people just stopped by for a long time.
TPR: Any advice for pleasure activists?
MRA: I’ve been organizing for five decades but if you're not organizing your own love fest with friends and family, then you're missing out on life. And you have very little to give to the common good if you don't have that.
Sometimes even I forget that and I have to be reminded.
FROM THE INSTITUTE OF PLEASURE STUDIES
If you want to be in touch with Magdaleno or support his work, you can reach him at leno@magdaleno.org and through the website Building Bridges, which advocates for the rights of deported veterans, deported DACA Mothers, and immigrants from various shelters in Tijuana, Mx. seeking asylum into the U.S.
One of Magdaleno’s favorite projects of late, The Playas de Tijuana Mural Project poses the question: Who Counts as a Childhood Arrival to the United States? The mural depicts the faces and stories of twelve migrants that entered the US as minors, also known as childhood arrivals. They include the testimonies of DACA recipients, veterans, mothers of citizens and permanent residents of the US, all of whom were deported. You can follow on instagram.
Homies Unidos works to end violence and promote peace in our Central American communities through gang prevention; the promotion of human rights in immigrant communities and the empowerment of youth and families in El Salvador and Los Angeles to achieve their full potential in a just, safe and healthy society.
In 1999, Joe and I traveled with Magdaleno to El Salvador where he had founded Homies Unidos. After meeting several of the former gang members, Joe produced Deported, the story of Jose William Huezo Soriano—a.k.a. Weasel. “Weasel” who, at age 26, was deported from Los Angeles to his parents’ home country, which he had not seen since age five. He had no memories of El Salvador, no immediate family, and little ability to speak Spanish. Deported: originally aired on This American Life.
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Inspiring post. Great interview too. Thanks so much.