The American working class has lost a beloved champion. Congressman Raúl Grijalva passed away on March 13 at age 77 after a lifetime of struggle and resistance to the corporate assaults on working people’s livelihood, their dignity, and the very environment we live in.
Grijalva was born on a southern Arizona ranch half way between Tucson and the Mexican border where his Mexican father worked as a bracero. He grew up in Tucson’s Mexican American South Side, where he continued to reside the rest of his life. He attended the University of Arizona and became involved in the “Chicano Movement” of the late 1960s and was also inspired by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers movement. As a young radical, Raúl joined the fight against the war in Vietnam, publicly burned his draft card, and helped found the local chapter of the Chicano student organization MEChA.
In 1972, Raúl ran for a seat on the Tucson Unified School District Board. He was moving away from some of the Chicano nationalism, retaining his radicalism while embracing the need for a broad working-class coalition. In a repeat race in 1974, he became the first Mexican American elected to the school board, where he served three four-year terms. On the school board, he advocated for Mexican American Studies and for saving inner cities schools. He is remembered as a strong supporter for teachers and students, a passion he maintained throughout his political career.
In 1988, Raúl was elected Pima County Supervisor from a district that included the University of Arizona and a big piece of Tucson’s Mexican American community. As County Supervisor, he continued in the footsteps of his environmentalist predecessor, David Yetman, becoming the force behind the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, an ambitious program for planned land use and biodiversity conservation. His strong support for conservation of the natural environment and protection of vulnerable communities and workers on the job from industrial and mining pollution continued into his Congressional career.
As with his tenure on the school board, he always advocated for working people, immigrants, and poor folks. He was re-elected county supervisor three times.
In 2002, following the 2000 census, Grijalva ran for a newly created congressional seat with a Mexican American majority. The district included a good chunk of Tucson, some western working-class suburbs of Phoenix, and a large section of southwestern Arizona that included Indigenous communities and much of the U.S.-Mexico border. His seven Democratic opponents included three popular state senators and the state Democratic Party chairman.
What ensued was an outpouring of popular enthusiasm and support from the community. Over 650 volunteers turned out to knock on doors, make phone calls, and prepare mailings. Every Pima County door in his district was knocked on at least three times, and the primary turnout was larger than usual.
Raúl easily defeated all seven opponents, including Sen. Elaine Richardson, who outspent him five to one. He even carried her University area precinct. In Tucson, he received more votes than all seven combined. Clearly, the community knew that he would continue to be on their side.
Grijalva emerged as the top environmentalist in Congress, something which the corporate press had a hard time digesting, refusing to believe that a brown man from the barrio could be an environmentalist. But, of course, Raúl was much more than that.
He served as co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and was a leader in the campaigns for single-payer healthcare, comprehensive immigration reform, marriage equality, abortion rights, and the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He opposed U.S. military intervention in Libya and Syria and was the first member of Congress to endorse Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.
As a leading member of the House Natural Resources Committee and later its chairman, he was instrumental in passing important environmental legislation protecting natural areas and curtailing the fossil energy interests. The list of his environmentalist accomplishments is long.
I remember when, at the beginning of the Iraq War, a long-time peace activist in California who was organizing a Latinos for Peace group sent me an email asking folks to join the new organization. After I posted and shared it online, the organizer called me to find out if the Raúl Grijalva who had signed the request might be the Congressman.
When I replied that I had sent it to the congressman’s office so I was sure they had all signed on, he said that he couldn’t get any of the Latino Congress members in Southern California to join. I had to explain that Raúl was not a liberal like them, but still the radical he was in his youth; he was one of us.
The lesson for activists is that when one dedicates oneself to defending the vulnerable and fighting the corporate bosses and racist attacks on our communities, people will notice and remember. Raúl never had to spend very much money on his campaigns because folks knew that they needed him fighting for us and for Mother Earth. He will be missed.
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