Maria Elena Durazo

From KeyWiki

Maria Elena Durazo is a Southern California labor activist. She was married to the late Miguel Contreras.

As Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Durazo is the first woman ever to lead the country’s largest labor council. She was President of UNITE HERE! Local 11 from 1989-2006, representing more than 440,000 hotel and restaurant workers in Los Angeles. Under Durazo’s leadership, Local 11 has become a vital force in the life of Los Angeles and in the debate over the city's future. Maria Elena Durazo, is a lawyer, an activist in the immigrant movement, and grew up in a family of migratory farm workers in California's Central Valley.^[1]

CASA

By his late teens, Antonio Villaraigosa had anchored himself to the movement -- and to the legendary Bert Corona, a radical organizer and proponent of immigrant rights who nonetheless functioned in mainstream politics. With Gilbert Cedillo and Maria Elena Durazo (much later to become president of the L.A. local of the hotel and restaurant workers), Villaraigosa became a full-time organizer at Corona’s Centro de Action Social Autonoma, CASA for short. ^[2]

Supported Communist Party call

In May 1992 the Communist Party USA newspaper Peoples Weekly World published a May Day supplement which included a call to "support our continuing struggle for justice and dignity"

Endorsers of the call included Maria Elena Durazo, Local 11, HERE.^[3]

MAPA endorsement meeting

Over 130 delegates to the Mexican American Retro Region Primary Endorsing Convention in Los Angeles April 25, 1992 voted to endorse those Congressional, State Senate, Assembly, and county supervisor candidates who took the strongest pro labor and pro immigrant stands.

Guest speakers were Maria Elena Durazo, President of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 11, Gilbert Cedillo of Service Employees Local 660, and Alfredo Pascoy of the Mexico's Revolutionary Democratic Party.

State Assemblyman Xavier Becerra won the Mexican American Political Association's support to be the Democratic candidate for the 30th District after he pledged support for extending unemployment benefits for the full length of joblessness.^[4]

DSA award

Los Angeles Democratic Socialists of America's November 13. 1993 Debs-Thomas Dinner, honored Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union leader Maria Elena Durazo, Los Angeles City Council member Jackie Goldberg, and longtime activist Donna Wilkinson.^[5]

Socialists organize to "challenge for power" in Los Angeles

On March 11, 1998, Los Angeles Democratic Socialists of America leader Steve Tarzynski wrote an email to another Los Angeles DSA leader Harold Meyerson.

Tarzynski listed 25 people he thought should be on an "A-list" of "25 or so leaders/activists/intellectuals and/or "eminent persons" who would gather periodically to theorize/strategize about how to rebuild a progressive movement in our metropolitan area that could challenge for power."

Tarzynski listed himself, Harold Meyerson, Karen Bass, Sylvia Castillo, Gary Phillips, Joe Hicks, Richard Rothstein, Steve Cancian, Larry Frank, Torie Osborn, Rudy Acuna, Aris Anagnos, Abby Arnold, Carl Boggs, Blase Bonpane, Rick Brown, Stanley Sheinbaum, Alice Callahan, Jim Conn, Peter Dreier, Maria Elena Durazo, Miguel Contreras, Mike Davis, Bill Gallegos, Bob Gottlieb, Kent Wong, Russell Jacoby, Bong Hwan Kim, Paula Litt (and Barry Litt, with a question mark), Peter Olney, Derek Shearer, Clancy Sigal and Anthony Thigpenn.

Included in a suggested elected officials sub-group were Mark Ridley-Thomas, Gloria Romero, Jackie Goldberg, Gil Cedillo, Tom Hayden, Antonio Villaraigosa, Paul Rosenstein and Congressmen Xavier Becerra, Henry Waxman and Maxine Waters.

Tarzynski went on to write "I think we should limit the group to 25 max, otherwise group dynamics begins to break down....As i said, I would like this to take place in a nice place with good food and drink...it should properly be an all day event."

DSA Los Angeles event

Democratic Socialists of America kicked off events at the Democratic National Convention by organizing a major panel on the 2000 presidential and congressional elections. National Director Horace Small played host to DSA leaders Harold Meyerson, of LA Weekly, who was doing double duty putting out a daily for conventioneers, Barbara Ehrenreich, who has been stumping for Ralph Nader, Cornel West, who was a co-chair of the Bill Bradley primary campaign, and DSA youth organizer Daraka Larimore-Hall–.

They were joined by panelists Maria Elena Durazo, president of H.E.R.E in LA, John Nichols of the Madison daily Capital Times, Antonio Villa, Speaker Emeritus of California’s Assembly, and William Monroe Campbell, of Ministers Against Global Injustice.

Lynn Shaw longtime DSA member and vice-chair of the LA County Democrats, chaired the event. — The event, at the University of Southern Calfornia, resulted in a revitalized Los Angeles local. USC professor Bettine Berge, professor of East Asian Studies, was instrumental in getting us the fine auditorium. Lynn Chancer and Frank Llewellyn were also key to making the event a success. ^[6]

Progressive Los Angeles Network

Circa 2002, Maria Elena Durazo, HERE Local 11 , served on the Advisory board of the Democratic Socialists of America dominated Progressive Los Angeles Network.^[7]

Major Obama supporter

The head of the politically powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor said mid January 2008 that she was endorsing Barack Obama for president.

The endorsement by Maria Elena Durazo was a coup for Obama that could help the Illinois senator in his uphill struggle against Hillary Clinton to win substantial support among Latino voters in Southern California. Obama has won the backing of other Los Angeles-area Latino leaders, but this was probably his biggest such endorsement yet, given the broad reach of the county labor federation.

As executive secretary-treasurer of the federation, Durazo headed an organization of more than 800,000 union members, the biggest regional labor group in California.

Durazo said her endorsement, was a personal one. She also a leave of absence from her job to campaign for Obama through Feb. 5, when more than 20 states, including California, conducted primaries or caucuses.

"My passion is the labor movement, and I believe very strongly that Sen. Obama is very clear about his support for workers who want to organize, workers who want to lift themselves out of poverty, and also protect good middle-class jobs," Durazo said in a phone interview before taking an evening flight to Nevada, where she will work for Obama through the state's Saturday caucuses.

"On a personal level, he really embodies the slogan we use a lot, Cesar Chavez's 'Sí, se puede.' (Yes, we can.") He has proved it by the way he inspires voters, the way he mobilizes."

Jaime A. Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles, said California's Latino voters backed Clinton by a wide margin, but Durazo's endorsement "might well turn" the opinions of some undecided voters.

"She's a powerful player -- there's no question about that. It will move some people, it will cause some other people to think and rethink," he said. Still, the Durazo endorsement by itself, Regalado said, is "not enough to sway" a large number of Latino voters.

But Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, emphasized Durazo's key role in local politics. He said Durazo "symbolizes the new power in Los Angeles and in California -- the marriage of Latinos and labor."

"And when you have those numbers, that organization and those volunteers, it makes an impact," Guerra said. "There is no person in all of California who could get more people out to the street to go do something, either to march or get the vote out."

Although Durazo's frequent political ally Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was a national co-chair of Clinton's campaign, she said her decision did not represent a serious break between the two, just a difference of opinion.

Durazo and her late husband, Miguel Contreras, who headed the county labor federation until his death in 2005, have had close ties with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, the third major contender for the Democratic nomination. Edwards helped the federation in 2006 during a national campaign to unionize hotel workers. "He was very active on that campaign and that was very important to us, so it is difficult to make this choice," Durazo said.

Among the factors that influenced Durazo were the Obama endorsements last week by her national home union, Unite Here, along with its big culinary workers affiliate in Nevada. Durazo said she also was motivated by Obama's background as the son of an immigrant father and a U.S.-born mother who raised him as a single parent.

"He wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth; he was raised in humble surroundings and that will carry over when he has to make tough decisions," Durazo said.^[8]

She then became a national co-chair of the Obama for President campaign committee, and was a pledged delegate for Obama at the National Convention in Denver.

Labor Campaign for Single Payer

In 2009 Maria Elena Durazo, Exec. Secty-Treasurer Los Angeles Federation of Labor severd on the National Advidory Board of Labor Campaign for Single Payer.

Occupy Los Angeles

On Nov. 27, 2011 Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary and treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor issued a statement in solidarity with the protestors:^[9]

“We are grateful to the Occupy movement for refocusing the country to the issue of income inequality. We call for nonviolence in all acts of civil disobedience by Occupy LA and in professional procedures by the LAPD. We are committed to a long-term movement from the 99 percent to hold Wall Street and the banks accountable for devastating our economy."

UFW 50th Anniversary convention

The United Farm Workers' 50th Anniversary convention was held Saturday, May 19,2012. Rabobank Convention Center. Keene, California.

• A three-hour program (1-4 p.m.) honoring the UFW pioneers, with special segments on the 1962 founding convention, 1965-1970 grape strikers and boycotters, 1966 peregrinos who marched from Delano to Sacramento, the Filipino American grape strikers and the farm worker ministry. Among the speakers were Dolores Huerta, Chris Hartmire and Luis Valdez, whose Teatro Campesino performed old union songs and actos throughout the program.

• Other speakers included California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton and Maria Elena Durazo, former farm worker and head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

Sunday, May 20, Rabobank Convention Center. Keene, California

• Mass at 7:45 a.m. with Bishop Richard Garcia from the Monterey Diocese presiding, honoring the rive UFW martyrs.

• A program highlighting multiple new UFW organizing campaigns among strawberry, vegetable, tomato and melon workers in the Central Coast and Central Valley in the wake of Governor Jerry Brown signing a UFW-sponsored law in 2011. SB 126 says if growers cheat by breaking the law and denying farm workers their union, then the state can immediately certify the union and get the workers a contract. It also speeds up the process so farm workers don’t have to wait two years before starting negotiations and it lets the ALRB general counsel go to court to reinstate farm workers illegally fired during union election drives.

• Among the speakers were U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, United Auto Workers President Bob King, Univision anchor Maria Elena Salinas and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.^[10]

References