History has shown us that whenever the wheels of justice grind to a halt a great leader emerges to lead us out of the dark period. Consider the ugliness in the South where black citizens were segregated from the mainstream society.

Hardworking women such as Rosa Parks would be relegated to the back of the bus at the mere whim of a white Southerner. When she stood up against this injustice, a boycott of the bus system was organized and the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. emerged. When farm workers got tired of being treated as less than humans and began to organize, they met with many hardships, and many families had to do with minimal food and resources during the UFW strike, but leaders such as Cesar Chavez emerged from this movement. Sometimes the wheels of justice not only grind to a halt, but start to go in reverse. This is what is going on in Arizona today.

It began with SB1070 which legalizes racial profiling, to the banning of Chicano studies in Tucson, the banning of English teachers with an Spanish accent, and an upcoming bill aims to deny citizenship to US born children who are born here if their parents are not citizens. This is nothing less than an assault on Latinos and other minorities in this state and these bills and policies are being drafted by known hate groups such as FAIR. But out of this ugliness and oppression in Arizona has come forth the only Latino running for US Senate in the entire nation for the Democratic party, and this civil rights leader is Randy Parraz.

Randy Parraz entered the US Senate race to replace John McCain on April 26th, the Monday after SB1070 was passed on Friday, April 23rd. As a labor organizer, Parraz has a history of working against injustice aimed at working class communities, from establishing the National Strawberry Commission for Workers Rights for strawberry pickers struggling to form a union in the fields of California. Now, with the passage of SB1070, which McCain supported, and with no strong voice fighting against this racist legislation from the Democratic nominees, Parraz decided that if no one else was going to stand up for our community, then he would.

Who is Randy Parraz?
The quick answer to this question is that Parraz is the real deal, a civil and labor rights activist who has a proven record of fighting for our community.

There’s something about making your mama proud, about seeing her filled with pride after all her hard work for your future pays off at your college graduation. Randy graduated not just once, but three times from the nation’s top universities!

After completing his undergraduate work at UC Berkeley, Randy went to get his law degree from one of the most prestigious law schools in the nation, the Boalt Hall School of Law at Berkeley. As if this wasn’t enough, Randy then attended and graduated from the nation’s top school,

Harvard University, with a Masters degree from the John F.Kennedy School of Government.
It was at Harvard that Randy Parraz first met Cesar Chavez, and little did he know how much his future work would continue what Chavez had started. Even though a world of wealth awaited someone with such a distinguished educational background, with degrees from both Berkeley and Harvard, Randy decided to use his knowledge to fight for justice for the hard-working American.

In this role Randy was able to literally continue on the work that Cesar Chavez had begun even after Chavez’s death. He was able to join beside Dolores Huerta and fight for the strawberry worker’s campaign to form a union.

Randy’s work with labor unions would bring him to Arizona as the Arizona State Director for the National AFL-CIO. During this time, Randy, in partnership with the Arizona AFL-CIO, helped initiate and launch a process that lead to the first major restructuring of the labor movement in decades.

If you ever get a chance to hear Parraz speak, one thing is immediately clear he is passionate about his work for the community.

The United States still has a long ways to go with issues of diversity. Only in the last year did the first black man become president, and a Latina the first ember of the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court. The US Senate has only one Latino Senator.

Robert Menendez from New Jersey, Randy Parraz is the only Latino Democratic candidate for US Senate in the entire nation.