Activist Luis Valentan battles from a Pasadena radio booth against wage theft, verbal abuse and other ways that immigrant day laborers are exploited. So does his masked wrestler alter ego.
, an internet-based streaming platform that is a project of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
“Immigrants are already here,” Valentan said later in an interview. “Someone has to do the work and I have had to be the voice, taking advantage of the different communication platforms, if other media ignore us.”Luis Valentan emigrated from Mexico at age 18 in the mid-1990s and began working as a day laborer. Eventually he became an activist for immigrant rights and workers’ rights.
“The problems of the immigrant community, especially day laborers, are not learned at the university,” Valentan said. “You need to see them and live them to understand them.” Lilia García Brower, the California labor commissioner who oversees the main law enforcement agency for workplace protections, said that Radio Jornalera has been an essential force in stemming wage theft. In 2021, California workers filed nearly 19,000 claims totaling more than $338 million in stolen wages, according to a database provided by the labor commissioner’s office.imm
The Baldwin Park resident took his case to Radio Jornalera, which he knew from its public service advertisements for local food banks. Valentan tried to contact the homeowner, but his phone calls weren’t answered. The homeowner also didn’t respond to a Times reporter’s repeated phone calls. “We immigrants need someone who identifies with us. A ring fighter is a character that always attracts everyone’s attention.”One afternoon in 1981, Valentan said goodbye to his mother and set off for the United States. He arrived in South Los Angeles a few days later. He was 18.
While living in Arizona for eight years in the early 2000s, he overlapped with Arizona’s passage in 2010 of highly controversial Senate Bill 1070, which barred state and local officials and agencies from curtailing federal immigration laws; imposed penalties on anyone sheltering, hiring or transporting people who are in the U.S. illegally; and empowered police departments to question the immigration status of detainees, including those stopped for simple traffic violations.
When an opportunity arose to broadcast the show out of the Pasadena Community Job Center, they seized it. There now are nine different shows and a total of 14 program announcers. “I was left without a husband, without a job and still with bodily pain due to the disease,” said the native of Jalisco, Mexico. “Mr. Valentan listened to my case and his team directed me to a food bank that continues to help me.”
Elizabeth Blaney, co-founder of Union de Vecinos, said it was important to have an extra public platform that aligns with the immigrant community on both longstanding and emerging issues.
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