Trailblazing California civil rights lawyer to retire after decades fighting for farmworkers
Jose Padilla’s 44 years of justice work can be traced back to a lecture from his grandmother in 1970. At a backyard party to celebrate his high school graduation and acceptance to Stanford University, she pulled Padilla aside.
“It doesn’t matter to me how important you become or how many important people you meet,” he recalled her telling him in Spanish. “Don’t ever forget you always carry a cactus on your forehead.”
Padilla was shocked but mostly confused. He asked his grandmother for clarification. Padilla was, she explained, from the desert of the Imperial Valley and forever marked by the plentiful cactus of that region.
“You come from common people, from hardworking people, from immigrant people, so never forget that’s your roots,” he recalled her saying.
That moment led to Padilla devoting his career to serving low-income and immigrant communities at California Rural Legal Assistance, a nonprofit law firm serving low-income residents of California’s rural areas. He joined the organization in 1978 and six year later, he became executive director. He remained in the position for 38 years, leading 17 offices and 75 attorneys across the state.
Under Padilla, the legal aid organization pushed for the passage of the Immigration Control and Reform Act of 1986, created new programs to assist Indigenous farmworkers and led the defense of sexually harassed farmworker women that brought multi-million-dollar settlements. CRLA’s service population also grew to 48,000 annually and the organization expanded its advocacy to include foreclosure prevention, sexual harassment cases and LGBTQ+ issues. He has become a trailblazer in the legal world, known for his commitment to systemic change, willingness for confrontation and collaboration with other groups.
Now, Padilla plans to retire in December. CRLA board members will conduct a national search to select the next executive director.
The Bee interviewed Padilla about the onset of his advocacy, the most memorable moments, future endeavors and how legal aid has changed throughout his career. Here are the key takeaways from the conversation. The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Q: What inspired you to advocate for rural and farmworker communities?
A: I grew up around farmworkers, my aunts and uncles were all fruit pickers. On more than one occasion, I went on to the fields. And then you see how hard the farmworkers work. Having become involved with the United Farm Worker movement while at the university, having done some field work personalized that whole movement for me. So I thought about how I could get involved with Cesar Chavez and the union. And then I realized that the union had lawyers, and they had lawyers who helped them maneuver the legal system. I wanted to help people, immigrant people. I wanted to help farmworkers. These are people like my grandmother, grandfather and father. So rural legal aid became that journey and career.
Q: Why did you stay with California Rural Legal Assistance for 44 years?
A: I’ve always had this philosophy that once you commit to something you don’t look back. My philosophy is when you’re going to follow a career path, as we say, “le das todo” (you give everything) and so, I had that attitude that I would give it everything I had. I’ve never regretted it. I feel blessed that I was able to give back to my community, the farmworker one that raised me. And being a legal aid lawyer, it’s not about making money. It’s about serving and practicing civil law for rural poor people, immigrants and low-wage workers and securing their justice through law. That’s been my blessing.
Q: How has legal aid changed over the years?
A: It has to be harder today because over time the provision of legal aid has become highly politicized and restricted, and so to this day we have to work within that restricted environment. And at the end of the day, the poor suffer because they don’t get equal access to the law. Rich people can pay their way into court and enforce their rights. And before there used to be this legal aid vision, that poor people also have equal access to the law just like the wealthy. They don’t have equal access to the law any longer. I call it half justice. You only get half justice, because you cannot fully enforce your rights in a court when you’re poor and your legal aid lawyer has their hands tied behind their back.
Q: What has been one of your proudest moments of your career?
A: The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Wikipedia will give you a history. It won’t mention CRLA, but I sent a lobbyist, Mark Schacht, to Washington D.C. to work with Congressman Howard Berman to make that legislation happen. So we put in specific provisions we called the agricultural worker provisions that said if you work a certain number of months in agriculture, you could apply to legalize. And it became law in 1986 and more than a million people were legalized in this country through the law’s amnesty provisions. I look at that effort as one of my biggest achievements, to be a part of having that national immigration law passed. That to me shows the kind of life impact you can actually have when you take advantage of your space of being an advocate for the poor.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: I am in the process of writing memoirs, so I periodically will write about different things that I remember in my life. I’m also planning to finish up an oral history project that I started many years ago as a student at Stanford. I started that project in 1973 and I interviewed 37 people who had immigrated to the Imperial Valley between the years 1900 to 1930. I plan to put these stories on a website so that people from the Imperial Valley, the mexicano community, their children and future generations can actually read the stories of those early Mexican settlers who showed up in that valley and were the foundation to its agricultural development. And so those are the two projects that I think are going to allow me in retirement to do what I consider to be personally valuable work. On my work desk at home I have a small, yellow Post-it that says, “tell the story before it dies, as promised.” So I promised these people that I would tell their story and I haven’t delivered on the promise. I don’t want to turn into a mentiroso (liar), as we say in Spanish; so that’s why I need to do this.
This story was originally published July 26, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
