Juan Gonzalez

Juan Gonzalez

Juan Gonzalez is a Senior Research Fellow at UIC Great Cities Institute.

Throughout his career, González has become known as one of the most well-regarded Latino journalists in the United States. He was a staff columnist for New York’s The Daily News for nearly thirty years, has been a co-host since 1996 of the morning news show Democracy Now, and was the Richard D. Heffner Professor of Communications and Public Policy at Rutgers University from 2017 to 2023.

His investigative reports on the labor movement, environmental justice, race relations, and urban policy have garnered numerous accolades, including two George Polk Awards for commentary, and he became in 2015 the first Latino to be inducted into the New York Journalism Hall of Fame by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Deadline Club. He is the author of five books, including the classic Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (2001), which became the basis of an award-winning 2012 feature documentary film narrated by González and which is now in its third edition. His News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media (2011), which he co-authored with Joseph Torres, was a New York Times best-seller and a finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. His Reclaiming Gotham, Bill de Blasio and the Movement to End America’s Tale of Two Cities (2017), examines the rise of progressive elected officials in cities across the United States and their efforts to revise urban policies.

Over the years, more than two dozen films and documentaries have featured González as a figure or expert commentator, including the landmark PBS series Latino Americans (2013); the PBS documentary 9/11’s Unsettled Dust (2021); the CNN series 1968: The Year that Changed America, (2018); HBO Max’s docuseries Menudo: Forever Young (2022); the Ric Burns history of Latino New York, Nueva York (2010); the PBS biography Roberto Clemente (2008); and Spike-TV’s Viva Baseball (2005).

A founder and past president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, González developed in 2002, while serving as the group’s president, an innovative effort to build partnerships between mainstream media companies and local Latino community leaders aimed at improving coverage of those communities and hiring and promoting more Latinx journalists. The initiative, known as the Parity Project, garnered more than $1.5 million in grants from the McCormick Tribune Foundation and the Knight Foundation to expand to more than a dozen cities.

González was born in Puerto Rico, raised in New York City’s East Harlem, and received his B.A. from Columbia University.

Immigrant crisis meeting

On January 24, 2024, over 60 people crowded the Latino Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to join a discussion with Juan Gonzalez of the UIC Great Cities Institute and David Ramirez of the Cuban Embassy around the current immigrant crisis and its root causes. The discussion was co-hosted by two campus groups: Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at UIC and Mexican Students de Aztlan (MeSA) at UIC.

First to speak was Louise Macaraniag from Anakbayan at UIC, a youth activist organization fighting for the liberation of the Philippines through the national democratic movement.

Next was the vice-president of the Union of Puerto Rican Students at UIC, Patricia Sepulveda.

Mahdi Muhamad spoke immediately after on behalf of the Students for Justice in Palestine at UIC.

A co-founder of the newly formed Latino Student Coalition at UIC, Jay Campos, spoke about the brutal exploitation of Latin America by U.S. multinational corporations.

Then, Marisol Marquez joined the discussion online to represent Legalization For All (L4A), a large network of organizations and individuals fighting for immigrant rights and legalization for all 12 million undocumented people across the country.

The co-hosting student organizations, MeSA and SDS, made their final remarks before segueing to Juan Gonzalez and David Ramirez. The president of MeSA at UIC, Lucy Arias, called attention to the historic hypocrisy of the U.S. government for their use of Mexican labor via the “Bracero” program implemented during World War II.

Sahian Sotelo, a student organizer, emphasized the importance of community and solidarity in their speech on behalf of Students for a Democratic Society at UIC.

González fondly recalled being a member of the original SDS during his time as a youth activist in the late 1960s. During the presentation of his report on the current immigrant crisis, Gonzalez repeatedly drew attention to and identified U.S. economic warfare against three specific countries – Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba – as a driving force in the latest migration surge.

Julie Wolenski spoke on behalf of the Chicago Cuba Coalition and motivated the audience to see Cuba for themselves. She suggested to folks, “Join a May Day delegation or brigade and join the campaign to take Cuba off the SSOT list!”

SDS

As a student Juan Gonzalez was a member of Students for a Democratic Society.

NASSCO3

In 1981 Mark Loo, a Chinese-American member of the Communist Workers Party , his party comrade Rodney Johnson, and unionist David Boyd were charged with the attempted bombing of the National Shipbuilding Company in San Diego, California. The trio were represented by lawyer Leonard Weinglass.

Defending the NASSCO 3, soon became a major cause for the Communist Workers Party.

A cocktail party in support of the NASSCO3, was held at Ramsey Clark's house in New York on July 10. Sponsors of the event included Haywood Burns, Abe Feinglass, Juan Gonzalez, William Kunstler, Stewart Kwoh, Manning Marable, Margaret Ratner, Abbott Simon, Frances Borden Hubbard, Flo Kennedy, and Ramsey Clark.

DSA function

On August 31 1991, over 300,000 union workers and their supporters marched in Washington, DC at a second Solidarity Day to say "we told you so." And DSA was there with them. Afterwards. DSA sponsored a well-attended reception at a Washington pub. Dennis Rivera, president of Local 1199 in New York City, and Juan Gonzalez, a leader of the Daily News strike, were but two of the labor luminaries in attendance.

How Class Works

At the How Class Works - 2002 Conference, panels included; 6.0 Class, Power, and Social Structure

• Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News – columnist
• May Chen, UNITE! – Vice President
• Jose Feliciano, Chair, Stony Brook - Physics

Center for the Study of Working Class Life

In 2009 Juan Gonzalez, Columnist, New York Daily News, and Democracy Now, Pacifica served on the Advisory board for the Center for the Study of Working Class Life.

In These Times

As of 2009 Juan Gonzalez was a Contributing Editor of Chicago based socialist journal In These Times.

New Labor Forum

New Labor Forum is published by Center for Labor, Community, and Policy Studies, Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education & Labor Studies.

Editorial Board members listed, as of March 2013; were; Elaine Bernard, Ron Blackwell, Barbara Bowen, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Arthur Cheliotes, Mike Davis, Amy Dean, Steve Early, Hector Figueroa, Janice Fine, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Juan Gonzalez, Marie Gottschalk, Gerald Hudson, Lisa Jordan, Tom Juravich, Robin D G Kelley, Jose LaLuz, Nelson Lichtenstein, Manning Marable, Ruth Needleman, Ai-jen Poo, Katie Quan, Adolph Reed, Daisy Rooks, Andrew Ross, Kent Wong.

Dream of Equality awardee

Juan Gonzalez is a past recipient of Asian Americans for Equality's annual Dream of Equality award.