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Jose Zapata Calderon was, until his recent retirement, a Professor in Sociology and Chicano Studies Pitzer College in Claremont. He is married to Marilyn Calderon who was once a staffer for Congresswoman Judy Chu.
Calderon received his B. A. from the University of Colorado in Communications and his MA and PhD in Sociology from the University of California Los Angeles.
As the son of immigrant farm workers from Mexico, he has had a long history of connecting his academic work with community organizing, student-based service learning, participatory action research, critical pedagogy, and multi-ethnic coalition building.
Along with friends, he opened the Apostles of Justice center in his grandmother’s Ault garage. When Ault High School students were suspended for requesting bi-lingual teachers, the Apostles of Justice helped organize the march that brought 250 protesters to the state capitol.
One of his first jobs after graduating from the University of Colorado in the early '70s was with the Colorado Migrant Head Start program. Calderón also visited the National Headquarters of the United Farmer Workers of America in Delano, California.
In Greeley in the 1970s, Calderon started the Al Frente de Lucha (meaning in the forefront of the struggle), which worked on the UFW boycott of lettuce and grapes. He took California students to work with the UFW, and has also worked with the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan or MEChA that promotes Chicano unity and empowerment as well as the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Calderon helped open Greeley’s Sunrise Community Health Center, build the Rodarte Cultural Center, and keep Jefferson High School open. He helped organize Monfort meat cutter workers, start the Welfare Rights organization with Maria Garcia, and began celebrating Cinco de Mayo and September 16th, the day of Mexican Independence.
A November 12 1979 Anti-Klan Rally held in owntown Denver, was addressed by Jose Calderon, a member of the Communist Workers Party.[1] .
On August 5, 1980, independent Presidential candidate John Anderson compared himself to Franklin Roosevelt .
Anderson was midway through his speech at the National Governor’s Conference, when the incident occurred. A member of the Communist Workers Party ran to the front of the meeting room screaming at Anderson and North Carolina Governor James Hunt and threw eggs at both of them. Both eggs missed their mark, and security agents quickly subdued the man, identified as 33-year-old Jose Calderon.
Calderon was protesting the killings of five Communist Workers Party colleagues in North Carolina. Despite tight security, he got into the room on an official guest credential.
By the early 1980s, Judy Chu and Mike Eng had settled in Monterey Park, which was experiencing an influx of immigrants from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, sparking a backlash among some longtime residents who sought a ban on Chinese-language storefront signs. When a divided City Council voted in 1986 to support a resolution endorsing, among other things, English as the nation's official language, Chu, by then on the school board, and Eng helped form the Coalition for Harmony in Monterey Park.
"Judy and Mike were always trying to find ways to bring people together," said Jose Calderon, another member of CHAMP who is now an associate professor at Pitzer College in Claremont. They started "harmony days" to celebrate the city's various cultures, and they led a petition drive that moved the council to rescind its divisive resolution.
In a show of opposition to Pomona College’s decision to terminate 17 employees who could not verify their employment documentation before a December 1, 2011 5 p.m. deadline, 15 supporters of the terminated employees were arrested for refusing to move from the middle of an intersection this morning. The arrests were part of a large protest that drew more than 100 students, workers, professors, union organizers and Claremont residents.
After hearing a series of speeches by fired workers and labor advocates, the protesters marched to Alexander Hall, where they picketed. They then moved to the intersection of Fourth Street and College Avenue, close to Pomona President David Oxtoby's home, where 15 of them sat down in the street to carry out a planned act of civil disobedience.
CPD officers arrested these 15 protesters, a group that included current 5C students as well as alumni and Pitzer College professor José Calderón, after they ignored repeated commands to disperse. As they were being handcuffed, these protesters called the names of fired workers and denounced what they described as an unjust decision by the Pomona administration, while a crowd of supporters chanted “Sí, se puede” and “This is what democracy looks like” from the sidewalk.
“Many years from now, I know your children and students will ask you, ‘Where were you on that day when they fired those workers that brought the food to your table?’” Calderón said in a speech at Frary, just after announcing that he was prepared to be arrested. “All of you are going to be able to say to your children, ‘I was there and I was fighting injustice.’”
“I’m ready to sacrifice some things in order to create a different atmosphere for Pomona College workers in the future,” said Davis Saul PO ’14, who was also arrested.
In addition to the support of organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Pomona’s terminated workers have received a message of support from Judy Chu, a Southern California Democrat in the House of Representatives. Bryan Urias, a member of Chu’s staff, attended today’s protest on behalf of the congresswoman, who may soon become Claremont’s representative because of citizen-led redistricting.
“She wanted me to be here to let all of you know, to let the workers know, to let Pomona College know, that she is watching what is going on and she is disgusted with the process that happened here,” Urias said.
Urias added that Chu had personally called President Oxtoby to ask him to reconsider his decision to terminate employees who could not update their documentation by Dec. 1. He also said that Chu’s office intended to help the terminated workers who wanted to fix their documentation and get re-hired by Pomona.
“This is one of the richest colleges in the country,” Francisco Duenas PO ’99 told the crowd inside Frary. “And yet today, in order to be able to not pay a few more dollars to their workers, this college is betraying its trust and betraying its morals. This college is selling its soul.”
“We do need to keep on fighting,” Dueñas added. “I think that this is only the beginning, and we’re going to be here until the end.”
In 2012, Calderon was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.
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