Raul Ruiz

Raul Ruiz

Template:TOCnestleft Raul Ruiz is a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the 36th district of California.

Background

Ruiz grew up in Coachella, California, and "learned at an early age that the key to attaining the American Dream was hard work and a great education. In the summer of 1990, under the hot desert sun, Raul walked from business to business in the Coachella Valley asking them to invest in their community – by contributing to his education. With each investment for college, he made a promise to come back home and serve the community as a physician".

Accomplishments

• Graduated magna cum laude at UCLA
• Became the first Latino to receive three graduate degrees from Harvard University – a Medical Doctorate, a Masters in Public *Policy and a Masters in Public Health
• Returned to the Coachella Valley in 2007 to work as an emergency physician at Eisenhower Medical Center, the Coachella Valley’s only nonprofit hospital
• Senior Associate Dean at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine
• Founder and director of the Coachella Valley Healthcare Initiative
• Founded a pre-med mentorship program, the Future Physician Leaders program, for students from underserved communities who, like him in 1990, want to become doctors and return to their community to serve
• Helped open clinics giving free care and health education to underserved communities throughout the Coachella Valley.

Overseas service

During and after his education at Harvard, Raul Ruiz also volunteered and worked abroad. He spent a year as a medical student with Partners In Health, bringing health care to the poor in Mexico. In El Salvador and Serbia, he served as consultant to the ministers of health on emergency healthcare reform.

1997 arrest

In 1997, Raul Ruiz, a 25-year-old Harvard medical student, participated in the annual Thanksgiving Day protest in Plymouth, Massachusetts, with the United American Indians of New England (UAINE), a group comprised mostly of non-Natives, according to Russell M. Peters, first Tribal Chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe. The protest, called “The National Day of Mourning,” is an event that marks the continued misrepresentation of Native Americans during colonial times.

Things got out of hand, and in a sudden turn of events, the police handcuffed Ruiz and dragged him off to jail with a handful of other protestors.

Fifteen years later, that incident is rearing its ugly head for Ruiz, now a 40-year-old emergency medicine physician at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California, who is running against Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack for her 36th Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, a post she has held for 14 years.

Bono Mack has taken to the airwaves with a pointed attack against Ruiz for his arrest back in 1997, portraying him as “one of the most far-left candidates to ever seek a Congressional office.” In an interview with The Desert Sun, Bono Mack said, “He led protests against the celebration of Thanksgiving, no joke … because he opposes what Thanksgiving stands for and what it represents. He even called for the smashing of Plymouth Rock a symbol of American freedom.”

Rally Against Racism

The Jan. 19 Rally Against Racism, Plymouth, Massachusetts, was organized by the United American Indians of New England in response to an "unprovoked police assault on peaceful Native demonstrators and their supporters on Nov. 27". That was "Thanksgiving"- better known to Native people as the National Day of Mourning.

UAINE elder Sam Sapiel, one of 25 people arrested that day, opened the program with a greeting and prayer. He was followed by Danza Azteca's ceremonial dances.

Mahtowin, co-leader of UAINE, opened the rally. She pointed out that it was taking place in First Parish Church in Plymouth, which traces its roots back to the congregation founded by the pilgrims.

Mahtowin discussed the massive, unprovoked police assault against the United American Indians of New England and their supporters. She pointed out that for the previous 28 years, National Day of Mourning demonstrations had involved no violence.

Mahtowin reported that several elders who had marched with Dr. Martin Luther King years ago called her to compare the Plymouth attack to Selma, Ala., in 1965 "Selma, Ala., and Plymouth, Mass.," she said, "are towns on a continuum of racism and hatred and violence that leads from slavery and lynchings and massacres at the Great Swamp and Wounded Knee, to our neighboring state of New Hampshire, which refuses to honor Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday, to a tiny village in Chiapas called Acteal, where last month paramilitary forces massacred one infant, 14 children, 21 women (nine of whom were pregnant), and nine men."

Imani Henry of the National People's Campaign, a poet and actor from the lesbian/gay/bi/trans community, co-chaired the rally. One of the two Black women arrested at the National Day of Mourning, Henry spoke of the long history of solidarity between the African American and Native struggles, from the Seminole War to the government repression of the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement.

Henry said of the media: "It is almost laughable to mention Dr. King's legacy of non-violence without mentioning the racist violence with which he was constantly met, including his finally being gunned down. Racism as systemic and systematic oppression is itself an act of violence."

Moonanum James, co-leader of UAINE, showed how the pilgrim mythology continues to be used to justify murder, theft, racism, repression and genocide against Native people today. He described current conditions on reservations. The crowd cheered when he called for freedom for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners.

Juan Gonzalez, spokesperson for the Council of Maya Elders, saw links between the massacre of Indigenous people in Chiapas at the instigation of the U.S. and Mexican governments and the attack on Native people in Plymouth.

Larry Holmes of Workfairness in New York thanked the organizers for rescuing the struggle essence of Martin Luther King Day from empty platitudes and corporate co-optation.

Holmes said that instead of grandstanding and pandering to the right with his "dialogue on race," President Bill Clinton should investigate the police attack on the National Day of Mourning.

Other speakers included Brian Shea of the Disabled People's Liberation Front, Myke Johnson of the Unitarian Universalists, Anita Mukarji Connolly, and John Perry Ryan-a gay man arrested at the National Day of Mourning-of Cape Codders Against Racism.

Juiza Gimeno, a Puerto Rican high school student from Boston, said: "I was at the National Day of Mourning. I cried because it was so painful to me to see my people be oppressed like that. But this experience will not shut me down."

Solidarity messages were read from several chapters of the American Indian Movement, the Texas death row prisoners' group PURE, and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Chicano/Mexicano activist Raul Ruiz closed the rally.

30th National Day of Mourning, November 25, 1999

National Day of Mourning is an "activist effort by Native Americans and other indigenous peoples to tell the truth about the genocide -- still ongoing in some parts of the world -- which is erased by history books and holidays which celebrate the lies that we are all fed as children and adults".

• The introductory prayer by Sam Sapiel
• Moonanum James, Aquinnah Wampanoag, activist and organizer for United American Indians of New England (UAINE.org)
• Mahtowin Munro, Lakota, activist and organizer for UAINE
• Clint Wixon, longtime activist
• Lone Eagless, Mashpee Wampanoag (see Wampanoag history)
• Millie Noble, Ojibwe, reading a poem (sorry, this reading is difficult to hear at times)
• Juan Gonzales, spokesperson for Mayan elders
• Teresa Gutierrez, Chicana re Mumia Abu-Jamal
• Dr. Bert Waters, Assonet Wampanoag from Mass. Commission of Indian Affairs, reading a statement from Leonard Peltier
• Sam Sapiel, Penobscot, elder
• Mahtowin Munro on the plaques that will be erected as part of the settlement with Plymouth arising out of the arrest of 25 activists at the Day of Mourning in 1997, and on the Boston Globe and Herald articles that question whether the reign of terror carried out against indiginous peoples was indeed genocide.
• Raul Ruiz, Mexica (& Chicano), including reading of letter from Sub-commandante Marcos of the Zapatistas

The letter was to Leonard Peltier.

Teresa Gutierrez, a Chicana, demanded freedom for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Gutierrez noted that she had just returned from supporting the struggle in Vieques, Puerto Rico, and the crowd cheered again when she demanded, "U.S. out of Puerto Rico now!"

During the Thanksgiving protest read read a letter of support for Leonard Peltier, who had been convicted of killing 2 FBI agents, and one from,Subcomandante Marcos, of the Mexican revolutionary group Zapatista Army of National Liberation. The incident was used by Mary Bono Mack, Ruiz's 2012 congressional opponent, in her campaign against him. The Ruiz campaign denied that Ruiz supports Peltier..

2012 CLW Senate victories

2012 Council for a Livable World House Victories were;

Ron Barber (D-AZ), Ami Bera (D-CA), Tim Bishop (D-NY) Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), Bruce Braley (D-IA), Cheri Bustos (D-IL), Lois Capps (D-CA), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), Lois Frankel (D-FL), John Garamendi (D-CA), Joe Garcia (D-FL), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI), Denny Heck (D-WA), Steven Horsford (D-NV), Derek Kilmer (D-WA), Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH), Dave Loebsack (D-IA), Patrick Murphy (D-FL), Rick Nolan (D-MN), Raul Ruiz (D-CA), Brad Schneider(D-IL), Carol Shea-Porter(D–NH), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ),Mark Takano(D-CA) and John Tierney(D-MA)..

Chicano movement

The 40th Anniversary Commemoration Committee of the Chicano Moratoriums was formed in the summer 2009 by the Chair of the National Chicano Moratorium Committee of August 29, 1970 along with two independent Chicano Movement historians whom although not of the baby boomer generation, have become inspired by the Movimiento. The organization posted a list of significant “Chicano movement” activists on its website which included Raul Ruiz of La Raza.

External links

• Campaign Website

References

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