Magdaleno Rose-Avila, former head of Seattle immigrant rights group, dies
Magdaleno Rose-Avila, a longtime civil and human rights advocate who championed immigrants and fought against the death penalty, died May 7 in Seattle. He was 80.
Known to his friends and colleagues as Leno, he had a sweeping career in Seattle and beyond dedicated to working for and with some of society's most neglected communities, including farmworkers, incarcerated people, former gang members and undocumented immigrants.
He served as executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project from 2003 to 2007, and was hired as the first director of the city's Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs. In 2006, the city honored him with its Distinguished Citizen Award for Human Rights. Rose-Avila was also a prolific writer and poet.
"He was such a mobilizer of people, making people feel like they were a part of something that was going to change the world," said his former spouse Carolyn Rose-Avila.
Born in Colorado, Magdaleno Rose-Avila was one of 12 children to immigrant parents from Mexico. He began working in the onion fields of southeast Colorado with his father at age 11, an experience that led him to farmworker rights advocacy.
In 1970, he helped organize lettuce pickers and packers to walk off the fields, and led a 120-mile march from Pueblo to Denver to highlight the plight of farmworkers, said family friend Jacqueline Jaramillo.
"By the time we got to the state Capitol in Denver, there were probably 10,000 people waiting for us," Jaramillo said. "It was just an incredible time in history."
Over the years, he worked with civil rights legends like Coretta Scott King and the Rev. Joseph Lowery. He was close friends with Dolores Huerta, the renowned labor rights activist.
His drive for justice led him to far-reaching places. Rose-Avila served as a Peace Corps country director in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Paraguay and Micronesia at various points in his career. He worked stints in Washington, D.C., running election campaigns and working at the Democratic National Committee.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Rose-Avila worked at Amnesty International USA, eventually leading the organization's anti-death-penalty campaign. He worked alongside Sister Helen Prejean, a leading advocate for the abolition of capital punishment whose book "Dead Man Walking" was turned into a film.
Rose-Avila was "always doing a million things," said longtime friend and Seattle-based author Paul Loeb. In 1996, he founded Homies Unidos, an organization aimed at ending youth gang violence in El Salvador, using money he drained from his pension fund. He saw the humanity in people in a way most don't, Loeb said. With his charm and jokes, Rose-Avila could win over even the surliest characters.
"It's almost impossible to extricate that impulse in his personality and that generosity of spirit, as well as the humor, because it's always there, from the impact that he had," Loeb said.
Maru Mora Villalpando, founder of the immigrant advocacy group La Resistencia NW, was a mentee of Rose-Avila. She said he was always honest about the realities of organizing and their limited legal and monetary resources, but he never backed down from a fight.
"He opened the door of every single aspect of power that he had access to," Mora Villalpando said.
Even when he left Seattle, Rose-Avila maintained ties here. He joined Bethany United Church of Christ's hybrid worship service on Zoom almost every Sunday, said senior pastor the Rev. Angela Ying, signing in from the latest community that needed his aid.
"We'd go, ‘Where are you, brother Leno?' He goes, ‘I'm in Georgia, trying to get the vote out.' " Ying said. "And then, ‘Where are you?' It's like, ‘I'm in Mexico and there's young people that we need to help feed and get back on their feet.' "
State Sen. Rebecca Saldaña, who met Rose-Avila when she was a union organizer with Justice for Janitors, said he "never forgot the importance of those one-on-one connections."
To the end, he had an "unflagging, undying belief in what was possible for us to accomplish when we come together, across race, across class, across issue areas," said Michele Storms, executive director ACLU of Washington. The day before he passed, she said Rose-Avila kept saying, "We will win, we will win."
At the time of his death, Rose-Avila was living in a Mexican border town just south of Tucson, Ariz., helping asylum-seekers and deported immigrants. He was in Seattle for a speaking engagement with Youth Eastside Services when he was hospitalized.
He is survived by his former spouse, Carolyn Rose-Avila, his daughter Aviva Rose-Avila, his son Kimbo Tenorio and a large extended family. A celebration of life is planned for July 11 at Bethany United Church of Christ.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the date of Magdaleno Rose-Avila's death.
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