Magdaleno Rose-Avila Executive Director, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project Seattle, Washington Magdaleno resigned from the AIUSA Board in September, 2005

My life has been dedicated to the protection of civil rights and human rights. I have risked my life in Central America and my career here in the USA to be a voice for the voiceless.

I have learned that in order to create change outside an organization, that people must often change inside the organization, and that is true in AIUSA as elsewhere. As a recent AIUSA Board member, I know that the Board must change its policies, practices, and priorities. For this reason I have decided to run for the Board as a member of the REFORM slate, with Govind Acharya, Steve Abrams, Rick Halperin, Phyllis Pautrat, and Paul Schulte. We have a detailed platform for change: http://www.amnesty-volunteer.org/usa/reform/platform.html.

I will bring to the AIUSA Board my knowledge and experience obtained in nine years as an AIUSA staff member, in my other work as an administrator, fundraiser and strategic planner, and in a lifetime of grassroots activism.

My hope is that we can build our organization and continue to reach out to communities of color, to those with different abilities and to youth. Our challenge is to have an organization that in leadership, in staff, and in membership reflects the world around us.

Together we can strengthen AIUSA to better address critical human rights needs around the globe.

Email:
Phone: 206-587-4009 ext. 124

    Amnesty International experience

• Member, Board of Directors, 2000–2003; Program Committee and Indigenous Rights Committee.
• AIUSA staff member for 9years:
  • Southern Regional Director 1985-87;
  • Director, Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty, 1987- 1989
  • Media Director, Human Rights Now Concert Tour 1988;
  • Western Regional Director, 1989-1994
• Organized with Ali Azizi the largest human rights event with the Iranian community in Pasadena 1992
• Founded Your Human Rights Theatre 1989
• Initiated the first concentrated outreach to the African American Community by AIUSA in 1986
• Member, AI Mission to Jamaica, 1987

  Other related experience

• Organizer for United Farm Workers Union
• Peace Corps Country Director in Nicaragua, 1978-1979; Guatemala, 1979-1980; Paraguay, 2000-2001; and Micronesia, 2001-2003
• Founder of HOMIES UNIDOS a human rights organization that works with gangs and youth at risk in El Salvador and Los Angeles, 1996-2000.
• Director of Moratorium 2000, a campaign to obtain a worldwide moratorium on the penalty of death, 1998-2000.
• Advisory committee member Death Penalty Focus and Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
• Board of Directors, ACLU Los Angeles
• Director of the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation, 1994-96
• Poet and writer <http://www.magdaleno.org/poetry/index.lasso>
• Ahora (news magazine)