On a typical day in years past, Luis Valentan was out chasing trucks by 5 a.m., jostling with other desperate men trying to land a job outside a Home Depot.
“Hey, take me! I work for a good price!” Valentan would plead amid an anxious chorus of foreign accents.
The immigrant from Mexico City was 25 when he became a day laborer, and immediately he began hearing co-workers talk about struggling to support a family, pay off debts and pull together enough money to cover medical bills and rising rents. Tales of wage theft, discrimination and verbal abuse circulated among his compañeros, especially those who lacked legal work documents.
Valentan knew that somehow he had to help immigrants like himself. But how?
Two decades later, Valentan utilizes a curious pair of props to realize his goals as an immigrant labor activist: a microphone and a wrestler’s mask.
Every Friday morning at 11, he enters a radio booth at the Pasadena Community Job Center, turns on his transmission equipment, adjusts his microphone and fires up his two-hour radio show, “Voces Jornaleras,” Spanish for “Worker Voices,” or “Journeymen Voices.” His show is a cornerstone of the lineup at Radio Jornalera, an internet-based streaming platform that is a project of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
Wearing jeans, a red plaid shirt and a baseball cap with a Mexican flag logo one recent day, Valentan, 50, leaned into the mike as he welcomed listeners as if they were old friends. His arms and face were...
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