If you’re wondering why flags are at half-mast today, it’s for Roberto Maestas, wildly influential King County social justice advocate and founder of award-winning civil rights organization El Centro de La Raza.While known as an advocate for Latino empowerment, he also “demonstrated for Indian fishing rights, participated in the fight to open up construction jobs to black workers and supported farm workers,” says the Times. He strongly supported the idea of Seattle’s social justice groups working together early on. In 1972, while a Spanish teacher at Franklin High School, led a “peaceful, multiracial sit-in of the run-down Beacon Hill Elementary School,” the same year he founded El Centro.RIP, Roberto. You will be missed.
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