Palacio Podcast
James Suazo Credits His Family for Mission as a Community Organizer
James Suazo is Associate Director for Long Beach Forward where he oversees communications strategies while providing support to the organization’s multiple initiatives and campaigns. Long Beach Forward is a nonprofit whose vision is to create a healthy Long Beach so that race and income don’t determine one’s future.
“…A community where everyone is safe, connected, and healthy.”
Suazo explains that Long Beach Forward works with low-income communities of color building community knowledge, leadership, and power.
“I do what I do because, at the core of it, my family.”
James Suazo reveals how much his world view was shaped by his family growing up in Santa Ana.
“My grandfather who lived with us was a laborer for many years so I grew up ‘oh yeah, every older person gets a monthly paycheck which is their labor pension, right?’”
He would later understand the significance of labor unions in his grandfather’s life. James Suazo would learn the importance of voting from his mother and the excitement that she instilled in him.
“Because she would take her break from work and come pick me up and we would go to the polls together.”
His mother would tell him that voting was important and it was their responsibility to do so.
“That was my first understanding of this concept of democracy…and to be able to use our political voice and that was my understanding and foray into how change happens.”
PalacioMagazine.com interviewed James Suazo at the Long Beach Forward offices on Atlantic Avenue about his working-class roots, the challenging issues facing low-income people of color, and what we can all do to join the fight for solutions.
James Suazo Biography
James Suazo describes himself as an avid reader and artist who identifies as queer, Latino, and Native American (Jicarilla Apache). His passion for social change began growing up in Santa Ana, California where he started organizing low-income bus riders throughout Orange County. Since 2008, Suazo has worked for elected officials; managed political campaigns; and organized with students, community-based groups, and labor unions throughout Orange County and Long Beach. Now settled in Long Beach, James Suazo also organizes locally and nationally with the Long Beach chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America as a charter member. Suazo graduated from California State University, Long Beach with a bachelor’s degree in English Education.
