Jose Rodriguez is an American political activist. He was born in the

Panama Canal Zone The Panama Canal Zone ( es, Zona del Canal de Panamá), also simply known as the Canal Zone, was an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the Isthmus of Panama, that existed from 1903 to 1979. It was located within the terr ...

in 1952 and was naturalized as a child because of his father's long career in the U.S. Air Force. Getting drafted for Vietnam changed his pro-war attitudes. As the war wound down, he spent four years in the Air Force, stationed outside of Los Angeles. Rodriguez then moved to Virginia, enrolled in

George Mason University George Mason University (George Mason, Mason, or GMU) is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia with an independent City of Fairfax, Virginia postal address in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. The university was origin ...

and became involved in the anti-nuclear movement, the beginning of a career as an activist. He worked on the 1984 campaigns of

Alan Cranston Alan MacGregor Cranston (June 19, 1914 – December 31, 2000) was an American politician and journalist who served as a United States Senator from California from 1969 to 1993, and as a President of the World Federalist Association from 1949 to 1 ...

Gary Hart Gary Warren Hart (''né'' Hartpence; born November 28, 1936) is an American politician, diplomat, and lawyer. He was the front-runner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination until he dropped out amid revelations of extramarital affairs. ...

and Walter Mondale. He did press advance for Joan Mondale. Rodriguez went on to become associate director of the political action committee of the

Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign Peace Action is a peace organization whose focus is on preventing the deployment of nuclear weapons in space, thwarting weapons sales to countries with human rights violations, and promoting a new United States foreign policy based on common secu ...

. He then joined the 1986 Great Peace March, traveling on the road and working in the Washington D.C. office. While continuing to organize protests and rallies, in the late 1980s he started selling T-shirts and buttons at street fairs, music concerts and political rallies, using many of his own designs. During the early 1990s he opened his Politically Correct Clothing store at three locations in Washington, DC. News stories about his efforts, accompanied by photographs, have run in '' The Washington Post'' and the ''

Dallas Morning News ''The Dallas Morning News'' is a daily newspaper serving the Dallas–Fort Worth area of Texas, with an average print circulation of 65,369. It was founded on October 1, 1885 by Alfred Horatio Belo as a satellite publication of the ''Galvesto ...

''.(The Dallas Morning News, April 26, 1994) From 1991 to 1993 Rodriguez hosted the Politically Correct Cooking show on Fairfax Public Access

cable TV Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broadc ...

channel Ten. In 1993 the show won the Hometown Award for best Informational Series sponsored by the Alliance for Community Media.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rodriguez, Jose American anti-war activists Living people 1952 births American anti–nuclear weapons activists George Mason University alumni Activists from Virginia