Luz Rodriguez (born March 7, 1956) is a Puerto Rican reproductive rights advocate.

Biography

Luz Rodriguez was born on March 7, 1956, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

to Puerto Rican immigrants Elsa Rodriguez Vazquez and Luis Rodriguez Nieto, Sr. She was raised in the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

and gravitated to community organizing and owned an apartment in the first sweat equity and green building at

519 East 11th Street 519 East 11th Street is a former tenement building in New York City's East Village. It has some architectural similarities to the nearby Eldridge Street Synagogue. Following abandonment of the building in the 1970s, a group of tenants organized th ...

. Rodriguez's community activities and movements of the time including the

Young Lords The Young Lords, also known as the Young Lords Organization (YLO) or Young Lords Party (YLP), was a Chicago-based street gang that became a civil and human rights organization. The group aims to fight for neighborhood empowerment and self-det ...

Black Panthers The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxism-Leninism, Marxist-Leninist and Black Power movement, black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. New ...

, and the civil rights movement influenced her political and social justice awareness throughout her career. In 1974 she graduated from

Seward Park High School __NOTOC__ The Seward Park Campus is a "vertical campus" of the New York City Department of Education located at 350 Grand Street at the corner of Essex Street, in the Lower East Side/Cooperative Village neighborhoods of Manhattan, New York City. ...

. From 1976 to 1978 Rodriguez studied dance at the

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was ...

before going on to receive her

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

degree from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

in 1982. While at NYU, she researched the sterilization of and the pharmaceutical companies' birth control experimentation on Puerto Rican women after hearing some of their stories growing up. This was her first exposure to

population control Population control is the practice of artificially maintaining the size of any population. It simply refers to the act of limiting the size of an animal population so that it remains manageable, as opposed to the act of protecting a species from ...

and impacted her later reproductive rights activism. She earned a

Master of Science A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

in Nonprofit Leadership from

Fordham University Fordham University () is a Private university, private Jesuit universities, Jesuit research university in New York City. Established in 1841 and named after the Fordham, Bronx, Fordham neighborhood of the The Bronx, Bronx in which its origina ...

. In 1996, she became the director of the Latina Roundtable on Health and Reproductive Rights. From 1997 to 1998, Rodriguez led a series of meetings focusing on reproductive-tract infections among women of color with the Ford Foundation. What came of these meetings was the consensus that women of color ought to represent themselves and their communities. This led to the founding of

SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective The SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, also known as SisterSong, is a national activist organization dedicated to reproductive justice for women of color. The non-profit defines reproductive justice as the human right to m ...

. She became co-chair of the SisterSong Management Circle in 2011. She has also been involved with Casa Atabex Aché, the Dominican Women's Development Center, the Foundation Center, Henry Street Settlement, East Side Family Resource Center, and the Dominican Women's Development Center. In 1994, Rodriguez was awarded a Windcall Residency for her activism. Her oral history and papers are preserved in the “Voices of Feminism” Women History Archives at

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rodriguez, Luz 1956 births Living people Puerto Rican activists Reproductive rights activists Activists from New York City Seward Park High School alumni Pratt Institute alumni New York University alumni Fordham University alumni