Plaque to honor memory of journalist Ruben Salazar

Ruben Salazar’s journalism exposing injustices that faced Mexican Americans in Los Angeles were an inspiration in the 1960s to Chicano activists and organizers such as Rosalio Munoz.

On Friday, Munoz, who helped organize the historic 1970 National Chicano Moratorium antiwar protest, was joined by dozens of people at an East Los Angeles park named after Salazar to mark the unveiling of a plaque highlighting the celebrated journalist’s legacy.

Salazar, 42, a Los Angeles Times and KMEX reporter, was in the Silver Dollar Cafe while covering the 1970 march when he was struck in the head by a tear gas projectile fired by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.

Munoz said that Salazar’s death helped motivate him and others in the Mexican American community in East Los Angeles to keep pushing to right injustices.

“Salazar has been a major inspiration for us,” Munoz said. “It’s wonderful that we’re going to have a permanent commemoration for Ruben Salazar, a courageous person who led a pioneering life.”

The ceremony was organized by Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina and the county’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

Molina said she was 21 when she attended the march. At the time, she said, Latinos were being treated like second-class citizens at the same time that many of them, such as some of her former high school classmates, were being killed in the Vietnam War.

“His death opened my eyes to the sheriff’s [deputies] and institutions who were discriminating against us,” Molina said. “He is not somebody who should be forgotten.”

Lisa Salazar Johnson, one of Salazar’s three children, was 9 when her father died. She said she is always surprised and honored at the number of people who attend events to commemorate her father’s work.

“People still remember my father because of the manner in which he was killed,” Johnson said after the unveiling, “and because some of the very issues he wrote about, like police brutality, are still alive and kicking today.”

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