Global Courant 2023-05-15 10:31:36
Gloria Molina, a trailblazing political leader who represented the people of Los Angeles, died of terminal cancer on Sunday, her daughter said. She turned 74.
“She passed away at her home in Mt. Washington surrounded by our family,” Valentina Martinez said in a Mother’s Day statement. “We will miss Gloria, the strong and selfless matriarch of our family.”
Molina had been battling cancer for three years, Martinez said.
A product of the Pico Rivera community on the east side of Los Angeles County, Molina proudly identified as Chicana, a political term describing people of Mexican descent who are both empowered and oppressed by living between two nations, two cultures.
She was the first Chicana elected to the State Assembly (1982), the Los Angeles City Council (1987), and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (1991).
She was also known as Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee from the days of Bill Clinton’s presidency until 2004. It was a role that Molina emphasized as a featured speaker at multiple Democratic national conventions.
Molina was born on May 31, 1948 to parents who grew up in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Her father, she said, was born in Los Angeles but raised in Mexico.
Growing up in the San Gabriel Valley east of downtown Los Angeles, she said, college was for white people — until a high school bookkeeper named Charlene Levesque kept harassing her about attending a new community college.
“I used to hang out with all the Chicanos,” she said. “And none of them were talking about going to college at the time.”
She went. And she fought against her mother’s pressure to work.
In college, including classes at East Los Angeles College, Molina sought out Latinas, and found them through the Chicana Service Action Center, a nonprofit community group, and local influencers like Francisca Flores.
After school, she volunteered for Democratic politicians and was the Spanish delegate for Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign in California in 1975. After Carter began his term as president, she worked in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel.
When she ran for the state legislature, she attributed as much support to women in general as to her Latino home base.
“One of our big goals was learning to become leaders,” she said. “Not to become followers of the white women’s movement, and not to become followers of the Chicano movement. But to become leaders for ourselves, for other women. That was very important to us.”
She volunteered for numerous community and political groups, held a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, and considered running for mayor before deciding instead to take one of five powerful seats on the county’s Board of Supervisors. representing 2 million people each.
In an oral history interview for the California State Archives State Government Oral History Program in 1990, Molina claimed victory.
“Every time I jumped at one of these opportunities, the first thing that went through my mind was fear, absolute fear,” she said of her candidacy. “And with that fear was the intimidation. “They’re smarter than me. They know more.’”
“I think one of our biggest challenges is convincing a lot of Latinos, both citizens and non-citizens, that it’s definitely a place and a game that we should be a part of,” Molina said. “What I also learned is that you can beat City Hall.”
Molina is survived by daughter, Martinez; her husband, Ron Martinez; grandson Santiago; and siblings Gracie, Irma, Domingo, Bertha, Mario, Sergio, Danny, Olga, and Lisa.
The LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, which Molina created during her time on the Board of Trustees, has scheduled a celebration of life for June 3.
