Jorge Antonio Renaud will be the guest speaker for our October Plática which will be on Wednesday October 19, 2016, from 7:00-8:00 p.m, at CLA 1.106. Jorge was born in New Mexico but unfortunately has lived most of his life in Tejas. His mother fled an abusive, arranged marriage in Mexico by wading the Rio Bravo when she was 15. His father’s family moved to the Rio Grande Valley in 1812, and they recently celebrated over 300 years of colonization in Raymondville. Jorge’s father became a sharecropper when Jorge was 8, and the family harvested cucumbers, onions, watermelons, and cantaloupes, thinned cotton plants and picked cotton for the next five years, chasing crops and occasionally stopping to seek education.
Jorge joined the Army at the age of 17 and committed his first robbery when he was 20, beginning an odyssy that would result in 25 of the next 32 years in Texas cages. He has published poetry in dozens of magazines, including Huizache, The Americas Review, The Texas Observer, and the Threepenny Review, and he wrote and published “Behind the walls: A guide for families and friends of Texas prison inmates,” while in prison. He was released on parole for the last time in 2008 and is on parole until 2051. He has a masters in Social Work from UT-Austin and he organizes individuals who have also been in cages or whose families have been devastated by incarceration. Jorge facilitates healing and community-building Restorative Justice-based circles for youth who have been trapped in the criminal justice cycle.
We look forward to seeing you there!
