Juan Velazquez, Community Activist, Campaign Organizer, 57

[DGH]

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Juan Velazquez, who was also a Chicago Streets and Sanitation
Department deputy commissioner under Mayor Harold Washington, died of
a stomach infection Monday, April 7, 2003, in Rush-Presbyterian-St.
Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois, at the age of 57.

A pool hustler in his youth, a social worker and pioneering labor
leader as an adult and a political thorn in the side of both of
Chicago's Mayor Daleys, Juan "Mama John" Velazquez was always ready to
buck the odds.

"He wasn't the best kid on the block in his youth," said his longtime
friend Jerry Negrete Jr., a Chicago police officer. "But he got out of
that and tried to help people. Every time he saw an injustice, he
tried to right it."

Born to Mexican immigrants and raised in Chicago, Mr. Velazquez
learned both billiards and politics in his father's Pilsen pool hall.

The hall, known as Manny's, was located in the heart of Pilsen in the
1100 block of West 18th Street. In addition to good pool players, it
attracted budding politicians and immigrants who needed a hand.

"If someone needed to send a telegram to Mexico, to take care of a
problem with the city or welfare or Social Security, they came to my
father," Mr. Velazquez told the Tribune in 1986.

When Mr. Velazquez was in his late teens, he began to follow in his
father's footsteps. He took a counselor's job at a local community
center, put aside his gambling past and took advantage of his
hustler's gift-of-gab to coax troubled youth away from gangs.

A powerful, barrel-chested man, Mr. Velazquez always looked older than
he was and got the nickname "Mama John" from residents when he was a
young man, said his wife of nine years, Carmen Prieto-Velazquez.

His activism increased in the late 1960s after attending a Chicano
Liberation Conference in Denver. Mr. Velazquez returned to Chicago to
lead a move for the Mexican community to take control of a community
center, Howell House, and rename it Casa Aztlan. He then helped found
other Hispanic organizations in Chicago, including El Centro De La
Causa, and worked on several campaigns in the early 1970s, opposing
candidates backed by then-Mayor Richard J. Daley.

In 1975, Mr. Velazquez headed to Florida to help with the growing
labor movement there. He helped form the United Migrants group that
led a strike in Immokalee, Fla. The strike broke down quickly but
helped spur future actions that led to improvements in pay and
conditions for the workers.

When he returned to Chicago in 1980, Mr. Velazquez dove head-first
into city politics. With Harold Washington's support, he ran against
longtime 25th Ward Ald. Vito Marzullo in 1983. Mr. Velazquez didn't
win but got 46 percent of the vote against the machine's candidate,
which helped encourage other Hispanics to run for office, said friend
and former state Sen. Jesus Garcia.

In recent years he had worked with the 25th Ward Independent
Democratic Organization and supported aldermanic candidate Ambrosio
Medrano against Mayor Richard M. Daley's candidate in the February
primary.

Medrano lost, but Anthony Sutor, a friend who helped run the campaign
with Mr. Velazquez, said the race had them considering Mr. Velazquez
as a candidate for state representative.

"People should know about his contributions," Sutor said.