From his Santa Cruz home base at Barrios Unidos, Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez has been working for almost 50 years to make lives better for children and families, as well as people trying to make better lives for themselves after incarceration.

by Wallace Baine April 7, 2024 (view article at The Lookout Santa Cruz)

The trailblazing singer and civil-rights activist Harry Belafonte was 96 when he died almost a year ago. But even at that advanced age, Belafonte remained politically active. Though the American public remembered his activism mostly as a product of the MLK years, he was still advocating for social justice, often loudly and bluntly, through the eras of Trump and Biden.

From his perch as the founder and executive director of Barrios Unidos in Santa Cruz, Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez saw Belafonte’s passions up close. Though two decades younger, Alejandrez counted himself as a friend and acolyte. He traveled widely with Belafonte — “I was standing right beside him when he called George [W.] Bush ‘the greatest terrorist in the world,’” said Alejandrez. And he looked to Belafonte as a mentor. 

Shortly before the older man died, the two were talking when someone mentioned the word “retirement.” Belafonte looked soberly at Alejandrez and said, “I never want to hear that word come out of your mouth.”

At 75, the man known throughout Santa Cruz County, and indeed throughout California, simply as “Nane” (NAH-nay), is, true to Belafonte’s example, entertaining no thoughts of retiring from what he has done for almost 50 years from his home base in Santa Cruz. Alejandrez is the founder, leader and iconic voice of Barrios Unidos, a thriving and multifaceted community of its own centered on a sprawling “campus” that takes up most of a city block on Soquel Avenue. 

Out in front of the Barrios Unidos building stands a long-neglected sign advertising Wilson Tire Service, a reminder of what the storefront structure used to be. Under the old tire sign, literally in its shadow, is a portrait of iconic civil-rights leader Cesar Chavez alongside the quote “Nonviolence is more powerful than violence.”

The BU hub

For almost five decades now, the space has been a hub of activity all to provide guidance, assistance and support to a wide variety of constituencies, from children and young families, to people newly released from prison. It is both a charitable nonprofit and a small business, its on-site screen-printing shop (BU Productions) serving as a kind of work/apprentice shop for those looking to establish marketable skills.

Also on the grounds is a professionally equipped recording studio and an auto shop to create a kind of learning center for young people and people reentering society after having served time. (Alejandrez is also a big car buff, and he allows young people and those in need of job training to help him restore old cars.) There is a dance hall and another performance space, meeting spaces and a warren of offices, all presided over by Alejandrez, his wife Jenny, sister Mary Lou, and son Joaquin. The organization’s staff and volunteer roster runs the gamut from UC Santa Cruz students to ex-convicts like Sam Cunningham, who serves as BU’s reentry programs coordinator.

It is here where Nane Alejandrez has built a mini-empire devoted to helping people. Behind the storefront building are a couple of small (very small) houses, set aside for those just getting out of prison with no other place to go. 

“We built that house right there for $1,500,” he said, pointing to one of the tiny houses. “If people got nowhere to go, then they’re going to be back in prison. That we know.”

Nearby, on a trailer so it can travel, is a life-sized model of a prison cell to let those on the outside know what conditions people in prison are enduring. Inside, the model cell is shockingly small, a bunk bed with two mattresses and a toilet in a space many people might find inadequate as a walk-in closet. In the bottom bunk is a dummy of a sleeping cellmate. 

“This is to show people what Pelican Bay [State Prison] is like,” said Alejandrez. “This is the real cell. I even tried to get the same color.”

At the heart of Alejandrez’s mission is confronting and turning around the culture of violence that is part of many Latinos’ lives in California, be it gang violence in the streets or the retributive violence of the state. Barrios Unidos dates back to the late 1970s when street violence (real and imagined) was a predominant obsession of the political mainstream. 

“This was an all-white neighborhood, when we first came here,” said Alejandrez, gesturing to the area beyond his back fence. “And they used to throw eggs and tomatoes at us. I should show you the signs they plastered all over the neighborhood: ‘Stop Barrios Unidos from busing gang members into our neighborhoods.’ So, we went to the city council and we got all the little kids from Beach Flats to sit in the front row. ‘These are the gang members they’re talking about.’”

In an essay he wrote for the Christian-based activist group Sojourners titled “César Chávez Saved My Life,” he called Barrios Unidos a “spiritual movement.” Though the organization is officially nonreligious and is not affiliated directly with any church, Alejandrez has always maintained a strong moral sense of his mission. And he had to work to convince many that his aims were more spiritual than political.

“As community-based organizations,” he wrote, “we have had to prove to the correctional institutions that we’re not in there to create any revolution. We’re there to try to help. I’m asking, How can I change the men that have been violent? How do I help change their attitude toward society and toward their own relatives? We see them as our relatives — these are our relatives that are incarcerated. How can we support them?”Alejandrez has demonstrated a remarkable skill at trans-personal relationships, equally comfortable talking to, and forging agreements with, prominent political figures and gang leaders.”

Felipe Hernandez grew up in Watsonville, mentored by Alejandrez on the legacy of Chicano political activism. Hernandez now sits on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, representing the Fourth District, which includes Watsonville. “I’ll always respect and admire Nane,” he said, “especially since he was one of the few who worked for a truce between gangs in the late ’70s in Watsonville.”

MariaElena De La Garza is the CEO of the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County in Watsonville, where she was born and rarised. When she first applied for the leadership role at CAB, she approached Alejandrez for advice. “He willingly and lovingly encouraged me to apply,” she said. “And I’m just one of probably thousands – tens of thousands – of people that Nane has mentored. He has taught me some important lessons that I use in my leadership role every day.”

Nane’s story

Alejandrez arrived in Santa Cruz from Fresno in the early 1970s. “My family was a migrant family from Texas and we migrated all over the Southwest,” he said. “I was born in Mississippi, in a cotton field. But I’ve got siblings born in Texas, Arizona, some relatives in California, Idaho, Wyoming.”

The family eventually settled in Fresno, and it’s there where a young Nane was drafted to serve during the Vietnam War. He returned from Vietnam in 1971, shocked at what he found. 

“I came from one war into another war, a street war,” he said. “There was a lot of violence happening on the street back then throughout California. And I just wanted to find a way to stop it.”

His family had been drawn into the illegal drug trade and he himself had become a heroin addict in Vietnam. It was then that he met Jenny and began looking for a way out. He attended Fresno City College, but after two years, he wanted to continue his education somewhere else: “In 1977, there were 20 killings of my own people around the neighborhoods where I was hanging out in Fresno.”

By happenstance, he stumbled upon UCSC, and, at 27, enrolled there in the Community Studies program. “I always say, UCSC saved my life, you know?”

After graduation, he decided “I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to stay here and build something.”

That something was Barrios Unidos. Though he founded the organization in Santa Cruz, most of his work in the early years was focused on addressing the gang activity in Watsonville, putting the credibility of his background in Fresno on the line to speak to local gangs. At the same time, he began reaching out to the political players of the era. He hosted a “Mayors’ Conference on Youth Violence” and invited all the local politicians. The mayor of Watsonville didn’t show. In fact, the only mayor who did show up was Santa Cruz’s John Laird, today a California state senator. “Ever since then, whenever he needs me or I need him, he’s there,” said Alejandrez of Laird.

Laird first got to know Alejandrez in the early 1980s as the director of the Santa Cruz AIDS Project, which rented a few rooms to Barrios Unidos. As a neighbor, Laird watched what was happening next door. “There were people in braids, in Native dress,” he said. “There were people with tattoos on every place that you can see could be tattooed. These were people that nobody else was helping and nobody else was reaching. And that’s what he did. To me that’s been the common theme through Nane’s entire work. Whether it’s people just getting out of prison and [who] need a leg up for a job, or in a whole host of other ways, he just helps people.”

Alejandrez became close associates with many progressive Santa Cruz politicos, from former mayor Bert Muhly to ex-supervisor Chris Matthews. As much as he was focused on community efforts, he was also interested in enlarging the vision to other communities. In 1997, he was able to purchase the site where Barrios Unidos now stands. 

California is listening

That same year he made a big impact on the state level.

Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley keeps a photo of himself standing alongside Nane Alejandrez in his city hall office. The two men worked together in the late 1990s when Keeley served in the California Assembly. Keeley authored a bill inspired by Alejandrez and Barrios Unidos that allowed the state to give funds directly to community nonprofits with violence-prevention programs. The bill was passed by the Legislature and, remarkably, signed into law by conservative Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, the most prominent proponent of the notorious Proposition 187, which sought to deny state social services to undocumented immigrants. (The initiative was approved, but later struck down as unconstitutional.)

Keeley said that, even at that time, Alejandrez had developed relationships with key figures and organizations across the state of California. “The Department of Corrections, the Department of Justice, law enforcement, they all know Nane,” he said. Keeley watched up close Alejandrez’s efforts to lobby for the bill, and was amazed at his effectiveness in talking to legislators from wildly varying political perspectives, the same gift of negotiation he has employed for generations with street gangs.

“With that soft, gentle voice of his, that slow cadence that gets you, that draws you in. You can see why his personality is a tremendous calming influence, where people can be heard who have not just vehement disagreements, but sometimes violent disagreements,” Keeley said. “And he has that capacity because of his background credibility, his years of work, and all the stuff that engenders trust and confidence.”

It’s only in recent years that Nane Alejandrez has begun to reap the recognition for his decades of work making people’s lives better. In 2021, for example, he won the Chief Justice Earl Warren Civil Liberties Award, presented by the American Civil Liberties Union, an award that’s also gone to the likes of Thurgood Marshall and Rosa Parks. He became a friend and colleague of celebrity activists like Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover. He has developed effective, yearslong relationships with many in the state prison system. And throughout it all, he’s changed countless lives.

“Nane is someone who humanizes people who’ve maybe made a mistake, and they’ve had to do time,” said Third District Supervisor Justin Cummings. “He gives them that pathway forward. I think that our community really should value him more and do more to support him because of his willingness to take on something that many people have shunted.”