Armando got married right after graduation and also shortly thereafter landed his first writing job in Sacramento where he and his wife, Helen, took up residence in 1962. The assassination of John F. Kennedy and meeting Cesar Chavez with whom he worked influenced his thinking and his commitment to social justice. In 1967, he was recruited for a job with the federal government that took him, his wife and by then three children to Washington, D.C. He now lives in Kensington, an unincorporated area of Contra Costa County, just north of Berkeley. He and Helen have four children and five grandchildren, happily, all of them living close by.
Public and Corporate Experience
From 1967 to 1969, Armando worked with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as a writer, co-founding a magazine titled “Civil Rights Digest,” that covered major civil rights concerns and afforded him the chance to meet key persons in the civil rights movement in various places around the country. He left the Commission to work fulltime on Chicano Manifesto, which turned out to be the first book about Chicanos written by a Chicano. The book was published by Macmillan Company in 1971 and reissued by Ollin and Associates in 1996. Afterward, he went into freelance writing and then in the early 1970s, co-founded a public relations firm in the Capital that consulted with corporate and government clients on outreach to Spanish-speaking communities in the U.S.
From 1979 to 1988, he returned to federal service with the U.S. Census Bureau to spearhead the promotional campaigns aimed at getting Latino and Native American populations to fill out the 1980 Census form; later, he was assigned as lead information officer for two interim censuses that were held in preparation for the 1990 Census. In 1988, Armando left federal service to return to the Bay Area. Two of his older children had already returned to enroll in post secondary schools here, and wisely, Armando and Helen followed close behind, rather than get stuck back East.
Starting in October 1998, Armando held the position of Senior Information Officer for the California Public Utilities Commission in San Francisco until October 2004. His primary role was as spokesperson for the Commission in dealing with press and general public inquiries, managing a staff of writers and coordinating research and writing of press releases and other publications that covered the full range of public utility rulings. He had joined the Commission in 1988 as a staff Information Officer, after returning to the Bay Area.
Academic Work
From 1976-79, after obtaining a Masters in Education from Antioch Graduate School of Education, The American University, Washington, D.C., hired Rendón as a Program Director to found The Latino Institute, a program that entailed recruitment, counseling and retention services aimed at young adult Latinos in the capital area. From 1977-79, he also held the rank of Associate Professor in the Continuing Education Department, teaching a fulltime course load. As a professor, he designed a course on Community Organizing and one on Latinos in American Thought and Culture, which he later converted into a radio series titled “Viva Latino.” That project won an Ohio State Award for Excellence in 1979.
In 1975, Armando was appointed a Trustee on the charter Board of Trustees, University of the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C., by then D.C. Mayor Walter Washington. After completing a two-year term, he was reappointed for a third year, having served on various committees, including: chair of Student Affairs, which developed the first UDC student constitution; Personnel, and Academic Affairs; and, the search committee which nominated the first president of the university.
Since 1989, Armando has been a member of the Collegiate Seminar faculty at St. Mary’s College as a part time lecturer, guiding first-year through senior students through the four basic seminar units: Greek Thought; Roman, Early Christian and Medieval Thought; Renaissance Thought; and 19th and 20th Century Thought. The Collegiate Seminar program is modeled on the original Integrated Curriculum, which Armando completed in his four years at St. Mary’s.
Social Activism
Armando graduated with the Juris Doctor from American University’s Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C., in 1983. He has served as a human rights lawyer since then, primarily with indigenous people’s groups, including the National Xicano Human Rights Council and the International Indian Treaty Council, a Non-Governmental Organization. At various times, he attended the United Nations Commission on Human Rights annual meeting in Geneva, and most notably in 1995 presented a formal intervention before that body on U.S. human rights violations against Mexican Americans under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
While living in Sacramento, Armando founded the Rural Education and Advancement Program (REAP), funded by the diocese, which provided social and religious services to migrant farm workers in Sacramento County. Armando met Cesar Chavez in 1964 and helped form a local support organization for the United Farm Workers; he continued to assist Chavez in the D.C. area and featured the union organizer in his book on the Chicano Movement.
In Washington, D.C., Armando became active in the diverse Latino community there, co-founding a bilingual pre-school, one of the first in the country; becoming active with the D.C. Democratic Central Committee, winning a seat on the council through a district-wide election; then joining the D.C. Statehood Party, which campaigned for statehood for the District. In 1987, recognizing how social activism had been a family affair, the Statehood Party conferred on the entire Rendón family, the Julius W. Hobson, Sr., Award for community service.
In November 2010, Armando founded an online literary magazine, titled “Somos en escrito,” an Internet-based publication directed at encouraging literary efforts by Latino writers in the U.S. and affording an instantaneous venue for new and established writers to show off their works. The magazine can be found at www.somosenescrito.blogspot.com. Armando can be reached at somossubmissions@gmail.com or by phone at 510-219-9139.