User:Tomwakely

Thomas John Wakely, ( July 18, 1953 - ) was born in San Antonio, Texas. He currently lives in San Antonio, Texas. He briefly served in the United States Air Force, receiving an honorable discharge. From 1971 to 1975 he was the Publisher and Editor of the San Antonio Gazette, a bi-weekly underground newspaper - copies of which are maintained at various libraries throughout the World including the National Library of Australia (http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3807047. During this same time frame, Wakely was also working as field organizer for the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFOC)in San Antonio, Texas. His pay was room and board, $ 5.00 a week plus all of the menudo he could eat. The menudo was provided to the UFOC staff by the families of migrant workers working the Texas fields. Wakely worked for UFOC for about 2 years and his responsibilities included organizing the Grape Boycott in San Antonio. His primary target was the H.E.B grocery store chain. In addition, he attempted to organize Hispanic farm workers working the farmers market in San Antonio — a institution at that time controlled by corporate farms. Among his many organizing activities included at early 1972 episode where he and several other UFOC staff members who were attempting to organize warehouse workers in San Antonio were fired upon by security agents of the corporate farm owners. In mid-1973 the San Antonio office of the UFOC was for taken over by the Brown Berets. This radicalization of the San Antonio UFOC office led to the eventual collapse of the San Antonio UFOC organizing campaign.

From 1975 - 1978 he worked as a union organizer in Denver, Colorado for Local 105 of the Service Employees International Union before returning to San Antonio where continued his union organizing activities with a local chapter of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE), which was a United States labor union representing workers of the hospitality industry. In 2004, HERE merged with the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) to form UNITE HERE.

The Chicago Years

In the early 1980's, Thomas Wakely left the labor union movement and entered the Chicago Theological Seminary with the intent of earning his Masters Degree in Theology and leading to his ordination as a minister in the United Church of Christ. While still in seminary he was involved in many social and economic justice movements and activities in Chicago including serving as the Organizing Director of the Chicago Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)which was founded by Micheal Harrington. One of his major accomplishments during this time frame was organizing the Congress on Religion and Politics. This international conference brought together leading theologians, academics, clergy and laity. In addition, he served as the lead organizer of a Illinois State ballot initiative to prohibit the deployment of the Illinois National Guard to Central and South American countries. He was recruited to organize the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Lakes in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. He served as the congregations minster until 1995 when he returned to his home State of Texas settling in Manor, a small town on the outskirts of Austin, the State Capital.

Economic Justice

From 1995 through 1997 his work primarily revolved around economic justice issues and concerns eventually leading him to attempt to organize the Azteca Community Bank, an FDIC insured community development bank in Austin, Texas. With the onset of the banking/financial crisis in the United States it became impossible to continue to attempt to raise the $ 10 milion in capital needed to establish the Azteca Community Bank. After a lifetime of working for social and economic justice, Thomas Wakely and his wife Norma Gomez, moved to Manzanillo, State of Colima, Mexico where he owned and operated a Jazz Club located on the Pacific Coast until returning to his home town of San Antonio, Texas to care for his dying mother. Upon his mother's death, Tom and his wife opened Ann's Place, a private care home for hospice patients. In March 2015, Ann's Place was certified as a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Foster Home.