New Horizons Man in the Middle: Ben Salazar PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID OMAHA NE PERMIT NO. 389
A publication of the Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging
June 2024 | Vol. 49 | No. 6
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By Leo Adam Biga dvocate-activist Ben Salazar, 78, has made good trouble in his adopted hometown of Omaha for three-plus decades. Where he sees injustice, this Latino community guardian weighs in with his voice, skills and experience. Growing up in Scottsbluff, he toiled in Nebraska beat, potato and corn fields. The U.S. Army draftee served a tour in Vietnam. After training as a lawyer he worked for Cesar Chavez’s migrant worker rights campaign. He aided the Arizona attorney general’s office in ferreting out wrongdoers. Back home he founded the bilingual newspaper Nuestro Mundo (Our World). Over its 20-year run Salazar tackled many issues. Salazar’s long served as a sounding board and advisor in South O in whose hard-working migrant, immigrant and first-generation residents he sees himself and the family and community that raised him. “My mother’s family came back and forth between Southern Cali-
cian picked up extra money playing gigs with his band. His brother Paul joined him. The group enjoyed notoriety in the western part of the state. “Playing music was his passion, his love. My dad and uncle got to be big enough that sometimes they’d go play a gig with singers and dancers.”
fornia, Arizona and the Midwest to do migrant work. She even went to school in Scottsbluff during layovers there. My mother met my father there. He was older. Also first-generation. They both had to work because eventually our family grew to nine kids. “My parents always struggled but worked hard. My mother must have
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worked 10 different jobs before I left the house for good. It’s unbelievable how far Mexican women will go and how hard they’ll work to take care of their family.” He, his siblings and parents worked the crop fields when things got tight. Salazar’s father worked mostly factory jobs. The self-taught musi-
IDENTITY AND DESTINY Salaza’s strong social-political consciousness emerged early. “I became aware even as a young child how society worked and how people of my clan, Mexican people, we’re a different breed,” Salazar said. “We were viewed as lesser human beings and limited to where we could live and work. As I got older my awareness of the Jim Crow attitudes around me started to gnaw at me. Changes were happening all over the country with the civil rights movement. I was hip to what was happening and very supportive of it. “I could see in my hometown --Salazar continued on page 8.
2024 ENOA’s Spirit of Aging Awards
This year, as part of its celebration of Older Americans Month, the Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging has presented its fourth annual Spirit of Aging Awards. Winners were selected in the Advocacy, Medical/Healthcare, Donor, and Volunteer categories. See article on page 5.
Thanks to each of the winners from the Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging, its staff, and the men and women the agency serves in Douglas, Sarpy, Dodge, Cass, and Washington counties.
ADVOCACY
MEDICAL/HEALTHCARE
Legal Aid of Nebraska
Visiting Nurse Association
Margaret Schaefer
Dala Wallace
DONOR
Covenant Presbyterian Church
VOLUNTEER
WoodmanLife