Jose Javier Rodriguez
José Javier Rodríguez writes short stories and prose poetry. He is a former board member of the Miami Writers Association and was a contributor for MWA’s exhibit at Miami’s Independent Thinkers at the Mitrani Warehouse in 2009.
In his other life, Rodriguez is an attorney at Florida Legal Services (FLS). He began there as a Skadden Fellow, 2006-08, after earning a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2006 and continues there.
Rodríguez represents indigent clients and grassroots organizations composed of affected community members. On their behalf he conducts litigation in state court, including individual, complex and representative actions; carries out legislative advocacy and negotiations with governmental entities over policy matters and matters involving public information; conducts trainings for community members and pro bono attorneys; and counsels non-profits on matters of corporate and tax law compliance. In his time at FLS, he has worked with day laborers to recover unpaid wages and educate workers about their workplace rights, with employees of municipal contractors to enforce and strengthen the local living wage laws of both the City of Miami and the City of Miami Beach, with residents of low-income mobile home parks and their mobile homeowners’ associations to protect their rights as tenants, with immigrants’ rights advocates to remedy misconduct on the part of federal immigration agents, with low-wage workers and advocates to draft and pass Miami-Dade’s Wage Theft Ordinance, with taxicab drivers to advocate for fairer local regulation of drivers, and with neighborhood-based organizations to increase civic engagement among traditionally disenfranchised constituencies.
Rodríguez sits on the board of directors for several community organizations, served until recently as an appointee to the City of Miami’s Community Relations Board and currently serves as an appointee to the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee for the Miami Urbanized Area. Prior to attending law school he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal where he was a small business advisor, 2000-02, and then an advisor to the Employment Section for Senegal’s Ministry of Labor, 2002-03.
Rodríguez co-taught the Carlos A. Costa Immigration & Human Rights Clinic at FIU College of Law from 2008 to 2010. While there he expanded the clinic’s international human rights docket as well as it’s docket dealing with immigrants’ civil rights.
