Trained as a lawyer, he’s spent more than 30 years mobilizing vulnerable communities ― gardeners, garment workers, domestic workers ― mostly behind the scenes. He organizes marches, proposes legislation, coordinates policy campaigns.
Back in the mid-1990s, when Proposition 187 tried to cut off services to immigrants in the country illegally, day laborers were being harassed on street corners and some restaurants refused to serve them. Narro helped launch an organization to protect them.
He held workshops to groom day laborers into leaders who could safeguard and mobilize their work corners. He had them form soccer teams to build solidarity and connected them to the greater immigrant rights movement.
In 1999, when Narro found out that many carwash workers were getting paid only tips or below minimum wage, he helped them unionize. He pushed them to picket and confront their employers. Those who got fired, he turned into full-time labor organizers.
In 2003, Narro’s efforts helped pass a law regulating all carwashes.
He used to work 10 to 12 hours a day.
“I felt all this pressure to keep going all the time,” he said.
In 2012, he started having terrible headaches and losing weight. He wound up in the hospital.
“I knew then I had to change,” he said. “I had to find balance.”
So he slowly began to teach himself what he is now teaching others.
On a recent Saturday, he joined about two dozen activists in a movement workshop at the labor center across the street from MacArthur Park.
Malia Gallegos with TeAda Productions, a performance group that promotes social justice, asked everyone to breathe into their bellies and begin an exercise used in Butoh, a Japanese form of improvised dance.
“We’re going to go on a journey,” she told them.
And so they leaned back, let the weight of their bodies fall forward and began to move rhythmically from side to side, meditating, concentrating on their breaths.
Among the participants were 10 labor union organizers, including one named Cesar Chavez who had driven nearly four hours from Pismo Beach.
The union Chavez works for, United Domestic Workers, represents about 90,000 home health caretakers whose livelihoods could be hurt by some of Trump’s proposed healthcare changes. If clients lose access to Medicaid, caretakers could lose work hours.
So Chavez constantly reminds his members via email and social media to call elected officials and try to hold back Trump and his fellow Republicans. He and other organizers are also working to develop more union leaders and encourage them to engage politically.
“We’ve worked so hard to get here,” Chavez said. “And now it feels like we’ve got this huge John Deere bulldozer coming our way.”
When he comes home after a stressful day, Chavez said, he tries to unplug from the news. So does his girlfriend, who works for a congressman and spends hours fielding calls from constituents upset about Trump. She unwinds with yoga. The two joke a lot.
“We’ve learned that the best thing to do at the end of each day is to keep it light,” Chavez said. “And to leave all those worries at the door.”
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