The smell of red beans and rice cooked in an amazing sofrito, pernil marinated and roasted for hours to celebrate a birthday, or maybe it was corned beef and cabbage to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, sometimes a Trinidadian duck curry cooked by the lady of the house, whatever the occasion we all get excited by that phone call, or a letter in the mail inviting us to a dinner by this master chef for celebrations at the Rivera house.
We know that there will be good company, much laughter and thoughtful conversations from a host who is a scholar well versed on a broad range of subjects from the Puerto Rican revolutionaries attack on the White House, the life of Ho Chi Minh, or the process that was used to create the very best scotch.
His warmth, sense of humor and graciousness makes everyone feel welcomed and loved. This is how many us knew Ray, in this personal way within this lovely setting.
But if I may, allow me to give a brief profile of Dr. Rivera the social activist, who had a transformative impact on media, public mental health, community based programs and art culture in San Francisco. It is the story of his transition from the east coast to the west coast.
This son of Borinqueno was born in New York and grew up in Connecticut. As an intelligent and strong-minded Puerto Rican youth, Ray was bullied by his white class mates, was faced with teachers at euro-centric, biased, culturally incompetent schools that never presented his history, or the history and accomplishments of people of color within the curriculum. This contradiction forced him to become a critical thinker at a very earlier age. As a positive outlet, Ray began working as a stable boy in a stable that housed expensive English bred horses. This was the basis of an autobiographical novel Red Wing that he wrote later in life.
At 17, Ray joined the Army Airborne. By his own definition, he was an arrogant fearless individual, who let his fists solve disputes. That fearlessness would serve him well later on in life when he took on dysfunctional public institutions. Ray served overseas in France, left the service with the rank of Staff Sargent.
After he came home, Ray became a very successful entrepreneur – owner, manager, hairstylist of Beauty Salon and owner executive chef of Catering Company. He also bought and sold 944 Porches. He owned a sailboat and became an avid sailor.
However, the lifestyle was not fulfilling for Ray. Searching for greater meaning, he left that life and hopped freighters crossing the country to arrive in San Francisco, homeless and looking for direction.
It is on the West Coast, in San Francisco, through the Real Alternatives Program (RAP), a youth self- empowerment program, that Ray was introduced to a core set of principles that would guide his life’s work. The foundation of which was that those who are most impacted by oppressive social and economic conditions, have the greatest understanding and cultural competency to address these issues, and, therefore ,they must be in charge of defining the policies and programs, provide leadership, direction and staffing of programs designed to correct these conditions.
Based on those principles, Dr. Rivera co-founded Mission Media Arts (MMA), an outgrowth of RAP whose primary objective was to ensure that people of color would be on camera, and as camera persons, script writers, editors, producers on the local five TV stations that had no one of color in those positions.
MMA formed a coalition with other community organizations snd Ray was selected as the chairperson. Under his leadership, the coalition sued the Federal Communications Commission to remove the licenses of these stations until they achieved ethnic diversity. The civil rights division of the Department of Justice became involved and forced the station to change its hiring practices. Every person of color that you see on local TV today is there because of this action.
To prepare young people for the industry, MMA trained young people in all phases of TV operations, and, for the first-time, young people of color began to see media arts as a possible career for them.
Ray then became involved with cultural arts, the city was seeking funding for building the Davies Symphony Hall, but they needed community support for the project. The ethnic-based art communities in San Francisco formed a coalition to demand that the city establish cultural art centers in every ethnic community if they wanted support for the symphony hall. The coalition selected Ray to be its chairperson, key negotiator and spokesperson.
The coalition was successful and cultural centers were created in every district. The coalition then lobbied the Mayor’s Office to ensure that a portion of the city’s hotel tax, which primarily supported the symphony, be used to support the district centers. The Mayor refused, but Ray, as the chief negotiator, kept aggressively advocating for the funds at every meeting with the Mayor. Because Ray kept interrupting the meetings and refused to take no for an answer, the Mayor had Ray arrested and removed from the meetings and placed in jail. The agitation finally paid off. The Mayor agreed that funds designated for the district centers would become part of the city budget.
Dr. Rivera then became involved with the public mental health system in San Francisco, that he fundamentally transformed. He encountered a bureaucratic system and leadership that did not always put the interests of patients at its core.
At every position in the public mental health system Ray always rose to key leadership roles, as coordinator and director.
The system had not encountered an individual with his intelligence, willingness to take on the power structure, someone who was uncompromising, fearless, willing to put his job on the line to ensure that the system provided excellent, culturally competent care to patients, and respect for the staff who provided the care. At every position in the public mental health system Ray always rose to key leadership roles, as coordinator and director.
Ray transformed whatever system he oversaw to provider culturally competent treatment where patients were treated with dignity and respect. Along with Dr. Gil Weisman, he co-founded the acute diversion mental health modality that used every possible strategy to divert patients from mental health hospitals, including the creation and use of short and long term community residential treatment centers — the first of its kind that became a national model for treating mental health patients.
Ray democratized the public mental health system by organizing staff and patients to force management to include patients and mental health workers as part of policy making bodies in the development of policies, programs, administration and staffing of mental health services. To management, he became the most feared man in public health, but to staff and patients, he was a hero.
Ray’s PhD. was awarded by the community not for an esoteric dissertation, but a project-based degree awarded for transforming three major institutions — media, mental health and the cultural arts — and the ongoing impact that it has had on thousands of lives.
Dr. Rivera was also an accomplished man of the arts. He authored “Red Wing,” an autobiographical novel about his stealing a horse from the English stables and his adventure that led him all the way to Florida to meet his father, and their journey with the horse back to Connecticut.
Ray also became an owner-manager of an art gallery in the Mission District.
He was a wonderful poet — poems about the struggles for social and economic justice, human nature and love. His poem to his wife, the lovely Trinidadian Gloria, reminds one of Pablo Neruda.
Ray was most importantly a man of principle and integrity. He was a good husband, father of two dynamic, intelligent, accomplished children, Renee, and Jade, and he was a good friend.
Somehow the wonderful mysterious spiritual powers of the universe allowed him to find Gloria, the love of his life, his greatest gift.
He is loved by his family, friends and community, for a life well lived.
Much Love and respect.