Luz Rodriguez

Luz Rodriguez (born March 7, 1956) is a Puerto Rican reproductive rights advocate.

Biography Luz Rodriguez was born on March 7, 1956, in New York City to Puerto Rican immigrants Elsa Rodriguez Vazquez and Luis Rodriguez Nieto, Sr. She was raised on the Lower East Side and gravitated to community organizing and owned an apartment in the first sweat equity and green building at 519 East 11th Street. Rodriguez's community activities and movements of the time including the Young Lords, Black Panthers, and the civil rights movement influenced her political and social justice awareness throughout her career. While at NYU, she researched the sterilization of and the pharmaceutical companies' birth control experimentation on Puerto Rican women after hearing some of their stories growing up. This was her first exposure to population control and impacted her later reproductive rights activism. She became co-chair of the SisterSong Management Circle in 2011. Henry Street Settlement, East Side Family Resource Center, and the Dominican Women's Development Center.

In 1994, Rodriguez was awarded a Windcall Residency for her activism. Her oral history and papers are preserved in the “Voices of Feminism” Women History Archives at Smith College.