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Fight Song Civil rights lawyer Jose Padilla champions the people of rural California.
‘Jose Padilla’s 40-plus years of “lawyering against power” began with a win before a skeptical judge—his father. After graduating from law school at UC Berkeley in 1978, Padilla, ’74, was poised to fulfill a promise he had made to the community leader who wrote him a recommendation for Stanford: He was coming home to the Imperial Valley, an expanse of sun-scorched scrubland snugged between San Diego and the Arizona border and transformed into prime farm country by the waters of the All-American Canal and the sweat of workers like Padilla’s grandparents…”