 At the same time, he continued to be active in East Los Angeles, leading a group of barrio writers and publishing "ChismeArte", a Chicano art journal, out of an office at Self Help Graphics & Art.He began facilitating writing workshops and talks in prisons and juvenile lockups in 1980 starting in Chino Prison.In the early 1980s, he also worked for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in public radio, and as a freelance journalist, including covering indigenous uprisings in Mexico and the Contra War in Nicaragua and Honduras, until he moved to Chicago in 1985.