Dr. Rod Daus-Magbual

Dr. Roderick Raña Daus-Magbual, Mayor of Daly City, is an educator and has served on the City Council of Daly City since 2018. A Bay Area transplant via Riverside and Long Beach, he received his BA in Liberal Studies from UC Riverside in 2000, his MA in Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University in 2004, and his Education Doctorate at the University of San Francisco in the Organization and Leadership Program with a minor in the International Multicultural Education Program.

Rod has taught education and Ethnic Studies courses at USF, UC Davis, Sonoma State University, City College of San Francisco, SFSU, and at Skyline College where he teaches in the Kababayan & CIPHER Learning Communities, and is currently Executive Director for the Pin@y Educational Partnerships. 

He enjoys playing, reading, cooking, and raising his daughter and son, Amianan and Razón, with his wife Arlene. Rod truly believes that understanding the history of your people, comes with the responsibility to act. He’s motivated by love and the pursuit for peace and social justice.

Poem

A POET IS A POLICY MAKER

A poet is a policy maker
Every stanza, rhyme, and critical stance shifts people’s hearts and minds
It’s the reflection of time through narrative that brings life to words.
Speak your truth, speak from your heart, because your art are whispers from your ancestors.
Every stanza, rhyme, and critical stance shifts people’s hearts and minds
Your words are meditations where prayers are transformed into reality.
Speak your truth, speak from your heart, because your art are whispers from you ancestors.
Plant the seeds so they can grow beyond soil and become fruits for generations to come.
Your words are meditations where prayers are transformed into reality.
You are the paradigm shift that needs to happen.
Plant the seeds so they can grow beyond soil and become fruits for generations to come.
Challenge the closed mind with your stories of struggle, survival, and imagination.
You are the paradigm shift that needs to happen.
Your poems become policy as we ritualize new ways of being
Challenge the closed mind with your stories of struggle, survival, and imagination.
Culture shifts politics.
Your poems become policy as we ritualize new ways of being
It’s the reflection of time through narrative that brings life to words.
Culture shifts politics.
A poet is a policy maker.

Copyright © 2020 by Dr. Rod Daus-Magbual. Originally performed on April 6. 2020 for the Daly City Bayanihan Response to Covid-19. Used with permission of the author.