Salvador E. Alvarez graduated from San Jose State University in 1963, 1 of only 5 Mexican-American students enrolled at that time and earned his MSW in 1967 at the University of California, Berkeley.

Throughout his life Alvarez dedicated himself to social justice causes related to immigrants and farmworkers. From 1967 to 1969, he worked with the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops as the Executive Director of the Bishops Committee for the Spanish Speaking where he established offices in Stockton, San Francisco, and San Jose. During this time, he met Cesar Chavez who asked for help from the church commencing a lifelong relationship with the United Farm Workers Union (UFW).

Volunteering with the UFW in 1970, he was assigned to work for the El Malcriado newspaper, a voice for the UFW on behalf of farmworkers. In 1975, he joined the UFW as a researcher studying the mechanization of the lettuce fields. He was later assigned as a legislative aide to Dolores Huerta where he worked on protecting the Agricultural Labor Relations Board and legislation for farmworkers, including the abolition of the short handle hoe, establishing workers’ compensation and the regulation of pesticides. In 1979, he was ordained a Permanent Deacon in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, continuing his work as a social justice leader in the Catholic Church and interfaith community while working for the UFW. He co-founded the Santa Clara County’s Interfaith Council on Economics and Justice and served as a special liaison on Social Concerns to the Bishop. In 2011, he was bestowed the Cross of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI.

In 1984, Alvarez was assigned to represent the UFW as their lobbyist in Washington, D.C. working on immigration reform to include farmworkers who had not been considered in the original immigration legislation. He spent the next three years working on provisions for seasonal agricultural workers to be included in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 which helped legalize 1.4 million farmworkers. For 50 years, he distinguished himself as a Chicano faith based civil rights leader during which he represented the National League of United Latin American Citizens, served as Vice- President of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, and served as Permanent Deacon for the Diocese of San Jose for 36 years.

Alvarez dedicated himself to the cause of peace traveling to 20 countries on peace delegations. He was a distinguished social policy analyst and instrumental in the protection of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, was a significant national strategist for the Passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 for which he was especially proud of its expansion of the Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2008.

In 1996, Alvarez founded the Institute for Non-Violence and served as executive director until his death in 2015. He developed tools for Latino youth and families to resolve conflicts and live in peace. He devoted the final years of his life to building consensus for transformative systems change to eliminate the pipeline of Latinos from public schools and child welfare to the California prison systems.