Luis Miranda Jr. reflects on giving, the arts and his son Lin-Manuel in the new memoir 'Relentless'

Luis A. Miranda Jr. was just 19 years old when he arrived in New York City from a small town in Puerto Rico, a broke doctoral student badly needing a job.

It was 1974 — decades before “Hamilton,” the Tony Award-winning musical created by his son Lin-Manuel, became a sensation and brought his family international recognition and unexpected fortune — when a nonprofit focused on Puerto Rican youth hired Miranda as a researcher in its office a few blocks from the Empire State Building.

“You can imagine the symbolism,” Miranda told the Associated Press. “A job with the Empire State Building in the background? I felt like Debbie Reynolds in ‘The Unsinkable Molly Brown’."

Miranda planned to complete his doctorate in clinical psychology and return to Puerto Rico. He was an ardent independentista, committed to helping lift his country from the shadow of United States colonialism.

But the job opened his eyes to the different challenges facing the Puerto Rican diaspora. They lived in substandard housing. Their children lacked access to a good education. They, like other Latino groups, dealt with inequality and lack of representation. These became the issues he cared about most.

“The Empire State Building was the symbol of the great city," Miranda said. "But El Barrio, the South Bronx, our communities, were the places that I wanted to spend my energy supporting.”

Miranda didn’t finish his doctorate. Instead, he threw himself into a career of community activism, political organizing and philanthropic giving — a transformation he recounts in his new memoir, “Relentless: My Story of the Latino Spirit that Is Transforming America,” released on May 7.

While he spent most of his career in politics, Miranda spoke to The Associated Press about how he and his family have also dedicated themselves to lifting up Latino communities through giving. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

A: We lived in a small town, Vega Alta. It was literally six streets. We didn’t have money. We couldn’t do what philanthropy does in the United States. But we had human capital, and we used our human capital to help others.

Every Thursday, my dad went to a meeting of the Rotary Club. They talked about the good deeds that they were going to do for the town. We were always involved in the Red Cross, and whenever there was a hurricane or something that hit the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, my dad was a leader in making sure that we were sending stuff.

What I have learned as I got a little more money and I could be philanthropic, is that you also have to give human capital. Being involved in the organization is much more work, but it feels different than when you just give money. I learned that from my parents.

A: At the Miranda Family Fund, we always try to be the first one giving money. Money brings money, so we want to make sure that we go in and we help sell the story.

We’re working with the People’s Theater Project on a dream of having the first off-Broadway theater in Washington Heights. You have no idea how many people said to me, “It’s really a tall order, we don’t have the audience.” It becomes a chicken and egg situation, because if you don’t have a place, how do you get an audience?

So we put the first $1 million in. Then, I went to New York-Presbyterian and said, “You need to match us, because you are the employer of this community.” Then all of a sudden every foundation is coming in, and we’re raising $20 million to create a real theater.

A: The arts changed our lives. We believe it not only feeds your heart and soul, but is a door to opportunity.

If my son had not created “Hamilton,” and if my wife and I had not taken the leap to mortgage our house to invest in “Hamilton,” the Mirandas would have still been great people using a lot of their human capital to help. But the arts changed our fortunes.

So the arts are a way to prosperity, but to get there, you need to get opportunities. And in order to get opportunities, someone has to invest. We invest in organizations that are in the arts and are opening doors, and in people who are in the arts, have talent and want a chance.

A: We did what we knew best through the Hispanic Federation, which was to use a network of nonprofits to help. The nonprofit sector in Puerto Rico already existed, with real leaders, with vision, but was very weak. So we said, “Okay, We know how to strengthen existing organizations, and we know how to push forward their development.”

We created the Flamboyan Arts Fund, again, not by ourselves. A donor reached out to us, he already had a foundation in Puerto Rico. So we didn’t spend a penny on creating new systems. There were organizations in Puerto Rico that were part of the art ecosystem and needed to be developed. So we invested there. We brought “Hamilton” to Puerto Rico and raised $15 million for the Flamboyan Arts Fund.

A: It was the most difficult but most rewarding chapter to write. I remember going to the Hispanic Federation one day. José Calderón, the president, opened a safe and showed me 500 letters they had received that day with donations. They had to get volunteers just to help open the envelopes.

Kids would send a $10 Hamilton bill in honor of Lin-Manuel. Other people sent sizable checks. Even the Facebook group “Fans of Lin-Manuel” mobilized themselves like there was no tomorrow.

It was normal people from all over. Those who were invested emotionally, like the diaspora was, and those who were connected, sometimes peripherally, because they loved “Hamilton” and they loved Lin-Manuel, or just because they saw real need and just came to the rescue.

A: You have to give, and you have to give until it hurts. When our kids were growing up, if we gave $250, we were hurting. We were not going to go hungry, but if Lucecita or Lin-Manuel needed some shoes or new this or new that, it was not happening because we gave $250 to an organization in the neighborhood.

I hope that my kids have learned that legacy and that it becomes a quest in their lives, and in how they teach their kids to be giving people who worry about their neighbors. That’s what I hope the future generations of Mirandas will continue to do.

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

FILE - Luis A. Miranda Jr. poses for a portrait during the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2023, in Park City, Utah. Miranda has dedicated his life to expanding opportunity and representation for Latinos in the United States. He recounts his decades of work as a community organizer, political strategist and philanthropist in a new memoir, “Relentless: My Story of the Latino Spirit that Is Transforming America." (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP, File)

LONDON (AP) — The host of a news conference about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's extradition fight wryly welcomed journalists last week to the “millionth” press briefing on his court case.

Deborah Bonetti, director of the Foreign Press Association, was only half joking. Assange’s legal saga has dragged on for well over a decade but it could come to an end in the U.K. as soon as Monday.

Assange faces a hearing in London's High Court that could end with him being sent to the U.S. to face espionage charges, or provide him another chance to appeal his extradition.

The outcome will depend on how much weight judges give to reassurances U.S. officials have provided that Assange's rights won't be trampled if he goes on trial.

Here's a look at the case:

Assange, 52, an Australian computer expert, has been indicted in the U.S. on 18 charges over Wikileaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010.

Prosecutors say he conspired with U.S. army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He faces 17 counts of espionage and one charge of computer misuse. If convicted, his lawyers say he could receive a prison term of up to 175 years, though American authorities have said any sentence is likely to be much lower.

Assange and his supporters argue he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing and is protected under press freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Among the files published by WikiLeaks was video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.

“Julian has been indicted for receiving, possessing and communicating information to the public of evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. government,” his wife, Stella Assange, said. “Reporting a crime is never a crime.”

U.S. lawyers say Assange is guilty of trying to hack the Pentagon computer and that WikiLeaks’ publications created a “grave and imminent risk” to U.S. intelligence sources in Afghanistan and Iraq.

While the U.S. criminal case against Assange was only unsealed in 2019, his freedom has been restricted for a dozen years.

Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 and was granted political asylum after courts in England ruled he should be extradited to Sweden as part of a rape investigation in the Scandinavian country.

He was arrested by British police after Ecuador’s government withdrew his asylum status in 2019 and then jailed for skipping bail when he first took shelter inside the embassy.

Although Sweden eventually dropped its sex crimes investigation because so much time had elapsed, Assange has remained in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison while the extradition battle with the U.S. continues.

His wife said his mental and physical health have deteriorated behind bars.

“He’s fighting to survive and that’s a daily battle,” she said.

A judge in London initially blocked Assange’s transfer to the U.S. in 2021 on the grounds he was likely to kill himself if held in harsh American prison conditions.

But subsequent courts cleared the way for the move after U.S. authorities provided assurances he wouldn’t experience the severe treatment that his lawyers said would put his physical and mental health at risk.

The British government authorized Assange's extradition in 2022.

Assange's lawyers raised nine grounds for appeal at a hearing in February, including the allegation that his prosecution is political.

The court accepted three of his arguments, issuing a provisional ruling in March that said Assange could take his case to the Court of Appeal unless the U.S. guaranteed he would not face the death penalty if extradited and would have the same free speech protections as a U.S. citizen.

The U.S. provided those reassurances three weeks later, though his supporters are skeptical.

Stella Assange said the “so-called assurances” were made up of “weasel words.”

WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said the judges had asked if Assange could rely on First Amendment protections.

“It should be an easy yes or no question,” Hrafnsson said. “The answer was, ‘He can seek to rely on First Amendment protections.’ That is a ‘no.’ So the only rational decision on Monday is for the judges to come out and say, ‘This is not good enough.’ Anything else is a judicial scandal.”

If Assange prevails, it would set the stage for an appeal process likely to further drag out the case.

If an appeal is rejected, his legal team plans to ask the European Court of Human Rights to intervene. But his supporters fear Assange could possibly be transferred before the court in Strasbourg, France, could halt his removal.

“Julian is just one decision away from being extradited,” his wife said.

Assange, who hopes to be in court Monday, has been encouraged by the work others have done in the political fight to free him, his wife said.

If he loses in court, he still may have another shot at freedom.

President Joe Biden said last month that he was considering a request from Australia to drop the case and let Assange return to his home country.

Officials have no other details but Stella Assange said it was “a good sign” and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the comment was encouraging.

FILE - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange being taken from court, where he appeared on charges of jumping British bail seven years ago, in London, Wednesday May 1, 2019. Assange faces what could be his final court hearing in England over whether he should be extradited to the United States to face spying charges. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)