Carlos Cortez (August 13, 1923 – January 19, 2005) was a poet, graphic artist, photographer, muralist and political activist, active for six decades in the Industrial Workers of the World. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1923, the son of a Mexican Wobbly union organizer father and a German socialist pacifist mother, Cortez spent 18 months in a US prison as a conscientious objector during the World War II, refusing to "shoot at fellow draftees."