Juliet De Jesus Alejandre one of 11 Chicagoans awarded $50,000 each from Field Foundation
In a time when protests for social inequities are everywhere, some Chicagoans are protesting through their daily passions.
The awards are part of Field’s ongoing investment in racial justice visionaries and organizations addressing systemic issues in Chicago’s divested communities. The MacArthur Foundation committed $2.1 million to support the awards to recognize and support diverse leaders from communities affected by Chicago’s history of structural racism, discrimination, and disinvestment.
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De Jesus Alejandre has been working for LSNA since 2006, mostly as a youth organizer. (She took the helm of LSNA on May 1 from Nancy Aardema, who held the position for the last 32 years.) De Jesus Alejandre plans on using her monies toward buying a home and her children’s tuition, the remaining money will go toward filling any fundraising gaps and keep people on the payroll to continue to support community families.
“I think of organizing as healing," she said. “My work with young people has been about helping them name the times that they’re in, the structures and the systems that have shaped the choices that their families have had to make to survive. If you don’t have an awareness of systems and structures, it can really feel like a character flaw, what your family is going through – this constant survival mode that a lot of our families are in. But for me, because I learned it, I made it my passion for young people to be able to experience that and to be able to experience what it means to feel smart, to feel powerful, worthy and useful in their community and hold powers accountable – that’s incredibly healing.