I am committed to reimagining life-affirming and liberating systems while supporting communities entrapped in the current extractive system. I imagine a world free of death-making institutions, systems of white supremacist racial capitalism, and extractivism. I have deep roots and connections within Chicago movement spaces where we collectively envision and practice non-capitalist life worlds.
I have been a community organizer for over 20 years in racial justice, immigrant justice, reproductive justice, youth justice, and abolition movements. My background in organizing and my lived experience as a U.S.-born daughter of Mexican immigrants who settled in Chicago have greatly influenced my dedication to a life of scholar activism. I have co-founded several direct action organizations, including Freedom To Thrive Oak Park, the Latin@ Youth Action League, and the Revolutionary Youth Action League (ROYAL), a youth-led mutual aid organization I co-founded with my daughters.
My role in movements is to be fluid, emergent, and adaptable as a scholar-activist in Urban Planning and Policy. I have dedicated my life to reimagining new worlds internally, interpersonally, and collectively.
How neighbors build systems of support the state does not, and what allows those systems to last.
Who absorbs the labor of care during a crisis, and how race, gender, and class decide that.
Alternatives to punitive systems, and the political imagination it takes to build them.
Urban governance, displacement, and how cities respond when people arrive with nothing.
Non-capitalist life worlds, solidarity economy, and organizing practice that adapts as conditions change.
For workshops, trainings, speaking, research collaboration, or consulting, tell me about your group and what you are trying to build. I read everything that comes in.