Juliet de Jesus Alejandre

Stephanie Sanchez

Mr. O’bra

Topics in Leadership

6/10/13

Interview of Juliet de Jesus Alejandre

Juliet de Jesus Alejandre is a community organizer at Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA) and is very passionate about her work. She craves learning new things about her Hispanic culture and has a big heart towards helping others. Juliet is a mother of three and has pure Latino blood running through her veins. Her father is Puerto Rican and her mother is Ecuadorian, and now married, her children are also Mexican. Juliet loves to read and write, and has a dream of writing her own book telling her story of the rise and fall of being a young Latina in Chicago, struggling with family, school and trying to juggle everything in between.

A community organizer is a person who primarily creates programs and community projects for young adults and teens. Juliet always had a heart for helping her community, but she really looked forward to working with young people. She considered being a teacher, but thought that being a teacher wasn’t quite the right fit for her personality. She agrees that teaching is a beautiful profession, but would much rather work as a community organizer. At LSNA, there are different routes to take to try and get involved. Adults who grew up in the neighborhood got involved when they were younger and didn’t really need any school preparation because their life prepared them for what they’re doing. There is also people who study to become a community organizer, such as studying sociology or cultural anthropology. Juliet studied sociology and Latin American history at UIC. Before signing up for her class, she never knew there was a class called “Latin American history” because she was never taught her own history in high school, so going to this class was a therapy for her.

Juliet was born in Chicago, but when she was a child, her mother had sent her to to Ecuador to live with her grandparents for three years. The reason why she had to move was because her father was involved in gangs and he got arrested, so it was really hard on her teenage mother to raise a child by herself. Since she needed the extra help, her mother sent her to live in Ecuador. At some point while Juliet was living in Ecuador, her mother stayed in Chicago to stay with Juliet’s father and got pregnant again. Juliet soon after had an additional member to their small family, a baby boy. Juliet’s mother joined Juliet in Ecuador and had her son, Juliet’s brother. Three years later, Juliet, her mother, and brother moved back to Chicago. Later in life, Juliet’s father’s sisters were really addicted to drugs, so all her kids got taken away. Juliet’s parents adopted two of her seven kids. Also, Juliet’s father’s other sister had passed away due to a gunshot wound and her five kids went to live with Juliet and her family. At different points, there were nine people living in one household. Everything she’s been through so far, that still wasn’t the biggest obstacle in her life.

One of the biggest obstacles Juliet faced growing up was watching the adults in her life hurting and struggling with addictions, most of them were in prison, or never around. She began to ask herself, “What’s wrong with me?” because it almost felt like no one around her could get it together. Juliet feels like this is not only an obstacle that her family went through, but also other families. “It’s not our people’s fault for how they act,” Juliet explains, “something is wrong with the way our people are being treated within the system.” During the interview, Juliet said, “There are injustices in our hometown. A lot of our families came to the U.S looking for jobs that don’t really exist. They come to the U.S to discrimination, bad jobs, bad schools, disrespect everywhere, and they soon start turning to gangs to feel powerful. By looking at a powerful system, you’re told to be somebody and you don’t have normal means to be powerful.” Juliet was introduced to these injustices at a young age, and she’s been trying to help our community heal from the negative effects the system can have on us.

As a child, Juliet saw gang violence everywhere. All the men in her family were in gangs in the area that she lived in and controlled it. As a child, she was protected at all times since her uncles, cousins, and the fathers were mainly the ones outside. At a young age, Juliet was able to identify the good and bad within the neighborhood and she grew older with the mentality that she can try and help make it better. In high school, Juliet met a lot more people and her experience was very fun and diverse. She was exposed to different cultures and religions that she had never knew existed. During high school, Juliet started to think about how to make our community and all communities better, and she began getting more politically active. A struggle she faced as a student was thinking about college. Juliet went to Lane Tech College Prep and they automatically expected every student to go to college. She let the fear of going to college hold her back. In her family, she was the first one to graduate.  

I asked Juliet what advice would she give about life to a younger individual and her response was, “I think the advice I would give to a young person is to trust yourself and to love yourself. I think a lot of us grew up so hurt that we don’t love ourselves. It’s like we’re traumatized; for example, soldiers coming back from war and how they have post-traumatic stress, and I’ve noticed a lot of people and kids in our neighborhood go through the same thing. These people and children didn’t go to Iraq, but in their everyday lives they have been hurt.They’ve seen too much, whether it was violence outside or in their home, or just an everyday trauma trying to survive, paying bills, and that’s very stressful for a young person... And, so, what I would say to a young person to heal... Get into a process to heal yourself, and love yourself, so you can start making good decisions for yourself. You can work to change things for other wrong people. Also, to be aware. The saddest thing is when they say ‘gangs don’t affect me’ or ‘war doesn’t affect me.’ Just be aware of your connection to the people and rest of the world.”

Juliet de Jesus Alejandre is a beautiful person inside and out, and she also has a huge heart. She still works for LSNA but her family usually takes up most of her time. After everything she has done, she is a perfect candidate for a community hero. While interviewing Juliet, she was very easy to talk to. Juliet feels that there are many injustices in our community that need major correction on and she’s been doing a great job being a part of the movement.