Betty Alzamora believes transforming the world begins in her personal yard. She lives these values on daily basis, making waves combating racism and voter disenfranchisement in her Chicago-space village of 15,000, Forest Park. A program supervisor with Uber utilized sciences, Alzamora, a self-described “citizen advocate,” is obsessed with championing human rights and voting rights.
Her dedication to social justice springs partly from seeing voting rights curtailed in her native Caracas, Venezuela. It was honed all by way of her personal 20-yr journey to American citizenship. In these a long time and since, Alzamora has devoted herself to neighborhood activism that gives voice to ignored and underserved people and communities. She serves on the board of directors of PASO-West Suburban movement undertaking, a group-based mostly social justice group that gives authorized assist to immigrant households dealing with deportation, and co-based Forest Park in the direction of Racism, a group anti-racist group.
“All change occurs at house,” she mentioned. “It expands domestically after which it ignites the world.”
Her work helps encourage and prepare native women to be leaders, from working organizations to working for elective office. typically, she should assist women overcome preconceived notions of typical gender roles. She goals “to current them the boldness that they matter, their tales matter, their opinions matter, they’ve ideas and options that are worth exploring,” she mentioned. “All of us should be dealt with with dignity and respect.”
In Forest Park, Alzamora works with undocumented Latinx households, lots of them single mothers or dealing with home abuse. She focuses on educating individuals with reference to the significance of illustration, whether or not which means being counted by the Census or registering to vote and casting a ballot. In her view, political participation is simply not one-dimension-matches-all: “We meet of us the place they’re,” she mentioned. “Not all people goes to take to the streets.”
She loves that group outreach permits her to get to know her neighbors one-on-one whereas promoting the notion of equality all by way of the place. To her, #EqualEverywhere means “giving of us the platform to permit their voices to be heard,” she mentioned. “It’s about giving them the platform to be seen. So many people who discover themselves disenfranchised and by no means represented, notably women and people who discover themselves exploring their gender, they’re unheard and unseen at so many ranges.”
Alzamora is hopeful with reference to the rising political engagement, amongst households, women, and youthful these that she has noticed in her group and past. sustaining our participative democracy is important, she mentioned. The youthful women she encounters are “ferociously sensible . . . Gen Z, they’re superb. They’re going to protect us all on our toes.”
Featured photograph: Paul Goyette