Jesús “Chuy” García had a good excuse for waving a broom onstage at his election-night party like he was a zealous White Sox fan celebrating a series sweep. It was meant to symbolize a sweep of the electoral kind. The mustachioed congressional candidate had easily won his primary, and his slate of young Latino candidates from the southwest side—Alma Anaya, Beatriz Frausto-Sandoval, and Aaron Ortiz (plus Cook County assessor candidate Fritz Kaegi)—all stood victorious on Tuesday.
Who would have thunk it?
You could make a convincing case that Anaya—who worked for García before running for the county commissioner seat he was vacating—was an even more unlikely candidate than Ortiz. She’s a 28-year-old native of Guadalajara who immigrated to Pilsen from Mexico with her family at age six. During her high school years, she and her mother and sisters fled her father because of what she describes as a “domestic violence situation” that left them without a home for an extended period of time. Life as both an undocumented immigrant and a homeless teen left her feeling incredibly disenfranchised.
Frausto-Sandoval’s origin story has some similarities to Anaya’s. Her family was also from Guadalajara before moving to Chicago in the 1970s. Her career choice as an immigration lawyer was in part inspired by her father, a steelworker and union steward she described as suffering a lot of harassment and discrimination from his bosses and the police. “Unity between immigrants and African-American and white workers was important to him—that basically all working-class people needed to unite and organize for their rights,” she says.
“A lot of people in our community now understand that it is possible to have progressive leadership in their communities. But the only way to actually accomplish any progressive movements here in the southwest side is that we need to work together. I think this is just the beginning.”
