On a hot summer day in Chicago in 2022, Jessie Fuentes — a child of Humboldt Park, an educator, a country music fan, and a young queer Latina — was inspired to represent her historically-Puerto Rican ward on the Chicago City Council. Nine months later, the first-time candidate, just 31 years old, strode into City Hall with 55% of her neighborhood’s vote.
“I don’t want to govern on behalf of people,” she said at the time. “I want to govern with people.”
The longtime teacher and community organizer is the ward’s youngest-ever leader and the first gay Latina to serve in the role.
Fuentes jumped into LGBTQ Nation’s Hot Seat from her office in the 26th, where the speed of her delivery was rivaled only by the passion in her answers.
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LGBTQ NATION: Who or what inspired you to run for Alderperson of the 26th Ward?
JESSIE FUENTES: What inspired me was being able to be the legislator that I wanted us to have. Someone who believes in restorative justice, young people, housing for all, really making sure that we were passing policy that allowed basic human rights to be at the center of the campaign. When that’s lacking in areas in which you want it, you just shoot to be the legislator you dream of.
When did you start dreaming about being a legislator?
So, I actually didn’t start dreaming about it until last summer. You know, my entire life, I never thought I wanted to be an elected official. I spent ten years in education. I love working with young people and really improving folks’ lives on a very personal and individual basis. But I looked up in July and just felt a different type of calling. So I ran for office.
At 15, you were expelled from school after you got into a fight. What was that about?
Absolutely, it’s a story I tell often. Look, I’m a daughter of two parents that suffered from substance abuse, one that spent a good chunk of my life in prison. I struggled with socially and emotionally regulating. I had a peer who poked fun at my mother’s drug addiction by calling her a crackhead, and because of my inability to really, you know, grapple with that statement in a way that was appropriate, I got into a physical altercation. And back then, Chicago public schools had zero-tolerance policies, and I was expelled at my first incident.
Is that something you want to see done away with?
Absolutely. It’s exactly why I became an educator, because of that experience, right? I think young people walk in with all sorts of lived experience, trauma, and generational trauma, in which they need a type of mentorship and wraparound services to overcome. I don’t think that one moment should define a young person’s life. I was super lucky to have great people in my life that allowed my life to go on the path that allowed me to be in elected office.
There’s so many young people like me where one suspension quite literally derails any ability for them to be successful.
You’ve said things turned around for you when you were enrolled in an alternative school. What was your new high school like compared with your old high school?
This was Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School, a small alternative school on Division Street. One, it was the physical set-up of the school. You walked in, there was no metal detectors, no off-duty officers and security guards invading your privacy upon entry when you walked into the institution. It truly felt like an academic setting in which you are free to learn, engaging in a process of liberation.
There’s also this very intimate structure on how young people were on caseloads with counselors and mentors, and their healing-centered engagement work that helped me confront some of the trauma that got me into that physical altercation in the first place, right? And really engaging in a process of healing is what made the difference.
And then I was also politicized in that same space, in a culturally congruent and competent curriculum: learning about my history as a Puerto Rican, learning about colonialism is what turned me into an activist.
So how do those lessons get applied to other schools that are basically like prisons?
I think that we have to look at our school systems and find all of the systemic ways to undo that school-to-prison pipeline. There’s some schools with police stations in them. Young people quite literally can go from classrooms to handcuffs. I think that we have to undo those systems so that young people can finally see the institutions in which they have to show up to five days a week as a space of liberation and freedom.
But in order to do that, not only do we have to change the physical makeup of our schools and take police out of them, we also have to take a look at our curriculum and find ways to engage young people where they’re at. Young people want to show up when they’re learning who they are and where they come from, because it is only then that they can imagine a life of where they want to be.
You shared that both your parents suffered with drug addiction. Cannabis is legal in Chicago. Where do you stand on the legalization of other drugs like magic mushrooms and ayahuasca?
I was a proponent of the legalization of cannabis. I think that we have to stop criminalizing folks for social engagement of those natural drugs. We have a culture in which we can drink, and we have seen that alcoholism has caused serious health concerns, but more importantly, has led to fatal incidents and people are driving under the influence. If we are going to legalize, there are ways to do so responsibly and advocate for them responsibly.
You’re a big supporter of small businesses and their role in maintaining a vibrant local economy. If you were to open a small business, what would it be and why?
Oh, you know, I love shoes. I love shoes and I love clothes, and let me tell you why. I think that shoes and clothes are a form of expression, right? And to be able to have a small business that really takes sneakers, for example, and creates memories and historical symbolisms with shoes that young people and multiple generations can wear — I imagine having like a nice cool sneaker tech store, that super small boutique-style that really speaks to the community in which I’m serving.
You’ve said, “I don’t want to govern on behalf of people. I want to govern with people.” What’s the status quo that you’re rejecting when you say that?
There have been elected officials that come in and they’re passing legislation or they’re bringing resources which they believe that is what’s best. There’s so much that I’ve learned about my constituency, on my listening tours, through my ward nights, about things that they need that I hadn’t even considered while running for office. We’re building a table that really allows community to bring their voices, and every decision I make I’m looking for that feedback. I’m not making decisions in the absence of that.
Some might say in a representative democracy, it’s exactly the role of elected officials to be educated and informed about issues so their constituents don’t have to be. Do you agree with that?
I think that we have a moral obligation to take in all of the information that maybe our constituents don’t have the time or capacity for, but there’s also that same obligation for us to share it in a way that’s digestible for our constituents to understand and participate.
You have Puerto Rican and Cuban roots and you’re a big country music fan.
JF: (laughing) Yes!
Who turned you on to it?
It’s a cute story. My wife and I, we met in undergrad. And we dated for about a year and a half, but I was in my early 20s, and I don’t think anyone knows how to act right in their early 20s. And we didn’t last. We separated. And we spent about six and a half years apart before we reconnected, and when we connected we’re like, “Look, if we could travel together then we could be together.” And we went to Nashville, and I think that that’s where we fell in love again, in spaces with beautiful, live country music. I’m also a spoken word artist and a poet. It’s how I spent a lot of my youth in my early 20s, and there’s something beautiful about the type of lyrics that we hear in country music.
Do you have a favorite country music lyric?
There’s this song by Luke Combs called Better with You. And it says, “Your lipstick in my pocket, on our way downtown. My life is always better with you.” It’s one of mine and my wife’s favorite songs.
Oh, that’s pretty. You and your wife bought a two-unit investment property in the 26th Ward that you rent out. Does that make you complicit in gentrifying the neighborhood?
No. What we do is make sure that we can provide family units at an affordable rate. We pride ourselves in being able to rent to family and friends to have apartments that they wouldn’t be able to otherwise afford in this ward. You know, the average one-bedroom here is about $1,800, and we have three-unit apartments that we are renting for well underneath that.
How many tattoos do you have?
(laughing) That’s a great question. I think I’m at like 12 now, and I don’t plan on stopping.
Can you pick one and tell us how it represents you?
Absolutely. So I have a tree, a family tree on my right arm that has a poem underneath it, and it says, “Families are like branches on a tree that grow their separate ways, but remain true to their roots.” You know, I come, obviously, from a dysfunctional family. I come from a family that has suffered quite a bit, right? My mother is Puerto Rican. My father’s family migrated from Cuba. He was a Marielito. And I am one of six siblings, set in the center. I tell folks all the time, I don’t have a lot of friends, but I have siblings that I actually love and care about. I also have 14 nieces and nephews, and so that family tree really is representative of all the reasons why I do what I do.
And when I think about the policies that I’ve passed on, I think about the things that I do in elected office, I think about my 14 nieces and nephews and the world that I want them to live in. And so the tree is always just a great reminder of how to keep moving and how to keep pushing forward.
Do you and your wife want kids?
Yes, we do. Actually, my wife went through IVF last year so we have embryos in a cryobank, and we are well prepared to have a family. We just want to make sure that I can get some time in elected office and really get my bearings oiled before we have a young infant around.
You’ve got some guns on you.
(laughs) I do. I work out.
What’s your routine?
I started working out in my early 20s. I was diagnosed with type one diabetes at the age of 21. I was dependent on insulin for about four years, and, you know, insulin is a medicine that definitely has side effects, so I wanted to find a way to take care of myself that didn’t depend on insulin. I try my best to eat well and work out every morning. Sometimes I get to the gym at 5:30, sometimes 6:00. I get a good hour, hour and a half workout in and it’s how I keep myself physically well and mentally sane.
I have some either/or questions. Deep dish pizza or Chicago-style dog?
Oh, deep dish pizza.
J.Lo or Bad Bunny?
Bunny.
Jazz or blues?
Jazz.
Art Institute of Chicago or the Field Museum?
Art Institute.
Willis Tower or John Hancock Tower?
John Hancock.
Poetry or policy.
Oh. Poetry.
What’s the best thing about living in the 26th ward?
Oh, it’s the ability to feel right at home. You know, there’s no other place I love more than Puerto Rico, and Humboldt Park just makes me feel a bit closer.
And what’s the best thing about your job as an alderperson?
Being able to be someone that constituents can see themselves in, and specifically young people. When I ran, it was really important for me, to young people in my neighborhood, to see a world of possibilities in a young person that had a troubled upbringing, was kicked out of school, has a juvenile record, has a lot of tattoos. Someone will look at me and be like, there’s no way they can be in elected office — and there’s a lot of young people that look like me — but they can. It was important for me to represent a particular community for LGBTQ+ young people, to find comfort in their identity, and to know they can do very important things in our city.
