The Pro-Choice Activist Running to Put Public Service Back into Politics

In honor of the Women’s March and their “Power to the Polls” initiative, we're highlighting progressive women and nonbinary candidates on the 2018 ballot. You can read more of their stories here.

Alcaraz is running for Cook County Commissioner in Chicago’s 4th District and is, by all accounts, a grassroots activist who has her own stories of heartache. Many of the causes she’s championed throughout her career, now platforms in her campaign, hit close to home—and that’s exactly why she believes she’s the best candidate to fix them. “My affordable housing activism kicked in because our affordable housing was being threatened. I faced an eviction when we were in high school, my mother struggled after my father was killed,” she explains. “I come from a place where I don't want people to deal with those [issues] anymore. I didn't just say, ‘I'm going to become a politician,’ my life has led me to this point because I believe everyone deserves opportunities.”

Alcaraz has spent the past 25 years championing various human rights causes, from reproductive rights to affordable housing preservation. In that time, she served as the Executive Director of the Chicago Abortion Fund, joined the board of the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health, and was a founding member of Affinity Community Services, a social justice organization advocating for black LGBTQ communities.

Among other issues, Alcaraz’s platform focuses on increasing civic engagement, transparency, and accountability because, according to her, residents of Cook County are sick of ineffective leadership. Alcaraz says folks in her community have asked her to run for office for the past 15 years, but it wasn’t until recently that she really felt compelled to do so. “I don't want to debate and argue anymore on Facebook or in person about the leadership—I want to step up and do something about it,” she says.

Alcaraz has made a name for herself in her community for doing exactly that. Though she’s served on official boards and advisory councils throughout her career, she’s never moved away from on-the-ground activism. As a young woman, when her affordable housing was threatened, Alcaraz mobilized the people in her building to fight eviction attempts. In 2011, when anti-choice billboards were put up in her community, Alcaraz organized rallies against them. She’s even volunteered as an abortion doula to fight abortion stigma and offer support for women undergoing the procedure.

“I am the most qualified of all the candidates running,” Alcaraz says assuredly. Throughout our conversation, she makes clear that public service has been the center of her life—and that won’t change if and when she becomes Cook County Commissioner. Alcaraz believes that too many American politicians have forgotten that their duty as a public servant is to actually serve the public. “There's two types of people that run for office,” she says, “a person that wants to be somebody and a person that wants to do something. Based on my track record and my history, I want to do something.”

While campaigning, Alcaraz noticed something she found rather disheartening: many people in her county don’t even know who their commissioner is. If she wins, she’s set on changing that. “I want to open up the office. I want to have public meetings that go around the district. I want people to be empowered,” she says. “I want people to know about how to run for office. I want people to be able to understand the budget. I want people to be engaged that way.”

One platform topic that Alcaraz feels particularly passionate about is bringing genuine health initiatives to her community. In 2016, Cook County passed a beverage tax law on sweetened drinks. “It was marketed to the Cook County residents as a way to fight obesity,” says Alcaraz. “Then it turned out that that was not true. The administration and leadership admitted that it was just to plug a budget hole.” Though the tax was repealed in December, Alcaraz says that its introduction proved to her that the current leadership wasn’t working for its constituents— and ultimately pushed her to finalize her decision to run for office.

Now, she wants to introduce health initiatives that are actually for the people. In 2012, Alcaraz says she decided to take control of her own health; she went from struggling to jog to completing marathons in hardly two years. “There are health issues in the African American and Latino communities [in Cook County],” she says. “I want to utilize the county's natural resources to have health activities like 5K races or family walks with the kids.”

Alcaraz is running at a time when being a black, female, pro-choice candidate isn’t exactly easy—but she’ll tell you that’s exactly what motivates her. “We're always under attack, not just reproductive rights, not just pay inequity—it's all these things,” she says. “That's why more women should step up and run… People deserve better, and we want better, and we can have better if we have better leaders.”