By Sara Glesne
Murphy News Service
Police officers tied Alondra Cano’s wrists with plastic wire and escorted her through smoke-filled tunnels to the University of Minnesota’s Northrop Garage where a van waited to bring her to Hennepin County Jail for the night.
Eight years after she participated in that sit-in protesting the Board of Regents’ decision to close the U’s General College, longtime community organizer and immigrants’ rights activist Cano awaits the start of her first term as a Minneapolis City Councilmember for the 9th Ward.
While Cano’s campaign tactics didn’t involve efforts as politically dramatic as her college activism, her values remain rooted in community advocacy. Along with her organizing background, Cano brings something else unique to the City Council: she is the first Mexican-American ever elected to the position.
Though she was born in Cokato, Minn., Cano spent much of her childhood in Chihuahua, Mexico, with her mother and grandmother. At age 10 she returned to Litchfield, Minn., where she worked hard to adjust to an English-speaking classroom. While she grew up, Cano’s parents were both undocumented immigrants. Later, her parents divorced and her father obtained legal status through a second marriage. Eventually Cano helped her mother become a legal resident.
After college, Cano applied her past and personal interest in defending immigrants’ rights to her work with the Minnesota Immigrant Freedom Network. The network is a statewide immigrant-led organization whose mission is “to empower, engage and organize immigrants and their allies.”
Cano said she was hired by the network to humanize representations of immigrants in the media. She worked to convince reporters to remove the term “illegal immigrant” from their stories. She also tried to encourage journalists to write stories about immigrants from a “noncriminalizing angle.”
“It was the most rich experience I could have had in terms of how to work in the field of communications for a social justice cause,” Cano said of her job with the network.
Now, Cano works as a senior communications and public affairs specialist for Minneapolis Public Schools, where she oversees staff and budgeting. Cano said her main goal in the position is to ensure that families and the 34,000 or so students in the district receive relevant information about schools and initiatives in their native languages.
Education ranks high in Cano’s priorities for Minneapolis and her ward. She has a history of promoting increased access and diversity within education. Cano helped spearhead the Minnesota Dream Act, which became Minnesota law in May.
The Dream Act guarantees in-state tuition at public colleges and universities to undocumented immigrant students who have graduated from a Minnesota high school and are actively seeking citizenship or residency, among other requirements.
Cano said she participated in and was arrested for the sit-in during her senior year at the U of M in order to support diversity efforts at the University. In 2005, students of color made up 48 percent of the U’s General College, whereas just 13 percent of students at the university as a whole were nonwhite. The University’s Board of Regents voted to dissolve the General College in 2005.
Lisa Sass Zaragoza, outreach coordinator for the Chicano and Latino studies department at the U of M and former supporter of the General College movement on campus, said she remembers Cano in her role as a student activist during the sit-in. “I think she works from her heart,” Sass Zaragoza said of Cano. “She fights for community initiative.”
The Bid for City Council
Before 9th Ward Councilmember Gary Schiff officially announced his bid for Minneapolis mayor on Jan. 29, Cano assembled a team to explore her odds of being elected to his empty council seat. After kitchen table meetings with trusted political allies, Cano announced her candidacy and bid for the DFL Party endorsement for Minneapolis’ 9th Ward on Jan. 2.
Cano said she found inspiration to run for the City Council spot while working for Council Vice President Robert Lilligren, the first American Indian tribal member to serve on the City Council. “Slowly I got to see firsthand how someone with my background and perspective could be helpful in getting local government and City Hall to be more responsive and reflective of diverse communities and the changing demographics of our city,” she said
One Cano supporter from the 9th Ward said it’s significant that Cano is the first Latina elected to the Minneapolis City Council. “Our district has been waiting for representation that reflects the diversity of our ward,” said Katherine, who asked that her last name not be used. “Our ward is a lot of different communities, not just white, which is what we’ve had for representation for many years.”
Cano emphasized the importance of her experience as a mother in her decision to run for the City Council.
Her three young sons fuel her passion and commitment.
“I can feel so many of those issues so close to me when we’re sitting here at home and I hear live gunshots on the street,” she said. “I worry more about my kids and the kids in the neighborhood.”
Along with addressing residents’ public safety concerns, Cano plans to work on at least one environmental issue affecting children in her ward: asthma. According to a study by the Minnesota Department of Health, Minneapolis has among the state’s highest rates of hospitalization due to asthma.
Two factories in the East Phillips neighborhood produce enough pollution that Cano said they became a common topic of conversation during her door-knocking sessions with ward residents. Cano said starting a conversation with the factories is crucial to resolving the issue. She said working with Hennepin County and the EPA to assure emissions regulations are being followed by the factories could also be an important step.
Environmental issues are far from the only concern on Cano’s mind. She said her priorities for the ward include keeping young families, good jobs and affordable housing in the neighborhood.
“She’s not a one-issue kind of candidate,” Katherine said. “I’m expecting her to sort of hit the ground running on a number of fronts.”
A Close Race
Up until the last vote, Cano faced close competition for the 9th Ward seat from Socialist Alternative candidate Ty Moore. The slim margin between Moore and Cano caused some concern for her team, though Cano said she never allowed her campaign to lose focus because of it.
Nick Espinosa, an organizer with the tenants’ rights organization Occupy Homes, supported Moore’s campaign. Espinosa said that while he’s excited Minneapolis will have its first Latina city councilmember, he prefers Moore’s radical initiatives to hers. Specifically, he criticized Cano’s opposition to Moore’s call for an increase of the state minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Espinosa sees some advantages to Cano’s role as a Mexican-American on the council. “I think it has the potential to make the Latino community feel more empowered and more a part of the city,” he said. But Espinosa also worries that Cano’s identity as a person of color might lead people to overstate the level of diversity in city politics.
Now that the race is over, Cano says she’s just excited to begin her work with the City Council. “There’s been a lot of talk, and now I just want to get in there and get started,” Cano said. On Jan. 6, 2014, Minneapolis will swear in its first Latina city councilmember, along with six other new members.
Alondra Cano
Incoming Minneapolis 9th Ward City Councilmember
Age: 32
Birthplace: Cokato, Minn.
Biggest Political Inspiration: Minnesota Rep. Karen Clark
Major Political Endorsers: Winona LaDuke, Keith Ellison, MN DFL Party, MN AFL-CIO
Major Issues: Immigrants’ rights, public safety, access to education, environmental health
Education: Bachelor of Arts, University of Minnesota, with a concentration in management, Chicano studies, popular education and the politics of identity
Fun fact: While Cano finished her coursework at the U of M in 2005, she didn’t actually graduate until 2010. The reason? She took time before writing her senior thesis to focus on work as a community organizer around immigration issues and to start raising her twin sons Arameni and Itzuri. She and partner Jose Luis Villasenor now have three sons.
Alondra Cano
Photo by Sara Glesne