Penulis: Terese Howard

Yomara Velez is an organizer and daughter of immigrants from Puerto Rico and Venezuela. As a single mother attending the U. of Massachusetts, she organized students on welfare to demand access to higher education and better living conditions. She has organized around housing and environmental justice issues in the South Bronx and founded Sistas on the Rise, a collective of young mothers of color. Their work was grounded in transformative practices based on grassroots leadership and uplifted motherhood as an important part of organizing work. After moving to Atlanta, she worked on immigration and economic justice issues, including ten years with the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Yomara describes the importance of relationships, of belonging to community and the significance of women mentors in her life. She reflects upon the need for political education and the leadership of community members in organizing and shares her own process of creating alternatives to oppressive structures – including hierarchical structures in movement organizations – and her own journey home schooling her children as a strategy to build alternatives in our personal lives that reflect the world we want to live in. Yomara was born in Massachusetts and currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.