19 minute read
JENNYFER MESA
She founded Latinos en Spokane and is a passionate advocate for the rights of immigrants MESA HELPED BUILD THE COMMUNITY SHE NEEDED, ASSISTS OTHERS IN NEED
LIBBY KAMROWSKI/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
Jennyfer Mesa, a 2020 Women of the Year selection, is seen in Spokane on Sept. 15. Mesa, who originally emigrated to the United States from Colombia, is an immigration activist who co-founded the grassroots organization Latinos en Spokane in 2017.
By Adam Shanks THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
When much of the town of Malden burned to the ground on Labor Day, it didn’t take long for Latinos en Spokane to spring into action.
The grassroots organization launched an online fundraiser for Alfredo Castillo, who was at work on a local egg farm when the fire sparked. He was able to escape Malden along with his wife and two children, but they lost their home and a pet to the blaze.
The fundraiser is exactly the sort of work Latinos en Spokane was founded in 2017 to accomplish, supporting Latinos in and around Spokane and establishing a sense of community.
Jennyfer Mesa, one of its three co-founders, felt the absence of that connection and organization when she arrived in Spokane nearly a decade ago. So she decided to do something about it.
“Spokane is unique in that there has never been a space for immigrants, for Latinos, for different cultures,” Mesa said.
Until now.
Back in 2018, thanks to Mesa and other volunteers, travelers at the Greyhound bus station in Spokane, where Border Patrol would routinely search until the company prohibited agents from its grounds earlier this year, were handed “Know Your Rights!” cards produced by the American Civil Liberties Union.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, Latinos received assurances, translated into Spanish, that they would not have to prove their immigration status or provide a Social Security card in order to safely be served by a food bank.
Others learned how to apply for citizenship, an exhausting and notoriously complex process that can cost thousands of dollars and take years to complete.
“We’ve created a trusted space and people ask us questions all the time,” Mesa said.
Tamber Price nominated Mesa as one of The Spokesman-Review’s Women of the Year because she’s offered a space “that’s really needed” in Spokane, she said. After meeting her at a local dance studio, Price got her first job babysitting one of Mesa’s two children.
“She is like one of my biggest role models, she’s like that for so many people,” Price said. “She puts everyone else before herself, to a point where it’s like she’s so passionate about advocating for everybody.”
It’s no surprise that Mesa would dedicate herself to helping others navigate the immigration system and life as a Latina in Spokane – she knows firsthand how “crazy-making” it can be.
Jennyfer Mesa Talking about the history of immigrants in Washington state
Born in Colombia, Mesa migrated as a girl to the United States with her parents in 1986 or 1987 – she forgets the exact year. Like many other Colombians fleeing the drug-fueled violence and unrest of Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel, Mesa’s family landed in Miami.
Her family was unable to apply for asylum despite having come to the United States to escape chaos in Colombia that several of her family members did not survive.
After their arrival in the United States, Mesa’s father returned to Colombia and she was raised by a single mother. She eventually dropped out of high school to work and help support the family. Mesa and her older brother were translators for things like apartment leases and car purchases for her mother, who could mostly get by in Miami with only Spanish and did not learn English until Mesa was in her early 20s.
But while her family laid down roots during those formative years in Miami, Mesa’s status was never permanent.
Although they arrived in the United States on tourist visas, Mesa’s documents had been lost or stolen with some of the family’s luggage en route to the United States. That meant the rest of her family could apply for residency, but she could not prove she made legal entry into the country.
“That affected the rest of my life,” Mesa said.
Years later, her father, by then living in Mexico, told her to come attend college there.
“I was naive, I didn’t know the risk of what would happen if I left. I was 17 at the time and I thought I could go and come back,” Mesa said.
But she couldn’t.
So Mesa spent more than a decade in Mexico as her mother, now a U.S. citizen, worked to help her daughter gain access back into the United States. Mesa applied for visas over and over, if only for a temporary visit to see her mother, but was always denied.
“We were just constantly rejected, and it was heartbreaking,” Mesa said.
In Mexico, Mesa put her skills to work, leveraging her bilingual abilities to enter the banking industry. She parlayed that experience into a career as a commodity broker.
Eventually, Mesa and her son were finally able to obtain a visa at the U.S. consulate in Bogota, Colombia. After years of frustration and legal wrangling, Mesa said she was never asked for “one single thing” to prove her identification by the officer who handled their case. To that point, her family had invested $27,000 in the effort over the years.
“My case, even with its complexities, I am a lot more privileged than a lot of people,” Mesa said.
Mesa moved to Spokane in 2011 with her then-husband, who landed a job in the area.
Because her professional experience in Mexico counted for little in the United States, Mesa began working at a call center and got to work on her GED, which she received in 2012. From there, she went to Spokane Falls Community College and transferred to Eastern Washington University, where she studied urban planning.
Her research and career, focused on neighborhood and transportation planning, has taken a number of turns.
Most recently, she worked as a senior planner with the Kalispel Tribe of Indians until she was furloughed due to COVID-19.
Mesa’s culture bleeds into her professional work in development and planning, a field sparse with Latinos, she said. As emphasis on public transportation and denser housing grows, Mesa said Latinos have already been living that way for generations.
“We’re not used to living in sprawled environments,” Mesa said.
Many in the planning field view it as apolitical and neutral, but that’s not the case, she added.
“In reality, if we want to be advocate for communities,” Mesa said, “it also includes equity.”
As Mesa studied the history of Washington, she got angry. Immigrants have been brought into Washington communities for decades and allowed to work, she said, but “there’s no representation, at the city level, or county level.” Even, she added, as they drive economic growth.
“People are living in the shadows and working in the shadows, and are not bring considered,” Mesa said.
But if people are living and working in the shadows, Mesa’s life as an activist and work as a planner has been to shine a light on them.
At Latinos en Spokane’s annual workshop to help students apply for scholarships, Mesa asks how many have had a Latino teacher. Or doctor. Or political representative.
“Here in Washington, and especially in Spokane, those kids have never been represented. They don’t see themselves in leadership roles,” Mesa said.
Latinos en Spokane could help change that. It began as an online community through the texting app WhatsApp with about 70 friends and family members, and “it just blew up from that,” Mesa said.
As much effort as she and her fellow volunteers pour into Latinos en Spokane, Mesa said structural change will come only with real investment in organizations and efforts like those undertaken by Latinos en Spokane,
“We’re starting to get there, but we’re a group of volunteers,” Mesa said. “We all have day jobs.”
Latinos, especially after the election of President Donald Trump, are being asked to be “many things at once,” she added.
“It’s hard for people to do their careers and also have to respond to need,” Mesa said.
For now, Mesa will continue to balance life as an activist and professional in Spokane, where she now feels at home with 6-year-old daughter Bianca and 17-yearold son Sebastian.
“Here, I was able to get scholarships, become more stable, put my son in school and have this quiet environment,” Mesa said.
The alternative, Miami, would have presented a different challenge.
“I would have been stuck in traffic,” Mesa joked.
THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW (OR FORGOT) ABOUT HOW WOMEN GOT THE VOTE
By Bonnie Berkowitz THE WASHINGTON POST
The origin of “suffrage” is not suffering, although plenty of people suffered in the pursuit of suffrage. It derives from the Latin suffragium, meaning a vote or a right to vote. It can also mean a prayer of intercession, certainly an apt description given the many groups of people who have prayed for the right to vote.
Here are some other things you may not have known about how women got the right to vote: • A slight in London
sparked a U.S. move
ment: The first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848, shaped the movement for decades. The event was the brainchild of abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who were furious after being barred from an 1840 anti-slavery convention in London because of their gender. • Abolitionists and
suffragists were inter
twined: The women’s rights movement sprang from the abolitionist movement before the Civil War, but the relationship was often uneasy. Some felt women should be able to vote before Black men, or vice versa. Others insisted everyone get the vote simultaneously. And some wanted to bar African Americans from the women’s movement, fearing their involvement would turn Southern legislators against the cause.
“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back. … And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.” • Lonely guys in Wy
oming deserved a tip
of the hat: Wyoming was the first territory or state to act after the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention to pass a women’s suffrage law, on Dec. 10, 1869. Some men truly wanted voting access for their wives and moms, but many legislators had other motivations, including the hope that the new right would attract more single women to that frontier, where men outnumbered women 6 to 1. • Julia Ward Howe’s
eyes saw the glory, but
not the vote: Author and abolitionist Julia Ward Howe not only founded several major women’s organizations and suffrage groups, but during the Civil War, she also wrote the lyrics that became the activist anthem “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” • Susan B. Antho
ny was arrested for
voting: At a time when women were mocked for speaking in public, Susan B. Anthony was a leading voice in the fight for equality in labor practices and pay. After voting in Rochester, N.Y., in 1872, she was arrested, convicted of voting illegally and fined, and the publicity attracted many people to her cause. She died in 1906 and thus did not live long enough to cast a legal vote.
“All that we require of a voter is that he shall be forked, wear pantaloons instead of petticoats, and bear a more or less humorous resemblance to the reported image of God. He need not know anything whatever. ... We brag of our universal, unrestricted suffrage; but we are shams after all, for we restrict when we come to the women.” • The Supreme Court
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Catherine Flanagan, left, and Gertrude Crocker are arrested in August 1917 as they protest outside the White House. Crocker holds a banner that reads, “How Long Must Women Wait For Liberty?” Women demonstrated at the White House for months, pressuring President Woodrow Wilson to support a 19th Amendment. ruled against letting
women vote: Women’s activist Virginia Louise Minor tried to register to vote in St. Louis in 1872 and was rejected. She and her husband sued, and the case rose to the Supreme Court. The nine male justices declined to interpret the 14th Amendment’s “all persons” clause to include women, forcing suffragists to refocus on the Constitution. • Men feared “petticoat rule”: According to a 1900s anti-suffrage pamphlet aimed at women, they shouldn’t get the vote because: 90% “do not want it, or do not care;” they would be competing with men instead of cooperating; “more voting women than voting men will place the Government under petticoat rule;” and “it is unwise to risk the good we already have for the evil which may occur.” • Ida B. Wells orga
nized women of color:
Death threats drove journalist Ida B. Wells from Memphis after she wrote a 1892 lynching exposé. She moved to Chicago, where she urged women of color to get involved in politics, and she led a group at the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C. Told by organizers to go to the back or leave, she emerged from the crowd halfway through the march and joined the Illinois delegation at the front. • “Silent Sentinels”
picketed the White House for 18 months:
Led by Alice Paul, who had helped organize the Washington march, more than 1,000 women in January 1917 began daily demonstrations at the White House gates, despite verbal and physical attacks from spectators. Paul was arrested, jailed and charged with obstructing traffic, and her hunger strike galvanized public support for women’s suffrage. “I am not one of those who believe – broadly speaking – that women are better than men,” she said. “We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislatures, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then, we must remember that we have not had the chance.” • A pandemic helped the cause: The 1918 Spanish flu spread rapidly among soldiers in the last stages of World War I, creating a sudden shortage of men. As women surged into the U.S. workforce, they blew apart the arguments that they were delicate and intellectually inferior. • Finally, women got the vote: On Aug. 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment, passed by Congress the previous June, was ratified by Tennessee, the last state needed to reach the threshold for becoming part of the Constitution. It was certified Aug. 26, and women had the right to vote.
Thanks for making a difference in our community
Bank of America recognizes the 2020 Women of the Year honorees. Community leaders like you are a vital resource and inspiration to us all. Thanks to you, progress is being made and our community is becoming a better place to live and work. Visit us at bankofamerica.com/local.
Whitworth economics professor is also a board member for a number of local organizations VANGE OCASIO HOCHHEIMER’S GOAL IS AN ‘ECONOMY THAT WORKS FOR EVERYONE’
DAN PELLE/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
Vange Ocasio Hochheimer, an economics professor at Whitworth University, owns her own economic analytics firm and has come a long way since growing up in Puerto Rico and New York City as one of eight in a household led by a single mother. She is focusing on policy and how economics can help alleviate inequities in society.
By Arielle Dreher THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
You could say that Vange Ocasio Hochheimer has hit her stride, but that doesn’t really begin to explain how the Puerto Rican economist came to be a professor, board member for various local organizations and a new business owner in the Inland Northwest.
At first glance, Hochheimer is a tenured economics professor at Whitworth University, and has taught there since 2011. She takes students to Costa Rica and Panama some years for a course, striving to help students gain understanding of poverty, wealth and how economics impacts everyone.
She is a wife and mother of two young boys. The family of four lives in north Spokane, and they have lived in the area for about a decade.
In reality, her involvement in the community runs deep and continues to grow. She opened her own independent firm, Grand Fir Analytics, early in 2020 before the pandemic set in. Hochheimer recently completed one of her first projects, a report on housing as a social determinant of health in Spokane completed for the Spokane Association of Realtors.
“It was a call to action to policymakers to pay attention to this issue because (housing instability) can definitely deepen poverty and deepen homelessness,” she said.
The report details how housing instability can lead to adverse health outcomes, including more poverty and homelessness when economic stability is threatened or destroyed.
Hochheimer’s work grows not only out of her love of economics, but also out of her own lived experience.
She was born in New York City but as a toddler, she and her twin sister moved to Puerto Rico to live with their grandparents. While her grandparents were not educated, Hochheimer remembers their work ethic and their commitment to other people as key to her upbringing. One of her formative memories occurred while living with her grandparents in Toa Baja, about 25 minutes west of San Juan.
It was some sort of promotion ceremony, Hochheimer remembers, maybe from elementary school to middle school. She received no additional recognition or awards for her school performance, and she felt shorted by herself.
“I remember on graduation day not receiving a medal or any kind of recognition and telling myself, ‘I can get recognition; I am smart enough,’ ” she recalled. “I remember thinking, ‘I need
Vange Ocasio Hochheimer Whitworth University economics professor
to work harder.’ I put myself to the test.”
Her hard work paid off, and she reached her goal of achieving a 4.0 grade-point average her next semester. She learned a valuable lesson that day.
“If you put in the work, you will get really good results,” she said, although she acknowledges that’s not a consistent formula. “It doesn’t mean you won’t fail,” she added.
That determination remained a deep part of who Hochheimer is to this day.
“I owe everything I am first to God, then to my grandparents,” she said.
She and her twin sister returned to New York City when they were 12 years old. She recalls hard years, and even a point when their mother who worked constantly (and had eight children; she and her sister were the youngest) could not afford rent anymore, and they were evicted.
Hochheimer believes that growing up in two distinct settings and seeing how economics played a role in her environment led her to later make that her field of study.
“I became acquainted with income inequality and poverty and all of these issues with the economy,” she said. “Sometimes the economy can work better for some than for others.”
Hochheimer said that those disparities she saw early on led her to questions of “Why are some people poor and why are others rich?” and “What aspects of their lives make them poor or rich?”
Hochheimer and her sister worked hard in both school and after school at retail jobs. Eventually, after graduation, Hochheimer went to Binghamton University in upstate New York and her sister returned to Puerto Rico. After receiving her undergraduate degree in pre-law and philosophy, Hochheimer returned to New York City and worked on Wall Street for an investment bank, but eventually decided she wanted something different.
She settled on pursuing economics in the form of first a master’s degree, then a doctoral degree, focusing on economic development, international trade and sustainability.
“I decided that economics was a discipline that gave me a lens to where I can dip in and out of different branches of business while also considering social issues,” she said.
At Colorado State University, where she studied economics, she met her husband, Manny Hochheimer. They spent some time in Colorado, as she finished her dissertation and taught courses in Denver. They wanted to stay in the West, and after having their first son, Noah, and finishing her doctoral degree, Hochheimer applied for the position at Whitworth. They moved their family to Spokane about a decade ago, and added another son, Luca, to their family.
She was tenured a couple of years ago, and serves on multiple community boards, from the YWCA in Spokane to the Catholic Charities Housing Board of Directors in Eastern Washington.
Her love of economics is inclusive, and understanding what keeps certain communities and people from accessing jobs, housing or education is integral to understanding how the economy works for her.
“Everything I do is connected to this perspective of: making the economy work for everyone,” she said.
Her graduate research focused on sustainable development, focusing on development respecting the environment and people it will impact. In a way, her research became her work, and is also reflected in the boards she is a part of.
She sits on the Inland Northwest Land Conservancy board as well as the state Department of Commerce Community Economic Revitalization Board, representing Spokane on a state board that helps allocate funding for development projects.
The question she focuses on asking and answering is, “How can the economy develop successfully while at the same time preserving the well-being and dignity of people and the environment?”
Hochheimer, who has primarily played the role of researcher, is looking to aim that work toward policy implications moving forward. Of course, the Spokane economy post-COVID-19 could look very different.
Before the pandemic, Hochheimer had analyzed available jobs in the state and found that there were labor demands for technological jobs but a shortage of workers to fill those roles. While those problems will persist after the pandemic, she is concerned about the inequities illuminated by the coronavirus.
“I think we need to reassess the impact of the pandemic; it is disproportionately affecting people of color, indigenous populations and the poor,” Hochheimer said.
After the pandemic, “that will deepen, the housing crisis will deepen,” she said, noting that if the eviction moratorium is lifted, homelessness could become a reality for many local families.
“I think the reopening should strike to reach a balance between all the different demographics that were affected and think strategically, because if we neglect certain populations, that could create a host of impacts,” she said.
As for her future? She’s just getting started.
“Policy work is what I will be pursuing very heavily going forward, and seeing how my contributions can help our community thrive,” she said.
