My mom grew up on California Boulevard across the street from Cook County Jail. She was one of the first Latinas to run marathons in Chicago. Some of my first memories are of my dad driving us to my mom’s early-morning races, posting up at finish lines, and cheering her across them. Growing up, our living room was filled with her plants and trophies.
Running is my mom’s love language. The winter I was struggling to come out and depressed, she woke me up every morning while it was still dark to run from Pilsen to the frozen lakefront. Those silent runs and sunrises saved my life.
When I did come out, she registered our family for the PRIDE 5K and got us matching rainbow socks. I’ve translated her coaching like “no matter what, don’t stop” or “you just try and be a little better each day” into life values.
For me, running isn’t just personal, it’s political. Running is resistance: running off plantations, running across militarized borders, running from ICE or CPD.
One of my favorite thinkers is the Black radical, George Jackson. If you dig, you’ll find several references to running in Jackson’s writing. My favorite is: “There just wasn’t any possibility of a policeman beating me in a footrace… the pig is mainly working for money, bear in mind. I am running for my life.” In this passage, running is a figurative refusal of the system, and means to affirm life, dignity and worth.
Since October 2023, the world has witnessed Israel’s live-streamed settler-colonial genocide eradicating Palestinian lives and disregarding their dignity and worth. Chicago is one-third Latino and the Chicago area is home to the largest Palestinian American population in the country. We share more than a city; we share histories of resisting colonialism and surviving genocide.
In January 2024, I co-founded Latinxs for Palestine with my friend Haneen Shriam to foster cross-cultural solidarity between the city’s Latinos and Palestinians, advocate for Palestinian resistance, educate about Israel’s settler colonialism, and fundraise for Palestinian-led organizations in Chicago and Palestine.
That spring, I pitched the idea to Haneen for a Latinxs for Palestine run club that would run through a different Latino neighborhood every week, wearing our keffiyehs and pro-Palestine gear, making support visible and embodying our political will for a Free Palestine.
For four months, our run club Las Sandias met every Tuesday. We’d run our Brown butts off and sell t-shirts and homemade paletas to raise funds benefiting Gaza Sunbirds and the Palestine Children Relief Fund’s (PCRF) Team Palestine.
For our first run alone, over 100 people came out to Harrison Park on Tuesday, July 2. That day, I couldn’t help but think how this was the same park where my mom would meet with her run club decades ago as one of the first women to run with Los Venados Running Club.
Los Venados are still running, led by co-owner of Monochrome Brewery, Enrique Rivera, who’s also keeping running generationally: his father Pablo founded Los Venados and ran with my mom. But now Venados aren’t the only Mexican American-led run club, there’s many more: Pilsen’s Las Tortugas Run Club, Viento Little Village Runners Club, McKinley Park Mustangs, Midway Mile Chasers, Chingonas Run Chicago, Los Guapos, etc.
Through Las Sandias, I had the pleasure of running with these run clubs and the Chicago Muslim Runners Club, all of which are full of people with fast feet and big hearts. I don’t know if there’s something in our cultural DNA responsible for so many South Side Latino run clubs in the city but it gives new meaning to social movement to me.
I can’t recommend enough that people link up with Las Sandias and these other run clubs. At a time when our racist repressive government has ICE’s Nazis raiding our communities, running is a way to make our Brownness visible and reclaim our streets.