Creating an inclusive DC
Jackie Reyes meets with everyone, even, she says as she smiles, with groups like 730DC. As the Director of the Mayor’s Office on Latino Affairs (MOLA), she is the face of Muriel Bowser’s administration in the latinx community, and her door is always open, as we can attest. Jackie switches between English and Spanish without blinking, and is equally comfortable with a natural-sounding Spanglish.
We spoke with Jackie about the Latino Community Grants, her professional trajectory and MOLA’s work in general. Her answers have been edited for length and clarity.
730DC: Tell us a bit about the mission of the Mayor’s Office on Latino Affairs.
Jackie Reyes: This office was established in 1976. We are the intermediary between the Mayor, the government agencies, community organizations and the private sector. What does that look like? If a latinx resident needs access to a social service or doesn’t understand how to navigate the system, we help them with that process. The mission of this office is to make sure that the latino community is fully integrated into the wider community in DC.
730DC: How has the latinx community changed over the last decades?
JR: Washington DC is a diverse city, and that diversity has shaped the city. We have so many embassies and consulates — the whole world is represented here — and in some way, that’s how the latinx migration to the city began. In the 1970s and 1980s, the onset of the civil wars in Central America explains, for example, the reason that in DC we have so many people of Salvadoran heritage, like me — I’m the first Salvadorean to work in this office. And it’s interesting that we have latinxs in all eight wards of the city and latinxs are represented among all the social classes and come from every single country in Latin America.
730DC: How did you decide to focus your career on representing and defending the latinx community?
JR: As the daughter of an immigrant and growing up in DC — I’ve lived here for 27 years now — I understand first-hand the needs of the immigrant community and I think this helped prepare me for this work. I don’t mean to say that I’m an expert in the latino community, because that would just be blowing smoke, you know? I started to get involved in local-level politics in 2005, and ever since I started to see the needs of the community more clearly. I began to see that there wasn’t anyone advocating for people when it came to different issues like education, and many of our young people weren’t going to school. These different things made me realize ‘this isn’t right’, but I also realized that you have to bring solutions to the table.
730DC: Can you tell us about some of these solutions from the past couple of years?
JR: One of the programs that we’re proudest of is the $500,000 that Mayor Bowser has allocated for legal services to help DC residents through immigration processes. We are only the third city in the US to do this. Another program is a workforce program for youth, open to all without regard to their immigration status. We also offer healthcare for people without social security numbers, DC Healthcare Alliance. The Mayor has always emphasized the values of DC, which for us means that we value each person, regardless of how they look, their immigration status or who they choose to love.
730DC: Can you tell us a bit more about the grants that MOLA just awarded to local NGOs?
JR: We just awarded $1.5 million in grants to 63 non-profit organizations, covering all the Mayor’s priority issues. We are really proud of this program. It would be impossible to say that one grantee is more important than another, because they’re all equally valuable. I want to emphasize that, even though for me education is a real priority, because if you have an educated community, that community is going to make sure that their kids are going to school. Sometime people ask me, why not give more money to fewer organizations? But this way we cover more ground. We’re experimenting with new organizations that were just created. They start out with $5,000 and that’s how they start to grow.
730DC: How did you get the word out about the grants?
JR: We had a really robust social media campaign. I think we’re one of the departments with the most active tech presence. We’re on social media, we’re in print media, we’re on the radio and TV. And I meet with everyone. On Facebook we reach middle-aged people, on Twitter we reach the millennials. We put all our photos up on Instagram. But we haven’t forgotten about seniors either, since they still read print newspapers in Spanish.
730DC: What suggestions do you have for people who are trying to promote civic engagement?
JR: It’s good to always keep your ear to the ground, because otherwise you never know what’s going on. I also like to think about how to be innovative, paying attention to the new things that are emerging and also the ways we can retain continuity. You have to figure out how to combine the new practices with the old, so that you don’t lose the essence of what you’re doing. That’s why I aim for a mix of everything, since you never know what’s going to be trending. You can’t be too millennial or too old school. The key is inclusiveness. If we practice inclusiveness, that’s how we’re going to make progress.
