This communications specialist and grassroots community organizer is joining our team to help make City Bureau a more resilient organization with even deeper ties across communities.
By Lucia Anaya
Andrew Herrera (Photo: Zakkiyyah Najeebah)
This week it’s my turn to introduce the other new member of our team, Andrew Herrera, our first director of growth strategy.
Prior to joining City Bureau, Andrew worked in public relations providing strategic communications and business development support to major brands and organizations. He’s also a Pilsen-based community organizer and president of Unite25, an independent community organization that works to build grassroots political power across Chicago’s Lower West Side.
With Andrew on board, we’re excited to explore new frameworks for fundraising and outreach, thinking of new ways to expand our mission across people and communities throughout Chicago and beyond.
Here’s a little more about him.
You’ve been working as a grassroots community organizer for a few years now. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got started?
A lot of folks in Chicago’s political scene come from activist families or communities that gave them a framework for understanding the world and how to engage with it politically. Where I came from it was a bit different. The lessons I learned about politics early on suggested that it was corrupt, impossible to change. Despite that, I grew up at a time of an emerging Latinx identity when our political voice was being found and expressed in a new and more powerful way which inspired me to find ways to get involved and push back against the status quo.
The first real campaign I worked on was in Chicago’s 2015 municipal election, which was a really formative moment for the progressive movement in the city. I signed up as much to make friends and meet people around my neighborhood as anything, and quickly found myself in a place where I felt committed and responsible to it, so I kept marching on. Because of that, I discovered the power a community has when it comes together and I’ve been privileged to play a role in building movements that have helped communities build that people power.
How do you see your experience in politics translating to your work at CB?
One of my greatest political beliefs is that if you give people the right information, then they will generally vote in their self interest. I think one of the biggest problems in politics today is an information problem, where people are being misled by bad actors, and the independent news media is no longer strong enough to correct the record. Where I think this experience directly relates to CB, and why I’m so excited about it, is that we are creating these resilient information networks at the community level that help folks easily access the information that is critical for them in navigating their everyday lives and finding their power.
How did you hear about CB? What made you interested in their work?
A friend sent me the job posting and told me that he’d found my dream job. I took a look and was hooked once I read through City Bureau’s core values. I’d never had the opportunity to work at a place that explicitly doesn’t believe in heroes, does movement building work and builds transparency into its process. The idea that I could continue doing this work in communities I care so deeply about on the South and West sides were all I really needed to know to apply. I think it’s also worth mentioning that the importance of dissent in building and maintaining healthy communities has always been really important to me. So for me, City Bureau’s approach to questioning the idea of a single objective truth, of welcoming respectful debate and dissent as part of its community-building process, was really energizing.
You grew up in the suburbs but you’ve lived in Chicago for almost a decade. What about Chicago do you like?
It’s the people. I live in Pilsen and I love my neighborhood and I love my block because you always feel like you’re part of the community. People are always looking out for each other. Every time I forget to close my garage door I know someone is going to give me a ring letting me know, and every summer we have a block party or three. It’s those little things that just make me feel like whatever’s going on, we’re in it together. Having grown up in a bedroom community where folks lived just as long as they had kids in school, I know how special this feeling of community is and how hard it can be to find.
What do you want to say to folks in the CB community who are reading this blog?
Apart from introducing myself, I want to say that I’m always here for an honest conversation, especially with folks from the community. If anyone is interested in reaching out, I’ll even kick it off with the first question! What is the value of local news to you, and what do you think community-based reporting should look like?
If you would like to chat about that or anything else, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email at andrew@citybureau.org.
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