Hope! That's the first thing that comes to mind when hearing that Jonathan Alvarez will attend the State of the Union address as the guest of Jamaal Bowman .
I'm humbled to not only know him but look up to him as a fellow community leader. I believe heavy on “ Each one, teach one .” So, when I see Jonathan, there's so much that I, and many in our community, can identify with. His strength, tenacity, and laser focus on uplifting those around him is genuinely admirable.
What does identifiable leadership looks like? A dedicated change agent like Jonathan Alvarez. He is a social justice advocate who champions community-violence intervention, criminal-legal reform, and positive youth development. Alvarez prides himself on his transformative experiences while serving a 15-year prison term.
In 2006 at the age of 17, he was incarcerated with only a 10th-grade education. Then in 2018 at 30-years-old, he returned home to Yonkers with a Bachelor's degree in Social Studies. His self-transformation motivated him to help the same community he once negatively impacted.
He soon joined the Yonkers My Brother's Keeper Alliance in 2019 to serve as a mentor and staff committee member. He toured public schools to share his lived experiences as a gang-influenced youth and a previously incarcerated person.
Driven to deter criminally-involved adolescents from a destructive path, he co-founded a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization called, 914United . The core mission is to expose, educate, and empower the justice-impacted population with resources and services to help them create a productive lifestyle. This program landed him an opportunity to work in the Youth Offender Program at the Westchester County Department of Corrections.
Valued for his educational achievements in prison, he was also recruited to serve as Academic Outreach Coordinator to provide educational support to incarcerated learners.
In addition to serving the incarcerated population, he joined the Yonkers SNUG Project . This initiative helps curb the spike in gun violence and address community trauma and healing.
Within the same year, the Yonkers City Council President honored him for Hispanic Heritage month as one of few Latinx community leaders in the City of Yonkers. Following this honorary recognition, he received notoriety in his first widespread publication via the Journal News/LoHud . The story profiled his post-prison successes as a nonprofit executive.
Moreover, in 2022, he became a national advocate for implementing Digital Equity and Inclusion within correctional spaces. Finally, Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins appointed him to the commission on prison education, where he studies and develops plans for improving education in the New York state prison system.
Today, Alvarez continues to be a voice for his community, working tirelessly to change the narrative that perpetuates systemic inequity. And that commitment awarded Jonathan multiple acknowledgments at the 2023 Human Rights Commission breakfast, along with the Community Member of the Year award.
To our community, Jonathan is not only a role model but the last chance for some of our forgotten youth. And to me an organizer, he is someone who empowers others around them. Jonathan, an organizer at heart, has a support team backing him all the way to the halls of Congress.
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