Meet Tanya Lozano: Activist, Community Defender, and the Woman Behind Healthy Hood Chicago

Tanya Lozano.

Courage flows through Tanya Lozano’s veins.

A self-proclaimed struggle kid, the young organizer, entrepreneur, dancer, and above all mother wakes up every day ready to save lives. She is the founder of Healthy Hood, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, known to most as a fitness center that offers $5 fitness classes, aiming to serve the underserved and succeeding at doing so. But not everyone who passes through the modest fitness studio, located on the ground floor of a church, knows the story of the woman behind it and everyone else standing alongside her.

Perhaps most importantly, Tanya was raised by activists and organizers. Hers was one of the first families to move to Pilsen, at a time when the now Mexican neighborhood was inhabited by Polish and Czech immigrants. Both of her parents are community organizers and activists. Her dad, Slim Coleman, is a former member of the Chicago Black Panther party who recently celebrated 60 years of being in the struggle. He met her mother, Emma Lozano, working as a senior advisor on the Harold Washington campaign. Emma, who dedicated her life to activism, recently made news when she found the killer of a pregnant Chicago teenager.

“My whole life I remember going to marches. My mom had a red wagon she would pull me and my younger sister in at every single march that she organized. At the Million Family March I learned how important it is to join other people’s movements. You can’t be stuck in your own bubble and fighting only for your own people.”

Tanya with her mother and sister.

Tanya’s uncle, Rudy Lozano, was also an activist who devoted much of his life to immigrant workers rights. Before he was assassinated in 1983, he helped get Chicago’s first African American mayor, Harold Washington, in office. The Lozano Chicago Public Library Branch and Rudy Lozano Leadership Academy are named in his honor.

Yet even with such an extensive family commitment to organizing, Tanya’s parents never forced her to follow in their footsteps.

“My mom never sat with me and said this is what you need to do and this is how you have to be. My mom lived and she let me watch. And I could see that it was right.”

Even though she was organizing throughout her high school career, she never identified it as such. Instead, Tanya dedicated most of her energy to basketball. She played throughout high school and then in North Central College. It was her experiences on the college basketball team, where she says she was treated like royalty, that directly inspired her work today.

“In high school, no one wrapped our ankles after practice. That’s a basic thing. It’s really fucked up that I was playing in the city with all these kids of color and we didn’t get treated the way I did in a predominantly white college. It’s unacceptable.”

Tanya then became a fitness instructor and personal coach. The conception of Healthy Hood can be traced back to her offering $1 Zumba classes in her church. She went on to teach at already established studios, where she realized that most of the instructors were people of color, and most of the clients were white.

“Fitness is a privilege in this country. I was like, what if we had a place where fitness professionals of color could teach and give back to their community? I’m proud to say that the model works so well that our instructors make more money teaching a $5 class at Healthy Hood than they do at Equinox.”

Tanya Lozano in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood.

In addition to creating a fitness community, Tanya and her father thought of a program for Chicago Public School students that cut help fight the health disparities gap that underserved communities face.

“The best thing I could do as a role model is be myself and show that I’m not any different than the people around me.”

Together with nursing students from Rush University, Tanya provides instructions on pre-screenings that students can do at home with their families and neighbors that allows them to catch any health abnormalities, such as high blood pressure, at home. The toolkit saves their families.

 

“It is an extreme injustice to cut someone’s life.”

And as a single mother, Tanya knows the importance of family. With the support of her “comadres,” aka the other women in the greater Healthy Hood community that help her mother her daughter and son, she teaches her kids to be strong. And just like her mother, Tanya welcomes her children in on her organizing lifestyle too, hoping that they will pick up the torch when they are ready.

“We may not be the picture-perfect family in the frame but I feel like it doesn’t fit in the frame. It’s too big for the frame.”

To support the Healthy Hood and all of its programming, including its community defense programs that focuses on preparing at risk individuals to successfully and safely combat injustices in today’s political climate, consider attending a class or donating to the organization: http://www.healthyhoodchi.com/donate