Shereemer Chevannes: An Advocate for Change

Shereemer Chevannes: An Advocate for Change

01/26/2023

It was the history of Fortune that drew Shereemer Chevannes, the current Policy Associate at the David Rothenberg Center for Public Policy (DRCPP), to apply to the Tow Policy Advocacy Fellowship in 2019.

Shereemer’s family immigrated from Jamaica to Canada before she was born, starting in what she described as “humble beginnings.” In her community, she saw repeated injustices and knew that she wanted to do something to make a change.

“Maybe there's something that I can do later in life that could help that or could stop those things from happening, making sure there are preventative alternatives to these things as opposed to maybe being too reactionary," she thought.

While studying for her undergrad, she often visited New York City during breaks. After her first year, she found the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and wanted to move to NYC to study here instead. However, her family encouraged her to stay in Canada, where she ultimately graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. After graduation, she moved to Toronto and began working at a law office. At the time, she was set on a law career track but found it wasn’t the right fit.

Shereemer jumped on applying for a Master of Public Administration at John Jay in 2018. When she started as a Tow Public Advocacy Fellow in the summer of 2019, she knew she had made the right decision.

During her Fellowship, Shereemer worked a lot with the Fair Chance for Housing campaign, creating an issue brief used by the campaign and coalition. At the onset of COVID-19, as offices closed and people began working from home, Shereemer returned to Canada and continued working as a Fellow until December 2020.

However, in January 2022, Shereemer returned to Fortune as the new Policy Associate in the DRCPP. Her new role with Fortune means she works directly with the DRCPP team to advocate for policy and legislative change.

As the Policy Associate, Shereemer organizes staff and participants to advocate for causes in NYC and Albany. Recently, she traveled to the state capital to advocate for the passage of Clean Slate in New York. In addition, the DRCPP is a part of many coalitions in New York, so Shereemer attends meetings with the team for updates and actions to be taken. Shereemer also traveled to Atlanta to participate in a conference on ending mass incarceration. In addition, she coordinates various Fortune events, including the “Your Vote Matters: Voter Registration Symposium,” authors the Fortune Weekly policy edition opening, occasionally hosts Fortune’s television show Both Sides of the Bars and constructs social media campaigns for DRCPP legislative priorities.

The DRCPP has a list of priorities every year that call on City and State lawmakers to remove discriminatory barriers for people with criminal justice involvement, expand access to services and legal protections for people with conviction histories and improve conditions inside jails and prisons. These priorities guide the team for the year while presenting the legislation that is also being supported.

All the priorities are essential to the policy team at Fortune. Still, the Close Rikers campaign has become extremely important to Shereemer in the past year with the rising number of deaths on the island.

"Close Riker's rallies are probably the ones that hit me the most every single time because you're hearing from the families of these people who are passing away. Sometimes it's raw, and sometimes it is last week that their family member passed away."

Shereemer also likes seeing Fortune participants coming together at rallies to advocate for themselves as well as their friends and families.

"I love bringing participants with me because they love it, they love to be on the floor, they love to fight for something, they love to shout for Fortune. And it also gives a sense of belonging, like we're a big family here, and we're going to go out, and we're going to fight for something together.”

With all the work that the DRCPP does to promote change in our communities, it couldn’t be done without the work and support of people like Shereemer 

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