Makin’ Moves with Raquel Aleman

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Photo courtesy Raquel Aleman

Raquel Aleman

Raquel Aleman

I want you to meet Raquel Aleman. The South Side native is the co-founder and executive director of Your Move MKE, formally known as the Hip Hop Chess Club of Wisconsin. Your Move MKE started as a small chess club in the back of Flip N Styles barbershop from 2017-2020. In 2020, tragedy struck when Fabian Guzman, who was 16 years old, and part of the chess club, was gunned down during an encounter over a major traffic accident. 

While mourning Guzman’s untimely death, SuperEgo, Blade and Rockz aka Raquel became inspired to expand the hip hop chess club into a youth organization, on the South Side, for inner city youth. Their mission was to create a safe place where youth can freely express themselves and learn new skills as a way to combat the varied barriers they may face in their homes, neighborhoods and communities. That same year, Your Move MKE was established on 11th Historic Mitchell Street and has remained there since then. 

Your Move MKE actively cultivates a family dynamic through examples such as expressing and implementing the importance of eating meals together and having the same staff that the youth can get to know. Rockz and her team created educational programs involving the teachings of hip hop just like the chess club. Their programs include Making Moves Breakdancing and Restorative Justice Cyphers. Your Move MKE also has an Urban Trade Skills six-week program for youth, ages 15-20, who can learn construction math, get CPR certified, OSHA 10 [10 hours of safety training], financial literacy and a chance to meet three tradesmen. 

Rockz, Blade and SuperEgo wanted to make Your Move MKE more Milwaukee oriented and focus on a higher level of thinking. On Nov. 11, 2023, Your Move MKE hosted an end of year celebration and fundraising event to showcase their Graffiti Gallery. Over 100 attendees showed up to participate in a silent auction of the artwork, experience live graffiti and breakdancing, watch YMRG perform, and eat great food. 

Safe Haven

Every Thursday between the hours of 6-8 p.m. youth are able to access a safe haven to express themselves and learn something new during their Restorative Justice Cyphers. I got a chance to experience this program. We gathered in a circle and talked about our backgrounds. Everyone shared what they liked to do and their journey towards attending Restorative Justice Cyphers. I felt very welcomed. Then, we listened to some beats by Blade and everyone spent time writing to them. 

When I first got there, Aleman gave me a tour of their space that included the main room where they host The Hip Hop Chess Club, Making Moves Breakdancing, and the Restorative Justice Cyphers. She showed me their recording studio and she played the recap video of the fundraiser. I even got to hear a few songs the kids recorded. As I listened, I was in awe about how they were able to create songs that reflected their experiences, just like me with writing. After we left the recording studio, Raquel Aleman showed me the woodworking room for the Urban Skills program. It had every tool imaginable, and the kids could even have a tool bag fitted for the first day on the job. I was amazed at how they truly implemented forward thinking. 

I asked Aleman about her experience growing up on Milwaukee’s South Side. “My background is very complicated, and I have experienced living in like 28 different villages,” she said. “My experience growing up, we grew up when there was a time of heavy gang affiliation between the [Latin] Kings and Cobras ... and so being very young at 9-years-old to 13 and seeing all of that was quite traumatic to me. Hip hop and music was the only thing that helped me really channel my energy ... RaDigga, that was one of the female MCs I absolutely loved.” 

Aleman explains that she “was heavily influenced by RaDigga [Busta Rhymes’ sister], that was one of the female MCs I absolutely loved, also huge on Lauryn Hill and the whole vibe that she brought with her album, I listened to a lot of Cannabiss and Eminem growing up. I had Eminem all over my walls and just loved him and followed his career. But right now I listen to a lot of cos contra and honestly I listen to a lot of our youth’s music because we have recording artists, my son is a recording artist, so I listen to a lot of his music. I just like to hear what our young people are talking about and just being able to give them that voice.” 

Culture and Creativity

I asked, “How did your culture affect your creativity?” “As a female artist, before I co-founded Your Move MKE or began our nonprofit, I had a record label and used to rap. For me the biggest thing that made me kind of standoffish was that there were not many Latina recording artists, I didn’t see a lot of representation in hip hop for Brown girls for Latinas specifically, or Mexican rappers ... representation truly matters for our young people, just thinking of myself as a young girl and how much I was so in love with hip hop that was something that kind of made me feel like, ‘wow, would I ever make it?’, ‘cause our market was so small,” she responded. 

Imagine being a young teen and not seeing people who look like you, doing what you love. The hope for success may feel out of touch. 

 “We have been completely blown away by the young people in our programs, right now where the culture of our city is, and the culture of our young people, things that they deal with, it's well beyond anything we’ve ever dealt with as young people,” Aleman continued. “With social media and with group chats and different things that they are using to be able to communicate and to be able to connect and the music that they are listening to and the agendas that are being pushed on our young people. It’s just a whole different culture but I will say, they are a lot more open-minded, our young people are a lot more vocal than we ever were, they are really open to talking if we would just listen.” 

If the young generations are our future, why aren’t we listening to them? The segregation in Milwaukee is well known and felt every day. Our city is divided, unapologetically. Aleman and her team work hard every day to create a space for our youth to express themselves and to be seen. “I think naturally our young people are gonna pull from what they know, and we just have to make sure they have those roots to pull from as well as like a family from our position to make sure they are educated on those matters to be able to project that into their music,” she said. 

Culture and creativity go hand in hand. Having mentors and coaches to help the youth present their experiences in creative ways is golden. 

Our conversation really resonated with me on every level. I closed the discussion by asking, “What’s the next move for Your Move MKE?” Raquel answered, “Our next move is just really at this point scaling, we just ended our grant cycle. We’re working on community partnerships, fee for service, building our collective with The Beginning [Collective], we’re a huge part of that, and the development of the building that we’re in—being a staple on Historic Mitchell Street.”