Notes on Resistance: Claudia Lennhoff and the Motivations of an Activist
It was a hot August day in 1996 when a 30-year-old Claudia Lennhoff stood inside her new apartment in Champaign, Illinois, surveying the mess around her that she would inevitably spend the rest of her day cleaning. The unit’s previous tenants hadn’t bothered to tidy up before handing the place over.
Claudia turned on her radio and got to work, distracting herself from the task at hand with the sounds of its tinny speakers. Only, the news broadcasting into the empty apartment wasn’t at all the mindless distraction she’d been hoping for. “It literally stopped me in my tracks. And I felt sick,” Claudia recalled.
That was the day Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 into law. This act marked a paradigm shift toward more temporary means of financial assistance for those on welfare; the government had made it clear that they wanted individuals to become self-sufficient rather than providing proper aid. For many who relied on welfare’s benefits, the change came as a slap in the face. Responsibility for survival was now largely in their own hands.
Claudia had spent most of her college career focused on public policy and community organizing. After years of studying the effects of legislation like Clinton’s PRWOA, she knew how devastating it would be to the people who already struggled the most.
At this same time, Claudia had just begun paid work with the Champaign County Healthcare Consumers. The organization was in the midst of creating public health policy for Champaign County; previously, only the cities of Champaign and Urbana had public health systems. Recognizing a disparity, the Healthcare Consumers knew they needed to act. Claudia became part of a team that would lay the groundwork for the systems that Champaign County still uses today. Her foray into community-level work, in tandem with the devastation she knew would follow from the PRWOA, spurred Claudia’s decision to pursue a career in local community organizing.
“That was sort of the catalyst for me to decide for sure that I wanted to continue to work at the community level. I still love public policy and want to work on that, but my illusions about it -- the blinders came off. And I sort of realized, like, here's what it takes to make change in communities and states and in nations,” Claudia said.
Claudia Lennhoff is now the Executive Director of the Champaign County Healthcare Consumers. While her life’s direction has veered off the trodden path on many occasions, one thing has always been consistent for Claudia: she has a love for people, and a uniquely prominent passion for helping them.
I began my interviews with Claudia four months ago. I had originally reached out to her after gaining an interest in learning about the Healthcare Consumer’s activism in a Champaign neighborhood affected by environmental injustice; from the moment she began talking about this work, Claudia’s passion for what she does was more than evident. As I got to know her more, I became fascinated by her story and was filled with a curiosity about her own motivations for engaging in the activism that has become her driving purpose.
Born in Mexico in 1966, Claudia grew up in a ranch-style home in the city of Monterrey. She spent her early childhood with her father, mother, and older brother. Her father, Miguel Lennhoff, was a physician. He fled with his mother from Germany to Mexico at only two years old to escape religious persecution during World War II. He moved once again to White Plains, New York for medical school during adulthood.
Here, he met Claudia’s mother, Marja-Liiisa Lennhoff Eskelinen. Marja-Liiisa was a nurse and a fellow European immigrant; her family came from Finland to escape the war. The pair eventually moved back to Mexico to raise their family.
Miguel often went on medical rounds throughout their neighborhood, treating locals who couldn’t afford high-quality medical care, when he wasn’t working at San Jorge Hospital. Claudia accompanied him whenever she could.
It was during these trips that Claudia became aware of the importance of health and what it meant for a community. “My dad always said, your health is your wealth,” she told me.
Claudia once recalled an instance in which her father was treating a young boy with stomach issues and diarrhea. The boy and his mother lived on the roof of a nearby building. As the family was unable to afford proper medicine, Miguel “prescribed apples -- a certain way to fix apples to tighten everything up. That was fascinating to me,” Claudia told me. “There's just so much that you can do to address health issues or the health care system through grassroots community organizing and direct service.”
Claudia’s mother was equally involved in their community. Though childcare prevented Marja-Liiisa from pursuing her career as a nurse while in Mexico, she helped those around her in other ways; she often opened the Lennhoff home to youth in the neighborhood, offering warm meals and a listening ear as a comfort for those who needed someone to vent their tribulations to.
Most of the time, these children came from homes where shows of affection were few and far between. “I remember this one girl, she was older than me and she had gotten pregnant while she was still in high school,” Claudia said. “She was kind of wild, but she was really a sweet person. And I remember the first time that she came over, it was one evening, and my mom had baked a cake of some sort.
“And so, my mom had her sit down with us, and we had coffee and cake. She just talked, and they got to know each other and stuff. I sort of got to know her better. And then I was walking her home, and she was telling me how wonderful my mom was, how much she loved being there.”
Claudia dropped the girl off that evening with a new perspective. This neighbor that she thought she knew turned out to be someone completely different; someone kind and intelligent that had simply fallen victim to the circumstances that she was raised in.
Growing up around parents who were always so ready to help the people surrounding them impacted Claudia in ways that she wouldn’t come to realize until much later in life. Experiences like these that she recounted to me instilled in her a strong and immovable sense of empathy that I believe has led to her successful path in activism.
Allow me also to note the way Claudia speaks of her parents. Her physical demeanor shifts in such a manner that her eyes practically light up; she begins to lean forward slightly, almost conspiratorially, as if sharing a close-kept secret. She has never spoken an ill word of either of them in our many conversations, and the amount that she cares for and admires them would be evident even to those who are not able to get to know Claudia as I have over the course of our eight interviews.
Without such strong guiding figures in her life like the ones she had, I do not believe that anyone could’ve expected Claudia to become the person that she is today. Despite her parents’ endless kindness to those around them, Claudia’s peers in Monterrey showed her and her brother anything but.
Riding the bus to school in the morning meant dodging rocks thrown by other children. Her family’s purchase of their first dog meant neighbors violently cutting its tail off in front of her. Despite Claudia and her brother having grown up in Mexico and speaking perfect Spanish in addition to English, their white skin set off alarm bells in the heads of those around them. To others, Claudia and her family appeared to be Americans.
Claudia’s curly red hair and height, traits inherited from her Finnish mother, also set her apart from her peers. “I was a lot taller, probably at least a couple inches taller than my peers. I remember one time on the playground, some of these kids decided to play a game where I was the monster because I was a giant, and it was just kind of painful. It was hurtful. It was like a way of ostracizing me a little bit.” Claudia often avoided speaking English in public so that she wouldn’t draw any extra unwanted attention to herself.
The bullying continued for Claudia and her older brother, Michael Leonardo, throughout the rest of their time in Mexico. Their childhood there was bisected, however, by a major move. For a year and a half beginning in 1972, the Lennhoff family lived in Montreal, Canada. Miguel and Marja-Liiisa, who had both already uprooted their lives in order to make a home in a new country, believed that Canada could offer something new for themselves and their children.
Despite their hope, Claudia said that she and her brother seemed to be singled out no matter where they went. The pair were often regarded as troublemakers despite their efforts to follow the rules. “My older brother and I went to school in what must’ve been kindergarten -- we were pretty young -- and we would have to sing the national anthem of Canada, which we did not know. And so, I remember me and my brother in school, we would be mouthing fake words because we didn't know them. And we got in trouble. We were always getting in trouble for stuff like that. And, like, we just didn't know,” Claudia recalled.
Things weren’t much improved by the time Claudia’s family moved back to Monterrey, Mexico. But while these instances of cruelty by Claudia’s peers were difficult to endure, the lessons on kindness instilled in her by her parents persisted; Claudia never turned to the same bullying tactics used by her peers, and, if anything, became more welcoming and kinder in her perceptions of the people around her. She knew what it was like to be outcast and was determined to make sure that no one else had to endure what she did.
Claudia also realized that her peers’ dislike of her and her family wasn’t to any fault of theirs; while she didn’t necessarily understand the anti-American sentiments that many of her neighbors in Mexico carried with them at the time, she and her brother respected that there were certain people they would never get along with and left it at that. Now, she recognizes that “Americans are not well liked in Mexico for a whole bunch of reasons that are perfectly legitimate.”
After three more short years in her hometown, the Lennhoffs once again decided to take a leap of faith and move to San Antonio, Texas. By the age of eight, Claudia had already lived in three different countries.
The Lennhoff family was also now one person bigger thanks to the birth of Claudia’s younger brother, Victor Felipe. Claudia and Michael Leonardo were now tasked with looking out for each other and the newest edition of their family, a job that they both took on with excitement.
While their ranch-style home in Monterrey existed in a middle-class neighborhood and was spacious enough for the family of four to live comfortably, the new Lennhoff residence existed in a trailer park in a wealthy neighborhood. In Mexico, she also lived just a few blocks from a shanty town, where many people lived in small, crudely constructed homes. This part of the city was where her father often treated patients. Claudia had been exposed to class differences all her life, and was largely aware of them by the time her family made the move to the U.S.
Claudia entered the third grade in San Antonio. Having been raised speaking both Spanish and English fluently, she entered her school with confidence that she wouldn’t have a problem communicating with her new classmates and teachers. Claudia quickly realized that, once again, she would have to put in extra work to fit in.
The culture shock of moving to a new country had crept up on her. At first, she and her teachers had a hard time understanding one another, despite speaking the same language: “I was considered by some of my teachers as a smartass, even though I wasn't. It's just that some of what I said was misinterpreted. One time, we were doing the chicken dance, and we were standing in lines doing the chicken dance. And I remember like telling my friend who was in the next row, like, ‘This is stupid, and I don't want to do it.’ And I'm like, flapping my arms and all that and the PE teachers -- there were two of them -- one of them stopped the record player. And she said, ‘Claudia, if you don't want to do this, just sit down.’ And I thought, great, like, I don't have to do this. So, I sat down. And it was just silence. And the next thing I knew I was hauled off to the to the principal's office. I spent quite a bit of time in the principal's office.”
Claudia also began her American education experience with a slight accent from her childhood in Mexico. Though she spoke English perfectly, her school believed that she needed to be sent to a speech therapist to reconcile differences in the way some of her speech sounded.
“Eventually, I started leaving class early to go meet my speech therapist. And I would just go and hide in the girl’s bathroom. The speech therapist also wasn't very nice, either. I don't remember her being mean, I just don't remember her being nice. And so like, I actively started avoiding her,” Claudia said. “I never told my parents that I was in speech therapy because I viewed it as a failure on my part.
“And so, one day, the school called my parents. That's how my mom found out that I was in speech therapy because I had been skipping out. And my mom was really fierce, she was really incredible. I remember her yelling on the phone, I was home when she got this call. And I remember her screaming at whoever was on the other end of the phone, saying, ‘She doesn't have a speech impediment, she has an accent,’ you know, and she hung up on them. And I didn't have to go to speech therapy anymore. But that sort of self-awareness and self-criticism, that was already deeply ingrained in me.”
The communication aspect of Claudia’s early education in the United States was not the only issue that she faced; when other students learned that she had immigrated from Mexico, they called her names like “wetback.” She knew that what she was experiencing was a form of racism, but one that she could never experience as fully and deeply as the people it was really intended to tear down. Claudia and her family were white, and her outward appearance could never be something that would cause her harm in the U.S. as it sometimes had in Mexico. American society’s deep-rooted discrimination had already begun to rear its ugly head at Claudia, allowing her to understand early on how this issue could impact people of color in an even worse way in her new home country.
After graduating elementary school, however, Claudia finally found a semblance of belonging in her new home. By middle school, she had lost almost all trace of her accent – no thanks to speech therapy – and her white skin and unruly red hair were something that allowed her to fit in rather than stand out. It was during this time in her life that Claudia would meet her two best friends, Kazumi Stewart and Alma Dodd.
Not only were Kazumi and Alma -- Japanese and Mexican American, respectively -- plagued by the same racism that Claudia had witnessed during her childhood, but they dealt with the added stressor of living in a lower-class neighborhood while attending extremely wealthy schools.
Both girls lived in the same trailer park as Claudia. The high school they later attended, however, was one of the two wealthiest schools in San Antonio. Claudia once joked to me that when both schools’ football teams competed each year, these games were dubbed the “Gucci Bowl” because of how rich the districts really were. There was a stark contrast within Claudia’s high school between the students who had money and those who were not as well-off.
Claudia explained two of the subcategories of people within the social sphere of her high school: the “socials” (the wealthiest and most popular students) and the “preps” (the equally wealthy but more academically focused students). Both groups wore distinct clothing styles that signaled their status to the rest of the student body, communicating a sort of unspoken allyship to their peers that dressed similarly while simultaneously telling poorer students to stay away.
“There was not a single lower-income kid that was a social, you know? I went to high school between 1980 and 1984, and this was when being a preppy was a big deal. Like, it was a fashion. The boys would wear, like, 15 Izod polo t-shirts, one over the other with the collars put up. And Izod was expensive back then, really expensive. Designer jeans were big back then, too. All of that stuff was really expensive. And so, there was like a very clear demarcation just from clothing of who was wealthy and who was not.”
Class consciousness seeped into the lives of the three girls as they navigated their way through their high school experience. Why should they be treated so differently, they often asked one another, just because they were raised in a different neighborhood? This question stuck out in Claudia’s mind like a sore thumb. Meanwhile, she watched each morning as the “socials” pulled into the school parking lots behind the wheels of freshly polished Mustangs purchased on their parents’ dimes.
By the time graduation rolled around, Claudia was grateful to be exiting this chapter of her life. With an admissions offer from the University of Texas San Antonio and the promise of a future studying psychology, Claudia walked across the commencement stage with her head held high.
The transition to college was not overly difficult for Claudia as the UTSA campus was a short drive away from her family’s San Antonio home. She attended for two years, living at home while attending classes during the day. Claudia loved that she was able to stay close to her parents and siblings while completing her general education requirements.
Claudia often skimmed over her days at UTSA in our conversations. I believe her status as a commuter student caused her to be somewhat disconnected from student life, as it sometimes does for those who do not live full-time on the campus that they study at. She did, however, bring up one story from her time there on several occasions, noting it as a turning point in her journey to becoming an activist: “Probably my first real exposure to any kind of political organizing was in San Antonio, when there was a parade by the college. Somebody dressed in blackface. My African American friend that had attended with me explained how wrong it was. He was outraged and got really into the protest effort surrounding it afterward. I think I sort of joined in that effort.”
As she stood in the streets of the UTSA campus, Claudia began to better understand the trail of discrimination and racism that she had witnessed throughout her life. The cruel acts against herself and her friends were not contained to unknowing childhood antics; in reality, they had been happening to those around her the entire time, even into adulthood.
Without much time to deeply consider the ways in which racism was engrained into this institute of higher learning that she had spent two years attending, Claudia completed her general education requirements and prepared, for the fourth time, to uproot the life she had made in San Antonio and move to Baltimore, Maryland to complete her undergraduate degree.
The decision to move so far from home was difficult for Claudia; despite her family’s frequent relocation throughout her childhood, in all her 20 years she had never lived in a space without them. The change was made easier, however, by an aunt and uncle who lived in Baltimore who she had visited somewhat frequently. Though she wouldn’t have her parents or brothers by her side, she would have a piece of home in Maryland to rely on should she need it.
Claudia’s foray into the red-bricked buildings of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County was pivotal. She was finally able to dive into her psychology-focused coursework, unhindered by the required English and math classes that disinterested her in her studies at UTSA.
Psychology was not her only focus while at school: on a whim, she picked up coursework in gender and women’s studies on a whim and was instantly hooked. Her classmates’ passion in their discussions on misogyny revealed a passion of Claudia’s own that she had previously neglected.
Throughout her education prior to college, Claudia had experienced misogyny far too often – she simply didn’t have the knowledge to identify it as such. She finally found the words to explain what had happened with a Latin teacher in high school who insisted that Claudia stay after school for extra lessons to help her succeed in his class; his uncomfortable closeness when the pair sat desk-to-desk during her studies and unnecessary brushes of their arms and fingers were anything but well-meaning. Found the words to explain why, when she found out that her high school basketball team’s coaching staff – primarily men – had a window in their office that looked directly into the women’s locker room, there was an odd amount of pushback to the team’s protests to remove it.
One day, Dr. Carol McCann suggested that Claudia and a few other impassioned students form a Women’s Union to address the problems that were so often discussed within her class. “She said, ‘You know, you could form a formal student organization, and you could get resources if you form a formal organization,’” Claudia said. “So, I think that was kind of the selling point. Before that we were just going to organize ourselves, which is basically what we did, except we found this avenue where, if we could be recognized as a formal on campus organization, then we could get resources like a printing budget, and you could make flyers and things like that.” Dr. McCann volunteered to be their faculty sponsor, and the rest was history.
The UMBC Women’s Union became known for their Take Back the Night marches, a historic form of protest that had been carried out by women’s groups for decades. Students gathered in the evenings to protest sexual assault and violence against women, carrying handmade picket signs and megaphones to broadcast their message to all of campus. The marches weren’t held without backlash from the community; after many threats from men and campus administration, the Women’s Union was forced to shut down the marches for good. In 2013, however, Take Back the Night returned to UMBC and soon after became a yearly tradition at the school.
The Women’s Union was by far one of the most impactful parts of Claudia’s college career. She was surrounded by women who only wanted to lift her up and guide her to become the most powerful, confident version of herself that she could be, and Claudia worked to do the same for others. She also began to realize the importance of community organizing; whereas before Claudia was reluctant to do more than march alongside her peers, she discovered how much more of an impact she had when she was the one bringing the protests to light. UMBC and its rich culture of resistance allowed Claudia to form the skills she still uses in her day-to-day proceedings with the Champaign County Healthcare Consumers and beyond.
Amid protest organizing and coming into her own as an activist, Claudia found herself mere months away from finishing her studies in psychology. A conversation with her undergraduate advisor had her considering the pursuit of a graduate degree; all it would take was four years and yet another big move – this time, 691.3 miles away.
Unlike her time in Baltimore, Claudia was completely alone in her new home of Champaign, Illinois. The excitement of her new program, however, outweighed any doubts she might have had.
As she dove into her studies, Claudia was immediately struck by the lack of women in her program. Out of what was already a small cohort in the niche Personality and Social Ecology track of psychology, Claudia was one of five women in her classes. Her professors were often dismissive of the work done by female students, and at times weren’t even sure how to handle them at all. Claudia once overheard a male professor frantically asking another, “What are we going to do with all these girls?”
The lack of respect that the faculty had for her female peers was dismaying, but Claudia reluctantly pushed on.
The noticeable disparity of student activism on the UIUC campus sent her reeling as well. Whereas Maryland was chock full of demonstrations and vocal students taking action, the culture in Illinois was drastically different. With no way to put her organizing skills to work and hardly any active efforts for her to join, Claudia found herself in a depression; she began to ask herself why she had made such a leap to come to Champaign in the first place. Regardless, Claudia completed a Master of Science in Psychology.
This milestone did not mark the end of her venture into academia; Claudia began work toward her PhD shortly after. Having established a life in Champaign with her life partner, Claudia was no longer itching to go back to Maryland or Texas; a lifetime of moving around had made her desperate for a few years of consistency.
Claudia had just begun work on her thesis when a small grassroots organization, the Champaign County Healthcare Consumers, made an appearance in Claudia’s life. She discovered the group while looking for a way to reignite her passion for organizing; though the decision to complete her PhD was a conscious one, she was still wholly unfulfilled by her studies. She began volunteer work with the Healthcare Consumers and was quickly immersed in the world of activism that she had loved so dearly: “That’s when I really fell in love with grassroots community organizing. It just felt like a very concrete way of making public policy from the ground up, fighting injustice and creating new resources for the community. I had still never thought about it in terms of work or profession or anything like that, you know, because I didn't think that many of those jobs were available.”
To Claudia’s surprise, a full-time organizing position became available within the organization after she had been involved with their efforts to create a public health system and policy for Champaign County. The CCHC’s board immediately offered her the job. It changed her life.
“I just think my lucky stars that I landed at Healthcare Consumers. I can't -- I honestly cannot even imagine doing anything different. I feel so fortunate. And I've gotten to work with just incredible people. And I love the social change part of it, I love the policy and working to make concrete improvements in people's lives. That was 26 years ago, and I haven't looked back,” Claudia said. In the same way her love is visible when she speaks about her parents, the love she has for her career is palpable.
Claudia never finished her PhD. The work she did with the Healthcare Consumers was more fulfilling than graduate school ever was, and she dropped her thesis shortly after gaining her full-time position.
Claudia’s eventual promotion to Executive Director was an obvious choice to those within the organization. It took a bit of convincing on her part; impostor syndrome was a very real struggle for her at the time, but she took a vote of confidence in herself. “There was a lot of training that I still needed. Some of my emotions were fear and nervousness and trepidation. I think there's also a thing that happens all too often with women, where we don't have confidence in ourselves. And there's a whole process of sort of embodying the role, like, you can get the position, but do you embody the role of being Executive Director? And for me, I learned that it's kind of a process of becoming, you know? Like, you get the position, but then you have to become the Executive Director.”
Claudia’s family stepped in to offer her guidance. Both of Claudia’s brothers work in industries that allow them to help people in similar ways to Claudia; Michael Leonardo is a full-time chef for a mobile soup kitchen, while Victor Felipe is the Head of Social Work at the Veteran’s Association of San Antonio. The impact that Miguel and Marja-Liiisa had on their children is evident in the careers that each of them have chosen to dedicate their lives to.
Claudia is now 57 years old and has no plans to slow down in her activism. She is particularly dedicated to the cause at Fifth and Hill Street in Champaign, Illinois; at the site of what was formerly a manufactured gas plant lie toxic chemicals that have been harming residents for years. Despite the CCHC’s efforts to push the City of Champaign and Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to action, the hazardous waste has remained at the site for over 50 years. In a neighborhood that is primarily Black and low-income, Claudia recognizes the implications of government inaction.
When I asked Claudia what she most wishes to accomplish in her activism in the future, she said: “I want to win Fifth and Hill. I really, really want to see a day when people from that neighborhood get justice, get the toxic contamination cleaned up, and can live their lives with like safety and security for their health.”
I believe Claudia’s answer to this question is telling of her character. Over the course of my efforts to understand her motivations in activism, she has always presented herself as a selfless individual who cares deeply about the wellness and wellbeing of others. I believe her experience being raised by two kindhearted, down-to-earth individuals has greatly shaped the person she is today. Without her parents, her experience as an immigrant and her experience as a woman, I do not think Claudia would be on the path that she is today. These parts of her upbringing and identity motivate her to help others the way that she does and have given her an unmatched sense of empathy that one would be hard pressed to find in many individuals. I am incredibly grateful to have had the privilege of interviewing her over these eight short weeks, and know that she will continue to change the lives she touches as long as she can.