Ramirez-Rosa was born on February 18, 1989 in Chicago, Illinois. He attended Chicago Public Schools and graduated from Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, where he was his senior class president. He then attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he was an elected member of the Illinois Student Senate. As an elected student senator, he supported funding for women and LGBT student programs, campus green energy policies, and fair treatment of university employees. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 2011. After graduating, he served as a congressional caseworker in the office of Congressman Luis Gutiérrez. After working for Congressman Gutiérrez, he worked as a family support network organizer with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights until he ran for alderman in 2015. He also served as an elected community representative to the Avondale-Logandale Local School Council.
Chicago City Council
He was elected the alderman of the 35th ward on February 24, 2015. He received 67% of the vote, defeating incumbent alderman Rey Colón. He is the youngest current alderman and one of the youngest aldermen in the history of Chicago, and one of the city's first two openly LGBT Latino councillors alongside colleague Raymond Lopez. After a year as alderman, Crain's Chicago Business distinguished Ramirez-Rosa as a member of their 2016 "Twenty in their 20s" class. He joined the Democratic Socialists of America in March 2017. Ramirez-Rosa's current term of office expires in May 2019. Ramirez-Rosa was selected by Daniel Biss as Biss's running mate in the 2018 Illinois gubernatorial election on August 31, 2017. On September 6, Ramirez-Rosa was removed from the ticket by Biss, following a controversy surrounding Ramirez-Rosa's support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. In May 2018, after casting the lone vote against the construction of a new police academy, Ramirez-Rosa was expelled from the Chicago City Council's Latino Caucus. Ramirez-Rosa was later readmitted to the Latino Caucus after public outcry. In the 2019 Chicago mayoral election, Ramirez-Rosa endorsed Toni Preckwinkle, giving her his endorsement before the first round of the election. In November 2019, Ramirez-Rosa was one of eleven aldermen to vote against Mayor Lori Lightfoot's first budget. He joined all five other members of the Socialist Caucus in signing a letter to Lightfoot which criticized her budget for "an over-reliance on property taxes" and "regressive funding models" that are "burdensome to our working-class citizens, while giving the wealthy and large corporations a pass."
Electoral history
Campaigns for higher office
On August 31, 2017, he was announced to be Daniel Biss's running mate in the 2018 gubernatorial election. Ramirez-Rosa was dropped from the ticket on September 6, 2017 by Biss. After Luis Gutiérrez announced his retirement from Congress, Ramirez-Rosa announced his candidacy for Gutiérrez's seat, Illinois's 4th congressional district; he withdrew on January 9, 2018.
