Member spotlight: Cade Halloran

Though he is a relative newcomer to Reclaim, expect Cade Halloran, 21, to make waves.

Halloran first became interested in social justice when he was involved in a social justice internship called POWER, which was run out of Temple University. He has since developed a strong sense for housing justice, justice for the LGBTQIA+ community and the importance of getting involved.

“[We learned] how much privilege affects our lives and how…our society revolves around a cis-hetero-normative narrative and...what we can do to bring light to the injustices and the issues we face,” said Halloran. “[Inner city youth] don’t really have a voice in…the Philly public school system, so [POWER] was a good opportunity for me to get my feet in the water.”

Halloran found out about Reclaim during the 2018 primary election season, when Reclaim member Aileen Callaghan came to his door to canvas for Joe Hohenstein’s campaign for State Representative for Pennsylvania’s 17th State Electoral District. According to Halloran, his mom answered the door and after talking with Callaghan for 15 minutes, called her son over to join the discussion.

“It was the first time there was an election that I was voting in, and it turned out that they wanted me to come canvass with the campaign because of what I said and what I wanted changed” said Halloran. “And then through working with the campaign, [Callaghan] started plugging me in with Reclaim.”

Halloran describes his core issues as fighting gentrification and LGBT rights in education.

“As a fledgling queer in the Philadelphia Public Schools, it didn’t feel the best all of the time,” said Halloran in describing his reasons for being passionate about the struggle for representation of the community in education.

Halloran also says that housing is his main issue because of how it has impacted him personally.

“My father passed in early 2017 from…kidney failure and because he was the main person who paid the bills we ended up missing a few months worth of mortgage payments while he was sick, so we kept getting sheriff sale notices” said Halloran. “My mom got all that squared away and then they started coming back because we found out that…all of our tax information was being sent to an address in California, and [the city] didn’t catch it until we were about to lose our house for the third time.”

Halloran will be joining up with the Housing Task Force for Reclaim, where he expects to fight hard for the changes he wants to see in the city and beyond.