With a passion for racial justice, economic fairness, immigrant rights and equality for the LGBTQ community, Michael Caga-anan Aguhar devoted his time to helping community organizations in the Chicago area.
As the program director for the Chicago-based Crossroads Fund — a longtime philanthropic group that supports area social and economic justice organizations — Aguhar took seriously the needs in his community and worked to build bridges and bring community voices into discussions about funding community organizing, colleagues said.
“He lived out his values every day,” said Emmanuel Garcia, development and communications director at Crossroads Fund. “He had a deep commitment to equity and justice, and he held them with care and accountability. He really believed in showing up fully, and felt we could build power through community and organizing, which really was a staple of his life’s work, not only from his time as an organizer and as the director of a grassroots organization but also as a public foundation.”
Aguhar, 42, died Feb. 20 at his home in the North Side’s Edgewater neighborhood after suffering a medical emergency, said his partner, Irina Zadov.
Born in Chicago to parents who had immigrated from the Philippines in the late 1960s, Aguhar lived in Edgewater until he was 3 years old. He then moved with his family to Houston, where he grew up and where he attended Strake Jesuit College Preparatory High School.
Aguhar got a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin and then a law degree from the University of Houston Law Center. After law school, he apprenticed for a time at a Houston law firm and then worked in a state mental health facility.
After both his siblings died, in 2011 and 2012, Aguhar decided to move to Chicago, where he took a job organizing with the group Asian Americans Advancing Justice.
He then joined the Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights and Empowerment, or AFIRE, where he served first as staff attorney, then as deputy director and finally as executive director.
While at AFIRE, Aguhar played a key role in the passage of the Illinois Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act, which took effect in 2017.
In 2019, Aguhar joined Crossroads as its program director. In that role, he succeeded Jane Kimondo, the longtime program director who was promoted to executive director.
“When he joined us, he said, ‘I feel like I still have so much more to give to the movement, and I still want to support the movement,” Kimondo said. “Michael was very committed. He had an idea of what is the future of the world we are trying to build, and why can’t we build that world now, and what would that world look like.”
Aguhar wore several hats at Crossroads, including programs for grant making and leading capacity-building programs to ensure that those receiving grants had a sustainable infrastructure from which they could organize. In addition, he regularly shared his legal expertise, Kimondo said.
Aguhar was very much on the ground, as his work at Crossroads involved funding groups with annual budgets of less than $500,000. In his work, Aguhar excelled at building bridges between people, between movements and between money and community. He had a gift for meeting people where they were — whether they were young activists, elders, grassroots organizers, policy advocates or foundation leaders, said Hina Mahmood, a close friend and fellow organizer.
“He had an incredible ability to talk about hard truths — about race, power, inequity — in ways that centered and impacted people,” Mahmood said. “He didn’t shame or alienate; he invited all people in. He helped folks understand what was truly at stake while still believing in their capacity to grow.”
Mahmood said that although Aguhar understood systems, “he never lost sight of the human beings inside them.”
“He believed in people deeply, and he worked to make sure resources followed that belief,” she said.
A friend and fellow Filipino organizer, Mark Anthony Florido, said Aguhar had the “rare ability to hold both deep conviction and deep compassion at the same time.”
“He was deeply rooted in community and just as comfortable inside institutions,” Florido said. “He never lost sight of who the work was for. (He had an) unwavering belief in people and the possibility of change. He didn’t just talk about justice, he lived it in the way he showed up for others.”
Another friend and local organizer within the Asian American community, Steve Moon, said Aguhar “extended grace, the kind that made a relationship trustworthy, knowing that he and we are ourselves works in progress.”
“He moved in such a way that he would be a partner, a facilitator and an instrument for the community, his co-workers and his friends, often in the background, sleeves up, just putting in work or simply just being there,” Moon said.
Aguhar’s “razor-edged sharpness of his analysis and his moments of restless frustration” reflected his deep-rooted values in love and justice and his own experiences, scars and triumphs, Moon said.
“Michael made space — the intimate kind, the public kind, the sacred kind — for so many of us, from individuals to organizations, to be fully ourselves and to fully imagine our futures,” Moon said. “It cannot be understated how critical of a role he served for so many racial justice leaders, movement builders and organizations that are critical to the very fabric of Chicago’s social justice ecosystem.”
Aguhar was a founding board member of the Filipino American Lawyers Association of Chicago and served on the boards of the Global Asian Studies Program at the University of Illinois Chicago and of ONE Northside, a group that develops grassroots leaders who seek to eliminate injustice through community organizing.
Zadov said Aguhar was “an amazing father” to the couple’s 3-year-old daughter, Zoya.
“He loved her so much,” Zadov said. “He was so warm and tender and so present with her and so playful. With everyone he was close to, that’s all he would talk about is how much he loved Zoya and how much she was a special light in his life. He was such an incredibly soft and tender and giving father and partner and so loving and so selfless.”
In addition to Zadov and his daughter, Aguhar is survived by many cousins, aunts and uncles.
A memorial vigil will take place Sunday in Houston, followed by a funeral Mass there on Monday. In Chicago, a celebration of life will take place from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. April 25 at Xoco House Gallery, 2317 W. 18th St.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
