Mondaire Jones
Mondaire was born to a young, single mother at Nyack Hospital and raised in the working-class Village of Spring Valley, which is in Rockland County. Life wasn’t easy, but the Jones family managed. And Mondaire’s mother always encouraged him to dream big in spite of their circumstances. After Mondaire was born, his mother dropped out of college. She worked multiple jobs just to make ends meet—even with the aid of a Section 8 housing voucher from the federal government. Mondaire learned early on that, in a low-wage economy that doesn’t work for the average American, government assistance is necessary to fill in the gaps. When he was two years old, Mondaire’s mother was diagnosed with a devastating mental illness. Like many single moms, Mondaire’s mother leaned heavily on her parents for help raising her kid. Both grandparents had left Jim Crow in Virginia to start a family in New York, where their community in Rockland County embraced them.
