About Ana H. Borges

Ana Borges’ story is about a woman who has spent her life building things up—and who finally decided to stand up when the system tried to tear her family down.

Ana’s Story: Facing What Must Be Changed

Pawtucket helped build this country. Along the Blackstone River and inside our mills, workers here powered the birth of America’s Industrial Revolution. 

Ana Borges is part of that legacy—a Cape Verdean immigrant who came to the United States as a child, grew up believing in hard work, and has dedicated her life to helping others be seen and heard.

Ana proved she could fix broken systems. In Atlanta, at the Nexus Contemporary Art Center, she worked on Cultural Olympiad projects around the 1996 Olympic Games—writing press releases, organizing press tours, coordinating interviews, and helping artists share their work with the world. Later, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she took an abandoned art consulting program that everyone believed was finished and rebuilt it from nothing, connecting local artists with banks, libraries, and institutions. That program became the financial lifeline of the Ann Arbor Art Center for years after she left.

Ana has also been a teacher and a voice for families. She taught conversational English in South Korea, gaining a deep respect for what it feels like to live in another language and culture. Here in Rhode Island, she created and produced Bible Tea Time For Children and hosts Express Yourself Rhode Island, giving children and adults a place to talk about real issues—school bullying, economic change, deed fraud, predatory lending, seniors’ equality, and more.

But the hardest battles she has ever fought have been right here in Pawtucket.

Ana’s daughter was assaulted in a school bathroom. Instead of protecting the victim, the school relied on an edited video and limited accounts, and wrongfully suspended her daughter as if she were the aggressor. Ana refused to accept that. She obtained the unedited video, brought it back, and only then did the school acknowledge its mistake and allow her daughter to return. That experience showed Ana how quickly a young person can be harmed twice—once by the incident, and again by a system that does not want to see the full truth.

Ana is also the mother of a son with Autism and Down Syndrome. He is 12 years old, and despite years in the school system, no one helped her find real programs or supports for him. She knows what it feels like to ask for help and walk away with nothing but vague promises. Those moments deepened her commitment to disability access and inclusion—for every child, in every school.

After she stood up for her children and filed a civil case, Ana herself was drawn into the justice system. She was stopped by State Troopers, and about a week later they came to her home and arrested her on allegations she maintains are false—including a counterfeit tag on a car that was not hers. At 57 years old, with no prior trouble with law enforcement, she suddenly found herself fighting criminal charges that still have not been dropped. She has asked the court to dismiss the case for lack of proper subject matter jurisdiction and continues to defend her name.

Ana does not share these experiences out of anger or for sympathy. She shares them because they reveal something important about our city: if this can happen to her, it can happen to any family in Pawtucket.

Writer James Baldwin once said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Ana believes that now is the time to face what is broken in our schools, in our treatment of children with disabilities, and in how ordinary people are treated by those in power—so that together, we can change it.

That is why Ana Borges is running for Mayor.

She is running to make sure victims are protected and believed, not punished. She is running to insure  every child in Pawtucket schools has the safety needed to focus on education, not survival. She is running so that families raising children with disabilities are met with real support, not silence. She is running so that law enforcement and the courts are transparent, fair, and accountable. And she is running because she believes deeply in Pawtucket’s people—the same people whose labor once helped build this nation.

Ana’s promise is simple: to listen, to face hard truths with honesty, and to fight for every resident of Pawtucket with the same determination she used to fight for her own children.

Let’s face it together—and build the Pawtucket we all deserve!