Two young Advocates for Youth organizers share their unique stories and how they found power and community in activism.
Yamalí Rodas Figueroa
Lead Organizer, Minnesota Youth Activist Alliance, Advocates for Youth
As an undocumented teen, I became an advocate and an organizer for immigrant justice out of necessity. I wanted to go to college, but I was confronted with a gap in resources and support at every turn.
“Can I get your license and registration, sir? Sir, what is your social security number? What is your country of origin? You are not cooperating. Step out of the vehicle sir.”
I was on my way to present workshops as a youth leader at Action Camp for LGBTQ+ youth when an Illinois state police officer attempted to detain my dad for deportation over a speeding ticket. In that moment, I didn’t feel like an advocate for my community. I felt anxious and scared that my dad would be separated from my family. I was frustrated with the police and nervous that I would say the wrong thing and would not be able to protect my family. Without adequate resources about my rights, I felt powerless. I decided I never wanted to feel that way again, and that no other young person should go through what I had experienced.
Surmounting challenges
As an undocumented teen, I became an advocate and an organizer for immigrant justice out of necessity. I wanted to go to college, but I was confronted with a gap in resources and support at every step of my journey as a student. I knew I wasn’t alone, so I created a coalition at my high school that pushed forward demands for undocumented students in Chicago, including specialized counseling for undocumented students that centered on mental health and postsecondary guidance. We worked to develop additional college scholarships for undocumented students in an effort to systematically change the distribution of resources to better serve undocumented students’ needs.
While my peers and I secured important wins for our communities, we also faced challenges and scrutiny from our parents, who worried that our activism would result in retaliation or even deportation. There was a constant pull between my values and my identity, between what I knew was right and what my family wanted for me. I also began to think about how different facets of my identity intersected: I realized that just as undocumented students face a lack of resources and support, queer and trans students experience inadequate sex education and information about our bodies and futures.
Advocating for a better future
As I’ve gotten older, my experiences in high school continue to shape my work as an organizer and an activist. Now that I’m in college in Minnesota, I have more autonomy and freedom to develop campaigns that support young people across the state. I’m now the lead organizer of Advocates for Youth’s Minnesota Youth Activist Alliance, where I manage Sex Educate Us, a successful multi-year campaign to update and standardize sexual health standards in Minnesota that resulted in new legislation that expands access to comprehensive and trans-inclusive sex education in the state. I have also initiated a medication abortion access campaign to push my college health center to provide medication abortion on campus for students — or at the very least, to create a comprehensive guide with resources about abortion.
When I was younger, I knew I needed to change the world around me, but I faced barriers and limitations. I did the best I could with the tools I had. As I’ve learned more about grassroots organizing, mutual aid, and abolitionist frameworks, my skills have sharpened and my advocacy has become all the more successful. Still, I’ll hold on to the feelings I experienced in the car with my father, and let the memory of that day drive me to create a better future for every undocumented, queer, and trans young person who just needs the tools to thrive.
Jacqueline Pham
Organizer, Know Your IX, Advocates for Youth
Many young people have misconceptions about getting involved with community organizing. I once did, too.
When I was younger, I thought organizing meant executing large-scale campaigns with high-level targets and demonstrations. In high school, I organized around sexual violence and harassment in my local community. Coming into college, I was excited to take my activism to the next level. However, my organizing experience in my freshman year has shown me that there is a rarely discussed power in activism: the power of community connections. My experience as a member of a student-run, non-hierarchical food cooperative has shaped the liberatory and relationship-centered framework I continue to apply when doing national organizing work with the survivor justice project Know Your IX.
Organizing for student rights
During my junior year of high school, I began noticing the dismissal of sexual assault cases in our school district and how administrators created a hostile environment for survivors by using victim-blaming rhetoric. After getting together with fellow students to discuss these issues, my peers and I founded a coalition against sexual violence within my high school district.
We fought for increased transparency around Title IX policies, integrated community resources for students, and inclusive, engaging sexual education. Through collective efforts, my peers and I were able to galvanize student power to successfully push our district to host a Title IX webinar for students and increase transparency on new sexual education curriculums. Our work pushed my own school to host a mandatory dating violence workshop for students through a local community organization.
Outside of these wins from the district, we created resources for ourselves where they couldn’t support us. Our coalition conducted our own community survey on campus attitudes about sexual violence and harassment. We created an anonymous form for survivors who wanted to share their stories on our social media accounts, utilizing our platform to amplify student experiences. We hosted teach-ins at school and supported survivors navigating their own Title IX cases. During my senior year of high school, I joined Know Your IX, a survivor- and youth-led project from the national youth activism nonprofit Advocates for Youth, and I began organizing around Title IX on the national level.
Recognizing intersectional struggles
Entering college, I continued working with Know Your IX while also deepening my connections within university community spaces. As a member of the food cooperative, I work with peers to operate a fully functioning space serving accessible, low-cost, vegan meals for our students and the broader San Diego community.
Outside of our regular operations, we host mutual aid events to feed the community for free and maintain a community shelf providing students with no-cost menstrual products, Narcan, Plan B, and other resources. Delving into a space focusing on an issue I wasn’t as familiar with has taught me that food justice is related to economic justice is related to climate justice is related to racial justice is related to survivor justice. In collaborating with co-op members about how we can continue to show up for all communities, I have further understood the need to uplift intersectional struggles and cross-movement solidarity.
Activism at all levels
Being a part of the food cooperative has taught me the importance of centering relationships and community care, but it has also shown me how building movements that are truly liberatory and horizontal can come with obstacles we need to work together to overcome imaginatively. As a non-hierarchical space, the food cooperative has no grievances officer or human resources appointee we can turn to when conflict occurs or harm is committed.
I have collaboratively discussed with co-op members about ways we can be an accountable space that acknowledges the fact that harm will be committed in our space at one point or another, and how we can formulate solutions beyond the dominant narratives pushed by the criminal punishment system — solutions that are rooted in true justice. This collaboration has continued to inform the organizing I do at Know Your IX, one of the few organizations promoting anti-carceral approaches to sexual violence. It has cemented in me the reason why we push for a robust, inclusive Title IX rule that provides survivors with a path outside of the criminal punishment system.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned there is not just one way to organize. While national campaigns and large-scale protests are exciting, there is also value in initiatives that center the values and experiences of local communities and organizers themselves. My work at the campus level has only strengthened my national advocacy, reminding me of the importance of relationships and community care at any scale. Organizing isn’t easy, but it has taught me more than I ever expected — both about the world and about myself.
