When I was 16, I was interviewed by The Mercury News at my first-ever protest. I was standing outside of San Jose City Hall with other high school students in 2018, calling on Congress to protect immigrants brought to the United States as children. The story ran with my name. For the first time, I saw someone like me, a young Latina, quoted in print about immigrant rights.
I didn’t know it then, but many years prior, another California teen at that same age, Stephen Miller, was also interviewed and given his first big media opportunities. Miller had advantages in the form of mentors in conservative media who helped him turn his local exposure into national TV appearances and a job in Congress by the time he was 23, the age I am now. As a teen, I had only my protest sign, my voice, and my neighbors. The difference between us wasn’t passion or intelligence; it was access.
Miller’s early platform helped him shape a movement built on exclusion. He is now the deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser for the Trump administration, where he is helping direct anti-immigrant operations that are kidnapping our neighbors and killing innocent people. My generation is determined to build something very different: a world where everyone has a voice; where everyone feels wanted, safe, and welcomed. We are building this world with few resources or connections. While Miller and other MAGA figures rose through cable hits and congressional internships, Gen Z is using its smartphones and organizing in the streets.
Recently, The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer described the burgeoning civic ethic that’s rallied residents of the Twin Cities as they have responded to the predations of Miller as “neighborism”—the idea that people should protect and care for one another when institutions fail. For Latinas like me, this is nothing new. It’s how our communities have survived for generations: We watch out for each other’s families, we share information, we organize rides, we deliver groceries. We were building networks of protection long before anyone gave it a name. What some commentators are just discovering, we’ve been perfecting.
This past summer, as fear spread through my neighborhood with ICE sightings rising across the Bay Area, I joined a community defense project, the Santa Clara County Rapid Response Network, responding to text message alerts and observing ICE activity to make sure people’s rights were respected. I attended numerous Know Your Rights workshops to educate myself and others. I distributed over 1,000 red cards in cities like San Jose, San Francisco, Santa Ana, and Anaheim. I created a Linktree resource page called Protect Our People, which has received over 100,000 clicks. It provides Know Your Rights cards, immigration updates, and community resources; many other young people are creating similar online resources.
We’ve been studying how the demagogues attacking our communities operate. We’ve observed them monopolize audiovisual media, from talk radio to YouTube, by channeling their rage and bigotry. Meanwhile, the political conversation on the left is dominated by institutional liberals and pundits who struggle to convey urgency. They’re insulated from the worst impacts of the policies they debate, and the lack of authenticity is painfully evident. When they speak about mass deportations and disappearances, it doesn’t resonate with most Americans because it doesn’t feel real. In traditional newsrooms, the people shaping narratives are overwhelmingly white, highly educated, and comfortable enough that the stakes remain theoretical. But for people like me, this crisis isn’t something I can blithely sleepwalk through. I see what’s at stake every day. That’s why voices like mine matter right now—because we’re not observing this moment from a distance. We’re living it.
My generation is determined to flip a playbook that has served us—and the country—poorly. We’re going on TikTok to fill the vacuum of content with work that is factual and authentic. Last summer, I created a TikTok video explaining how the “big, beautiful bill” would continue to enable mass deportations, allocating $75 billion to ICE, an already overfunded agency. I explained, with genuine urgency, how millions of people would lose access to health insurance and EBT benefits, resources that low-income families rely on to survive. That video reached 500,000 views and received 100,000 likes. Ahead of the 2025 elections, I made another video encouraging people to vote “yes” on Prop 50, which would redraw congressional districts to safeguard democracy, and to drop off their ballots early. It reached 23,000 views and 3,200 likes. Ultimately, Californians passed the ballot initiative.
Earlier this year, a federal court denied efforts by the California Republican Party and the Department of Justice to sue California to stop the implementation of Prop 50, which they claim unfairly favors Latinos. Of course, giving Latino voters an equal shot is “unfair.” Republicans have turned grievance into a brand, claiming persecution at every turn, even as their leaders have enjoyed every institutional privilege imaginable.
The rest of us don’t have the luxury of grievance politics; we are too busy doing the work, without the powerful mentors, the platforms, or the media pundits on speed dial.
After months of mass deportations under this administration, the fear and anxiety in mixed-status communities are constant. We have Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem threatening us in commercials. “Leave now. If you don’t, we will find you and we will deport you.… You will never return,” she says in one ad. These horrible ads are aired across Latino-dominant platforms like Univision. As a 23-year-old Latina watching these ads, my heart drops thinking of all the heroes who risked everything to create a better future for their children, who are doing everything they can to prop up this country, only to be treated like animals.
But my generation will not be silenced. We’re creating a resistance movement from scratch. As institutions ignore us, we are learning to rely on each other, turning neighborhood networks, group chats, and protests into our command centers. My generation takes the tools designed by tech billionaires to capture our attention and flips them into engines of our collective power.
I recently graduated from UC Merced with a degree in political science, and plan to pursue a law degree. I plan to use my education to protect people from harm, not to persecute them.
For years, I’ve been studying these MAGA provocateurs, not because they inspired me but because they shaped the battlefield my community is forced to navigate. Charlie Kirk is another figure who built an empire by portraying himself as an outsider, all while enjoying the full backing of billionaire donors, right-wing think tanks, and a media ecosystem eager to elevate him.
For a long time, I daydreamed about debating him someday. His assassination last year was a disturbing reminder of how violent our political landscape has become. But it also clarified something for me: The fight was never about him or Miller or any provocateur. It’s about the systems that made them powerful, that are injecting hatred into the national bloodstream. And it’s about the infrastructure my generation is building to spread love and neighborliness.
This journey has led me to spaces I never imagined, including “Our Unsilencing,” a new initiative at USC Annenberg for increasing the diversity of public intellectuals, and it has changed me. I once believed my voice was my weakness; now I know it is my greatest strength. I plan to take the commentary skills I’ve learned and pour them back into my community.
We do have an advantage over the provocateurs: years of building without anyone’s permission, without protection, without a safety net. We learned to navigate systems designed to exclude us. My story is only one thread in something much larger: a generation that refuses to surrender its future, and that has grown strong fighting a rigged system. And we are just getting started.
