As a White-presenting Latinx cisgender woman married to a Black man and raising a Black boy, I personally know and witness daily the mental and emotional injury caused by encounters with racism, racial bias, discrimination, and hate crimes. Race-based trauma has detrimental psychological impacts on people, therefore as a racial equity social justice consultant, trainer, coach, and systems agitator, I work to hold individuals, institutions, and systems accountable to supporting the needs of those most deeply affected. Like many of my Black, Indigenous, and brown people, there's a deeply personal path toward becoming the systems agitator I am today. Here's the beginning as I know it today.

MY STORY

I was born in San Bernardino, CA and raised in Compton, CA with 3 brothers. My mother is from San Salvador, El Salvador and my father is from Jalisco, Mexico. Both migrated to the states at very young ages to provide for their family back home and to fulfill the “American Dream.” At a very young age, I “learned” about segregation, racism, poverty, community violence, immigration/deportation, colorism, and the beginning of my anti-Black learning/sentiment. 

Compton’s systemic segregation was largely responsible for the concentration of poverty we were all experiencing. When you have economically disinvested communities, people are cut off from opportunities. Over time, the instability of our community grew and trickled down to us; poverty, crime and under-resourced schools. In our neighborhood, our parents often found themselves in a tug of war with the streets.  We saw how prison, drugs and joblessness left too many homes without family members. Due to this, we moved to Eugene, OR in 1999. Little did I know that it would be the beginning of my mental health being impacted by race-based traumatic stress. I went from a diverse school district, to what felt like the whitest city in the world. This was the beginning of my journey to becoming a systems agitator and the staunch advocate that I am today. 

MY WORK

As a White-presenting Latinx woman, my work starts with remaining on my own racial-wounding journey in order to effectively support others to jump on their own. I strive to break cycles of internalized racism, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and anti-Indigeneity within myself and within my Latinx community and other non-Black communities of color. I want to support my Latinx community to understand and dismantle the white supremacist and anti-Black sentiments that have been ingrained in our culture such as seeking partners with white or lighter skin to "lighten" our family trees, images in telenovelas, Spanish-language news, and the racial caste system Latin American countries were built on. I believe our oppression is bound up and intertwined with the oppression of the Black community and until they are liberated, until they are free from injustices and oppression, we will never be liberated ourselves. I have learned to acknowledge and reconcile with the privilege my light skin has given me within systems tainted with white supremacy and I have promised myself and my community to continue to unlearn and uproot the white supremacy characteristics we were forced to ingest to survive in this country and heal.

MY INVITATION

To my Latinx and non-Black communities, please join me in healing and breaking the cycles of internalized racism and white supremacy we've endured for centuries. Our healing is necessary in order to be free and to stand in true solidarity Black folx everywhere.

Co-Founder