Humans of New Era — April 2018

Here are two of the incredible volunteers who have dedicated their time to building a better democracy.

Marcos Michelena

Why Marcos is awesome:

Marcos was first welcomed to the New Era fam in January and ever since has been a huge advocate for student debt reform. Marcos is dependable, hard working, and dedicated to making change in Colorado. Marcos cares about immigration, is a triplet, and loves to travel around Colorado taking in the views! Whether he’s registering voters on campus, advocating for student debt policy, marching in support of gun reform — Marcos always leads in his community.

What issue motivates Marcos the most:

Other than student debt reform, immigration is something that is personal issue for me. I am an immigrant myself and I’ve moved to the states and I’ve been lucky in the sense that I’ve been able to get a residency and a citizenship very, very quickly but I know so many other people that haven’t and other people face discrimination just for trying to make a better lives for themselves and for many immigrants moving to a different country is not a choice but it’s a survival instinct and a lot of people believe that they are here to take up space, but they are here because even though they have no social security, no health benefits, zero rights what-so-ever, they will have a better life than what they had back home.

Ali Noor

Why Ali is awesome:

Ali has been involved with grassroots organizing for a while now, although New Era hooked him with our municipalization campaign back in 2017. He is particularly passionate about affordable healthcare and is a wizard at phone banks. We are so happy that he has stayed involved into our spring student debt work!

Why Ali thinks more young people should get involved in our democracy:

“Because [young people] are marginalized we don’t have much representation like older folks do. We just have to put ourselves out there and if we do that we can get the representatives we want, and shed light on the issues we really care about.

Definitely get involved, it’s worth it, it’s fun, and you meet great people, interesting people, people with a bunch of different stories and you see what issues they are focused on and you can reflect on your own issues and see where they align and what you guys can do together to fix [those issues].”