“I am not an activist by choice, I am an activist for survival:” Interview with Andrea Alejandra Gonzales
The original interviews I did for Youth to Power were longer than could fit in my book, but I wanted to share the valuable information with you all. These interviews will be up online as a permanent, free resource for people, young people in particular, looking for inspiration.
— Jamie Margolin
Andrea Alejandra Gonzales (she/her), 18, is the Director of Operations at Youth Over Guns, and a community organizer for gender justice, racial justice, decolonization, and gun violence prevention.
Jamie Margolin: What is your story — how did you become an activist?
Andrea: Activism is in my blood. My father was an activist back in his home country. Growing up, he never censored anything that was happening in the world around me. So I grew up extremely empathetic towards everyone in my surroundings.
I have always wanted to be involved in making change, but I officially started mobilizing young people in the sophomore year of high school. My school took down a photography project I did about the abolishing of rape culture. The project consisted of photos of women posing nude with different empowering words painted on their backs like, “No means No” etc. The school took it down claiming it was “pornographic,” which was super ironic considering the whole point of my photography project was to make a statement about how women’s bodies were not inherently sexual or to be exploited.
I was fifteen at the time, and something inside me woke up. I didn’t give a shit about anything else people had to say, I was going to take a stand. So I made about twenty forms and made an online petition for the school to put my artwork back up. On the first night, my petition got 1,000 signatures, and then the next another 1,000. This made me realize the true power of my voice.
The students at my school generated enough outrage that I got interviewed by many news outlets, and my empowering photos ended up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in a few DC museums. It was awesome to see my artwork in establishments.
From then on out, I became that really annoying activist girl. THAT person. And I loved it. I loved being known for that person who stood up for my community.
Fast forward to two weeks after the Parkland school shooting. There was a school shooting threat in my high school, and I’ll never forget it. My school was in lockdown for about three hours, without service, which means there was no clear information about what was happening. We got random bits of inaccurate information here and there. At one point we thought there was a shooter in the gym, my teacher started crying and I started crying because my sister was in the class right next to the gym. I thought I would lose my sister that day. I was panicking and trying to text my mom and friends but the service was spotty and it wouldn’t go through.
When the police arrived, they had gigantic guns and were aggressive and hostile. They didn’t help the situation at all.
When I my sister and I got out of school, our mom was waiting outside, in tears. The three of us cried the whole way home — because even though it was a false alarm, it could have been real. That day could have been the last day of our lives, and the fear was worsened by the fact that this shooting scare was only two weeks after the Parkland Florida school shooting.
After this traumatic experience I joined the organizations March for Our Lives NYC and Youth Over Guns to take a stand against gun violence.
How does being an Indigenous Latina queer woman affect your activism?
The way that I look dictates the way people speak to me and regard me.
Being at the intersection of being queer, Indigenous, and a woman of color… there’re so many layers in my identity that I am proud of but also cause me a lot of pain and judgment.
Being a woman makes people regard you as submissive. I like to think that my tenderness makes me strong, but often in spaces I’m in they shut me down and they take advantage of my tenderness. Intergenerational trauma forces me to shut up.
During my experiences working for March For Our Lives New York, they asked me to shut down, and I did it. I learned from that negative experience and now I never let anyone silence me.
Being a woman of color I am regarded as angry, loud, a bitch, bossy, without even speaking. I am also labeled as promiscuous. I remember working with March for Our Lives NYC, I wore whatever I was comfortable in and people called me slutty. As a Latina I am always labeled as exotic, sexual, and promiscuous. I got a lot of nasty stares and didn’t know how to deal with it.
Being Indigenous and carrying the trauma of my parents and ancestors is really hard. I literally feel pain in my cells of what my ancestors had to survive through. I’ve been in a lot of activist spaces where people try to explain my own trauma to me. That’s a trigger and I don’t know how to deal with it — those experiences trigger burnout. I put my heart into spaces where I am traumatized and it makes my burnout a million times worse.
Being a queer woman, I will admit I hold a lot of privilege. I use the term queer as an umbrella term. I am very fluid with my sexuality and I tend to fall on the feminine side, so people assume I’m straight. So I don’t look “visibly queer” — because I’m femme, I don’t face many oppressive experiences. But it is still a big part of who I am, what I fight for, and the effects of homophobia within my community are real.
What are your strategies for creating change?
I used to be part of this camp that thought things could be reformed. But as I grow and learn and read, I realize that I demand a revolution in order to be liberated. I need that in order to see my children survive. I see liberation as not having to die for something, and I don’t want my children to have that weight of potentially dying for something, having to die for their freedom.
So now my general goal for change is fighting for the end of all violence. Violence is not just war and shootings. Violence is also not having water and food; violence is being systematically pushed into the prison system. And the only way to do that is to radicalize and realize that within every system, there is someone at the bottom who is being exploited.
Subconsciously, everyone is dying for liberation. Subconsciously, everyone is dying for change, and it’s activists who bring that subconscious to life. Radicalization and politicization is possible because everyone wants to be free.
My plan requires unification of everyone in the country and world. I work towards that by educating people through workshops and events and talking to people who are marginalized. I have done this work long enough to understand that the oppressed often don’t have the space and language to talk about our pain and trauma, and how to transfer that pain into the minds of the people who need to understand. So I work on education and giving communities the language and vocabulary they need to empower themselves.
What are your tips for young women of color activists?
In whatever way you decide to carry yourself, that’s your strength. All of your unique experiences lead up to this moment and no one else can lead the way you can. As a woman of color, I have to carry myself a lot of ways throughout spaces. I lead through a lot of love, and tenderness — some people see that as weakness and fragility. But I find strength within that. I know with my love and tenderness, those are the unique characteristics that will change the world. So as a young women of color, your unique characteristics will be your strengths in leading.
To all my women of color sisters, we have to remember: we are our ancestors’ wildest dreams, and we are here for a reason. Your great- great- great-grandmother fought for her life to see you in this place. And she would hate for you to change yourself because she would want for you to be the way that you are. This is what our ancestors have been fighting for, surviving for — to see you in this place. They survived for you, they fought for you, and you should have pride in who you are.
What are your thoughts on the contemporary culture of youth activism?
It’s so amazing to see this big, visible wave of young people to fighting for what is right. But on the downside, lately I have been noticing that there are a lot of youth who do “activism” just for a college recommendation [and] then abandon the community they said they were uplifting the minute they get what they need. Communities are exploited for performance and attention, and then we’re abandoned as soon as the other person gets what they want. It’s hard to see privileged young organizations not listen to the voices of marginalized youth who face real threats in our community every day.
With this culture of celebrity activism, people just sit there and tweet out a couple of things and that’s the extent of what they do. Are they giving us money? No. Are they coming to our communities? No. Are they attending our events? No. They want the glory and credit for themselves.
There needs to be a serious conversation among privileged, White, young activists about what allyship means. There are people still dying in my community. If these ego-activists really cared, they would fund the grassroots. There would be an end to all the systematic oppression in my community.
There has to be more appreciation of what I call “broke activism” — youth who still have to work, do chores, go to school, and support our families that are in tough [spots] because activism doesn’t pay. Grassroots, low income, frontline youth organizers deserve to be in TIME magazine.
We are exactly what people thought we weren’t going to do. We are out here fighting without any recognition, without any funding or resources, without the awards or TV shows other activists get. We’re making something out of nothing because that’s the way systemic oppression works. We were designed to have nothing. The system was made that way. And yet we overcome.
It hurts to see all these folks getting money and plane tickets to wherever they want and I’m stuck here in my community and I don’t ever get a break. A lot of people here can’t even put food on the table. It’s heartbreaking. I know my community needs me, but I also need to survive. I also need to provide for my family.
Activism can be so meaningful, but it’s not a popularity contest. Activism is not a little extracurricular. I am not an activist by choice, I am an activist for survival.
