From homelessness to confronting Jeff Flake — she's fighting for reproductive rights for the marginalized.
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00:00When you become homeless, you can't hide that you're poor.
00:03You can't hide the experience, and I had to become open
00:06and share my story to really just get by.
00:19It taught me about the ways I was being disadvantaged and disenfranchised
00:23and taught me how to move forward and move forward authentically.
00:30I found not a single mention of consent in my old sex ed.
00:45These are some of the really pressing issues that,
00:47if not supplemented by a parent at home, when many of us don't have parents at home,
00:52it puts low-income people of color, women, first-generation Americans,
00:57LGBTQIA youth, really at a disadvantage.
01:09They took me in and provided me with six months of birth control,
01:13which for me was great because I had struggled to access transportation
01:18to even get to that clinic.
01:28So I'm a young woman, and you're a middle-aged man.
01:31I'm a person of color, and you're white.
01:34I come from a background of poverty,
01:37and I didn't always have parents to guide me through life.
01:40You come from privilege.
01:42Why, it's your right to take away my right to choose Planned Parenthood.
01:58Following my interaction with Jeff Flake,
02:01I did a lot of work with Planned Parenthood.
02:03But ultimately, as a young person and a young person
02:06who does come from a low-income background,
02:09it's important to me that I be paid for my labor.
02:11And so I moved on to opportunities that were more conducive
02:15and more inclusive of my needs.
02:28We're people of color, first-generation Americans, teen moms,
02:32the people who really access these services.
02:35And we serve as peer sex educators,
02:38so we suggest ways that these clinics could be more accessible.
02:41For example, providing Ubers and Lyfts to and from clinics,
02:45providing food at the clinic.
02:57One thing I've been working on on Columbia's campus
02:59is getting first-generation and low-income students
03:01recognized as a special interest community,
03:03along with LGBTQIA folks or the Latinx folks
03:08who all have a physical space on campus
03:10to come together in community.
03:12Something that's been really making me rethink my activism and organizing
03:18is this idea that we could all support each other a whole lot better,
03:23and that folks with privilege could do better at passing the mic.