In The Community
Continuing with our summer series, “Latinas Who Lead,” we bring you another group of impressive Latina activists in the U.S. putting in the work in their communities to improve the lives of those they are representing. Whether you’re looking for Latina women to support and champion, or you need inspiration for your own activism, these women are examples of leadership, resilience, and empowerment. Check out the first installment if you missed it, but if you’re up-to-date, here are 5 Latina activists to keep an eye on:
Juleyka Lantigua
Photo by Juleyka Lantigua
Juleyka Lantigua is a journalist and entrepreneur, Founder and CEO of award-winning digital media studio, LWC Studios, which focuses on making podcasts for clients who highlight stories that matter. LWC Studios also produces original podcasts, many of which are focused on Latino experiences and stories. Lantigua is the producer of the “Latina to Latina” podcast hosted by Alicia Menendez, a TV commentator, host, and author who also works on MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” a show that provides analysis of the big events of the week. “Latina to Latina” showcases remarkable Latinas in business, politics, arts, and more, giving a platform to Latinas making an impact across industries.
Her body of work is as diverse as it is award-winning. She also produces the “70 Million: One Jail at a Time” podcast, which focuses on the effects local jails have on people and communities, and sheds light on how communities across the country are addressing jail reform. The podcast was nominated in 2020 for a Peabody Award and won Best Narrative/Documentary Podcast at the New York Festivals Radio Award in 2020.
LWC Studios also recently launched “100 Latina Birthdays,” a documentary podcast that focuses on Latina health. It’s a narrative investigative series that reports on the key health issues Latinas face in the U.S. at every stage of their lives. The first season focuses on issues starting in utero to age 20. The following seasons will continue exploring different age groups through age 100.
Lantigua was born in the Dominican Republic, and her family moved to the U.S. when she was 10 years old. She grew up in the Bronx, went to Skidmore College, and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship, which provides grants for U.S. citizens to go abroad and citizens from other countries to come to the U.S. to study, teach, research, and share their talents and skills. Lantigua holds a Master's in Print Journalism and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction, which she has used to create platforms that the Latino community can benefit from for over 20 years, and in many ways, this is only the beginning for Lantigua.
Dr. Carmen Rojas
Photo by Dr. Carmen Rojas
Of Venezuelan and Nicaraguan descent, Dr. Carmen Rojas is the President and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, which works for a healthy democracy and a just economy. She has had this role since 2020 when she became the youngest Latina to lead a nationally endowed philanthropic foundation. The foundation’s mission is to help create a country where underrepresented communities are no longer ignored by the government. To achieve this goal, they fund organizations, initiatives, scholars, and leaders who work on shifting the power balance to communities that are constantly excluded from having any say in society.
Under Dr. Rojas’ leadership, the foundation launched the prestigious Freedom Scholars award, a program designed to support scholars with a one-time $250,000 award to further research in areas like feminist prison abolition, Indigenous erasure, global urbanism, alternatives to movement capture, and militarized policing. Since 2020, the program has granted over $130 million in funding to a variety of organizations and individuals including Angélica Cházaro, J.D, co-founder of La Resistencia, a grassroots organization focused on ending immigrant detention, deportations, and the Northwest Detention Center; Lorgia Garcia Peña, PhD, a scholar on Latinx studies, global Blackness, and Dominican diaspora studies; Sarah Haley, PhD, whose work focuses on gender and women’s history, prison abolition, Black feminist history and theory, and more; among others.
Dr. Rojas has dedicated her entire career to working with foundations, nonprofits, and financial institutions to make a difference in the lives of working people all over the U.S. She’s also a member of the boards of Nonprofit Quarterly, Blue Ridge Labs, San Francisco Federal Reserve's Community Advisory Council, and the Confluence Racial Equity Initiative Advisory Committee. It’s not easy being one of the few, but Rojas is an advocate who dreams boldly, is a passionate philanthropist, and is an inspiring figure in the world of philanthropy where systemic change is hard to come by.
Rachel Carmona
Photography by Kisha Bari
Rachel O’Leary Carmona is the current Executive Director at both Women’s March and Women’s March Network. Women’s March is one of the largest political platforms for women and the most impactful grassroots organization on the progressive spectrum. Carmona is a first-generation Mexican American, and she’s dedicated her career to inspiring, mobilizing, and empowering people to have a say in the actions and policies that affect their communities.
Carmona began as the Chief Operating Officer of Women’s March in 2018 and transitioned into her current role in 2019. She helped transform the organization by overseeing the creation of its infrastructure and the incorporation of the Women’s March Network. Carmona also established Women’s March Win, a Super PAC dedicated to empowering and mobilizing women politically.
Under Carmona’s leadership, the Women’s March has grown exponentially, mobilizing thousands of marchers every year, with 2018 boasting an estimated 300,000 marchers across the U.S. The Women’s March voter mobilization efforts played an important role in a national coalition that led to Trump’s loss in the 2020 elections.
Moreover, Carmona spearheaded a change in approach: the Women’s March isn’t just about an annual march in Washington D.C. They expanded their on-the-ground organizing efforts to take action throughout the year, with efforts focused on stopping abortion bans, standing against gun violence, rejecting white nationalism, demanding dignity for survivors, and more. Women’s March has mobilized tens of millions of individuals to work for a more feminist future, and they’re now consistently on the front lines of transformative social change.
Liz Alarcon
Photo by Liz Alarcon
Liz Alarcon is a Venezuelan American communicator, facilitator, social entrepreneur, political analyst, and speaker. She has held a variety of roles in her career, including Director of Strategic Partnerships for The Children's Movement of Florida, Producer and Reporter at Univision, Miami Director of the Leadership Program for the Millennium Campus Network, Debate Teacher at Archimedean Upper Conservatory, and Analyst at Bendixen & Amandi International. There doesn’t seem to be much this powerhouse can’t do.
Alarcon is a proud alumna of the University of Miami and Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and is another Fulbright Scholarship recipient. She is also the Founder and Executive Director of Pulso, a non-profit media outlet dedicated to sharing news and stories for and about Latinos. Pulso reaches a subscriber base of over 2 million Latinos across their media platforms, across the U.S., and is committed to building community for a population that rarely sees their history told accurately or their experiences reflected authentically.
Alarcon has written and provided commentary for publications like The New York Times, MSNBC, & The Atlantic, among others. One of the main focuses of her work is increasing people’s understanding of Latin America and empowering Latinos in the U.S., making them feel seen while also engaging them so they can increase their political power through civic participation and advocacy.
Irene Godinez
Photo by Vote Run Lead
Irene Godinez is a force in the world of activism, particularly within the non-profit sector. With almost 15 years of dedicated service to her community, she’s left a mark on various organizations at local, state, and national levels. Of Mexican descent, Godinez is committed to causes close to her heart, including immigration, women's health and reproductive rights, civic engagement, and community outreach.
As the founder and executive director of Poder NC Action, Godinez is leading the fight for reproductive and economic justice in North Carolina. With a decade of experience in the abortion rights space, she anticipated the challenges that have now arisen in the space of abortion rights, and she sees them as a rallying cry for action. She’s determined to elect leaders who uphold and champion the rights of women to be whole and independent humans with full bodily autonomy.
Poder NC Action is a nonprofit organization dedicated to building people's power, investing in leadership development, and educating the public about critical issues and elections. At its core, Poder NC Action strives to cultivate a sense of belonging and efficacy among Latino individuals, challenging historical distrust of government and fostering a community rooted in shared values. Godinez envisions a world where political leadership reflects the diversity of its constituents, so she advocates for justice and equality, especially when it comes to reproductive rights for the Latino, Black, and LGBTQIA+ communities.
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In a new summer series, “Latinas Who Lead,” we’re highlighting Latinas who are at the forefront of social justice movements in the United States, advocating for change and equality in many different ways. From civil rights to environmental justice to entrepreneurial equity, you can bet passionate Latinas are making a significant impact in their communities and beyond. To give them well-deserved recognition and offer sources of inspiration for your own advocacy and activism, here are the first 5 Latina leaders in our series:
Marisa Franco
Photography courtesy of Marisa Franco
Marisa Franco is a prominent Latino rights advocate and community organizer based in Phoenix, Arizona who fights for immigrant rights. She’s known for organizing campaigns and protests against deportations, detention centers, and discriminatory immigration policies, such as the #Not1MoreDeportation campaign back in 2014. She’s also the co-founder of Mijente, an online organization that serves Latino and Chicano activists, helping them organize their efforts to dismantle systems of injustice and inequity.
The organization has achieved some significant gains against the prison industrial complex, which makes billions of dollars a year through the mass incarceration of Americans and immigrants. Their #notechforice campaign addresses the predatory ways tech companies are making millions of dollars by violating civil rights and allows communities to support the efforts through petitions and other easy actions. They also have a petition tool where anyone can start their own petition for a cause they want to support.
Alejandra Gómez
Photography shared by ywcaaz.org
As a daughter of Mexican immigrant parents, Alejandra Gómez realized very early on how broken the U.S. immigration system is. This planted the seed of passionate activism that eventually led her to become one of a cadre of highly effective and dedicated Latina community organizers in the state of Arizona.
In the wake of the disastrous SB1070 law in 2010, known as the “show me your papers” law, that allowed Arizona law enforcement to stop and detain anyone at all just for “appearing” to be in the U.S. without proper documentation, Gómez joined thousands of activists who refused to allow her community to be terrorized by the state. The law was partially struck down just two years after then-Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill into law.
Gómez continued to focus her efforts on immigration rights and community justice and helped organize large-scale efforts to empower Latinos to vote and understand that when enough people come together, their collective actions are powerful and influential.
As the Executive Director of the Arizona Center for Empowerment and LUCHA, she’s been involved in many high-profile community wins, including the ousting of controversial Sherrif Joe Arpaio. More recently, through organizing efforts, she helped get abortion protections on the 2024 ballot and helped secure 150 million dollars for the Arizona Trust Fund to address the affordable housing crisis.
Ana María Archila
Photography courtesy of Ana María Archila
Ana María Archila, of Colombian descent, got a lot of national attention back in 2018 during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when she confronted Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator about sexual assault. She’s a dedicated advocate for women’s rights, immigrant rights, worker justice, and LGBTQ rights. She leans heavily on political engagement and grassroots organizing to empower immigrant communities, low-income communities, and women of color.
She’s led several national organizations, including the Center for Popular Democracy and Make the Road New York, where she significantly increased the influence and presence of their members across the United States. As if that wasn’t enough, she ran for Lt. Governor of New York in 2022.
Archilla is now the Co-Director of the New York Working Families Party, where she’s focused on building a multiracial working people’s political party that can enact an agenda that creates real material change for working people in the U.S.
Carmen Perez
Photography shared by gatheringforjustice.org
Carmen Perez is a Chicana feminist and a devoted activist fighting for civil rights, women’s rights, gender equity, community policing, violence prevention, and more. She’s the CEO of The Gathering for Justice, a nonprofit focused on ending child incarceration and the racial disparities that plague the criminal justice system in the U.S. Perez was also one of the co-chairs of the 2017 Women’s March, the largest single-day protest in the history of the country for women’s rights. Women’s March continues to this day, organizing events around the country to create change.
Raised in Oxnard, California, she frequently returns to her roots to help lead or participate in community events that empower local youth and adults alike. She recently told the VC Star, “Good trouble is when you are out there with people that you love making sure that justice prevails.” She punctuated the words with a laugh. “I find myself getting into good trouble often.”
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez
Photography courtesy of Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez
As the co-founder of the Workers Defense Project and founder of Jolt, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez has been a tireless advocate for the rights of immigrant workers and Latino youth her entire adult career. Her activism is focused not only on immigrant rights but also on voting rights, universal healthcare, climate change, economic justice, fair wages, fair working conditions, and more.
She’s led successful campaigns for workers’ protection, immigrant rights, and voter mobilization, driving positive change at a local and national level. Many of these campaigns are notable for their creativity and focus on culture. While at Jolt, she helped lead the #PoderQuince campaign, which helped young quinceañeras use their 15th birthday parties as a platform to register and mobilize Latino voters. It’s well known that quinceañera parties are steeped in culture and community, and by leveraging these gatherings, they were able to register and activate tens of thousands of new Texas voters.
To expand her activism Tzintzún Ramirez co-authored a book, “Presente! Latino Immigrant Voices in the Struggle for Racial Justice” in 2014, and ran for the U.S. Senate in 2020 in her home state of Texas. She’s currently the Executive Director of NextGen America, the nation’s largest youth voting rights organization.
These five Latina activists are contemporary examples of resilience, passion, and dedication. Their efforts are a source of inspiration and empowerment in the Latino community, and they’re leading the next generation of Latinas fighting for justice and equality. Keep an eye out for the next installment in the series and join us in getting to know more of these impactful Latinas.
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College students are rising up across the country to protest the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the lack of action from global governments. After the initial October 7th attack on Israeli people that resulted in an estimated 1,200 deaths, an estimated 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in response, with over 15,000 of those killed being children. The Palestinian death toll count is an estimate for various reasons, including an unknown number of bodies that are still under the rubble, decomposing bodies in unsafe areas that can’t be searched, and the lack of access to a government source that can accurately account for Palestinian citizens.
The University of Southern California (USC) protest is one of many now featured in heavy news coverage due to the clashes between students and law enforcement. USC protests first began after the university decided to cancel valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s commencement speech, a student who has been openly pro-Palestine on social media. USC cited safety concerns for the cancellation of the speech; however, the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed to local NPR affiliate “LAist” last week that no crime report had been opened for the threats. USC then went on to cancel the entire main graduation ceremony.
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USC also announced a drastic change to the campus-wide commencement ceremony, and it seems that other universities in the U.S. will follow suit, including Princeton University, Emory University, Cornell University, Northwestern University, City College of New York, and George Washington University because students have joined the efforts in calling for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide on Palestinians.
Since Wednesday night, dozens of protesters have been arrested across U.S. universities. At USC, over 90 people were arrested by the LAPD during peaceful protests because they refused to disperse and disband their encampment (up since last week) in Alumni Park, which is where the university’s commencement events take place. Encampment has been an element of many student-led protests sprouting on college campuses all over the country as a quiet means of disruption. USC protesters stood their ground, but arrests eventually started, with LAPD officers zip-tying people and leading them to LAPD vans.
As reported by NPR, arrests have also been made at Princeton University and Emory University, and there has been heavy police presence at Emerson College and the University of Texas, among others. Tensions are rising on college campuses across the nation as students refuse to stay quiet about their activism and their solidarity with the Palestinian people.
A Latino Father Goes Viral
Amidst the chaos of USC protests and the violent reaction of local and campus police forces, a supportive Latino dad emerged as a gold standard for parents everywhere by showing up to support his daughter, one of the protest organizers on campus. While many parents would counsel their children to “mind your own business” or “don’t get involved in things that don’t concern you,” this Latino dad headed to campus and stood by his daughter.
This “don’t ruffle any feathers” approach is particularly pervasive in Latino culture, where it’s common to be taught to keep your head down and not make any waves - “no te metas donde no te llaman” or “no es tu problema” are phrases Latino children hear often.
@holdonnow_ #utaustin
A reporter from ABC7 Los Angeles identified the supportive father as Lazaro Aguero. He confidently stated, “I’m here to support my daughter. She’s studying here, and they’re protesting against a genocide.” He shared that the entire family is against the ongoing genocide and has been aware of his daughter’s efforts on campus.
Aguero also said, “They’re threatening, if we don’t leave the campus we’re going to get arrested. But the students are so brave, look at them, they don’t want to leave the campus.” When asked if he was concerned about his daughter he said, “It does concern me, but my daughter did a right decision. If she rather be arrested fighting for Palestine, I will be the happiest daddy. I will be the happiest daddy if she’s doing the right thing.”
This moving show of support made many Latina daughters proud across social media, and the ABC7 clip quickly went viral. To see a father breaking through machismo beliefs that often lead to controlling behavior and the repression of female power within families was nothing short of awe-inspiring. Thousands of comments can now be found showing the emotional response to seeing a Latino father stand so resolutely by his daughter as she does what so many Latino parents, especially fathers, teach their daughters not to do.
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Many commentators agreed that this viral video served as a reminder not only to other Latino parents but parents across the ethnic spectrum to support their children when they’re putting themselves on the line for acting on their beliefs and seeking change in systems that have been shown to be unjust, unfair, and inequitable.
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The younger generation, as evidenced by students across the U.S. who are raising their voices for Palestine, is following their anti-war beliefs and bringing their parents along with them. Where global governments have stayed silent and stayed put, young people are amplifying Palestinian voices and helping mobilize the masses, not just in their communities but also on social media, across all platforms.
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