Jolt organizes young Latinos in Texas to exercise their right to vote and demand that our government give the Latino community the dignity and respect that we deserve. Almost 40% of Texas’ population is Latino, yet the state legislature promotes discriminatory laws like SB4 and Latinos face disproportionate challenges: They are more likely to live in poverty and lack access to good schools and health care. Jolt Initiative empowers young Latinos to organize and demand equality and justice for our community.

I have committed my life to winning equality for immigrants and communities of color because I come from an immigrant family. I’ve seen first-hand the cost of a broken immigration system that devalues the lives of immigrants, especially immigrants of color. My uncle lost his life crossing the border, my husband is a DREAMer, and I grew up in Ohio where I regularly saw my Mexican mother face discrimination. There is no one or two moments that have led me to do this work; rather it is the experience of growing up in a Latino immigrant family.

At Jolt, we work to empower and organize young Latinos, and in a short period of time we’ve organized hundreds and mobilized thousands. However, we are working in a state with the second-largest population in the country. This makes scaling our work our greatest challenge. To influence policy at the state level, we need to organize our base and voters to scale. And in a place as big as Texas, building an organization to scale takes significant human and capital resources.

I’m inspired by civil rights leader Ella Baker. She believed that ordinary people had the power to transform their conditions. In 1960, she helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and organized mass voter registration and mobilization efforts. In the face of what seemed like insurmountable circumstances, she helped people unlock the power within them to strengthen their communities and shape their future.

Maggie Juarez is a vibrant young woman and a first-generation Texan. Although Maggie had never been politically active, she was so outraged and saddened by immigration raids in Austin that she walked out of school in February to protest. That day, Maggie met me and became involved with Jolt. A few months later, fighting for better conditions, she was one of the lead organizers of Quinceanera at the Capitol, a performance action to protest the discriminatory law SB4 and Jolt’s most notable action to date.