Interviews and post by Jennifer Tomkins
Some years ago, when I served on the board of the progressive magazine, “In These Times,” our board chair was a young guy who had graduated from Princeton. He used to say that he was the only Princeton graduate he knew who was not pulling down a six or seven figure income from Wall Street or a corporate law firm. Instead, he was a community organizer (brief moment of silence to remember one who used to occupy the White House) using his smarts and his education to make social change.
He was an exception and an exceptional person, as are two the young organizers in the Central Valley who returned home after educations at UC Berkley and Harvard. Alicia Olivarez (the Harvard grad) is Strategy Director of 99Rootz and Crisantema “Crissy” Gallardo is its Senior Organizer. 99Rootz is a regional youth and young adult leadership initiative specific to the Central Valley launched in early 2018 by what’s known now as Power California, a former recipient of Airlift funding.
Growing up in Atwater, Chrissy starkly recalls to me the stultifying boredom, lack of opportunity and the violence that destroyed the lives of so many in her own family and others (one sister murdered and a brother in jail) and contemporaries — no public transport, lack of recreation facilities, poor education. Chrissy was determined like her friends, to “get out.” It was her experience at UC Berkeley, where she found the support of women of color, that led her back to Rootz.
Alicia, who grew up in Sanger, felt similarly about her childhood town and future. Outside the bubble of wealth that is much of coastal California, Sanger’s reality for many is unemployment, lack of access to healthcare, mass incarceration of youth of color as adults and environmental problems caused by pesticide use and abysmal air quality. As the eldest child, Alicia ended up being responsible for caring for her younger siblings, while her father worked and her mother battled addiction. She remembers drive-by shootings, living in homes infested with roaches and mice and the fear of loved ones becoming addicted to meth. Like Chrissy, Alicia decided to use her education not to escape her community, but to change it for everyone through deep organizing.
As Chrissy succinctly states it, the vision for 99Rootz is “To be the vehicle youth use to transform our schools, cities and region. We are going back to the basics (#eachoneteachone) sharing our stories, building our leadership and taking it to the streets and ballots.” Knowing that few of Central Valley’s youth will escape to Harvard to get a political education, 99Rootz gets creative with their tactics used to realize the #eachoneteachone philosophy. Last summer, they brought 25 students who returned home from university to the community to provide deep training on identity, political education, campaign planning as well as arts and culture.
The core of 99Rootz’s gameplan is building community as a way to change policy. That’s why they incorporate fun and friendship into the organization. As the rabble rouser, Mother Jones, said almost a century ago, they want the revolution to be joyful. Following that mantra, the 99Rootz office serves as a cultural hub for young people to experience and create art as well as a base from which to run political education, voter registration, phone banking and door-knocking campaigns.
Right now, 99Rootz is dedicated to advancing various safe schools and communities effort, mainly gathering signatures to get their Schools and Communities First initiative on the November 2020 ballot, which would bring $12 million in school funding to the area. At the same time, they are also working to turn out record numbers of young Latinex voters in the 2020 primaries.
Without the work of Alicia, Chrissy and their team of passionate young organizers, Central Valley communities would have a lot less hope—and power. As an Airlift alumnus, we can attest to the strength, energy, creativity and vision of Power California, 99Rootz and all other grassroots organizations. We will continue to follow and cheer on these teams’ invaluable work through 2020 and beyond.
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To donate to 99Rootz and other crucial Central Valley grassroots organizations, go to https://powercalifornia.org/.
99Rootz Shows How Youth Organizing Is Done