This is the second story in a series about the Othering & Belonging Institute's Bridging for Democracy project, a coalition of grassroots organizations canvassing—door-to-door, across the country—to bridge across differences. What they are finding is an antidote to authoritarianism.
“I spend my days thinking about how people who have been taught to distrust each other might begin to see one another again as human.”
On Tuesday nights, when most kids were finishing homework or falling asleep in front of the TV, I was learning how power works.
I was 12 years old and barely tall enough to see over the podium at Fullerton’s City Hall, but I remember the feeling clearly—the fluorescent lights, the long wait, the adults who looked past us like we were on a school field trip instead of kids demanding something real. We weren’t there for extra credit. We were there because our park in South Fullerton didn’t have lights, and when the sun went down in our neighborhood, everything got smaller: practices ended, parents worried, and kids drifted toward streets that didn’t always forgive mistakes.
I didn’t know then that I was being organized.
I didn’t have words like civic engagement or belonging or bridging. I just knew what it felt like to grow up on the side of town that always had to ask twice.
Today, at 31, I’m a lead organizer with Orange County Congregation Community Organization (OCCCO), a single mother of two boys, and someone deeply rooted in the Othering and Belonging Institute’s Belonging for Democracy work. I help facilitate long-bridging conversations across divided communities—across race, class, geography, and political fear. I spend my days thinking about how people who have been taught to distrust each other might begin to see one another again as human.
But the truth is, that work didn’t start in meeting rooms or trainings. For me it started on that soccer field.
I grew up in South Fullerton, on the other side of the train tracks—the side that’s more Latino, more working-class, more visibly struggling. Fullerton isn’t subtle about its divides. North Fullerton is whiter and wealthier, with a large Korean population in the northwest. You don’t need data to see the segregation. You feel it in who gets resources, who gets listened to, and who gets told to wait.
Still, I loved my neighborhood. It was community. It was playing games on the playground at recess and lunch, friends talking Spanish freely while teachers tried—and failed—to keep up. It was tejano music playing everywhere, cousins always nearby, and a deep sense that we belonged to each other even if the city didn’t always act like we belonged to it.
Soccer was everything. My dad started a soccer club in our community, and it became more than a sport. In a neighborhood surrounded by gang activity, the field was protection. It was a bridge. Kids who could have gone one way found another path instead. We weren’t separate from the violence around us—we were navigating it together.
“I was fiery even then. I was raised that way.”
But our park didn’t have lights. When winter came, practice ended early. So my dad brought generators. He set up makeshift lights so we could keep playing. And through community organizers, families, and kids, we learned something powerful: we could go to City Hall and ask for what we needed.
So we did.
We showed up—kids and parents—asking the city to install lights at our park. And eventually, the city said yes. But the yes came with a condition: the lights would take three years.
At the time, that felt like a victory. Proof that the system worked if you pushed hard enough.
What I didn’t understand yet was that the lights wouldn’t just illuminate the field. They would illuminate the rules.
Once the park looked valuable, clubs from other parts of town started reserving it—clubs with money, permits, and parents who could afford fees. We’d show up for practice like we always had, and suddenly someone would tell us we couldn’t play. Baseball had the field. Another league had paid for the slot.
We went back to City Hall. Again. And again.
And the message—maybe not spoken plainly, but understood clearly—was this: if you can’t pay, you can’t play.
That’s when we started doing sit-ins.
Kids from four years old to 18, families sitting on the field during practice hours. If another group had rented the space, they couldn’t use it—not while we were there, not while we were reminding the city that this was a community park before it was a business opportunity.
Looking back, those sit-ins were my first lesson in belonging without othering. We weren’t trying to disappear anyone else. We were insisting that our presence mattered too.
I was fiery even then. I was raised that way.
I grew up in a machismo environment with a mother who refused to let me inherit her powerlessness. From a young age, she taught me to speak up, to be loud, to defend myself, to not let anyone step on me.
“Bridging taught me how to slow down, to stay curious, to build relationships strong enough to hold disagreement without turning people into enemies.”
I started organizing seriously when I was 18. In 2016, I was registering people to vote in downtown Fullerton when someone told me to go back to my country.
That moment broke something open in me.
I went home crying. My mom told me to stop. To protect myself. But the next day I told her: you taught me not to let people step on me. You were talking about men—but this is about my skin. This is about my right to belong.
I went back and have been organizing ever since.
Over time, though, I’ve learned that fire alone isn’t enough. Without grounding, it burns you out. Without strategy, it isolates you.
That’s where bridging changed everything for me.
As an organizer with OCCCO, and through my work connected to the Belonging for Democracy program, I’ve learned how to channel that fire into something sustainable. Bridging taught me how to slow down, to stay curious, to build relationships strong enough to hold disagreement without turning people into enemies.
It helped me understand that the fight over that soccer field wasn’t just about access—it was about dignity. About who gets seen as part of the “we.”
That insight shapes everything I do now.
As a mother to two boys—seven and four— I carry their future in everything I do. I don’t want them growing up believing they have to hide to survive. That’s why, in Fullerton, I helped build a coalition called Fullerton Is Our Home, grounded in narrative work developed with community and informed by broader bridging belonging frameworks. We started by naming what people were carrying: fear, anger, exhaustion, silence.
And we started with healing circles.
Before policy demands, before actions, we created space—space for people to cry without their kids watching, to say “I’m scared” out loud, to remember they weren’t alone. The first healing circle started with one question—How is everybody doing?—and it took two hours to answer.
“[B]elonging isn’t abstract. It’s material. It’s safety. It’s stability.”
Later, when I had to lead, I did it my way. I introduced karaoke healing circles. Loud, joyful, unapologetically Mexican. Singing Tejano music by Mexican icons like Selena reminded people they still had a voice.
People told us they woke up the next day feeling reset. Loved. Like they belonged again.
That sense of belonging became essential when immigrant families started asking impossible questions: What happens if ICE detains my father? Who do I call? Do we have money for a lawyer?
I didn’t have good answers. And that’s what pushed us to advocate for legal aid funding and mutual aid—because belonging isn’t abstract. It’s material. It’s safety. It’s stability.
Even when city leaders stayed silent or tabled decisions without explanation, bridging helped me keep going. It reminded me that accountability doesn’t require dehumanization, and that disappointment doesn’t mean disengagement.
The Belonging for Democracy work I’m part of now—especially long-bridging campaigns—feels like a continuation of that childhood lesson on the field. Communities separated by railroads, zip codes, and fear need spaces to encounter each other as human beings before they can tackle hard issues together.
You don’t start by arguing. You start by listening. You start by remembering similarities—parenthood, loneliness, hope. You trigger curiosity.
Curiosity is what turns “them” back into “us.”
When I think about that kid sitting on the soccer field during a sit-in, refusing to move, I see her clearly now. She didn’t have the language for belonging or bridging. But she understood the instinct.
Show up. Take space. Demand dignity. Don’t disappear.
Everything I do now—every circle, every canvas, every bridge built across fear—comes from that same place.
The lights mattered. But what mattered more was learning how to insist that we belong—together.
