Hi everyone. Last year the tiny Latino civic engagement organization, JOLT, did something remarkable. Working with youth, we brought national attention to Texas’s discriminatory law, SB4. We did this through performance protest put on by 15 young women called Quinceañera at the Capitol. The protest landed JOLT on the digital front page of the AP. It was picked up by outlets around the world and across the country. And it also spurred a movement of young Latinos ready to take action on the issues that they care about. Before I talk about the protest, I’m going to talk about Donald Trump. Donald Trump’s election victory was a huge surprise for me, like it was probably for many of you. And it was also very personal, not only because I had worked here in 2016 to get his opponent elected, but also because his campaign was an all-at-attack on immigrants and people of color. When I was a kid, I was undocumented. And while my dad and I were able to fix our immigration status, my mom waited in line for 10 years. And my family was eventually separated from her because she was undocumented. So Trump’s victory really hurt. I felt like half of the country was rejecting people like me because of the color of my skin, because we were immigrants. And also, it obviously hurt as a woman. And I also felt like Trump and his administration were giving young people like me and millions of others across the country. A new identity, as criminals, as lazy, and really as unworthy of being in this country. So after he won, all I really wanted to do was be around others like me and go back to my community and feel that comfort. And that’s what really motivated me last year to go to Texas and help my friend, Kristina Sonsun, launch Jolt. But Trump’s election also motivated another group of people to do something entirely different. It really emboldened his base to continue these attacks on Latinos and people of color across the country. And one of those people was Texas governor Greg Abbott. So last spring, Greg Abbott took a page from Donald Trump’s book, and he signed a law called SB4 on Facebook Live, like on Sunday night. It was really crazy. And the law was really serious because what it did is essentially it allowed local police in Texas to be able to ask anybody that they just came into contact with for proof that they were here legally in the United States. And if the police found, you know, somebody couldn’t prove that they were here legally, the police would then be forced to turn them into immigration enforcement for detention and deportation. The law put millions of immigrants in Texas, sorry, thousands of immigrants in Texas at risk for deportation. But it also made people really scared to come into contact with police. And Houston, Texas last year, crime reporting among Latinos fell by almost half. And in a state where 40% of the population is Latino, it made millions of people that targets a racial profiling. The law was really designed to disrupt immigrant communities and to intimidate people of color. And it’s probably no surprise to many of you that Donald Trump not only endorsed the law, but his administration and Jeff Sessions really held it up as an example for the rest of the country to follow. So we launched Jolt in the wake of these attacks on our community. And our goal is to increase Latino civic engagement in Texas. So one in three eligible voters in Texas is Latino, but unfortunately our community doesn’t like turn out to vote. In 2016, only 40% of Latinos went to the polls. And for young people ages 18 to 24, who will soon be the majority of Texans, that number is closer to 30%. So we’re working to change that by delivering leadership training so that young people in our state will be ready to lead Texas. And we’re also starting Jolt chapters across the state to teach people how to self-organize around the issues that they care about and also register their communities to vote. There’s no similar effort in Texas right now. And we really believe that if we invest in young people, we’re going to make a difference not only in Texas, but also across the country. Now we know that the Latino community in Texas is really complex. It’s huge and it’s diverse. We also know that young people have really been turned off by both political parties recently. So we ground our organizing not on politics, but on shared identity and culture. So what does this mean from a public relations perspective? Well for us, it means that we have a communication strategy that’s centered around lifting up our stories and showing Latino youth as positive change makers and heroes. And we do that by an earned media strategy that is centered on sharing their stories and we’re always striving to create digital content that lifts up our community. It also means that we anchor all of our campaigns on art and culture. For example, last May we launched a campaign to keep Texas families together and we kicked it off by painting this live mural which we invited immigrant moms and their children and their kids to paint. And we’re also later this month we’re going to have an art installation at the Texas State Capitol celebrating Dreamers and it’s going to be really big and it’s made out of pan dulce which is a traditional Mexican dessert pastry. So at a time when the government and our state are trying to erase our community, we’re really striving to celebrate our culture and our identity and everything that we do. And that’s exactly what we did with the Quinceañera at the Capitol protest. So for those of you who don’t know, Quinceañeras are a really important Latino tradition that mark a young woman’s transition into adulthood. So the idea behind the protest was to have a Quinceañera at the steps of the Texas State Capitol and then go into the Capitol to talk to a lot of the state elected officials who had supported us before. So to promote the event on social media we work with artists to create really beautiful images of the Quinceañeras and share why they were protesting. And the young women who choreographed the performance for the Quinceañera picked some really popular songs by Los Thetas at Norte and some songs from the Hamilton Mix Tape. Another really important component to the protest were the visuals. So a lot of the young women wore their actual Quinceañera dresses and they were like huge and puffy and they made like for really good photos and videos. So we brought all of these elements together, a nod to our shared identity, a celebration of our culture and great visuals. We tied them to us before and then we put the stories of young people of color at the center of it all. Hundreds participated in the protest. It was picked up by NPR, The Guardian, Vogue, you name it. And we worked with MTV to create a video about the protest and it was their most watched video last July with over six million views. So let’s take a look. Senate Bill 4 is the bill that allows law enforcement to ask any person that looks foreign for their legal documentation. And the reason that they’re saying that it’s not discriminatory is because it can apply to everybody. The way that I’m involved in today’s protest is I choreographed the dances and I helped teach the girls part of the dances. A Quintañera is when it’s a young lady’s celebration, like her becoming a woman, like a young woman. And her family comes together and they celebrate and it’s just this giant party being like, yay, you’re a woman. Now you gotta be like an adult and be responsible. When Governor Greg Abbott signed the bill into law on May 7th, he disrespected my community. This hateful law violates our human rights. It will create fear and distrust in our communities and it will tear apart our families. But I am standing here today along with these 14 strong women to tell you that we will not let that happen. Now ladies, please repeat after me so Donald Trump and Greg Abbott can hear us. We are brown and beautiful. And we won’t back down. I think it was super effective. I think people all over the country are talking about SB4 now. So the protest was really powerful and it was really emotional. But it did more than just bring national attention to SB4 and Jolt. It really helped us build a movement across Texas. So after this happened, we were flooded with messages by people all across Texas telling us that for the first time they felt hope for their communities and they really wanted to get involved and do something. So even though our organization has barely been around for a year, we’ve been able to build a volunteer base across the state of hundreds of people. We’ve also been able to mobilize thousands of people to later protest to defend DACA and other immigration bills. And we’ve started creating Jolt chapters all across Texas. So from UT El Paso to UT Tyler to high schools in central Texas, young people are organizing around the issues that they personally care about and they’re also hosting registration drives. And this November, we’re going to be working with them to turn out our community to vote. And that’s how we’re making change by organizing through shared identity and culture. Thanks.