DEMAND & DISRUPT

“My best self-advocacy tip would be to find community and a supportive environment, especially if you come from a more marginalized background. As someone who grew up in a single-parent family with all sisters, and someone who grew up low-income with housing and financial instability, I did not see people who looked like me do things I wanted to do. Now I'm someone who is a visual artist and does activism work and community organizing. For self-advocacy, I think, it is stronger to be around people that make you feel confident and make you feel like you can be you. While there are so many different ways you can advocate for yourself, make sure you are safe and taken care of, and that your mental health is okay, and that you take care of yourself so you can take care of others, I think the most important thing that I have found in creating a space where I can do my work is creating a safe space for myself.”

“My self-advocacy tip is that for other people to see your worth you have to see it first. Communicating your worth can be hard but I believe in the power of storytelling and I believe in the power of self-work, whether it's writing in your journal in the morning, saying affirmations; the way we show up can really change the way people treat us. So if you are in a space where you need to advocate for yourself, people are going to believe in you if you believe in you. The more I say something, the more I believe it, and the more I believe it, the more other people believe it. So whether it is saying 'I’m going to get that raise' or '[I'm] going to be the president one day' or 'I'm going to get that internship,' sometimes the power of saying it can make it happen.”

@magdelenebarjolo’s principal may have tried to shut her down, but she demanded representation and disrupted the status quo at her high school.

“In high school I went to a predominantly white and asian high school, so there were not a lot of African Americans or people of my culture. I really felt the need to start a Black Student Union. I began this journey with my best friend our senior year of high school. Our principal told us we could not have a Black Student Union because it would be called a “separatist group” and that was very shocking to me because I felt like our high school needed one. A lot of black students felt like there voices were not being heard, they were being mistreated. Originally they did not have a Black Student Union, but we created one. Our movement of inclusiveness started the movement of black voices being heard on our high school campus. We ended up creating a Black Student Union. Now we have an instagram page and they are educating people on African American history, so it’s just beautiful.”

“In school a teacher gave me an unfair grade. I know for a fact that I did not deserve the grade that she gave me, and so I walked up to her I told her “I got a 75 and that is not what I worked for so I think you need to change it.” And you know she was hitting me with all this: “I can’t do it, it’s already in the report card.” So eventually I went up the assistant principal, and I kept going back. Eventually she did change it and gave me the grade that I deserved. You should not just settle for less. I think settling for less is disrespectful to yourself.” - @sheldaaaaaa

“A time that I demanded my worth in a work environment was when I had to interact with the police when I was 17. Three other girls and I held a protest with 2,000 people in downtown Chicago. We stopped 2,000 people on State and something, which is an impossible thing to do because it shuts down downtown Chicago completely and we had to leverage our education and we had to say you can’t treat us badly because of our age. You can’t demonize us because of our age and the color of our skin. I just did not let up. I was like “I deserve to be here.” These people on the other side of the bridge commoditize black and brown bodies. They need to know about our fight for liberation. They need to know about the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and that it is young black people who are fighting this right now. Eventually we were able to cross the bridge, we were the first protest, the first BLM [Black Live Matters] protest to cross over into residential North Side Territory.” - @imyagirleva

 “What does centering my narrative, the narrative of the community I come from look like? I would say a time when I demanded my worth was when I ended up getting a job full time in corporate America after graduating. For me, it was really important that when I occupy certain spaces that I understand the privilege that one: it takes to occupy the spaces and two: that I need to be doing work that is going to help with my community; that's going to impact people that look like me. So when it was time for me to take that position that was the center of discussion I was thinking: "What does impact look like"? "What does centering my narrative, the narrative of the community I come from look like"? Being able to take up space because if I can't impact externally then I’m not going to be here, so that is when I demand my worth.” - @thechelseamiller