🌱 Where Do You Get Your Resilience?

Hey y'all, welcome back! 👋🏼

May the 4th Be With You! The beginning of May is always a magical time for opportunity. With my birthday on Star Wars Day, Taurus season, and May Day, it's a recipe to celebrate how my unique identities have shaped my work. This month, I share more of my story to help folks build their own resilience during hard times. Read on for more...

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Where Do You Get Your Resilience?

Part I: Building A New Media Ecosystem, Old Roots for New Growth

I sat down with Bold Journey Magazine earlier this year to talk about my election experience and why I’m building a decolonized media ecosystem and communications agency. My life experiences have been nothing short of interesting and have prepared me to be an organizer in this moment of rising fascism and growing climate collapse. I hope you enjoy my story!

I was born and raised in a white, wealthy suburb of Dallas, TX. On the surface, I have light skin that reddens more than it tans and a feminine, unassuming body. However, beneath the surface layer, I am also Latino, Indigenous, queer, Two Spirit, and more. I like to say that I contain multitudes, because I am a hard person to fit into a binary.

My many overlapping identities have given me resilience through the years as I’ve navigated harmful dynamics in white culture in Texas, the subtle and not so subtle misogyny of the advertising industry, and now as a storyteller and organizer who often doesn’t fit well into the definition of “social justice activist.”

I Contain Multitudes

I get my resilience from my multitudes, which come from my family and ancestors.

My warmth comes from my grandfather, Charlie Chavez, who could warm up any stranger he met with a conversation or a bowl of home cooked beans. His soft voice was a powerful presence in rooms gone silent so others could hear his wisdom. His stories would keep our extended family laughing and smiling for days.

My love of learning comes from my Nana, Angie, who taught in Albuquerque public schools for decades. She deeply loved her family and community, but also yearned for a life more than what a Latina could have in her time. She always loved my independence and free spirit. I hold on to her words of support from 2020 as I continue to do work that goes against the grain.

I get my snark, comedic timing, and strength from my other grandfather, Papa, who grew up poor and white in rural Texas during the Dust Bowl and moved to New Mexico for a better life. He also used film to imagine beyond his immediate world. Humphrey Bogart, Charlton Heston, Marlon Brando, Alec Guinness, Omar Sharif, and more shaped his own sense of masculinity. I inwardly reckon with how his struggles as a boy brought him strength, while also recognizing that his role as a real estate business owner brought harm to other New Mexicans and is still an arm of colonization in the southwest to this day.

Finally, I get my love for beauty and aesthetics from my grandmother, Phyllis, who was just as fabulous as Elizabeth Taylor in my eyes. Her beautifully crafted aesthetic of silver, turquoise, and vibrant colors allowed her to transcend her patriarchal world. She reckoned with her power as a woman and what that means in a man's world. While our version of beauty is different (mine is much more anti-capitalist!), looks and aesthetics are so important to me when it comes to communications and tech. Beauty is a way for us to reconnect with our inner humanity and deepen our connections to each other.

My resilience comes from my New Mexican roots. Colonization has a complicated history in the Southwest. I am a living example of this. I may have been the first Chavez to have been born outside of the land that our family has lived on for centuries, but my roots and ancestors anchor me when times feel especially tough as they do now under a new administration.

These roots allowed me to build the roots of change agency four years ago. It is now a thriving media ecosystem and communications agency supporting thousands of heart-first humans, movement leaders, and social change communicators.

Next week: my story of building progressive media amidst rising fascism

🌱 Seedling Member Zone

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🍿 Don’t forget to scroll to the end and watch our weekly video for activists where we dive into on a weekly news topic.

• ✍🏼 🧑🏽‍🎓 Take Action! Graduates for Civil Rights (Get Free)
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• 🎟️ Friday, May 30th - Give Your Future Self a Gift and Register for Rootid Respite's Monthly Community Care Call (Rootid Respite)

🦸🏻‍♀️ What's Your Activism Super Power?

After 2 months of the new regime, now is our moment to build solidarity and a movement for true liberation against the forces that work to quash us all. Have you browsed our Heart-First Activism Onboarding Hub? our Watch & follow on YouTube.

And that's a wrap on this week’s newsletter! We hope you found this helpful in your work. Forward this to a friend and help democratize communications! If you have any topics you want covered, questions, or curious about our Assist an Activist program, please reach out and let me know.

In Solidarity,
Sam Chavez
the roots of change agency