Today we’d like to introduce you to Angelica Andrade.
Angelica, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My childhood was a challenge, but I like to think that going through everything I went through made me the person I am today. Growing up in what people call “low-income’ neighborhoods, I learned to do what I can with what I have, and we didn’t have much so I learned how to be resourceful. I was the first in my family to attend high school, and while the reality of ending up behind bars, or dead before I was 21 was something I accepted as a kid, I always dreamed of going to college. Those dreams were crushed when my counselor told me, college isn’t for people like you, you’re not college material, you have to have money to go to college. Then she signed me up for a home-economics class. The thing is, when my parents were incarcerated, I was able to utilize a lot of the things I learned in that class, all I could do was be thankful for that moment.
Raising six kids, while being a kid myself, didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary. It was challenging, but we had each other, and that was everything. Every step of the way I realized how the systems around me directly affected me and my family. I got so many tickets, and then the surcharges, it all dug me in just a deeper hole. How do you get a driver’s license when you don’t have the money or an address? I was just a teenager, but by actual luck of someone referring me, I got a job at a Mexican restaurant as a cashier making a whole $6.25/hour. Best believe I gave it all I had, and before I knew it, I was the Assistant Manager. It was the first time I learned what a salary was, and where we could finally afford luxury things like, food and toilet paper. Lol. Still, it wasn’t enough to raise a large family.
I decided to enroll in community college. It’s crazy to think I was so scared to even enroll. I was the first one to graduate from high school, and that was a challenge in itself, college seemed like such a faraway reality. Honestly, I felt like I didn’t belong there, and even worse, I felt like I didn’t deserve to be there. I had to give myself a pep talk just to walk into the building. I put a family picture of my siblings in my pocket, to remind myself why I was there. I signed up for clubs on campus, got super involved in student life and ended up getting into politics. It angered me seeing people in charge of decisions that would affect my family, my community and they would never once feel any of it. I quickly became an activist and a student leader without ever even really realizing it. It was during my time as an activist I received a call that my father was deported, I didn’t know until that moment he was undocumented. I was already two years into the movement, and I had no idea my father was what the media would call, “a dreamer.”
I look back at the trauma from my family separated by both mass incarceration and mass deportation, and I carry that with me, every single time I show up for my community. I know the pain firsthand. I know what it feels like to be born into a society that places chains on you ever so lightly, that you don’t even know they’re there. As you get older and start experiencing injustice, you start to see those chains and how they hold you back. When I was a kid, I used to ask, why me? I stopped asking and started searching, and in it I found inequity in all forms, drawing all the lines to systematic racism and oppression. I stopped questioning myself and started questioning people in power and what I could do to push for change.
It started with speaking out, every chance I got. I turned every obstacle into an opportunity. It has all brought me to where I am today. Surrounded by injustice, I was able to see those chains that were placed on me, and unapologetically throw them at my oppressor. Me quitaron tanto que me quitaron el miedo. Fueled by the unconditional love for my people, my hood, my community, and a passion for justice, and liberation for all. Because if one of us isn’t free, none of us are.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Being homeless in high school was probably one of the first real struggles that made me realize how much people around you don’t pay attention, but more importantly, it taught me how to be aware of those around me, and pay attention. I had a math teacher, who always pulled me aside and checked in on me. she asked enough to where I finally shared with her that I didn’t have a home.
I was 17 when I became a teen Mom. It was one of the toughest things I had to do. My own high school wanted to send me away to another school, and I learned how judgmental and hurtful adults can be. It taught me who to never be to someone else. It taught me to look at young Moms just like I would want people to look at me when I was a young Mom. Most importantly, it taught me compassion. I had a tutor assigned to me through a program at school, and she would make sure I turned in all my assignments and reminded me I belonged in high school, and to come back after I have my baby. I’ll never forget walking back into class and my class clapping for me because I came back. I graduated from high school with my baby girl turning one.
Being a single Mom to six kids while I was just a teenager myself was a challenge but I always, and I do mean always had my friends, my family, and my community. Everyone in our neighborhood was barely making it, but we always had each other’s backs. When my lights got cut off, we would run an extension cord up the hallway until the next paycheck. Whoever worked in restaurants would come home with bags of food and we’d all have a feast. When one of us got a car, we all had a ride to where ever we needed to go to. I had friends that would randomly stop by to make a meal or bring a bag full of Jack in the box tacos and we’d feast. A family that would show up time and time again with clothes for the kids, or toys, things to remind us that we were all kids.
It wasn’t a smooth road but it was my road and I would not have had it any other way.
We’d love to hear more about your organization.
North Texas Dream Team (NTDT) is an immigrant youth-led 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. NTDT’s mission is to advance the dreams and goals of students; to educate and bring awareness to everyone when it comes to issues in our communities, regardless of race or ethnicity. NTDT began as a student-led organization and has grown into a community-led organization, with one of our most-known services is providing free DACA workshops to our North Texas community. Since the inception of DACA in 2012, we have been able to assist nearly 9,000 DACA recipients to renew their DACA at no cost to them. Along with free DACA workshops, we bring food and essential items to asylum-seeking families recently released from detention centers, and we have a crisis rapid response team that responds to ICE raids, in order to document that truth about ICE raids in North Texas, and to assist families immediately with information, resources and humanitarian aid.
As the community organizer for NTDT, I facilitate educational Forums, Know Your Rights Presentations, host knows your rights forums and presentations across North Texas campuses. Some of the main projects we are working on are the ICE out of Dallas County campaign, and the F.I.R.E hotline. The ICE out of Dallas County campaign is a campaign to raise awareness of Dallas’ mass deportation machine. In 2017 alone, Dallas and surrounding cities deported 16,520 people. That is 16,520 family separations in one year alone. This is due to the show me your papers bill, Senate Bill 4 and supported by signed contracts and collaboration with ICE through several police agencies, our county and the continuous presence of ICE in our jails.
The Force for Immigrant Rights and Empowerment (FIRE) Hotline committee works to train community members to know their rights, to identify ICE sightings and police brutality and become legal observers. The purpose is to combat today’s ICE raids, police harassment, and brutality and the violation of our communities’ civil rights. All the work that I do is to combat the impact of Senate Bill 4, to inform our community members of their constitutional rights, educate allies, and provide necessary and life-saving resources to our directly impacted community.
What I am known for, I would have to say would be hope, speaking truth to power, my love for people, and relentless passion for justice and liberation for all. I really don’t like talking about myself, it actually makes me uncomfortable but I am surrounded by a community who uplifts me in some really dark times, and I am so thankful for them because they remind me I am never alone, I carry them and their words with me, and so for them, I share what they share with me. I can’t say how many times I am stopped by someone who reminds me of my Grandparents, or one of my Tio’s, who say they saw me on the news, or in a video on social media and they thank me and tell me that I brought them hope. That they thought they were alone. I am tearing up writing about it now because, sometimes they thank me for speaking for them, because they can’t, or because they don’t have a voice. All I do is hug them, and tell them, I used to think I didn’t have a voice too and thank them for their words.
What I most proud of is we always put our community first, with compassion and with a radical love and they are not really there for our community.I’ve had the privilege of being surrounded by the most selfless people, that roll up their sleeves every single time and fight for our community, just as hard as they would fight for their own families. It’s different than any other organization I’ve ever volunteered for, which is why NTDT will always be #1 in my heart.
The NTDT is volunteer-led, meaning 100% of all donations that come from our community, go right back to our community. For the last 10 years, NTDT has been supported solely by donations from our community, we’ve never charged for any of our services and continue to provide free services to our impacted and directly impacted communities. I am new to the non-profit industry, but I have noted that there are a lot of organizations that serve people of color, but their board is made up of predominately, and a majority of the time, non-people of color. The NTDT has always had a board made up of people of color that are from the directly impacted or impacted community. I believe that’s why we have continued to provide any and all services for free, many of us have firsthand experience with financial and obstacles created by capitalism, there’s no reason to create another barrier for our community. Solidarity is people over profit, always.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Hard to say. Possibly not waste my time with machismo-led organizations, and organizations that tokenized me, or that truly weren’t for our community. However, I feel that experiences taught me exactly what not to ever become, and what to look out for when considering collaborating with people and or organizations.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.northtexasdreamteam.org
- Phone: 877-686-6838
- Email: communications@northtexasdreamteam
- Instagram: northtexasdream
- Facebook: northtexasdream
- Twitter: northtexasdream
Image Credit:
North Texas Dream Team
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