Today we’d like to introduce you to Daniel Macias-Gomez.
Hi Daniel, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I would say that my story begins really in high school; this was when I not only began exploring my identity but also became more knowledgeable about the power of organizing and community. I came into high school in 2016. This was the year that Donald Trump came into office, and it was very evident the ways in which my family would be impacted by his administration. As a young queer and trans person of color, coming from a mixed-status household, my family’s union jobs were all under threat.
This all made me realize that I needed to find a community on campus that understood what it felt like to be experiencing these axes of change and crises. I found my campus’s Gender and Sexuality Club (GSA) to be a safe space to talk about our struggles and demand for a better future. A year or so later, I found my campus’s National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Club and found this to be a space where I could also tackle the realities of culture, stigma, and hardship that we were facing in our daily lives.
From these organizations and the leadership positions I had in them, I found myself eager to continue organizing and advocating for the liberation of my communities and other communities facing similar oppressive experiences. This led me to my college experience of community organizing initially in the hopes of reinstating affirmative action in California through Prop 16, supporting in my housing cooperative’s leadership, and mobilizing for housing justice at the city level.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I wouldn’t say It’s been a smooth road necessarily—I would say for a good amount of first-generation students of color that come from low-income backgrounds, we don’t have smooth journeys—but I would say some of the most prominent struggles I faced while in college were when I found myself in dire financial need and housing insecure. As well as grappling with student leadership responsibility while attempting to keep up with the academic rigor of a student with disabilities.
When I had been accepted into a program that takes students to DC, I found myself struggling to make ends meet—even though I had saved for the program and had a job while I was out there, it still wasn’t enough. Thankfully, through community sponsorship, I was able to make it through the program, but when my housing arrangements fell through upon returning from the program, I was in dire need of housing. This is probably one of the most isolating in difficult times of my whole college experience.
In addition to this, I have been a low-income student the entire time I’ve been in college, so over the years, as it’s become more expensive to live in the Bay Area, I have had to sustain on average from 2 to 3 jobs the entire time I’ve been in college.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a community organizer and activist that has focused on mental wellness resource access, disabled and BIPOC student retention, and housing access. What this has looked like has been mobilizing people for the defense of People’s Park, participating in the local housing commission, lobbying the state legislature for disabled student resourcing, and smaller-scale organizing of community events.
I’d say I’m most proud of the work I did in advocating to the state legislature and succeeding in securing an additional $19 million for disabled student services at UC in its budget plan for 2023-24. This is something that has been extremely important to me as a disabled student who has struggled to have access to consistent resourcing while in college and it makes me really proud of what collective action is able to achieve. This campaign, in particular for disability access, reaches multiple areas of campus life on multiple campuses in the UC system, and I think this is a powerful precedent for what is possible.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you, and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
An important lesson I learned due to Covid and the racist violence in the United States in 2019 and 2020 were reflective of the importance of collective action but also intersectional and disability-inclusive organizing. Myself as someone that was immunocompromised and extremely agitated by the heartbreaking reality for people of color, specifically Black people in the United States, I was extremely called to organize and take action but recognize my personal limitations and they need for community responsiveness to acknowledge the need for disability-inclusive organizing (this included things like requiring masking or preparing adequate accommodations to the protesters that had accessibility needs). Not only that but at this moment in time it was evident that there is a clear racial hierarchy that was violently enforced in the United States, this meant that Black communities, queer and trans communities, and many other marginalized people face extreme uncertainty of whether police interactions will result in death. Through all of this I learned that our struggles are intertwined, and we are in dire need of systemic change and structural abolition for reimagining justice, liberation, and an inclusive society.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecyngomez/
