Lauren Rangel: Blazing a Trail for others to Follow
Although my Professor of Inequality and Poverty did not intend single me out that morning of my first semester at Columbia University, the statistics she read fell upon me like heavy blows. I identified with nineteen of those twenty-six demographic traits she listed as indicating the decreased likelihood of upward socioeconomic mobility, and this shook me to my core. I was devastated because I had just learned over the weekend that I was about to become a teenage mom. The realization that my child’s life course could be so readily predicted by factors beyond their control conflicted with my perception of justice and drove my passion for entering public policy. So upon graduation from college, I dreamed of working in the Texas legislature on issues of educational equity and social welfare programs to promote upward socioeconomic mobility.
When I arrived in Austin though, I faced significant barriers to achieving my dreams – the first being a lack of paid entry-level opportunities. As a young mom with financial obligations, unpaid internships were just not attainable for me. After overcoming those challenges and entering this field I came to realize that there were additional systemic barriers for advancement in this space, particularly for women of color from low-income backgrounds.
Despite having the educational background, and policy knowledge; oftentimes, I was made to feel like less than because of where I came from. I also noted a great deal of policy solutions being espoused as in the interest of families like mine (young, low-income, Latino or “hard-to-reach”) without input from those families about what they need. Once, during an advocacy coalition meeting a very established advocate turned to me and said (in reference to “hard-to-reach” communities), “They don’t understand that and they don’t know what they need. Let’s just leave this to the experts.”
It lit a fire in me.
I was driven to form We Got This TX because I am committed to burning down the elitist and exclusionary thinking in policymaking and ensuring that those impacted by policies are present, heard, and respected at tables where decisions are being made. My lived experiences of growing up in a low-income Mexican-American family on the westside of San Antonio, being a first-generation college student, teenage mother, and struggling to support my children speaks to the lived experience of many Texans whose voices have been routinely shut out of the Texas legislative process. But, my lived experiences are what have helped me to inform policies around children with disabilities, educational equity, and social welfare programs. My lived experiences are my strength. That is why every day I work to amplify the priorities of historically excluded Texans and to support them in engaging in legislative advocacy. Our lived experience is expertise that belongs in the halls of power.
Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, once said “If you can’t see it you can’t be it,” and her words drive me to both create a pipeline of opportunity and pave a pathway for others to follow. I know what it is like to be the only woman of color in the room, and how daunting it can be to navigate spaces where there is no one else with shared lived experiences. I am determined to break down these barriers and ensure that every Black, Indigenous, and woman of color with a dream to serve her community through advocacy in the Texas legislature knows that although these spaces were not built for us that we belong there.
My advice to young women of color who are passionate about public service is not to give up or listen to those who say you cannot accomplish something or that you do not belong. The louder they say those things, the greater the reason for you to be occupying that space. It is always more important to be there, even if it makes others uncomfortable, because through that discomfort and saying things that have gone too long unsaid is where we have potential to spark transformational change. The journey may be difficult, but as Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter says, “It is our job to make the impossible possible.”
