In college, I volunteered with a student group that piloted a program teaching English to non-native English speakers and facilitating “know your rights” workshops. After college, I served as a human rights observer in an indigenous Zapatista village in Mexico that was being threatened by paramilitaries.

I later served in AmeriCorps and worked for two years as a substitute teacher, which showed me just how much your zip code determines the quality of your education—and just how hard teachers work for so little pay.

I worked for several years with the International Association of Genocide Scholars with Dr. Gregory Stanton, who authored the 10 Stages of Genocide, and I presented a paper at a 2007 genocide studies conference in Sarajevo. This experience taught me the grave danger of vilifying entire groups of people, using dehumanizing language to describe them, and putting them in concentration camps, and it informs my policy views today.

In 2015, the Supreme Court granted me the right to get married. I’ll never forget what it was like to receive this right, but as someone who grew up in the closet at a time when the majority of the American public opposed gay rights, I know we must continue to fight for our rights — as the Trump administration, sadly, showed.

I serve as a commissioner on the Tacoma Area Commission on Disabilities, and I’m an organizer with the Tacoma Tenants Organizing Committee, which won significant tenant protections in Tacoma and played a large role in new state-wide protections. These changes had a direct impact on my security, as someone who lived on a month-to-month lease with rent that rose 16% in 3 years.