When I was three, a KKK member spat on my white mom for having a mixed baby (me). This was in New York.

After 9/11, a group of dudes slammed me into a locker and asked me if I was a Mexican or a terrorist. (I went to high school in Texas.)

Later on, that same group made it known that they were going to the border with guns to keep out people like me. They called themselves minutemen.

I was 14. This was 16 years ago. I was terrified to go to school. But I still walked to and from, alone, all 5’2” of me, because fuck letting people like that make me live in fear or diminish the quality of my life.

I wrote this article in part because it’s also my power to look at those people and say “I don’t respect you. I don’t value you. You think you’re important, but you’re nothing. You don’t control how I view myself. You’re just an old man.”

And that is how I feel. I’m not afraid. I’ll keep on fighting in my own way.

I will die before I let people like that into my heart and fill it with fear and hate.