Teresa Baca is a senior at St. Michael's High School and has served on New Mexico's Gay-Straight Alliance Youth Council for two years; she also has started a social justice group at St. Michael's.
SFR: Can you tell me about GSA and what sort of work you do with them?***image1***
TB:
It's all about empowering youth to educate other youth, mostly about GLBT issues, but also about injustice and oppression in general. We do regional training workshops where we'll travel to a high school and youth from the region will come and they'll attend a series of workshops. Some of the workshops that we present to them are to get them thinking about their GSA and what direction they'd like to go in with their GSA and how they can make their GSA stronger.
So there's a network of GSAs?
It's the New Mexico GSA Network; we help to network high school GSAs all over New Mexico [and] provide them with resources and information that can help them make their GSAs more effective.
How did you get involved?
They hold an activist camp every year; it's pretty much all-day workshops, the kind of workshops that we do in regional training. I attended activist camp after a friend of mine, Antonia, convinced me to do it - I went away from activist camp feeling really inspired to take all these things that I learned there and apply them to my community. So when I got home I filled out an application for the Youth Council, and I've been working on it ever since.
Have you always been concerned about human rights, or did GSA inspire it?
I've always had a passion for social justice. And I think gay rights issues [are] a major human rights issue in our country today. I have friends who are gay; it's something that I take very personally. Just knowing that I have friends who won't be able to get married to the people that they want to spend the rest of their lives with when they get older. Those things were always disturbing to me.
Is this something you'll continue working on throughout your life?
Absolutely. It's something that I'll continue working on until I feel like it's not an issue anymore. And I hope that happens within my lifetime, but I also know it's likely that it won't.
Can you tell me about the social justice group you started?
It's not really related at all to the Youth Council; it really can't be because [I go to a] Catholic high school and there's only so much that we can do.
You can't focus on controversial issues?
Yeah. It's actually me and Ryan Dish, who is also on Youth Council. Antonia had drafted up a plan for this group that she wanted to start. She wanted the group to focus more on GLBT issues. That was something that was really difficult for us to do; we were met with resistance from the Archdiocese. So Ryan and I decided - we were going to take all the momentum that she was building up and put it towards doing something that we could do, and started a group that focused on social justice.
What changes could be made in our country as far as human rights and social justice?
In terms of gay rights, repealing the Defense of Marriage Act everywhere, slowly getting our country on a path where, eventually, gay marriage will be legal everywhere. And anti-discrimination laws; there are still a lot of states that don't have laws that say that you can't discriminate against someone on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity. That's in terms of employment and housing, really basic necessities of life. And in terms of immigration, there are a lot of changes that could be made. Immigrant rights, ensuring that these workers aren't being exploited and that they have an easier path to citizenship.
Some young people approach these issues with a sense of injustice and anger. Is there a better way?
There absolutely is. It is really easy, especially for young people [to fall into that] because we're so marginalized, and we can't vote so we don't have control over these things that are going on in the world.
It almost gives a sense of helplessness.
It's very easy to feel helpless about these issues, but the fact is that we are not helpless. And I really believe that our generation will do great things.
What do you think are the most prevalent social justice issues right now?
Poverty is a huge issue. Poverty is a form of violence, and it's one of the most prevalent forms of violence because people are being subjected to conditions in which they cannot thrive, and they cannot survive sometimes. And also the genocide in Darfur. Especially because of our nation's involvement with China, and the fact that China is essentially funding the genocide that's taking place there.
Do you have any advice for people who want to become more involved?
I think the most important thing in becoming involved is just to find out what you care about most, and then find somebody who's already working towards attaining that goal. Before I got involved, I did spend a lot of time thinking about these issues and talking about these issues and being angry about these issues. And it was a really big change for me to go from that to just doing something, just doing anything.
