Austin's Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez shares Five Things She's Learned about America.
View the next in our new series of messages, ideas, and inspiration – shared directly from Americans we admire.
Five Things I’ve Learned began with the aim of learning directly from people we long admired. Find out what they think most important to share, we believed, and we’d learn and be inspired by their example.
This summer, we’re doing something more: soliciting and sharing written pieces, short videos, and other bursts of ideas and inspiration from people whose ideas and experiences give shape to the issues that continue to shape America and November’s upcoming national election.
Today, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez shares Five Things She’s Learned About America. We’re so pleased to be able to share Christina’s great and inspiring reflections.
Cristina has spent the last twenty years taking on some of the most powerful special interests in her home state of Texas. Today, she is the Executive Director of NextGen America, the nation’s largest youth voting rights organization. NextGen has registered and mobilized millions of young people to the polls, with the goal of harnessing the power of young people to reshape the political outcome of our country – not for an election cycle but a generation.
Five Things I’ve Learned About America
“My name is Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, and I’m the President of NextGen America, the country’s largest youth-voting rights organization.”
American people all want the same things – no matter where we come from or who we are.
“My mom is the oldest of nine kids from a poor farm working family in Mexico and my dad is a white American hippie…”
Individually and collectively, it's our diversity that makes Americans culture rich.
“American music, the best of art, movies, and television – it comes from Black-American culture, it comes from latino culture, it comes from white culture. It comes from all those things coming together…”
We need different measures for our economy, ones focused not on corporate profit but on how we deliver the things that the great majority of Americans want most.
“There’s a lot of people across the country struggling to have what matters in their life…”
Young people give me tremendous hope: They’ve inherited a pretty raw deal, but they’re voting in record numbers and they're already disrupting the status quo.
“I feel like I have one of the best and most important jobs, especially this year: I get to mobilize young voters across the country and lead the country’s largest youth-voting organization…”
When we look back at our history, it’s easy to recognize that America isn’t perfect. But if we collectively try to learn from our mistakes, we’ll be better able to heal the pains of our past and to improve things in the future.
“My son is seven years old. I never tell my son that he’s perfect, and I don’t want him to think he’s perfect. What I want him to be able to do is to look at his mistakes and say, “Here’s where I’ve done wrong and strive to be better, to make progress”….”
MORE ABOUT CRISTINA
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez has spent the last twenty years taking on some of the most powerful special interests in her home state of Texas. Cristina is a civil rights leader and former 2020 U.S. Senate candidate. She has organized construction workers, immigrant mothers and young voters to build a government and economy that works for all of us.
Cristina has led on some of the most important issues of our time, including climate change, student debt, runaway inequality, immigration and voting rights. Her work has led to the passage of legislation at the state and local level on student debt and workers’ rights.
Today, Cristina is the Executive Director of NextGen America, the nation’s largest youth voting rights organization. NextGen has registered and mobilized millions of young people to the polls, with the goal of harnessing the power of young people to reshape the political outcome of our country – not for an election cycle but a generation.
Previously, Cristina founded two of Texas’ largest voting and civil rights organizations. She founded Jolt, a statewide organization focused on mobilizing the Latino vote, when she was six-months pregnant and in the wake of the 2016 election. Under her leadership, Jolt mobilized tens of thousands of young Latinos and developed some of the nation’s most creative strategies to engage young Latinos, like #Poderquince that supports young quinceañeras to use their sweet 15 birthdays as a platform to register and mobilize Latino voters.
Cristina launched her first non-profit, Workers Defense Project, while still an undergraduate student at UT Austin. She built WDP from a small volunteer project into a statewide organization that was named “one of the most creative organizations for immigrant workers in the country” by The New York Times.
Cristina has been named “Hero of the New South” by Southern Living Magazine, one of Texas’ top ten changemakers by the Texas Observer. She is also a JM Kaplan Innovation Prize winner and a Roddenberry Award winner.
Cristina is an author on issues of race, gender and immigration, and she is the co-author of “Presente! Latino Immigrant Voices in the Struggle for Racial Justice” published by AK Press (2014).
MORE ABOUT FIVE THINGS I’VE LEARNED ABOUT AMERICA
Five Things I’ve Learned about America presents live, personal conversations with leading thinkers, organizers, and advocates for our democracy. In tandem, we’re soliciting and sharing written pieces, short videos, and other bursts of ideas and inspiration from people whose ideas and experiences are equally inspiring and instructive.
Check out our first reflection, from PoweredXPeople founder, author, and former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, and great, on-demand 90-minute conversations with Beto, Stuart Stevens, Alan Light, and others, presented in partnership with Resolute Square. Find these, and more than 100 more great on-demand classes at myfivethings.com.
