I grew up in the town of Tehachapi. It's in the mountains, which you can't see from Bakersfield because of all the air pollution. I went to school at Cal State Bakersfield, where I worked on immigrant rights as a student intern with the United Farm Workers Foundation. That's when I started learning how to organize. After I graduated, I went to work for the Service Employees International Union, where I helped about 43,000 childcare providers across California establish a union. 

My first experience going up against the oil industry was in 2018. In California, it's up to cities and counties to decide how far back oil wells have to be from homes and schools and hospitals. The Arvin City Council became the first in Kern County to require a minimum setback of 300 feet. On the day the ordinance passed, the entire chamber was filled with residents testifying in favor of the setbacks. It was awesome.

At the time, I was working with NextGen America to support local environmental justice groups, but a friend of mine had just been hired by the Sierra Club, and she encouraged me to apply. Last December, I became the first Beyond Dirty Fuels organizer in Kern County. A lot of people choose to leave this area because they feel like they don't have the power to change things, but I want to be here, organizing in my own backyard.

I'm also getting my master's in public administration. On the side, I learn as much as I can about oil. I have a three-year-old and a husband, so they take up the rest of my free time.

There's not a whole lot of opportunity in Kern County. People graduate high school and know that they can get a job in the oil industry because it pays well and they can support a family. But it's also extremely dangerous. If there were other jobs that paid well, that were unionized, they would take those jobs.

One thing you'll notice in Kern County is that a lot of people have asthma. I had it as a child; all my cousins have it. Preterm births and birth defects are also common. People get nosebleeds and headaches. In Arvin, residents live literally feet from oil production wells, and their houses visibly vibrate. If a well is not producing enough oil, the company will just leave it, still dripping, oozing out toxic chemicals. It's cheaper to abandon it than to plug it up, so there are many orphaned wells. They should be training people to plug up those wells.

Despite all the oil wells, there are a lot of beautiful places here. When I was growing up, we'd go on family outings to Tehachapi Mountain Park. There's a monastery there. On Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve, we'd make our way up the mountain and listen to the nuns singing.

In March, Kern County voted on an ordinance that would grant all the oil companies the right to rely on a single environmental impact report for any project in the next 25 years. Residents really showed up to voice their opposition, but it still passed. It's frustrating. There's this huge community actively saying that oil is poisoning us, and yet county officials voted unanimously to accept this plan. The evidence that they presented to support their decision was available only in English, not in Spanish or Tagalog or Mixtec. As community organizers, we are doing our best to make sure that diverse groups are heard, but we are labeled outsiders. That's a form of white supremacy. We are not outsiders. We live here.

This article appeared in the Fall quarterly edition with the headline "Organizing in My Backyard."