By Joyce Kim
La Cañada, Calif.

On September 5, 2017, a rainy Tuesday in Durham, North Carolina, Marco Gonzalez Blancas and Salvador Chavero Arellano, then freshman at Duke University, heard the news: DACA would be dismantled.

The Trump Administration’s announcement that it would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program left nearly 800,000 “DREAMers”— young people who had entered the country un-lawfully as children—at risk of losing the legal protection granted to them by the program, which allowed them to defer deportation in renewable two-year periods, as well as apply for a driver’s license, social security number, and work permit.

“I remember the date exactly,” Arellano re-called. “That was when a lot of us—you know, freshman, sophomore, junior, seniors—got together, and we said something needs to be done. We need to fight.”

The students started Duke University’s chapter of Define American, an organization that “uses the power of narrative to humanize conversations about immigrants.” The newly-founded chapter included undocumented and DACA students, TPS (temporary protected status) students, and citizens who were allies. That year, the group lobbied the U.S. Congress to urge their representatives to keep the program.

“I really wanted to have more allies coming into the chapter,” said Gonzalez, who served as co-president of Duke’s chapter. “I think a lot of people, even at Duke, hadn’t met an undocumented person or DACA person. Or maybe they had, but those people that they had encountered throughout life hadn’t told them because they were afraid that they were going to be treated differently. So we took it as our mission to also inform and educate people more on topics re-lated to immigration.” The chapter’s initia-tives included educational and social events, such as dedicating a week to un-documented awareness, or tabling at the plaza on campus and asking students to give up their student ID for a period of time in order to simulate the experience of being undocumented. Gonzalez and Arellano say they received support from Duke’s administration. Days after Trump’s DACA decision, the president of Duke “told us that the institution would be behind us,” said Arellano. The administration funded the chapter’s trips to D.C., gave students access to Duke’s law clinic for individual assistance with renewing their DACA status and alerted students if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was in the area, among other services. They also allowed students who didn’t qualify for work-study to receive grants and financial aid.

Despite Duke’s institutional support of the undocumented, Arellano says not all of the staff at Duke were well versed in the problems facing students like him. When he sought counseling at Duke’s Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) after his parents had to go back to Mexico, Arrelano recalls, “I remember talking about my experiences and my status, and the person [at CAPS] did not know how to help me. They were like, ‘Oh, why didn’t you just apply for citizenship?’ I think there was a huge limitation during the first half of my experience there.”

Since then, however, Define American’s chapter has done trainings for Duke administrators on how to support undocu-mented students, and Gonzalez and Arellano say that there has been an exponential change for the better. 

Even after all they’ve done, Gonzalez and Arellano don’t plan to stop working to improve conditions for America’s undocumented, whether or not they qualify for DACA.

“I think we need to fight for as many people as we can and rewrite the narrative that you need to be a perfect immigrant in order to belong here,” said Gonzalez. “We don’t stop the fight just because we get our papers.”

By Regina Roberts and Tryphena Awuah
Alexandria, Va. and Columbus, Ohio

Before social media, an activist was of-ten thought of as a protester or as an active participant in an organization. But social media has given all of its users a platform in which to voice their opinions, changing our perception of what an activist is. Instagram infographics have grown increasingly popular as a way to speak out against issues and bring awareness to peers. 

“Within my community, it has become more of a norm to post about issues you feel passionate about,” said Joyce Kim, 17, of La Cañada, Calif. “Personally, I used to be intimidated by activism but the pandemic and Instagram made me realize that you can participate in small ways.” This accessibility is part of the appeal of online activism, which al-lows everyone to readily communicate with their audience. Alexsis Tapia, 16, from River-dale, Md., said that social media activism “combats the stigma of adolescents not knowing enough to get involved and has al-lowed them to speak out.”

Because many users may only hear one perspective, they can easily be exposed to misinformation, as we have seen with claims of election fraud in 2020. This makes fact-checking essential. But the practice can be exhausting, with the flow of endless information making some, like Baby Cornish, 17, of Frederick, Md., want to “forego social media altogether.”

On Instagram, it’s all about the aesthetic: colors, fonts, and even the song playing in the background of a post. “Insta-gram has molded activism in an aesthetically pleasing type of way,” said Les-lie Nevarez, 18. Nevarez, who is from Brownsville, Texas, says that the actual information is often sec-ondary to eye-catching, bite-sized infographics, which contribute to the rise of performative activ-ism and make the harsh realities of the world seem like trends. “Before I post something on social media I make sure of two things: that it’s kind and informative,” she said. 

What really happens after we post? How can we know if we impacted someone at all? While on-line activism can be an easy starting point, Nevarez feels the real change comes from offline activism. Her city, Brownsville, has been hesitant in accepting the LGBTQ+ community, but it does have an organization that created a pride flag in June 2020 to place on its welcome sign. The flag only lasted a day before someone took it down and replaced it with “no LGBTQ” in spray paint.  This June, those who created the flag protested and organized events to reinstate it. Their efforts were successful and the flag remains on the welcome sign.

“If it hadn’t been for social media and those in-dividuals per-sisting,” Neva-rez said, “we wouldn’t have reached mem-bers of the community to create change.” Social media can also bol-ster local and nat ionw ide movement s , such as Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate. These social justic initiatives have been amplified by social media and have brought about awareness across the country. Online activism has been a valu-able medium for activist organizations, although Nevarez believes that it alone can only accomplish so much.

News reaches members of the younger generation through their Instagram feeds faster than their television screens. With this overflow of information on global, national, and local issues, some social media users feel pressured not only to keep up, but to repost and spread awareness to appear in-formed. 

For teenagers like Kim, the pressure to post on social media is about keeping her audience informed on issues that do not receive extensive news coverage. In March, following the Atlanta spa shootings, Kim said that she was disheartened by the lack of awareness among her followers on social media. Many, she noticed,  glossed over the issue or ignored it alto-gether. During this time, she felt pressure to post. “If I don’t voice my opinion on this,” she recalled thinking, “then who will?” Posting about it online, she said, “has helped me find my voice as an advocate.”

By Jada Jackson
Queens, N.Y.

“It was a lip-syncing competition, and everyone dared me to go as Macy Gray … basically with my natural hair, I like tied it back, I shaved, and I went out there and I performed the song called ‘I Try.’ And I got second place out of ten acts as a solo performer, lip-synching a boring song, and I really made it work.” 

This was the first time Vivica C. Coxx was able to dip her toes into the glorious and liberating world of drag. The drag queen and drag house matriarch had her first show at just 17 years old in her high school, North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. This was the moment that Coxx was launched into a community full of love. Coxx was granted an opportunity of a lifetime. “[O]ne day I was sitting in an establishment, a bar. On my way to go… the owner of the establishment asked me if I knew any local queens who could open from Manila Luzon from RuPaul’s drag race. I’m over here with 10 years of amateur experience, I’m bold, why not say I can do it. They asked to see some pictures of me, I showed them a photo from Halloween … They said let’s do it … It was like this perfect storm for someone to step up. And I did.” The crowd loved her. She exceeded everyone’s expectations, including her own. “There’s this moment from that night, where you see that I realized this is what I was supposed to do.” That’s what the Drag community is about—freedom and self-expression.

Gay Bars like Roscoe’s Tavern, which opened on April 1, 1987. It was one of the first in Boystown, Chicago which helped create an LGBTQ neighborhood on the Northside of Chicago. At the time, it was rare to find a place where LG-BTQ people could be them-selves in public. Roscoe’s was bold to keep windows open to the streets. Today this isn’t important but at the time, “every other business was known for having their windows bro-ken out on the regular,” said Shawn Hazen, the Marketing & Special Events Manager for Roscoe’s Tavern. “When we started 30 plus years ago … we wanted people to be encouraged to you know … feel comfortable being an out queer person.” Roscoe’s was a place where people would feel safe to enjoy themselves.

Bars like Roscoe’s have been a refuge for Queer people for generations. It was a spiritual rejuvenation session. “[D]rag is church. A lot of people, they go to church  …  You go on Sunday, and you get your soul filled,” Coxx says to explain what drag is. Drag queens are the beacons of light for many in the darkness that this harsh world has created for those in the LGBTQ community.

That’s how it was before COVID-19 shut everything down. Without places to host drag shows, queens got creative. They weren’t discouraged by the pandemic, Coxx said, “for most drag performers everything didn’t fully shut down … I actually per-formed a lot during the pandemic, all from the comfort of my home.” Coxx enjoyed being able to put on a show without the physical constraints of a corset, heels, and foam padding. She embraced the change of scenery with her natural flair and extravagance. 

“However, there were times where I would be performing in my room and it was completely silent. I didn’t know if they were enjoying it … Could you imagine that?” Coxx asked. It changed what drag was about. The sense of family was left in the chat, no longer was she on a big stage with bright lights, where she felt, “this is home.” Now she was actually alone.

“COVID-19 was a very isolating experience … I spent a year and a half basically alone.” Despite it all, she survived and is still flourishing. Coxx recently performed her first in-person drag show performing as if everything was never shut down. Coxx, like many drag queens, and bars like Roscoe’s Tavern, adapted to the situation and were able to make it through. The community built before COVID was one of family, togetherness, and love for each other. That community has shown that it will remain whether virtually or in-person for years to come.

By Alyana Santillana
Brentwood, Calif.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit fast and hard. In a matter of days, the entire world left their ordinary routines for a mandated stay-at-home order. Months of confinement inevitably took their toll on the masses. As a result, people found emotional support and companionship in man’s best friends: pets.

Laura Wagner, of Prospect Lefferts Gardens in Brooklyn, was fortunate enough to adopt a Jindo-terrier mix named Jake at the start of the pandemic. “It took until May until we actually got our dog. It was five weeks of applying for a dog and not getting one, and getting our hopes up,” Wagner said.

While the process of adopting her furry friend was long, the wait was well worth it. “Spending a lot of time with Jake probably helped us bond,” she said. “It provided a real structure for my physical life and that has really helped my mental health, as well as a structure  of things to do, because he’s so cute and so fun to be around, so that was nice as well.”

As life slowly begins its return to normalcy, Wagner and her family are in the process of helping Jake adjust to a post-pandemic routine. One of the steps is getting Jake used to be-ing alone in her apartment. “We’re working with a trainer on this thing called guaranteed departures, where you leave for like 10 minutes and come back, in-creasing the amount of time each day so that the dog gets used to knowing that when you leave, you’ll be back,” she said.

While Jake has become a valued member of Wagner’s family, the same cannot be said for many pets who were returned to stores or shelters as people began returning to their normal lives. “We saw a big spike in animal sales, but not any of the animal products. … Animals were being surrendered because people just didn’t know how to care for them any-more. A lot of the animals were being abused,” said Cynthia Salazar, a guest experience specialist at a PetCo location in Texas. “When everything opened up, we started seeing a lot of surrenders as a lot of people were coming back to their jobs,” she added.

While the lockdown undeniably changed the course of our lives and habits, the same goes for the ones we turned to for support.

By Yasmin Mustefa

Federal Way, Wash.

Imani Hill never thought that she would play lacrosse. But her freshman year of high school, Hill’s basketball coach told her that she needed to participate in a spring sport to stay in shape for next season. An hour later, she pulled her out of class to speak with the lacrosse coach. 

“I’m just like, ‘I have no idea what lacrosse is,’” Hill said. But the coach con-vinced Hill to try. “I went out, and it was so interesting to me because of how unfamiliar it was. It was a really challenging task.”

By her junior year, several colleges were observing Hill. She decided to join Delaware State University’s Division I program in the fall of 2015, which she said was the only historically Black college or university (HBCU) at the time with a women’s lacrosse team. In 2019, while attending grad school at Auburn University in Alabama, where she is a current PhD candidate, she switched from player to head coach. 

Although she is no longer a coach for collegiate lacrosse, that breadth of ex-perience gave Hill a distinct perspective on the name, image, and likeness (NIL) laws that multiple states recently passed. The new laws allow college  athletes to use their name, image, or likeness for compensa-tion and prevents colleges and universities from pro-hibiting athletes to do so. 

While Hill acknowledged the “cool opportunities” the NCAA gives athletes, she’s glad players now have money-making opportunities she didn’t. “I think that it’s something that’s necessary  and something that really should have happened a long time ago,” she said.

“As a whole, sometimes we forget that the NCAA is a governing body, and ultimately they are a business. I think that some-times we kind of get that confused with an organization that supports athletes or wants what’s best for athletes.”

As a player, Hill practiced up to 20 hours a week, with additional hours of physical therapy, conditioning, and traveling. Players were given about a $500 stipend every season, she said, but that wasn’t enough to cover off-campus expenses.

Hill’s family lived close to Delaware State, and she remembers them filling up her dorm room with snacks and going home on weekends. “There are a lot of athletes who don’t have those luxuries. So literally their entire dependability is, like, on the university and what the university gives them,” she said. By contrast, the new laws could allow student-athletes to save money, help their families, or buy food, clothes, or school supplies.

At the same time, Hill also believes that the laws will continue to blur the line between college and professional athletes. She’s not sure how she feels about that. “How do we define those lines that let the world know that this person is still a college student before anything else?”

By Ebony Riley

Most young people obessively scroll through TikTok and send their friends an endless number of videos. For Alexa Walkowitz, though, that mundane hobby morphed into something much less common: creating content people loved to share, and a life as a TikTok influencer known as @sluglexa. 

It was 2019 when Alexa Walkowitz stumbled upon TikTok. Like any other teen, they would find themselves stuck in a continuous loop of sending and scrolling for hours at a time. It wasn’t until the summer of 2020, though, when they started to find fame of their own on the addictive app.

With bright green hair and a mind reeling with stress, Walkowitz planned a night full of thrill to take their mind off Covid and the rest of the world around them. They decided to log onto Randonautica, an app that sends users on a random adventure by generating geographic coordinates. 

Driving at night through the vast rural Lucerne Valley, part of the Mojave Desert in California, Walkowitz and a friend set off on a Randonautica quest. The app had become a popular trend on Tik-Tok, leading many users to unknown places by asking them to list objects or ideas they’d like to see and then point-ing them to a place on the map.

That night, Walkowitz was on the hunt to find their mother’s lost dog. “We chose an anomaly, and set our intention as my mom’s lost dog,” Walkowitz says in their video recap of the out-ing, which quickly went viral. 

The two continued their search, walking far into the desert, deeper into the wilder-ness where there were no other signs of human life. Scared and unsure of where the app would  lead them, they stumbled upon a dog walk- ing aimlessly through the desert. Curious but frightened about the app’s capabilities, they  approached the dog and realized that, although the dog was not the one they were seeking, it had friendly intentions. 

“We’ve never been out here before, and we’ve never seen this dog in our life, but he was so friendly to us and he kept leading us in the right direction towards our actual point,” Walkowitz says in their TikTok.

Following the dog further into the desert, the found three trees in a strange configuration. Before they knew it, the sky was almost pitch black and a low growl-ing sound came closer towards them. Capturing the whole experience on their phone, they ran quickly to their car—leaving the dog behind—and began driving home. 

What would’ve happened if they had stayed any longer? What was growling? Walkowitz  kept asking these questions, and it turned out TikTok viewers shared them. The video went viral. Soon enough, it had just over 4 million views. Today, Walkowitz’s TikTok account has nearly 61,000 followers. 

“It was kind of like, it was mostly shocking, because, I don’t know, you  never really expect that to happen,” Walkowitz says now. 

After the video went viral, Walkowitz spent most of their time posting videos about their obsession with rats and random videos with their friends. They describe their content as a “postmodern fever dream.” 

Walkowitz is currently on the hunt for jobs, and has seen their fame slowly dwindle without another huge viral hit. But regardless of how many people watch their videos, they say, “it’s just as fun to put the content out there as it is to watch.”

And just like that, the postmodern fever dream continues.