My experience is no anomaly.

The people closest to the pain should be closest to the power, driving and informing the policy-making. Like many movement builders and table shakers, it is my own lived experiences that have driven this core value of mine, and I wanted to share a few of those with you.

Ayanna with her mom, Sandy

I was raised by a single mother, Sandy — may she rest in power — who was a social worker, community organizer, and legal secretary. Child care was always a challenge for us due to the high cost and her untraditional work hours. So I was home alone a lot as a child and throughout my teenage years. I remember the trauma I felt when I came home one day to an eviction notice on the door.

My mother made incredible sacrifices to prevent hardship coming my way. It felt like it was us against the world.

Like me, my mother had fibroids — and growing up I witnessed her navigate a health care system that constantly denied the pain she was feeling. She worked through that pain out of fear of losing her job.

Early on I witnessed the ways in which our policies and the world wore on her spirit as a Black woman.

Ayanna with her Dad, Martin

Growing up, my father Martin, missed out on some of my happiest and hardest life moments while navigating the injustice of the criminal legal system and battling a substance abuse disorder that was criminalized. And like so many, it didn’t take me long to realize that our entire family and community was serving time with him. But, despite the circumstances, he has shaped his own destiny in incredible ways, and has since been there for every major milestone of my life.

Later on in life, like 85% of Black students, I had to take out loans to go to college. And like many of them, I defaulted — despite working multiple jobs and 12-hour days while being a student.

This is my origin story. And this is why my pain informs my policy. The experiences I used to think my family was marked for were not unique to us — they are conditions shared by so many people who call this country home, driven by decades of policy violence. It took me working within government and seeing the policy-making process firsthand to realize that wasn’t the case, and that led me to fight for equity and justice today.

I fight for universal childcare because of the years I spent in solitude as a child.

I fight for women’s healthcare because I witnessed my mother’s pain firsthand.

I fight for paid leave because my mother shouldn’t have had to work through her pain.

I fight for a more humane criminal legal system because of the circumstances keeping my father down — and many of the policies that supported him in becoming the brilliant professor he is are policies I fight for today.

I know how much these policies mean to people because I have lived the very disparities they seek to address.

That’s why no matter how many twists and turns we endure on the path for justice, I’ll never stop using my voice to champion bold, transformative change. And I’ll never stop advocating for those who are ignored, left out, and left behind. And I’m hoping you won’t either. If you’re able, please chip in $25 or whatever you can to help power our movement.

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Yours in service,

Ayanna