My Activism

Written by Andrelyn Izquierdo.

My road map of places where I helped change occur through my activism work.

Warning: This blog entry may be triggering to those with strong feelings and beliefs about politics. Regardless of what side you are on, the intention of this writing is to display my accomplishments on exercising my voice and finding my feet on the road that leads me to freedom from human trafficking.

Photo by Andrelyn Izquierdo.

Over the course of years, I've participated in a lot of political activities from a distance using the power of my pen and words. Most people that I have run into or have exchanged debates with have opposing beliefs of what activism really is. But the truth is that activism can happen individually and within a group that is both official, such as a nonprofit, or unofficial that was organized quickly to achieve a shared goal of getting an important message across to be heard by the people for the people.

Photo by Andrelyn Izquierdo in January 2020.

Protesting

Last year, I mentioned in another blog post about protest marches I participated in. They include, but are not limited to:

• Inside of Bethany Church for individual photo session with my 2 protesting signs. One sign is shown above and the other is in my other article: https://andrelynwriting.wixsite.com/website/post/my-personal-way-of-living-update
  

• BLM Event in Downtown Tacoma, WA in June 2020.

• Protest march in Downtown Tacoma, WA in July 2020.

• BLM Protest march to the Washington State Capitol on July 4, 2020 in Olympia, WA.

Photo by Andrelyn Izquierdo.

Policy Changes

I have assisted directly in the change of policies and procedures that are official and unofficial (not in writing yet) in my activist journey.

• Washington State Organizations
  

  • WSU Extension Pierce County Master Gardeners - volunteer work for four years with participation in almost every Committee including the Foundation Board of Directors and Strategic Planning Committee. I have work spanning throughout almost every single Committee of PCMG.

  • x15 South Hill Pierce County Library 2024 - immediate changes for improvement with growing community attendance plus evaluation of usefulness of their resources. 2024 Strategic Plan input.

  • Washington Native Plant Society - National Poetry Appreciation Month Committee & Marketing Committee.

  • The Salvation Army in Puyallup - change of hours and improving their identification process in the Food Bank.

  • YMCA - employee training program, seasonal marketing promotions, and Zumba fitness choreography.

  • Pierce County Health Department - local marketing.

  • U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness

  • Seattle King County NAACP in 2020 - planning and procedures for voting at 2020 ballot offices.

  • Assisted Tacoma City Council with budget planning and resource allocations.
    

• x15 with a Republican Politician in Olympia on sex education that is inclusive to all genders including the LGBTQ+ Community.

• x18 with Patty Murray on abortion access.

• x1 with Florida Mayor in 11th Grade for a school project in Lake Brantley High School.

Volunteering & Fundraising

(In chronological order)

Volunteer Work

• Friends of the South Hill Library 2025 - Donor towards year-round book sales.

• Puyallup Mathematical Society 2024 - participate in group activities and discussions for each theme of the mathematical presentation relative to everyday activities outside of the classroom.

• The Salvation Army Food Bank in Puyallup 2022 - 2024 - Donor of clothing frequently on multiple occasions on behalf of myself and others; donor of art supplies in 2023; assisted in aid of the program with improvements of access to more clothing, children's literature, and shoes; food bank picture identification card process; paper resources of essential information; church availability throughout the week; human trafficking and survival information, etc.

• Friends of the South Hill Library 2024 - Donor and customer service.

• Friends of the Puyallup Library 2024 - Donor and customer service.

• WSU Extension Pierce County Master Gardening (PCMG) 2020 - 2024 - Annual Plant Sale fundraising and Children's Garden Washington State Fair Events.

• National Sexual Assault Hotline 2022 - 2023 - Assisted with correcting their given resources after auditing all options offered. A much larger problem was discovered, but a little bit of progress was made after the awareness phase.

• Domestic Violence Hotline 2022 - 2023 - Encourage and showed more advocacy work in peer appreciation in counseling over the phone and documenting during their screening process; assisted with networking with networking of shelters throughout Washington State; requested a safety walkthrough cheat sheet and provided examples for securing a household in the evening; requested more domestic violence shelters and heightening their security procedures in multiple states; assisted with correcting their given resources after auditing all options offered.

• National Human Trafficking Hotline 2022 - 2024 - Requested additional forms of discreet communication, such as text message and live-chat with an actual person; assisted with correcting their given resources after auditing all options offered.

• Washington State Native Plant Society 2022 - Volunteer work within the event planning and marketing committee.

• Bethany Baptist Church Puyallup - Live to Give 2021 - Collected homeless snack and hygiene packs and passed them out to homeless in about six cities on the corners, visiting their camps, and leaving them as treats in their favorites places to go on behalf of the church.

• Tacoma Gardens 2021 - Networking with local and distant plant nurseries and community gardens of different cities.

• Puyallup Food Bank Summer - Fall 2019 - Volunteered in all volunteer positions to encourage more access to the community.

Fundraising

• The Salvation Army of Puyallup - Bell Ringer for the Christmas Season for 2 years in a row 2022 and 2023.

• PCMG Children's Garden - Assisted with some fundraising during the annual seasonal programs at the Demonstration Garden as well as at the Washington State Fair from 2020 - 2024.

• Master Gardener Foundation of Pierce County (MGFPC) 2022 - as a Foundation Board Director Member assisting with fundraising in different events.

• PCMG Plant Sale 2021 - 2022 - participated in the planning, preparation, and annual plant sale where Pierce County Master Gardeners raise the most money during the year every Spring for programs and supplies in the organization.

• Federal Way Food Bank 2021 - Sold seahorse jewelry raising about $400 while working at a dance studio in Federal Way.

• Come Walk With Me Breast Cancer 5k (the largest breast cancer walk in Pierce County) annual participation from 2015 - 2018 in Sumner, WA supporting breast cancer health programs at MultiCare Good Samaritan Health Hospital.

• The Big Climb in Seattle 2016 - Climbing 1,113 steps of the tallest skyscraper, the Columbia Tower, in Seattle, WA and fundraising for Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

• Entrepreneur as a Sales Representative, Unit Leader, & District Manager Assistant for Avon a company for women - Avon’s Breast Cancer Crusade 2009.
  

Petition Signing, Surveys & Donations

(In alphabetical order)

Topics

• Abortion

• Accessibility

• Agriculture

• Animal Rights & Protection

• Anti-Corruption and Transparency

• Black Lives Matter (BLM)

• Building Construction

• Child Care

• Climate Change

• Civil Rights

• Combating Drugs and Crime

• Culture

• Cybersecurity

• Defense

• Deforestation

• Democracy

• Discrimination

• Economy

• Education

• Endangered Species

• Energy

• Equality

• Food Hunger

• Gardening

• Health Care

• Homelessness

• Housing

• Human Rights

• Human Trafficking

• Immigration

• Justice & Crime

• Labor

• Law Enforcement

• Marketing

• Ocean Pollution

• Protesting

• Public Administration

• Public Safety

• Racism

• Senior Assisted Living

• Sexual Violence

• Slavery

• Social Policy

• Transportation

• Unemployment

• Volunteering

• Voting Rights

• Water & Sanitation

• Women's Rights & Suffrage Movement

Organizations

• ACLU - American Civil Liberties Union (2019 - Present)

• Act Blue - supporting The Obamas and more politicians. (2019 - Present)

• Black Panthers (2020)

• Change.org (2013 - Present)

• Democratic Majority (2020 - Present)

• Discord (2020 - 2023)

• Drawing Foundations (2021 - 2022)

• Grassroots Democrats (2020 - Present)

• Lake Brantley High School Step Team - Sigma Kappa Rho (2002 - 2003)

• LBHS Asian American Association (2002)

• LBHS Urban Group of Color (2002)

• Martin Luther King Jr. Center (2020 - 2022)

• MoveOn.org (Since 2008)

• NAACP in Seattle, WA (2020)

• Planned Parenthood Legal Group of Missouri. (2020 - Present)

• Planned Parenthood of Seattle, WA. (2019 - Present)

• ProChoiceWomen.org (2020)

• Puyallup City Council (2019 - Present)

• Roland Martin Unfiltered in D.C. (2019 - Present)

• Seattle City Council (2020 - 2022)

• Southern Poverty Law in Montgomery, Alabama (2020 - Present)

• The Salvation Army of Puyallup (2019 - Present)

• The Young Turks Television Show (2020 - 2023)

• Trip to District of Columbia for John Lewis’s Memorial Service (July 2020)
  

Countries

Joint or individual activism awareness, news, and debates.

• Afghanistan

• Africa

• Argentina

• Arunachal Pradesh

• Australia

• Bangladesh

• Bombay

• Brazil

• Canada

• Central African Republic

• Colombia

• Costa Rica

• Cuba

• Democratic Republic of Congo

• Dominican Republic

• Egypt

• El Salvador

• Ethiopia

• Germany

• Greece

• Ghana

• Greenland

• Guatemala

• Guyana

• Haiti

• Iceland

• Iran

• Iraq

• Israel

• Jammu and Kashmir

• Japan

• Jordan

• Kenya

• Korea

• Kuwait

• Libya

• Madagascar

• Malaysia

• Manipur

• Mexico

• Mozambique

• Namibia

• Nepal

• New Zealand

• Niger

• Nigeria

• Norway

• Pakistan

• Panama

• Peru

• Philippines

• Poland

• Portugal

• Puerto Rico

• Punjab

• Rajasthan

• Romania

• Russia

• Somalia

• South Africa

• South Sudan

• Spain

• Sri Lanka

• Sudan

• Sweden

• Syria

• Thailand

• Turkey

• Uganda

• Ukraine

• United Kingdom

• United States of America

• Uttar Pradesh

• Venezuela

• Vietnam

• Vishakhapatram

• Zambia

Legal Work & Debates

Legal Work

• Jury Duty in Washington State 2021.
  

Debates

• Abortion

  • Access to humane medical care.

  • Abortion medication.

  • Child support.

  • Difference between Medicaid and Medicare.

  • Roe v. Wade.

  • Birth control methods.

  • Unrealistic adoption agency expectations and price hikes.

  • Sex education.
    

• BLM

  • Excessive force and time frames.

  • Racism and discrimination.

    • How to prove racism in the court system.

  • Policing the police.

  • Protesting locally and nationally.

  • Protesting rights and safety.

  • Fake news in different types of media.

  • Excessive force.

    • George Floyd.

    • Breonna Taylor.
      

• Climate Change

  • Controlled initiated wildfires.

  • Utilizing Native American gardening practices for overall climate change recovery and sustainability.

  • Preserving the Amazon Rain Forest.

  • Preserving trees in Tacoma parks instead of cutting them down.

  • Reforming and redesigning the sanitation system to include composting in other cities that did not have them.

  • Saving endangered species of Western Red Cedar tree species and reserving them for research.
    

• Coronavirus / COVID

  • Fear during the Pandemic

    • tsunami analogy for hysteria amongst people.

  • Are booster shots safe?

    • discussed side effects.

  • Policy change discussions and experience stories.

  • Vaccine production procedures.

  • Emergency announcements and notifications.

  • Medical coverage and medical professional roles.

  • Patient routing in hospitals and death tolls.

  • Senior home living.

  • Domestic abuse and sexual violence.
    

• Education

  • Education system needed improvements.

  • Plagiarism in school essay, midterm, and final papers.

  • Reduction of test preparation.

  • Transparency of classroom practices.

  • Special Education.

  • Special Olympics.
    

• Human Trafficking

  • Advertisements in media.

  • Law Enforcement responses and lack thereof.

  • Shelter operations as brothels.

  • Statistics between genders.

  • Volunteering Abroad.

  • What does human trafficking look like?
    

  • Forced marriages.
    

• Philosophy

  • Aristotle, Archemedes, Socrates, and other philosophers.

  • Designing the perfect society.

  • Different types of government.

  • Science vs Religion.

  • Policy changes in government according to Socratic theories.

  • Socialism vs Communism.
    

• Prison Pipeline

  • Communication access via snail mail and electronic mail.

  • Education system needing improvements.

  • Excessive force in juvenile detention centers, jails, and prisons.

  • Job system improvements for jail expenses and court fees affordability.

  • Solitary confinement procedures.
    

• Religion

  • Difference between Catholicism and Christianity.

  • Does God exist?

  • Genesis - The Garden of Eden.

  • Marriage as a promise.

  • Noah's Ark.

  • Revelations, The Prophet, and the Apocalypse.

  • The 12 Disciples.
    

• Science & Technology

  • Consciousness.

  • Hypnosis.

  • Neurology.

  • Psychology & Sociology.

  • The different hemisopheres of the brain.
    

• Women's Rights

  • Abortion Rights.

  • Is there a wage gap?

  • Minimum wage.

  • Roe v. Wade.

  • The Backlash.

  • Sexism and Racism.

  • Domestic Violence.

  • Voting Rights.

Letter Writing Campaigns

Wrote to politicians by State and nonprofits with results:

• x7 people in Washington State

• x11 people in New York State

• x10 people in Florida State

• x3 in North Carolina State

• x4 in California State

• x1 at 15-years-old on access for children to get to school in their policy with Florida State Mayor.

• x2 with Mayor Justin Bibb in Ohio State in 2023

• x1 with Governor Mike DeWine in Ohio State in 2023

• Senator Patty Murray in every State I’ve been to in the 2 years! ✍️😃

• x6 Congresswoman AOC in two States in 2 years! ✍️ 😃

• x4 Congresswoman Maria Cantwell in 2 States!

• x5 Senator Kim Schrier of Washington State 2020

• x4 United States Representative Nancy Pelosi 2020

• x1 President Biden about sexual assault. 2021

• x3 Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey 2022

• Many more politicians in The House of Representatives!

• South Hill Pierce County Library - expressed requests for improvements throughout the library with a focus on the homeless community and cybersecurity.

My Independent Projects

• Political Research Supreme Court Hearings. 2018 - 2022

• Political Research & brainstorming of human trafficking and all of its branches. 2018 - 2024

• Juneteenth Slavery Independence Day Letter Writing Campaign to State Governors 2020 - It took 25 hours to complete this project without any sleep.

• Investigative Journalism Writing. 2020

• Wrote to Puyallup City Council about adding to their changed law declaration about including adult women instead of only focusing on the young age group of girls. 2021

• Researching infrastructure for water sustainability and roadside (bike lanes, sidewalks, & wheelchair accessibility in residential areas and not just for main streets.) 2021 - 2022

• January Slavery & Human Trafficking Prevention & Awareness Month information flyers 2022 & 2023

• Providing family resources around the community on children's literature and exposing the public to infant dolls. December 2023

• Auditing Resources - Provided a written evaluation on my website of the South Hill Library’s digital and printed resources from their website and inside of the library offered to the community. 2023 
  

• Current Independent Project: I’ve been working on my own individual Community Safety and Auditing Evaluations as a solo project to increase my legislature and WAC code standards knowledge. 2023

• Current Independent Project: Website Assessments for Communications - Governors 2024

These lists are growing much more this year as I remain steadfast in my mission to free myself from human trafficking along with loved ones and my brother who is innocent in jail without a reasonable cause.

If you are interested in a letter writing campaign or have an invite to an organization event, please feel free to email me at andrelynwriting@gmail.com.

#activism #politics #healing #awareness #personalexperience #victim #survivor #speakout #truestory #UnseenFortitude #empowerment #poet #blogger #writer #KnowTheTruth

Inspired by me and my family's true story.

Dedicated to my special loved one dearest in my heart, my brother, Jose Alicea Jr.

Thank you for reading.

Feel free to leave a comment below.

This article is written by:

Andrelyn Izquierdo

#AndrelynWriting