I had been a Girl Scout from the time I was 8 to the time I was 18 years old. I had belonged to my church organization and youth groups. But, you never really found a way that you could make a change.

Especially as a teenager, I was always being racially profiled by the police. You just see all this injustice, and you want to do something about it, but you don't know how.

We have to convince people that they have the power to elect people. The people they are electing are the ones making the decisions about how our tax dollars are going to be spent. Is it going to be for more jails, or for more schools? For more house services? It's very important that people understand that, do their research and find out who to vote for.

My son, Emilio Huerta, is running for congress. He was a young man who was marching and picketing.

We must use our lives to make the world a better place to live, not just to acquire things. That is what we are put on the earth for.

My mother was a dominant force in our family. And that was great for me as a young woman, because I never saw that women had to be dominated by men.

Every single day we sit down to eat, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and at our table we have food that was planted, picked, or harvested by a farm worker. Why is it that the people who do the most sacred work in our nation are the most oppressed, the most exploited?