One Hundred Years of Attitude
On Generational Activism + The Metrics of Making a Difference
A poster I designed while the highest-level POC at a St. Louis creative agency promoting an event (that never happened) by the unofficial BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA+ ERG — for which I was the organizing co-founder in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Within about a year, none of the founding 18 members of the ERG were still at the agency. Then the agency took credit for the ERG. Then I called them out publicly. Then they quietly recanted their cultural and intellectual theft.
A note on the use of BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and POC : For usage in my speech and writing I’m working to identify their respective, respectful substitutes that I believe communicate accurately and concisely the groups to which I’m referring. I haven’t quite found them yet. In this piece, their usage is effectively accurate.
“The reason speaking out is so important is that it lowers the perceived risk of those who are still silent and have something to say. Your courage matters. Your words matter. Every voice is a key to unlocking another’s.”
– Attribution unclear
Measuring Water with a Sieve
I’ve been thinking about what it means to “do enough” — that impossible calculus of personal action against the incomprehensible scale of systemic injustice. It’s like measuring water with a sieve; the moment you’ve captured something meaningful, it has already begun to drain away.
The question haunts me: Am I doing enough? And worse: How would I even know?
Mariame Kaba (abolitionist organizer and justice architect) offers a liberating perspective: “People don’t actually know ‘what will have an effect.’ They simply do not. Do what you believe must be done within your capacity and do it with others. Be an agent rather than a pundit."¹
I’ve always found myself desperately wanting to be an agent, not just another voice shouting into the (algorithmic) void — though I’ve certainly done my share of that, too. But what does effective agency look like in a world where activism is both urgently necessary and easily commodified?
Activism as Inheritance
My activism wasn’t something I chose so much as something I inherited — like my grandfather’s inability to suffer fools or my mother’s eyes.
My ’buelo² walked into the United States at age ten, fleeing the Mexican Revolution with nothing but the clothes on his back and whatever determination a child can muster when survival is the only option. He spent the next 85 years working the land that reluctantly received him — a living embodiment of the truth that America was built on immigrant labor well before it began building walls to keep it out (and gulags³ to keep it incarcerated).
Meanwhile, my maternal grandfather began writing for the WPA during the Great Depression, and kept documenting New Mexico and its indigenous communities throughout the 1930s⁴. He had one confirmed Hispano⁵ paternal grandparent and one maternal grandparent whose Puebloan⁶ lineage was accepted but not officially documented — positioning him in that liminal space where ancestry becomes both connection and question mark. He inhabited the complicated territory of partial belonging that so many Americans navigate: close enough to claim kinship, distant enough to require explanation, existing in the grey area between cultural insider and privileged observer.
My parents — then starry-eyed idealists — met in the Peace Corps in the early 60s. My mother’s tour found her establishing a peanut butter production collective in a Guatemalan village while my father unintentionally went rogue during an attempted coup in the Dominican Republic — the evacuation call somehow missing him, isolated as he was in a remote village. Later, my father campaigned for Bobby Kennedy, holding onto that particular American optimism that says change is just one charismatic leader away.
By the time I was four, my mother was taking me to picket lines, boycotting grapes⁷ with Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers to fight against the exploitation of farm workers outside a Safeway supermarket in Menlo Park, CA. I learned to spell “¡Viva la raza!” ⁸ before I could properly tie my shoes.
Is it any wonder I’ve spent my life assuming action is the baseline requirement of citizenship?
The Modern Measure
“People don’t actually know ‘what will have an effect.’ They simply do not. Do what you believe must be done within your capacity and do it with others. Be an agent rather than a pundit.”
Mariame Kaba
abolitionist organizer +
justice architect
Fast forward through decades of shifts in how activism manifests: Before I choked on tear gas in student protests in Paris, before social media gave us digital megaphones, there was the raw physicality of defending space against hate. In the mid-80s, Northwest skinheads had taken up camp on “the Ave” in Seattle’s University District, terrorizing locals with their particular brand of organized intimidation. We — the goths, mohawks, and SHARPS⁹ — became an unlikely frontline of community defense.
I still remember the surreal moment of staring down “Nazi Kelly” — the diminutive skinhead leader — and his hulking “muscle” (whose name has mercifully evaporated from memory, though his frame remains indelibly etched, nearly thrice Kelly’s size). They attempted, unsuccessfully, to intimidate my friend and me into surrendering either a. our shoes (don’t ask), or b. our money — a shakedown masquerading as ideological confrontation. The irony wasn’t lost on me: these self-proclaimed “defenders of the white race” couldn’t even successfully intimidate two proto-grunge/goth 20-somethings out of their boots.
For several nights that summer, I patrolled with “the Mohawks” (though I sported dreads at the time I) — a walking contradiction in a makeshift community safety patrol, helping keep “our people” safe. This wasn’t activism as social performance; it was activism as necessary defense of physical space — the kind that leaves no digital footprint, generates no metrics, earns no engagement analytics.
I’ve marched with my seven-year-old on my shoulders during the 2017 Women’s March — a generational echo of a silkscreened image created by my “honorary” godfather Ralph Maradiaga (one of the founders of San Francisco’s renowned Galería de la Raza) showing 7-year-old me perched atop my maternal grandfather’s shoulders. The visual rhyme across generations wasn’t lost on me; activism as inheritance made literal through mirrored postures.
It’s not lost on me that the activist’s message and the capitalist echo are literally (yes, literally) identical.
I’ve pulled a wagon of children through a PRIDE parade, walked for Black Lives Matter after George Floyd’s murder (where I remember the gut-punch of reading a handwritten message on the back of a t-shirt worn by a woman whose body she had clearly reconceptualized as protective armor for others: “If shooting starts, stand behind me I’ll shield you"). I’ve organized employee resource groups for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ colleagues in three different organizations, and clearly and consistently called out the systemic racism in my industry both locally and nationally.
I founded an irreverent, vocal recovery media platform¹⁰ — creating space for those whose voices had been flattened by both stigma and saccharine recovery narratives. I’ve advocated fiercely for my trans family members, eventually (briefly) formalizing that advocacy as Board Member and Marketing and Communications Chair for TransParent USA, supporting parents navigating the simultaneously mundane and extraordinary journey of raising transgender and gender-expansive children. I’ve created award-winning art for and populated committees for Creative Reaction Lab’s Artwork for Equity initiatives, managed brands for community organizations fighting for interracial dignity, served as the digital backbone for a DEI network, and occupied that peculiar role that non-profits euphemistically call “factotum” — the person who does whatever needs doing when resources are thin but mission is thick.
I deliberately make my values visible through what I wear in public spaces — recognizing that while t-shirts and pins aren't enough, they signal to those under threat that they're not facing hostility alone. My allyship aims to balance public solidarity with the quieter work of showing up when “cameras aren't rolling”.
Tee: Fetch KC x Golden Gems STL
And yes, I’ve maintained that steady stream of social media content that sometimes feels essential and sometimes feels utterly futile¹² — a decade-plus of digital breadcrumbs marking a path through evolving consciousness.
Maybe all of this sounds impressive when listed in bullet points. Maybe it looks like “enough” when packaged neatly for consumption.
But is it? I dunno.
The Metrics Problem
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: there is no spreadsheet where I can track the real impact of these actions. No quarterly report that will tell me whether marching with a sign actually protected anyone’s rights, whether my social media advocacy changed any minds, whether my organizational efforts created lasting change or merely provided temporary comfort.
The systems we’re fighting are designed to absorb our resistance, commodify our outrage, and sell it back to us as “awareness.” Capitalism has a remarkable capacity to transform dissent into merchandise — to make rebellion just another lifestyle brand. And, yes, guilty. But movement needs messaging, and messaging needs media — signs of resistance are something. No?
I find myself wondering: if my grandfather crossed a border to build a new life, and my parents crossed oceans to help communities in need, is my digital — and as able, IRL local — activism even in the same category? Am I building something real or just cultivating an identity?
We watched activism transform from something you did with your body — marching, striking, occupying — to something you can now do with your thumbs (Resistbot, anyone?)
Being an Agent, Not a Pundit
Kaba’s directive to “be an agent rather than a pundit” hits uncomfortably close to home. How much of my activism has been doing versus commenting? How often have I substituted analysis for action?
The most meaningful work often happens in spaces without hashtags, in moments that never make it to Instagram. The patient, unglamorous work of showing up, of building relationships, of making small changes that accumulate over time.
Perhaps “doing enough” isn’t about the quantity of actions or their visibility, but about their integrity. It’s about showing up consistently, even when — especially when — it won’t earn social capital or build your personal brand.
Generational Context
My generation occupies an awkward space in activism’s evolution. We’re not the direct action pioneers of our grandparents’ era, nor the digital natives who learned to organize online before they learned to drive. We’re the transitional generation, with one foot in analog resistance and one in digital mobilization, never quite at home in either.
We watched activism transform from something you did with your body — marching, striking, occupying — to something you can now do with your thumbs (Resistbot, anyone?). We’ve seen causes reduced to colored ribbons, hashtags, profile frame overlays — the commodification of solidarity into easily digestible, shareable content.
But perhaps this transition offers its own opportunities. We understand both languages, can translate between worlds, can connect direct action to digital amplification in ways that neither our parents nor our children might manage alone.
The Family Business
When activism spans generations, it becomes something like a family business — evolving with the market while maintaining core values. My grandparents and parents couldn’t have imagined organizing via social media, just as I struggle to imagine what forms of resistance my child will embrace in their future¹¹.
What matters is that the thread remains unbroken — that each generation finds its own expression of the underlying commitment to justice, to seeing the humanity in others, to standing with — or for — those whose voices are systematically silenced.
My four-year-old self, holding a picket sign I’d likely just learned to read outside a Safeway, is connected to my adult self posting about systemic racism, is connected to my child who will find his own ways to resist systems of oppression I might not even recognize yet. (JFC, that last thought is frightening.)
Enough
So am I doing enough? The answer, I’m coming to believe, will always be no. Not because my efforts lack value, but because “enough” is the wrong metric altogether.
The work of justice is never complete. There is no finish line, no moment when we can dust off our hands and declare mission accomplished. There is only the daily decision to keep showing up, to do what we can with what we have, to act within our capacity alongside others doing the same.
The question isn’t whether I’ve done enough, but whether I’m still willing to do something. Not whether my activism measures up to some impossible standard, but whether it remains honest, connected to real needs, and in conversation with those most affected.
As the quote at the beginning reminds us, every voice helps unlock another. Perhaps that’s the only metric that matters — not how many followers you have or protests you’ve attended, but how many other voices your courage has helped to liberate.
And by that measure, the work continues. As it always has, across generations, across borders, across the long arc that bends toward justice only because hands like ours keep pulling it that way.
A Postscript on Receipts
I started writing this reflection after being challenged on Facebook by an ex co-worker and self-appointed moral accountant wielding their family's military service like inherited social capital¹³: “What have YOU done, Aguirre? And then I’ll tell you about the money I’ve donated, the letters I’ve written and the votes that I’ve cast.”
It’s a fair question, I suppose — the activist’s version of “show me your receipts.” And I’ve just spent several thousand words trying to answer it, not to prove my worthiness in some resistance Olympics, but to wrestle with it honestly.
The “recliner resistors” and “armchair antifa” (orig: “slacktivists”) who measure their commitment in dollars donated and ballots cast are participating in their own way. Financial support matters. Electoral politics matter. I’ve done those things too.¹⁵
But I wonder about the impulse to quantify justice work — to reduce it to countable units like donations and petitions signed. There’s something distinctly American, distinctly capitalist about needing to financialize resistance, to make it legible through the same metrics that govern our 401(k)s and quarterly reports.
Perhaps the most radical act isn’t counting our contributions but committing to keep making them — in whatever forms our bodies, resources, and circumstances allow at any given moment. Sometimes that’s putting your physical self between hatred and its targets. Sometimes it’s writing a check. Sometimes it’s simply refusing to look away.
The question isn’t “what have you done?” but rather “what are you doing?” — present continuous tense for a justice that requires continuous presence.
FOOTNOTES
via Bluesky
What I called my paternal grandfather — my abuelo — well into my childhood until I saw it written and was surprised to learn the word started with an “A." I suspect toddler-me thought my relatives were Spanglishing it and saying "A" (English article) + "buelo" (Spanish noun). Which would also explain why I called my Mexican grandmother “’Buela." The linguistic archeology of bilingual childhoods contains multitudes.
“‘Nobody really knows what’s going on’: US officials scramble to expand Guantanamo Bay for migrants”, CNN, Feb 13, 2025
e.g. “Tales of the Moccasin Maker of Cordova”, Lorin W. Brown, May 3, 1937, Library of Congress
Hispanos of New Mexico, Wikipedia / NB: My grandfather, Lorin W. Brown, is the author of Hispano Folklife of New Mexico published in 1978 by University of New Mexico Press.
Tesuqe Pueblo specifically, one of the many remaining pueblos inhabited by indigenous Pueblo people.
In solidarity with the Delano grape strike, September 7, 1965 – July 29, 1970
“Ask a Mexican: What does Viva la raza even mean?”, Westword, Aug 1, 2013
Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice
One of my favorite responses to what was an admittedly incessant stream of anti-Trump content I posted on Facebook during his first term was by another former co-worker: “Do you ever have anything positive to post or say? You were a great guy at Zip but you seem to be so full of hatred and negative feelings." Clearly, we had different … realities.
I find it reassuring that he’s already the type to confidently sport a tee reading: “Respect My Existence Or Expect My Resistance.”
YKTV¹⁴: “My grandfather fought in WW II to secure the freedoms we hold so dear and he’d be rolling over in his grave.”
You Know the Vibe
I remember standing beneath the Gateway Arch as part of Barack Obama's largest rally (100,000 people!) during his first presidential run, witnessing that rare moment when hope seemed structurally possible rather than naïvely aspirational. Then, reality.
I know, I know — Starbucks bad. Most of my coffee is consumed at home and/or from local, independent shops. Don’t come at me.
Your coffee donation keeps this armchair agitator caffeinated and conspiring while Starbucks¹⁶ remains available without a prescription.
My son Lorin, perched on my shoulders in downtown St. Louis during the 2017 Women's March — unknowingly recreating a parallel moment from my childhood when I sat on my grandfather Lorin's shoulders. The name ‘Lorin’ traveled through generations as a middle name for me, Christopher Lorin, to my child — though of the three, only one of us actively chose it.
“Don Lorenzo de Córdova and his grandson, Chris”
silk screen on acetate
1/5, Maradiaga ’75
The “No Kings” Yard sign I designed (and sell). Part of a growing collection of “activism swag” I peddle at the Dome Depot. For context tho, I’ve been out of work for over 18 months and am tryna apply my skills in a way that benefits me and the greater good.
