My mom gently knocked on my bedroom door. She had just gotten home from work and wanted to talk to me. It was a few months after they told me the big news. Knowing her, she simply wanted to lift my spirits. But I was starting to like this new brooding version of myself. If you thought having no direction in life was hard, try having no direction while not being allowed to be in the country.
My mom walked in and sat on the edge of my bed. She looked at me and, with a twinkle in her eye, said, “I tried to tell you the truth about our status before, but then you wet the bed so I thought against it.” I didn’t think that was funny at the time, but I now appreciate a well-structured joke. My mom apologized and said she and my dad had had no choice. They thought it was best that I didn’t know the truth. “Because,” she said, “we didn’t want you to grow up feeling different. Because dreams should not have borders.”
Damn. That shit hit me hard.
“Please don’t be so hard on your father. He’s doing his best. He always wanted to make sure that you valued our sacrifices and hard work. But this one thing, we didn’t think it was necessary for you to know so young.”
My mom’s pep talk worked. She and my dad had sacrificed so much to come to the United States and had been living with this distressing reality for so long. I had only been dealing with it for less than three months. I woke up the next day with a tiny spark under my ass. It didn’t quite resemble fire—thank God because I would’ve had to get that checked!—but the spark was there. In 1997, nobody I knew referred to themselves as “illegal” or “undocumented.” We simply said, “We don’t have papers.” That was me. I didn’t have papers. But it didn’t matter. I was still determined to be that all-American high school student I’d once aspired to be. My dad and I were still at odds, but that was okay. Whatever love I wasn’t getting from him at home, I would just have to figure out a way to get from my fellow classmates at West Covina High.
My mom’s pep talk forced me to put things into perspective. Anywhere else on the planet I might have been doing child labor in a sweatshop, or been a child soldier in some meaningless war, or worse—I could have been stuck all alone inside a cold, desolate cage separated from my parents. Again, it was 1997 and expressions such as “child migrant” or “DACA” or “don’t @ me unless you’re nasty” had yet to enter our lexicon. Beyoncé had not yet taken over the world, and having Bill Clinton in the White House was considered diversity in politics. I was a junior in high school, a promising sixteen-year-old student that looked like an aspiring MTV VJ, and the world could still be anything I made of it.
I was drinking with my cousins one weekend, thinking of the latest episode of Saved by the Bell I had seen in which Zack ran for class president.
“I’m gonna run for class president,” I told Choli and Joe.
Having a spark of genius, Joe replied, “You should call your campaign Operation Rafa!” He, of course, was referencing one of our favorite punk bands of all time, Operation Ivy.
Soon after Joe’s brilliant suggestion, Operation Rafa was in full effect. I gathered Choli, Sandra, Napo, and Joe, and we began making posters. Joe was a great artist and was therefore tasked with all campaign art design. Choli looked tough, so he was in charge of all campaign security. We had giant posters with a picture of a guy moshing next to the words “Operation Rafa.” Nobody could possibly know what the sign meant, but it didn’t matter. We knew.
Of course, we couldn’t do the normal thing and hang up the posters during our free period—that would be so boring and un-Zack-like. No, we needed an explosive campaign announcement. Choli, Napo, and I snuck out of our houses late on a Sunday night and drove up to the school with our lights off. Joe didn’t go because he was over twenty-one and we figured it would be best if he wasn’t sneaking around a high school after hours. Choli, Napo, and I hopped the school fence and made our way inside the quad. For the record, this was the first time I had hopped any fence in my life.
The guys and I ran around the school, each holding our own tape and posterboard. We plastered campaign posters all over the school. They were up on the gym entrance, right outside the school cafeteria, on the wall to the principal’s office—they were everywhere. Students may not have known who I was, but as of Monday morning, they were going to know my presidential campaign.
Monday morning, I was in the shower singing Céline Dion’s “All by Myself” when I spotted an open bottle of shampoo. You really couldn’t blame me. It was the first official day of my campaign, and I had a lot of pent-up energy to release. But unbeknownst to me, the shower window was wide open. So as I put the shampoo to work on something other than my hair, I inadvertently locked eyes with Ramon mid-stroke. Ramon diverted his eyes and yelled some Spanish apology, I screamed for Ramon to trim the hedges—and slammed the shower window shut!
The guys and I arrived at school and I found myself at the center of attention. A student walked up to me and asked, “Are you throwing a party or something?” Damn. I guess being cheeky on the messaging was not a good idea. Another student asked if Operation Rafa was a concert we were putting together. I got a little deflated. All that work for nobody to know what the hell we were doing. I should have taken a damn marketing class! That’s when Sally, an Asian American wiz kid and the envy of all advancement placement students, came up to me and said:
“Operation Rafa. I like it. I’ll vote for you.”
Yes! The smart kids got it. Praise the Lord for smart kids! A few even gave me their endorsements on the spot. In the end, nobody really knew what Operation Rafa was, but they all knew they wanted to be a part of it.
I was thinking about my candidacy in my American history class, when my slightly neurotic but very thoughtful fifty-year-old history teacher, Mr. Demke, said something that shook me to my core. He was in front of his chalkboard discussing the Boston Tea Party and the colonies’ protest of the British Parliament’s tax on tea, when he looked directly at me and said: “That’s why we had the American Revolution… because there can be no taxation without representation.”
HOLY SHIT!!!
There can’t be taxation without representation in this country. Of course! I was blown away by what Mr. Demke had said. He finally connected the dots for me. How did nobody else see this? My parents were “illegal” but they always filed their taxes. I know this, because they were always happiest when they received their tax refund checks once a year. My parents paid payroll tax and property tax and filed their state and federal taxes, and we were all forced to pay sales tax when we went out. But they were “illegal” and could not vote or be part of our political process. That meant that my parents—like all hardworking employees without documentation in the United States—were being taxed without representation! It is what the American Revolution was founded on, and yet this country was doing it to us.
Now more than ever, I was determined to win. I ran a very tough campaign. I was up against two overly qualified girls who had been involved in the Associated Student Body since freshman year. I showed up out of nowhere with crazy-looking posters and a cool catchphrase. I had no platform, just an incessant need to be loved by everyone. I was tailor-made for politics! The girls I ran against lobbied hard to get us to debate, but the school didn’t have the time nor the resources. Students would just have to make up their minds via our posters and our friendly dispositions. My motto was easy: “I’m just one of you.” Also, the current senior class president, Vanessa, a brilliant young woman of color, was my cousin Diane’s best friend. Her endorsement sealed the deal for my campaign.
I won the election by a landslide. No runoff needed. No stupid hanging chads. I felt bad for my two opponents. They were better students than me and had been far more involved in school up to that point. It was as if I was literally taking all their jobs! For clarification, I didn’t want to be president. I needed to be president. I ran because I was undocumented and I desperately needed the love of my community. I was never going to lose that election. To this day I wonder if I would have ever run for class president if I’d had my papers.