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While in high school she got her first taste of activism after attending a workshop that Lily Huang, Executive Director of Jobs With Justice facilitated on social justice.

“I saw Lily’s session online and I was beginning to get more interested in social justice,” Rivas told TBF. “ had always been curious about the way that economic injustice impacts us. My parents are union members; they are janitors in Boston. They work in skyscrapers in the city. I grew up poor and I knew the impact that had on me—especially at a place like Boston Latin School, where so many of my peers had parents who could enroll them in very expensive tutoring to help them with their classes…We were just high school students, but I started realizing how much is stacked up against poor kids, especially in the public school system, so I became more interested in learning about income inequality and racial justice, based on these incredible discrepancies between the resources that were available to me and the resources that were available to my peers…So, when I saw that Lily was hosting this workshop on social justice, I became really excited. It turns out that she creates a space for so many young people to be involved and she gives us all a voice. Her workshop was one of the first times that I was really moved to look at social justice issues related to my community and the communities around me. That was a transformative moment, because I began to realize how a lot of history and social power structures had sort of caused the outcomes that a lot of us experience.”