by Adriann BarboaAfter eight wonderful years of working at Young Women United, I am so happy to be blessed with another opportunity to grow my strengths and live a life full of my passion, serving for JUSTICE!
To the next generation of YWU, I have seen the strength in your eyes and fight in your hearts, and that is why I knew that I must make room for you to spread your wings and take flight. I have no doubt that your struggle, your experiences and your wisdom will create an even greater, sharper and more vibrant sisterhood of radical women of color than I could imagine.
So here I stand, in a grounded stance ready to take all that you have allowed me and move forward in a new and exciting journey with Forward Together, formally known as Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice. For years I have been such a fan of ACRJ, the opportunity to work with them, is a dream come true! ACRJ and I are in this place together, looking around us, seeing the need to grow, make additions to our homes, broadening our reach and making room for new leadership, while still tending to our roots. That's why this name change, Forward Together, feels so right. It includes me, it includes my beloved New Mexico, it reaches beyond big city business to include small metro areas like Albuquerque as well as rural and Indigenous communities whose struggle, strengths and victories are so often hidden and therefore under-resourced. That’s what excites me most, that just like Forward Together is taking special care of its roots while expanding its garden to new terrain, I too will be cultivating nuestra tierra, sharing on a larger level the ripeness of JUSTICE and STRONG FAMILIES that my state has to offer. I thank you all for this blessing, and ask for your continued support because I know that within all of you, lives the life sustaining nutrients my communities and I need to thrive.