"Growing Your Own Legs": Keynote Address to Irvine Valley College's Puente Program End-of-Year Celebration

My name is Sandra De Anda. I'm the Network Coordinator at the OC Rapid Response Network, a writer, immigration policy advocate, and yes—also a comedian. It’s an honor to be your keynote speaker today. I want to begin by sharing a thought: There are decades where nothing happens, and then there are weeks where decades happen. Right now, we’re living through those weeks. I come to you today after another long day confronting Trump-era immigration policies—policies that continue to detain, deport, and dehumanize our immigrant and refugee communities. 

And yet, here we are. Here you are. All of us resisting simply by existing. 

It’s important to know who we are, so we don’t lose ourselves in who we are not. Especially now, when the fabric of our reality is coming apart at the seams. But that kind of self-knowing takes time. It takes encouragement. It takes discipline. And I see all of that reflected in your bright faces today. You, the future. You, who will help mend that fabric, stitch by stitch. 

I’m able to do the bold work I do today because I know exactly who I am. I’m the daughter of mixed-status parents from Sinaloa, Mexico. I was raised in a working-class neighborhood—Minnie Street in Santa Ana—alongside Mexican and Cambodian immigrants and refugees, during the height of Reagan’s so-called “War on Drugs.” Many in my family, including young people, were criminalized—targeted by over-policing and pressured to assimilate into a culture that never fully embraced us. 

Before I was born, Minnie Street had already become a site of migrant resettlement. In the years after World War II, Mexican laborers—including many from the Bracero Program—settled there, taking the place of former El Toro Marine Base residents in the 1960s. In the early 1980s, Cambodian refugees fleeing the Khmer Rouge genocide were directed to Minnie Street by refugee organizations because of the availability of affordable housing. By the late '80s, the neighborhood held the largest concentration of Cambodians in California outside of Long Beach. 

I believe these layered histories have deeply shaped how I see myself. Understanding the legacies of migration in my neighborhood—and recognizing that I, too, am a carrier of those histories—has made me more compassionate toward those pushed to the margins by systems of power. The systems that push people out and make them invisible—those are the same systems we’re fighting against, right here, right now. 

As an individual shaped by these layered histories, I grew up with a visceral desire to draw nourishment from places and people that recognized my humanity—as a working-class woman and a scholar. This impulse to investigate, to question rather than simply accept what was placed before me, has taken me on a journey of a lifetime. 

I spent my formative high school years at an all-girls boarding school in Southern Virginia, after a counselor at Villa Fundamental recognized my academic potential. Though I often felt alienated because of the color of my skin, I absorbed the history of that place—traced through its architecture and the lives of those who built it, many of them Black women and migrant laborers. I was there at the height of the Republican "Tea Party" wave, and I pushed back—throwing myself into progressive politics. I phone banked and eventually met former President Obama in Charlottesville. At the same time, I was immersing myself in the world of ideas—reading Dostoevsky and Cortázar and uncovering the strange beauty and anti-capitalist critique woven through French New Wave cinema. From across the country, I cheered for the LA Dodgers while receiving care packages filled with tamarind candies and letters from my family and friends back home. 

Because of my strong distaste for right-wing politics, I chose to attend the college of my dreams: Reed College, a countercultural haven that stood in stark contrast to my Southern upbringing. Their unofficial motto— “Communism, Atheism, Free Love”—perfectly encapsulated the rebellious spirit of the place. In Portland, Oregon, I immersed myself in the lush, green forests, many of the walking paths I helped pave during my work-study in the local school canyon. 

Yet, even within this progressive haven, I soon recognized the presence of opposing forces—right-wing extremists. So, I aligned myself with the punk, anarchist, and student-of-color communities, all of us united in resistance. It was there that I began to read Marx, Lenin, and Claudia Jones, diving deeper into the political and intellectual currents shaping the world. I also took courses on Soviet and Hong Kong New Wave cinema, expanding my understanding of culture and resistance. 

What ultimately brought me back home was a single article in OC Weekly, written by undocumented youth from Orange County Immigrant Youth United, who were resisting deportations in 2017. It reminded me that I had studied and struggled everywhere for the last decade—except where I came from. 

I am no different from today’s Puente graduate, you discovering who you are in the midst of the whirlwind of history unfolding around us. Each of you revisiting your past and living your present to find your future. My life grew legs of its own and continues to run, and I know that your lives are growing their own legs, taking you to places you can only begin to imagine. 

Programs like Puente are essential—they help our students understand and value who they are while providing the vital support needed to become curious scholars. I am here today because of all the English and writing teachers who encouraged me to embrace my own narrative. I am here today because of my counselors who helped me appreciate the complexity of my experiences. And I am here today because of all the mentors, both traditional and non-traditional, who chose to stay in my life, even through the messy parts, urging me to keep going. 

Congratulations to every single one of you! You are bold and you are beautiful. Who knows what the future will bring? Perhaps I’ll see you all on the front lines, standing shoulder to shoulder, or maybe I’ll read an award-winning piece of journalism written by one of you. Wherever it is, wherever you go, I have no doubt that you will all be studying, struggling, and fighting for justice, as history unfolds in its recurring patterns. I look forward to it. Thank you for your time today!

Sandra E. De Anda is an award-winning Santa Ana-based writer and immigrant rights advocate. She received her BA in English from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been featured in the LA Times, Voice of OC, Sin Cesar, The Ear, Makara Arts, Khabar Keslan, and the late OC Weekly, where she co-founded a weekly column titled, “Deport This” which highlighted the stories of local immigrants and refugees in resistance. 

You can follow her recently published work here: https://linktr.ee/Basurababushka  

Instagram & Twitter: @basurababushka