"Otherness", Oppression, and Overcoming with Digital Video Producer, Yessica Cruz
Seattle born digital video creator now living in the very hot city of Los Angeles. She worked up the ranks of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, producing over 22 digital videos & appearing in more than 137 videos, was a founding producer and personality behind Buzzfeed’s Latinx Facebook page, Pero Like. Yessica hosted and produced an 11 episode series on Flama called Mas Mexican focusing on understanding different aspects of Mexican identity by meeting people in the street. Yessica currently produces shows with People Be Like, focusing on entertaining yet informative content aimed at a diverse millennial audience.
Brown Girls Rising is a partnership with Nylon Espanol to elevate the conversation of feminist action, leadership, community involvement, and culture.
“I’m going to use my voice to advocate for people” - Yessica Cruz
In this episode, we sit down with Digital Video Producer, Yessica Cruz, to chat about how she strives to celebrate difference in latin culture. In this interview, Yessica talks about moving from Seattle, latinx, and societal inequality.
“Coming from an intersectional, multi-culture background in Seattle, I identify with the others. I know, that it is a terrible thing to grow up with, feeling like you can’t trust your government. That’s also very dangerous, to have citizens afraid of the government. That’s no way to have a democracy.”
Yessica goes on to talk about how the feeling of oppression has weighed on her since she was three years old and that lead her to speak out to her audience that is a younger generation.
“I’m going to use my voice to advocate for people. I want to evoke change and I think younger kids and people are my age are the ones to evoke change.”
Yvette and Audrey talk about their fears as America transitions with the new president and their feeling of “otherness” which have resurfaced.
"By unlearning a lot of things that society taught me, I became woke" - Yessica Cruz
This and previous episodes of Brown Girls Rising, can be found at BrownGirlsRising.com or on iTunes & SoundCloud.
This episode was recorded in sunny Downtown Los Angeles at Maker City LA.