Anatomy of an L.A. activist

Grist magazine interviews Francisca Porchas, an organizer for the Bus Riders Union here in Los Angeles. She sees global reach in her cause of cleaning up pollution from MTA buses.

Q: What long and winding road led you to your current position?

A: My first and most profound transformative political experience was migrating to the U.S. from Sonora, Mexico, at the age of 9. It was not until I traveled back to my native Mexico that I began to make connections between U.S. foreign policy and the profound poverty and never-ending migration of my country's people, and that I began to understand the need to organize low-income communities like my own.

Searching for training, I worked with the Union Summer Program organizing security guards in San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as the Center for Third World Organizing's Movement Activist Apprenticeship Program, where I organized in South Los Angeles around health-care issues. I wanted to be an internationalist, class-conscious organizer challenging racism and sexism in a direct organizing campaign, so I applied for the Strategy Center's National School for Strategic Organizing and stayed on as an organizer.

Grist is a Seattle-based enviro magazine that says "we believe that news about green issues and sustainable living doesn't have to be predictable, demoralizing, or dull. We butter the vegetables! And add salt! And strain metaphors!"