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With the United States election looming, this week’s episode is a dispatch from Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, who is in the midst of touring 114 college campuses and hosting parties to mobilize newly eligible voters. She shares stories from the road, what she’s hearing from young voters, and how her own heritage influenced her career as a youth vote organizer.
Lale Arikoglu: Hi there. I'm Lale Arikoglu, and in this Women Who Travel episode we have a dispatch from Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez. She's touring 114 college campuses and hosting parties and events to mobilize newly eligible voters.
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: My name is Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, and I'm the president of NextGen America, one of the country's largest organizations to mobilize young people across the country to turn out and vote. I think I have one of the coolest jobs. There is the idea that young people are apathetic, that they don't really care. It's actually not true. We've had the three highest youth voter turnouts in American history in the last three elections. I'm hoping we're going to have the fourth again this election. This is the most civically engaged generation in American history, especially when you start to talk about young women, and they're very clear what's at stake this election, and they care more than anything about policy than any single politician or party. We really push, especially young women, and organize with young women because young women turn out at greater rates, and in the last election when Roe was overturned, it really, of course, pissed off a generation of young women that had their rights taken back 50 years overnight and galvanized them to vote.
In 2022, 71% of young women voted for Democrats, 53% of young men. So a pretty big gender divide. Most of our volunteers are women, and then most of our leaders on the ground are also women. Women, I think we're just more social creatures. I think social movements, especially civil and voting rights movements have often been led by women. If you look back at the history of the civil rights movement, led by incredible women, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, just to name a few of the incredible women that were at the forefront, but they didn't get the credit for it.
We don't put our hope in any one single party. We put our hope in America's young people. I think that we can push the Democratic Party to be better and deliver. I wish we could push the Republican Party to do more, but I think we're living in a moment where they are catering very little to the needs of young people, especially young women. Whether we're talking about abortion or IVF or child care or investing in our education or equal pay for equal work, I see very little in the agenda of the Republican Party. That being said, I don't think you elect a Democrat, and it changes the world. I think you elect good people, and then you push and organize for them to deliver. I have much more faith in movements than I do in any politician.
Recently was National Voter Registration Week. Our teams across the country were on campuses connecting with young people. They're doing things to really engage young people, telling them what's at stake this election. We also partnered with BuzzFeed and HuffPost to be their core partner to register young people on their sites, and then our volunteer teams that send calls and texts are calling and texting tens of thousands of young people in these key states to try and get them registered. A lot of young people didn't sit down and watch 90 minutes of the debate. What they watched were really funny memes or people breaking down what happened at the debate on TikTok on Instagram. So for us, it's really important that we be on those platforms. We sometimes also organize on dating apps because you can search by geography, age, political persuasion, slide into people's DMs, and talk about the sexiest thing there is, which is, of course, saving democracy.
I would say I spend a good chunk of my time on the road traveling to our critical states, where we have organizers on the ground on college campuses. So we're in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, and we're also in my home state of Texas. We are also in Houston and San Antonio, but we're also in what's called the Rio Grande Valley, so traveling around Texas is also a lot. Next week I personally am going to be in Michigan, and so I'm going to fly into Grand Rapids, and then I'll be headed to Detroit to meet with our team there. That's also doing some events on college campuses there.
One of my favorite things I love to do when I go to the campuses with our team is we actually do a lot of interviews for social media when people come up and say, "Tell me why you're voting." Or, "What matters to you this election?" And what's really cool is I was interviewing two sets of friends. They were new to campus. They had just met each other in the dorm two days before, but they had become already super best friends, and one young woman, you asked her, she was 18, she was going to be a first-time voter, she was so excited to vote. She had clearly like, "These are all the policy reasons why I'm going to vote on abortion, on Project 2025." And then her friend said, "I don't know. I want to vote for Kamala because I think she's cool." And what was great about it's they each were learning from each other, but I am always really impressed by the level of knowledge that people have.
So when you come up to a NextGen table, not only are you going to be greeted by other young people, but they may be making Taylor Swift friendship bracelets at our booths. We've also had coffee and donuts, different games and prizes, and, of course, our big, big swag that people love is our Hot Girls Vote campaign and our Bad Boys Vote campaign. So people love the swag and stickers that come from those. So people's dorms can be kind of dreary. So they were actually coming to the booth so that they could paint original artwork for their dorms to decorate them. So a lot of those activities are what draw people in.
There's also these amazing local influencers that have really key geographic followings. So there was a pair of huskies, not even people, huskies, that had a huge following in Wisconsin. So we signed up them, actually, it's their owner, and signed them up to make sure they were using their platform to tell people about the voting deadlines to get, encouraged them to vote, and why the dogs wanted to vote and who they were voting for if they could.
We are trying to increase and make sure that we have more men in the organization, and we even organize on Discord and Twitch to try and reach young men. We know that men of color vote at less higher numbers. So this election we've also been targeting certain men of color and Pennsylvania and Arizona to make sure they're using their platforms to connect with young people and make sure that they're getting out information that's reliable and honest and truthful about when, where, and how to vote.
We also did an event at the University of Houston where one of our influencers that was part of the football team, he came out and he participated in our speed dating event. Of course, people recognized him as well. But what's cool about it is, a lot of young, especially women, when we're talking about straight folks, they don't want to date young men that are not politicized. There's a lot of data showing that young women don't want to date men that aren't supportive of reproductive rights. They don't want to date men that have voted for Trump. So I always say it's also good if you're a straight guy trying to figure out your dating life to get educated about these issues. It can really increase your prospects if you're smart about the public policy issues that impact young women because they care and they are very clear about that.
So it's not hard to interject because it's something that young people are already thinking about. Does this person align with my values and how I see the world and my role and place in it? Does this person want me to have the same rights that I believe I should have? Does this person believe in the rights of the LGBTQ community? This is a very diverse generation, and so I think that they see a very different view for young women. So they've been very successful events, but again, this is what people are already thinking about. I think that they see a very different viewpoint, especially from candidates that are trying to sow division between communities based on race, ethnicity, or immigration status.
LA: After the break, how Cristina's heritage influenced her career and how music is a key attraction at the event's NextGen America organizers. Back with Women Who Travel and Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, youth-vote organizer.
CTR: My mom is the oldest of nine kids from a poor farmworking family in southern Mexico, the state of Michoacán, and my dad's a white American hippie that met her while he was living on a commune in Mexico in the '70s. So I feel very lucky because my parents raised us to speak Spanish. I grew up going to Mexico every single year, if not multiple times a year, and I have always had a deep love and pride in my culture, and it's led me to do a lot of work. That's actually how I got into voting rights, I was spending a lot of time organizing in the Latino community, mostly immigrant community. My big foray into taking the leap from organizing immigrant workers into organizing Latino voters was here in Texas a few years ago. There was legislation that was being proposed that sought to criminalize and target Latino families and immigrant families because we often get grouped and lumped in the same whether we are U.S. citizens or not, even though close to 68% of Latinos are U.S. citizens.
So I decided we would organize and fight back by using the power of quinceañeras, which, if you don't know what a quinceañera is, you can have a bar mitzvah for a 15-year-old Latina girl. It is her coming of age becoming a woman. It's about duty to family and community, and we thought, "Well, shouldn't one of those duties be also protecting your family and community with your right to vote and your ability to organize?" So we brought 15 young girls together. They did these amazing performances at the steps of the Texas Capitol against that legislation, also for voting rights. They danced to Lin-Manuel Miranda's “Immigrants (We Get The Job Done)” and also “Somos mas Americanos” by Tigres del Norte, which is one of the most famous Mexican band, which is We Are More American.
Then they gave these beautiful speeches. You have these beautiful dresses, all different colors, fifteen-year-old girls with tiaras, and they put their fists up in the air and they say, "We are brown and beautiful. We are Texas, and we won't back down." People were crying, and really what they symbolized with the future of the state because half of those turning 18 in Texas are Latino. So we started to use Quinceañeras as a vehicle at my previous organization that I founded to register and pledge young people to vote and really use the symbol of these young girls as the beauty and future of this state that refuses to recognize them, but that we're totally what made this state beautiful.
LA: Cristina's experience using the power of music has carried on into NextGen's campus events.
CTR: At some of our booths, we have karaoke and music and DJs as well, so we've had Sabrina Carpenter parties and matcha lattes coming out for folks that want to get caffeinated and dance. So these are also ways to attract folks a huge way. I think that also you've seen Harris connect with people is through music, and so that music that you see in her campaign is also music that's incredibly popular that we use to really attract and engage with folks and make sure they're drawn in to see like, "Oh my God, what's this music playing?"
We did a lot of Brat Summer events using Charli XCX's music, which was like the album of the summer. We went to the Democratic National Convention. I was there, and our staff made Demobrat hats. We sold out instead of Democrat, Demobrat, and then Taylor Swift. Of course, when we're making those bracelets, we also have all of her songs playing “Shake It Off” or “If I Were a Man,” and then you can't deny the role that Beyoncé is playing in this election as well. Three total queens that have really led the charge of making the election a lot more fun and musical.
LA: Coming up, how Cristina copes with a travel routine that becomes all the more punishing as we head into election day. Back with this Women Who Travel dispatch. It's important for Cristina to be in person at campus events.
CTR: I am a working single mom. So I have a 7-year-old little boy. So my goal every time I go to a city is to go in as fast as possible. So I have a whole packing routine. I have a whole sleeping routine. I am literally there as fast as I can to get as much packed in as possible, but if I have a little free time, for me what's really important is always maintaining my exercise routine. So I have learned how to do calisthenics, which is just like with body weight. If there's no gym or there's no place, I will find 30, 40 minutes in a room somewhere, and that also keeps me really sane and happy, or on the road, or I'll go for a run.
The other thing that I always do is I've been vegan for 26 years, and I use a travel app that I love. If there's anybody that's ever wondering, that's called HappyCow. That will let me know where the closest vegetarian, vegan, or health food store is to me anywhere in the world. I took my first solo. Well, I was with a friend. It was a solo girls trip, and I was 19, and we traveled around Central America. I discovered the app back then and have been using it ever since.
I always pack one pair of dress shoes and one pair of tennis shoes, and I will travel in with sometimes a little backpack and I have everything in there. So I'll have one pair of dress pants, and then the rest of my bag is usually gym clothes. I wash my hair always the day before I leave or the day I leave so that then I don't have to wash my hair on the road. I don't wash it every day, so I don't have to pack even shampoo or conditioner. So my bag gets smaller and smaller. Then my food and snacks, I'm always taking a bag of snow peas, granola bars, mango slices, and vegan beef jerky, if you can believe there's such a thing. So I'll always make sure I have snacks or food, and now it's a lot easier when I used to travel because back then people didn't know what vegan was and also DoorDash and these other things didn't exist.
I sometimes find it hard to sleep in hotels. So I'll make sure that I have to calm myself down. You've got all this stimulation from being on a plane from traveling and trying to sometimes run to meet your plane. So I will make sure I stretch in my room a little bit. Then on rare occasions, if I'm really struggling, I don't drink alcohol usually, but sometimes I'll have a small glass of beer and it'll knock me out because I don't drink regularly.
I have lots of terrible travel stories that are not related to the voting, but just like getting stuck in an airport, getting stuck in a terrible hotel. Those are always funny to me. My assistant, she and I have known each other since high school. She actually is the person that traveled with me solo across Central America when we were 19. I've known her since I was 15 years old, but she's probably the most cheapskate person I've ever met in my life. So we stayed at hostels together.
I remember her first trip she booked for me to California. She was like, "I found you a place, but I hope you don't mind sharing a bathroom." I was like, "Are you booking me at a hostel, Elizabeth?" Like I'm foraging down in one of my own bathrooms. So she's always booking me the most crazy kind of cars at the most crazy places because she's always trying to save like $85 or $50, and it cracks me up because that's exactly how she was when we traveled across Central America and we ended up... I remember one place we stayed at where it was so dirty, but we had paid $1 to stay there, and she thought it was great because we only paid $1, but we ended up bathing in the river. So that's kind of how she keeps me traveling today.
We are nerds at NextGen, and we like to measure the pulse and see where young people are. Obviously, it's a very diverse generation, so people that say, like, "Oh, this is what all young people think." It's a little more nuanced than that. So back in the spring, we polled young people, and we did again once Harris was the candidate, and in the spring you had a huge percentage of young people saying, "I don't like either candidate. I don't want to vote for Biden. I don't want to vote for Trump." They were called thus double haters. Once Harris became the candidate, those double haters have almost totally, totally disappeared, and they've all gone over to support Harris.
So we went from a campaign where we were going to have to persuade young people to turn out to mobilizing them. So it's just making sure now that we're touching as many young people as possible, but that they also have the information and resources about knowing where to vote, how to vote, and that they also go down ballot. There's not just the presidential race on the ballot. There's really important state and local races ballot initiatives in places like Arizona and Nevada. So lots and lots of things for folks to think through.
LA: Thank you for listening to Women Who Travel. I'm Lale Arikoglu, and you can find me on Instagram @lalehannah. Our engineers are Jake Lummus, James Yost, Vince Fairchild, and Pran Bandi. The show is mixed by Amar Lal at Macro Sound. Jude Kampfner of Corporation for Independent Media is our producer. Stephanie Kariuki is our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is Conde Nast's head of global audio.
