Located in Austin, TX, Latinitas describes itself as one of the only bilingual tech organizations in the U.S. and prides itself for creating the first digital magazine made for and by Latina youth. In 2002, Latinitas was developed as a project by a group of undergraduate students in a Latinos in Media course at the University of Texas at Austin.  Founders of Latinitas saw a need for more representation and stories by Latinas. Prior to the organization receiving its non-profit status, the organization ran as a student-led group. Since 2003, the organization has grown and adapted to the needs of the community and has provided an assortment of writing, leadership, tech, STEM, and college preparation workshops for Latina youth in middle school and high school. Through these workshops and the online magazine, “Latinas discover their voice and develop media skills while building a solid foundation for their future” (Donelly 2017). In addition to serving 3,000 girls annually through a variety of workshops, their online magazine continues to be a key tool for sharing multimedia content that represent the evolving digital landscape and what it means to be a Latina[1]. The work by the magazine’s editors and writers support and circulate the organizational identity[2] of Latinitas. In this article, we focus on how Latinitas, as a Latinx[3] organization, challenges the deficit perspective of Latina youth while trying to keep up with a changing digital landscape.

Who is an activist? What actions define a scholar-activist, an artist-activist, or community activist? How do community members, as non-academics, serve their community as advocates as well as intellectuals? And, finally, what is the impact that scholars and advocates make when they join with one another for social justice efforts within their respective communities? These are the questions that guided the work we present in this special issue of Reflections. This special issue will underscore how activism can work with academic life in the fight for social justice and change, so we invite you to take a closer look at activism and academia in community work.

In this article, we examine how Latinitas, a non-profit organization aimed towards empowering Latina youth through multimedia and technology, is a site of resistance. Latinitas provides linguistic, cultural, and technological resources as means to promote empowerment in the Latinx community, thereby creating and nurturing a space for Latinx youth. This article is written by two members of Latinitas: Jasmine Villa, Coordinator for the Youth Editorial Advisory Board, and Taylor Figueroa, a high school senior and Contributing Writer for Latinitas Magazine. Using personal experiences and testimonios, this article highlights how Latinitas sustains social justice efforts by providing an interplay of multimodal spaces (physical and digital) for Latinx youth to use as a platform for self-expression.