This article is part of a Women and Leadership special report highlighting women who have forged new paths.
The political activist and digital content creator Deja Foxx, 25, has used the internet to build political power since she was a teenager. With more than 700,000 social media followers across platforms today, Ms. Foxx uses her influence to champion the working class and reproductive justice.
Last spring she became a candidate in a special election for Arizona’s Seventh Congressional District, hoping to make history as the first Gen Z woman in Congress. She lost the Democratic primary in July — coming in second in a field of five — to Adelita Grijalva (who went on to win the general election and was sworn in Nov. 12). But her digital-first, small-donor campaign blazed a trail for a new generation of aspiring leaders.
Ms. Foxx’s father is a Filipino American immigrant and she was raised by a single mother in Tucson, Ariz.; the family relied on government assistance for food and housing. At 19, she became the youngest staffer on Kamala Harris’s 2020 primary election campaign, working as an influencer and digital strategist. She later graduated from Columbia University — the first in her family to earn a college degree. This interview, conducted by video, has been edited and condensed.
You define yourself as a digital strategist and Gen Z activist with a focus on reproductive justice. What does that mean to you?
My work as an activist is done through the lens of reproductive justice, which is a framework built in the 1990s by women of color. It is about much more than abortion. It’s about deciding if and when to have children, being able to raise the children we choose to have in healthy, thriving communities, about being able to feed your family and live in safe housing. That’s all reproductive justice.
Everything I put out on social media is for a version of my younger self, who needs to see someone fighting for her. There will come a time when we’ll be asked by our children what we did during a period when our neighbors were being kidnapped, when families were struggling with food insecurity and when women were losing the right to control their bodies. The answer should be we did everything we could.
I am using the tools that are native to my generation to connect with others and be an engine of change. I train communication professionals and content creators how to use social media to raise funds for their organizations, change the narrative in the press, build community and sustain volunteers.
Why run for Congress?
I didn’t pick politics; politics picked me. I grew up in Section 8 housing and SNAP benefits put dinner on the table. Policy is what enabled my life, and families like mine bore the brunt of policy decisions. At 16, I went toe-to-toe at a town hall with our then-Senator Jeff Flake about his wanting to defund Planned Parenthood, which was where I got my care because I had no insurance and no money; it became a viral video viewed millions of times.
I ran for Congress because I think we need young, working-class leaders in this country, people who have to make hard decisions in the grocery store line.
After losing the primary, you wrote that you had “created a new playbook for our generation of leaders.” Can you define what that means?
Some people inherit donor lists or tap into personal networks to fund-raise and launch a campaign for office. The first thing a consultant tells you is to call your contact list and ask for money. I had no one to call. If we are going to see a new generation of young leaders step into power, we have to change those strategies, and social media is a big part of that. Some days in the first few weeks of my campaign, it was just me in my bedroom on my laptop. In the beginning, we were raising maybe $140 a day, but by the end of our campaign, we raised more than $1 million and racked up 100 million impressions on our social media content.
What does the future hold for you? Another run for office?
I ran for office because I wanted to be part of the decision-making process; I still do. I am and always will be an activist. Now, I’m sharing my life and my activism online and modeling tangible ways others can get involved with the issues we care about. I want to help people, no matter their role, figure out how they can be an activist every day, right where they are.
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