Her goal is to uplift the silenced and marginalized.

Emily Persaud-Zamora, Executive Director of Silver State Voices, is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

The daughter of Brazilian and Guyanese immigrants, she grew up in Queens, New York, and moved to Las Vegas at 15 years old.

An appreciation for Speech and Debate class in high school led her to pursue a degree in Political Science and Government at UNLV.

Now the leader of a civic engagement coordination hub for progressive nonprofits in Nevada, Emily Persaud-Zamora, Executive Director of Silver State Voices, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

(Emily Persaud-Zamora) Thank you for having me.

-I want to start off with that word "progressive."

When you got into this line of work and heard about progressive movements, what was the public's perception of them back then versus now?

I think the word progressive scares some people.

-Yeah, it definitely does.

And I think it's just a matter of maybe education or mis- and disinformation.

But you know, I think that-- when I think of the word progressive, what really resonates with me is using social change to affect policy and the laws and regulations that affect all of our day-to-day lives.

I think that, unfortunately, since maybe 2016 but maybe more in 2020, that has-- that there's been this narrative that that equals the Democratic Party.

And I don't think that that's, you know, particularly true, because sometimes, you know, we don't exactly agree with what the Democratic Party wants to do or says.

-And you are nonpartisan?

-Yes.

-How difficult is it to maintain that status in your line of work?

-You know, I've gotten a lot of practice over time, and so it is easier.

It is hard sometimes when, you know, you're having conversations with certain people and you want to say, like, Don't you see this, right?

But I think the reality is that being able to do things in a nonpartisan way allows us to be messengers on issues in a different way, where we're not shoving a political party's agenda.

-Let's talk about being the daughter of immigrants.

Your mother from Brazil-- -Yes.

- --your father from Guyana-- -Mm-hmm.

- --what impact do you think that had on you?

-So, yes.

My parents, it's-- I know.

I always get, "It's a very interesting mix."

But my parents, I was born and raised in New York, and they met there.

And I think that growing up for me, they both came to the United States with minimal.

My mom and my dad are both the first people in their family to immigrate.

My mom, till this day, is the only person from her family that lives in the United States.

And so I think, for me, what that really was, was just this growing pressure that I had to be something and I had to do something because my parents made the sacrifice of coming here.

And there were so many different obstacles that they faced, and so I needed to do something with my life.

And I think that I really struggled with that until, like, mid-20s, right, because I think every kid goes through that, What do I want to do in life, right?

But when you know that you're the first generation and that so many things have been done to be able to provide you with a decent life, there's that additional level of pressure.

-I first learned about that when I was listening to your oral history that you gave UNLV Special Collections, the Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project.

And that level of pressure continued even after you graduated high school here in Las Vegas.

You wanted to return to New York-- -Mm-hmm.

- --but you didn't.

Why?

-I didn't, because I'm an only child.

I moved to Las Vegas with my mother.

She had full custody of me.

And you know, I really felt like it would not be okay for me to leave my mom here alone.

I always thought about, you know, what would happen if, God forbid, something medically happened to her?

Luckily, she's great.

She just turned 80 years old about three weeks ago.

But, you know, I just always had that, what if something happens to her?

I would never allow myself to be okay with the fact that I wasn't, you know, 20, 30 minutes away to be able to go to her quickly.

-The immigrant experience that you have witnessed firsthand, is that what made you aware of marginalized communities, underrepresented communities?

Would you consider that?

-Yeah.

I think that there are so many different immigrant stories and how people got here, why they came here.

I think that's the beauty of immigration.

I think that one of the stories that I might have talked about a little bit, but I don't probably talk enough about, is that of my husband.

I think that is the one that really kind of ignited the fire in me.

My husband came here when he was two.

When we first got together, there was no such thing as DACA that many young immigrants now are able to have the benefits of.

Not all, but some.

And so I really just saw the struggle of him being able to go to college but not be able to take all the classes that he wanted to because he didn't have a social security number.

And in those times, right, you couldn't take out loans.

You couldn't get any type of assistance.

You had to pay everything out of pocket.

And even at our alma mater of UNLV, like that gets expensive for the average college student.

And so I saw that.

I saw family members in my family that got deported back to Mexico after many, many years of being here and being wronged by immigration attorneys.

I think all of that, plus my parents' experience, was just like the catalyst for me to want to do this type of work.

-Where was it that your husband moved from when he was two?

-From Mexico.

-Mexico.

-Yeah.

Him and his mother came to the United States, and they came because her sister was here and had a small daughter who had an illness.

Unfortunately, she did end up passing away, but she needed help in being able to take care of her daughter and also be able to work and take care of her other children.

And so that's why my mother-in-law came.

-It must be a difficult time for you personally then with the anti-immigrant sentiment that seems to be more prevalent these days.

-Yeah, it is hard.

I will say that I'm in civic engagement now, and it's the part that's like, I love doing that work.

But prior, I did immigration work, you know, did so many different things in the immigration space.

And I think that although my work is nonpartisan, with the election of a President Trump and all of the immediate things that he did around immigration and just the fear that he created with his words, it made it feel impossible to even just get out of bed at times because of just the fear that I felt, the fear that my family felt, the fear that many of the community members that I would work with.

You know, they would call and just be like, What's going to happen to me?

And to be able to look people in the eye and say, I don't know, that was something that was really scary for me.

But what I just thought to myself is, how can I change immigration is getting people civically engaged in the process, right?

Because the only way that we're going to be able to make the changes in immigration is by electing the people that care about those things.

-To be fair, I imagine you have criticisms of President Joe Biden's handling of immigration as well.

-Yeah.

I mean, their-- the things that he did around the wall are just not okay.

He's been a great President in a variety of different ways, but I was hoping that he would have been stronger on immigration.

-What do you say to people who say undocumented immigrants are voting?

-They're not.

They are not.

And many of those people that are saying that don't actually realize that if people who do not have U.S. citizenship status register to vote and cast a ballot, there are deep consequences, and they may potentially be banned from actually becoming a U.S. citizen.

So that's something that is not true.

And as somebody who lives in a mixed-status household and has really always grown up in a mixed-status community, there are so many-- from a young age, if you don't have status, that's one of the things that your parents always tell you, like, Don't fill out any paperwork without me, right, because of any potential consequences that may happen.

-That would be a significant deterrent.

-Yeah.

-Of all the work that you have done in civic engagement, what are you most proud of?

-That's a good question.

-It's a lot more than just voter registration.

-Yeah, it is.

I think that there are a lot of different things.

I-- it's hard to really just kind of put it into words, but I think that one of the things that I'm just like most proudest of is being able to work with a diverse set, a diverse coalition of organizations that really just care about the well-being of their communities.

They want their communities to be seen just like any other community and ensure that they are at the forefront of the, of democracy and that their voices are heard.

And whether that's us providing data for them or being able to make regrants to them so that they can hire the people to be able to do the work, I think that I take great pride in that, right, because I really want to ensure that democracy is just not white, pale, and stale, right?

Like it should look like you.

It should look like me and all of the folks that really make our state.

I would say beyond that, I think that just I would say two other things.

I think, one, being really policy driven, I think that our organization has really worked with our partners to be very vocal about what voting rights and all democracy issues should look like within our state.

And we don't see that across the board, right, but we're very lucky that in the state of Nevada, citizens are really listened to, and it's not just corporate lobbyists, right?

And I think we know the issues the best, because we are engaging with our community members on a day-to-day basis and we hear from them.

What are the struggles that they're experiencing at the polls?

Why is it that they're getting evicted?

You know, we hear that information.

I would say, lastly, I think that I really pride myself in having a team that's amazing.

That's not just they're amazing in general, right, but I think that they're hungry and they really care and they're from the community, right?

And I think a lot of times when I got into politics, I really saw that there wasn't so much passing of the torch and mentorship, and I really think that in order to be able to grow as a democracy, we need to be able to pass the torch and teach our, our-- it's gonna make me sound old.

I'm not that old.

But like our younger folks, right, like how to do this and why we do this work.

-That oral history, you had said your exposure to politics was like a dog-eat-dog world, and that's what you wanted to get out of that and that you found yourself in this work.

-Yeah.

-Back to your parents and the expectation to be something.

What do your parents think of what you have become?

-I think, you know, it's, it's interesting and it's been, it's been-- it's been a journey, because I feel like, unfortunately, the generation that my parents come from, they are not very emotional people, and I think that's something that really hindered me growing up, right?

I crave that.

It's my love language, right, being able to hear how people feel about me or what have you.

I think my mom, she would say that, that she's proud of me.

I think she doesn't really-- none of my family really understands my job still to this day, but I think that, you know, she recently told me that she admires me.

I think that made me kind of ugly cry, because it's like, you know, to hear your mom say that, right, because not only do I do my job, but like, I'm a wife, I'm a mom, right, my son is on the spectrum, and so there are so many different things on my plate.

And to be able to hear my mom say that, I think is cool.

I think the icing on the cake for me was my grandmother, my paternal grandmother, who's 86 years old, and she told me that she wanted to see me go to the White House, and I got to-- I got to go and take a picture.

And I think that just was the icing on the cake for her.

-Emily Persaud-Zamora, thank you for joining us.

-Thank you.

Thank you.