For Aliyah Annis (she/they), having pride being born and raised in the vibrant immigrant-led agricultural city of Salinas California developed a deeply seeded understanding of the need to dismantle systems of oppression and exploitation that perpetuate the criminalization, displacement, and dehumanization of low-income, black, brown, and indigenous communities, along with the rhetoric that uphold them.
Aliyah took this focus to the University of California, San Diego as a pre-law student receiving her bachelors in Political Science: Public Law and Human Rights and Migration. During her undergrad, Aliyah was first introduced to non-profit program management and trauma-informed practices via experience in Social Work as a Lead Basic Needs Assistant, spearheading data initiatives and development of The Hub’s Personal Hygiene Program. Aliyah then began her journey with Uprise Theatre as a legal intern, working directly with families impacted by the criminal justice system via community-organizing models such as Participatory Defense, learning what on the ground application of community defense, accountability, and prison abolition entail. With UCSD’s Mexican Migration Field Research Project, Aliyah paired knowledge of the perverse effects of the US-immigration system to conduct research on how emerging HSIs can best serve Latinx students. Aliyah wrapped-up her undergrad with UCSD Center of Global Justice’s Blum Internship, where she curated safe spaces for migrant children ages 5-12 in the largest emergency migrant settlement in Tijuana through day-long environmental and health-based education programs.
While Salinas will always be home, Aliyah currently remains a resident in San Diego as a UCSD Alumni and remains dedicated in advocating for folks within her shared adopted community of the San Diego-Tijuana region. Today, Aliyah works as a Peer Support Specialist working with individuals across San Diego county to deliver compassionate harm reductionist community care coordination for those criminalized under the US Justice System transitioning from detention to community re-entry with histories of substance use, mental health diagnoses, and homelessness.
Aliyah enjoys cooking for/with friends and family, sketching, creative writing, mutual aid, and will always ask to pet your dog. Is queer. Is Oaxacan and Korean. Is a life-long learner and product of all forms of resistance that came before her, and views every past and future experience and opportunity as a classroom.
It is this that makes her immensely proud of Uprise’s mission to marry art and activist lawyering to reclaim power to the people.