I’m almost a month into starting my interviews with Latin American women across the Greater Toronto Area who have been, or are currently involved in social and environmental justice activism; and I’m overwhelmed in the best way possible. After much internal turmoil of how I was going to present my research project to community members and my compañerxs, my work has received more interest than I ever anticipated. My worry stemmed from the ways researchers have historically, and continue to extract knowledge from racialized and working-class communities to further agendas that do little to nothing to work in solidarity with their struggles for liberation. I knew that the people I wanted to speak to, Latin American activists, would already be keenly aware of this and would most likely challenge me to consider the contradictions of my position as a Latina conducting research with her “ethnic community” in the academy.

I…