I have a PhD in cultural anthropology at Vanderbilt University and am currently a lecturer at North Carolina State University. I received my Master's in anthropology at George Mason University where my research focused on the impact of United States economic and military policies on the ongoing conflict in Colombia. Drawing from and expanding on this research my dissertation research addresses how the political becomes personal when individuals are not directly affected by the changes a social movement is advocating for. My research examines US-Latin American solidarity movements over the past 40 years during three distinct junctures: the 1980s Central American Solidarity Movement, the early 2000s anti-globalization mobilizations against corporate interference in Colombia, and today’s focus on immigration., It asks whether and how people involved in these specific episodes of US Latin American Solidarity have become politically aware and how this political consciousness has influenced how they imagine and enact resistance