Samantha Ramirez-Herrera is a radical creator and a trailblazer in every sense of the word. Born in Mexico with a legacy lived, made, and growing in the US, she has become “her ancestor’s wildest dreams”—something I heard her describe from stage in the mountains of Montana.
Sam is who I go to—as my North Star—to track the narratives being created in media that support the movements that support the people. Her work is provocative in that it represents resistance and progress all in the same sweep.
Her mantra is “F-ck fear.”
And, to top it all off (not even kinda), Sam is an Emmy Award-Winning filmmaker, a self-made entrepreneur, and the founder & CEO of OffThaRecord—a creative studio with the mantra, “We are creatives who give a damn.”
She is a DREAMer who grew up in the United States undocumented, but what we learn without hesitation from her is that there is not a single DREAMER who’s out here wasting their opportunity. She says, “I am labeled as a DREAMer, but I am way more than that. I am a DOer. And I am a chain breaker for my family.”
I’ll take a DEEP breath to that one.
It’s that quote, and all the stories she's lived to date, that brought us the name for this episode: “BEYOND DREAMER.”
This conversation is a repeat listen for those moments when we need to remember that we can make new rules for ourselves, our communities, our society, our future.
It's not possible to leave this listen without a hunger for equity, a determination to “fuck fear,” (visualize those words in Old English, please) and a drive to love yourself radically.
Get pen and paper. Your hands are about to be busy grabbing lines like this:
“Being an immigrant in this country is difficult. Because every day you’re attacked with words… and if you don’t love yourself radically, if you don’t love yourself in a revolutionary way, they can break you. But I choose to be unbreakable. And I choose to love myself.” - Samantha Ramirez-Herrera
WORKS:
- CEO & Founder, OffThaRecord—a creative studio with the mantra “We are creatives who give a damn.”
- CIVICS FOR THE CULTURE—a campaign launched by Fair Fight Action (founded in 2018 by Stacey Abrams) to mobilize young people of color 18-35 to vote and be civically engaged.
- SEEDS OF RESILIENCE—Sam and her team at Off Tha Record worked with Food Well Alliance to uplift the stories of Black growers around Atlanta through a 4 part series titled “Seed of Resilience”. They discussed land access, growing food in the city, and the significance of supporting Black-led agriculture -- particularly in the South.
- WE ARE HOME—a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-generational coalition calling on the Biden administration and Congress to take immediate action to protect millions of immigrants who call this country home and end the cruelty of our interior detention and deportation system.
- UNDERDOG DREAMS—OffThaRecord executed storytelling and video productions for Underdog Dreams, a non-profit organization working on revolutionizing the flawed child welfare system.
- Keynote Speaker, where she describes herself as "just a Brown immigrant pursuing all of my wildest dreams and hoping to inspire others to do the same."
TOOLS:
- How to transcend the lies of stigma
- How to make new rules for yourself
- What it really looks like to create the path to equity
- Tools to redefine yourself in alignment with your true identity and ACTIONS
- Contemplations to witness and honor the hardships and privilege people individually carry and inspiration to help guide you to work through yours
- Stories that motivate you to embrace your actual potential
- Permission to love yourself radically
- Reminders that strengthen courage in the face of fear
- Everyday practices we can do knowing traumatic events are happening DAILY without time to process
- Reminders to see the way social media manipulates the mind. Sam talks about “appreciating the moments between the posts.”
- Reminders to protect our mental space and our energy
- Compassion around how addictive social media is
- We hear revealing stories that remind us to protect our mental health
- Strong awarenesses around what happens when we normalize trauma rather than carrying for our mental health proactively
- Absolute unending permission to curse. Sam and I joke about how we have to keep it quiet the first four segments because it’s made for radio
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
BETTER is recorded on the unceded and ancestral territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, and has been stewarded by them since time immemorial.
BETTER with Mark Brand is produced by Pamela Rothenberg of I HEAR YOU STUDIOS and Adam Karch with Orbyt Media