Olivia Julianna Is Optimistic About Texas

Republished from Power Breakers, an interview series from Square One where every other week, we’ll bring you a conversation on the people and ideas that matter in this election cycle and beyond. We’ll make you think. We’ll make you question. We’ll make you hope. Sign up for Power Breakers on Substack here.

I have never met an apathetic nonvoter.

In fact, often the opposite is true: When I talk to someone who doesn’t vote about why they don’t vote, I’m often regaled with just how much they care but they don’t see themselves reflected in our politics—so they don’t believe the political system is capable of working for them.

This paradox is particularly pronounced with young voters. Despite Gen Z being more politically active than millennials were at their age, and despite the fact that they turned out in record numbers in the 2022 midterm, many of the nearly 41 million Gen Z voters—including more than 8 million who will be newly eligible to vote—are still not expected to vote in November.

But if they show up, young voters can have a potentially decisive voice in elections across the country. And that is why Olivia Julianna, the 21-year-old political powerhouse, is working in Texas and beyond to not just turn out the youth vote, but to make sure that young voters’ priorities, from climate change to reproductive rights, are part of every electoral conversation. Because if leaders speak to those issues, it will be easier to grow the number of politically engaged young people.

Despite 2024 being the first presidential race she is eligible to vote in, Julianna has already become an influential political strategist and activist in Texas and around the country. She has been organizing since high school and had her formative political experiences shaped by tragedies like the Parkland school shooting, George Floyd’s murder, and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests. However, many people were first introduced to her when Republican congressman Matt Gaetz attempted to embarrass her by publicly body-shaming her in a despicable tirade where he noted that unattractive and overweight women didn’t need to worry about getting abortions because “nobody wants to impregnate” them.

In response, Julianna used the moment to raise more than $700,000 for abortion funds.

She took a moment of internet harassment and hate, some of the worst features of our current politics, and used it to organize and bring together a grassroots movement—one of the best and most powerful features of our current politics. It was a perfect national introduction to Julianna because it perfectly encapsulates the way she has done and continues to do this work.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Maya Rupert: You’ve had such an impressive and consequential political career already. It’s easy to forget this will be your first presidential election cycle as a voter. Can you talk about your catalyst for getting into politics?

Olivia Julianna: Yeah, I’ve talked before about growing up in a very politically conversational household. My dad is a lifelong Republican, and it was very important that we were informed about politics. Fox and Friends was on every morning, we watched ABC News every night, and on the way to school it was talk radio. Politics was always very present in my life. I remember watching the debates in 2008, and I was in kindergarten during that election.

But it wasn’t really until I got into high school that I started getting more and more engaged, because that was when the Parkland shooting happened. And I remember doing the school shooting drill that year, which we had done since I was in fourth grade. But during this one in particular, I was actually afraid because the administrators were doing more to simulate a threat. So they were going through jiggling doorknobs, and banging on the door, and yelling “open the doors!” And these issues started feeling more urgent to me.

I signed up for debate club in high school, and I remember starting to have really strong political opinions. And while at that time I trended more conservative, I just started listening to [Donald] Trump and seriously disagreeing with him. Then my junior year was when the COVID lockdown started, and I remember being at home—we had moved back to my dad’s hometown in the middle-of-nowhere Texas—when George Floyd was killed. And I just couldn’t understand how people around me weren’t outraged by it because it was so clearly wrong. And the moment that really cemented it for me was when Trump gassed the protesters in D.C.

I’ve always been very religious, and I’m still very religious to this day. At this point, I was leading Bible studies, I was on the youth board of a ministry, and I was an officer in my school’s chapter of Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I was so disgusted because of my faith. And so I wanted to do something.

MR: Wow, so that was what prompted you to get involved more publicly?

OJ: Yeah, and I went to my dad and said, “This is so wrong. I want to go to Houston. I want to march.” And my dad told me, “If you go march, don’t come home.” I knew I had to do something, so I started posting on TikTok about how and why young people should get involved in this election that I wasn’t even old enough to vote in. I was a week too young to vote in the 2020 election, but I still got involved, and it all just took off from there.

MR: That had to be so scary at your age to get that reaction from your father and still decide you wanted to get involved. Has your relationship with your dad changed as your work has progressed?

OJ: Yes, a lot. In the beginning, he wasn’t supportive, but he also didn’t tell me to stop my online advocacy, and I didn’t get punished. He certainly didn’t agree with me for a very long time. But now he’s very supportive. He has pictures of me and Joe Biden in his office at work. And he’s been very vocal about how he’s voting for Colin Allred here in Texas. He’s knocked doors for him. While he hasn’t committed to voting for [Kamala] Harris yet, he has said he will not vote for Trump, which is huge.

It’s been a transition process, because he’s a lifelong conservative. I had my first really big political moment in 2021. I had graduated, and I was still living at home. There was an abortion tip line here in Texas, and I was involved in taking it down, so I was invited to speak at the state Capitol. But I didn’t have a way to get there, because I don’t have my license, so I asked my dad to take me, and he said, “I’m pro-life. I don’t agree with abortion. If you want to go, you need to find your own way there.” Thankfully my childhood best friend drove me. But to show how far my dad has come, he tells me now that one of his biggest regrets as a father is not taking me to that event, because even though he didn’t necessarily agree at the time, he feels like he should have been there to support me as his daughter.

I feel very fortunate for how his ideology has changed because he is very supportive. My sisters are, largely, very supportive, and I feel lucky to have that.

MR: I love this story because I think it’s such a powerful message about the ways we need to organize. We have the most success organizing in our own families and communities because these are people we trust, who we share values with, and so we can reach them in a much more meaningful way. What has that process with your family taught you about how progressives can engage in deep organizing work?

OJ: I definitely treat my family as an informal poll a lot of times, because they have all different ideologies. And what I have found that has been the most effective is pointing out issues they have in their life that are the result of policy failure. For example, one of my sisters counts education as her number one issue. Well, her son is autistic and has special education needs, and she recently moved back to Texas from a different state that had a much better education program than we have here. She’s realizing why it’s so difficult for her to get the necessary accommodations for my nephew is because of how Republicans in the state of Texas have treated public education. So having practical conversations about the reasons why programs aren’t working for most people is really effective.

And it’s taught me a lot, too, about polarization. When I was younger and I started doing this, I was very rigid. My position was basically, “If you’re not a Democrat, or if you’re not the same type of Democrat as me, I don’t like you, and I think that you’re wrong and I think you’re stupid.” Now, as I’ve gotten older, I’m so much more open to having conversations with anyone and everyone. I love talking to conservatives, and I think it’s because I have so much experience now. Having had all these conversations with my family, I feel comfortable doing it, but I also feel like it’s necessary. And some people have to be willing to do it. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s mine, and it’s really taught me that at the end of the day, most people are good. Most people care. Their anger oftentimes is just misplaced, and so we just have to find a way to put that anger and that energy into a place where it can be productive.

But we just have to be willing to have the conversations and educate people so that we can actually affect change, because siloing off different people based on party or region or whatever is just not going to work. So I think I’m very fortunate to have learned that so early with my family. I feel like I’ll be able to be more effective because of that.

MR: There’s another issue that I think we as a movement struggle with—and it’s related to this question of how do we meet people where they are and not feel like we’re compromising our values. We have a moment right now where we are seeing young generations of voters who are informed and enthusiastic about engaging in the political process, but also have high expectations for how they can affect change. And this creates a challenge.

How do you think we can balance needing to build up patience for incremental change while not lecturing young voters or squelching their excitement or their expectation that they can make real change?

OJ: First, in order to effectively solve this problem, we also have to look at what is causing it. Gen Z Is very politically engaged, very civically engaged for our age. But there is 100 percent a problem with young people wanting instant gratification when it comes to politics. And I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that that has happened, as we have grown up in a time of rapidly developing technology. Our brain chemistry, because of social media, has been rewired to want instant gratification. We get immediate feedback from social media, overnight delivery from Amazon. We have just become accustomed to very quick processing and that has seeped into every other facet of our life. The only place where we really don’t see this rapid pace change is in our government.

So for the young people who are feeling like, after voting in one or two election cycles, they want to see more change, first I think we have to remember that in the last ten years, we’ve seen a dramatic change in policy and politics. If you feel like nothing ever changes, go back ten years ago and see how many elected Democrats were pro-life, or didn’t support marriage equality, or were endorsed by the NRA. We have seen change because of the involvement of young voters.

The second thing is we have to remember that while the federal government moves at a glacial pace, the local and regional levels are where you see a lot of quicker change. We have to remember that the government is much bigger than we think it is sometimes, and a lot can happen that can make big changes if you look at state and local elections. But that isn’t just an issue for young voters. Getting people to focus more on those local solutions is a societal problem. I don’t think it’s just a generational problem.

MR: That is such a good point, so let’s talk about what’s happening in the states. You’re a Texan, and you are a proud Texan. You organize around progressive issues in a state where people outside of the state usually only hear about it in the context of extremist abortion laws, or denying trans people health care, or passing laws attacking public education. Does that vision of Texas line up with what you see when you’re doing work in the state?

OJ: Ann Richards had this quote: I didn’t realize how big Texas was until I started campaigning across it. And in the last three months I have been all over the state. I’ve been in El Paso. I’ve been in Waco. I’ve been in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Houston. And when I talk to people, regardless of politics, people are a lot more open on a lot of issues. And historically, Texas has always been a place of progress. The first Black woman from the South elected to Congress was Barbara Jordan from Texas. The state that had some of the most effective organizing work around minimum wage laws and anti-discrimination laws was Texas. Texas was the state that brought us Roe v. Wade. Texas! It was two young Texas women who graduated from the University of Texas who argued that case in front of an all-male Supreme Court. The president that signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law was from Texas. We have had all these major progressive victories happen in this country [that have] come out of this state that people have forgotten about because of people like Greg Abbott, and Ted Cruz, and Ken Paxton.

The fact of the matter is Texas is not a deeply conservative state. Texas is a non-voting state. We have millions and millions of eligible voters here who do not vote. And so often, people say they don’t vote because they don’t believe politics impacts them, so we have to talk to potential voters more about how their everyday lives are being impacted by what our leaders are doing. And unfortunately, we have horrible elected officials who have created a deep sense of apathy in Texans. A deep sense of miseducation in Texans. And they did it so that they can maintain power and control.

And it’s starting to change. We are going to flip the state of Texas. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. I personally think in 2030, we will flip our entire statewide electoral slate, and I think by 2030 we’ll elect a Democratic governor in the state of Texas. And this is why it’s the key focal part of my work. We need people to understand that Texas is worth fighting for and changing the narrative around Texas, and not just because of the quality of life for people here in this state, but also the electoral premise that if we flip Texas, that’s game over. If we flip the state of Texas, we can pass some of the most monumental legislation in American history.

MR: It’s interesting because you started your political journey before you could vote, and you talk about our path to transforming our politics through engaging nonvoters. So often we think about our political identities as a feature of being voters, and I think it’s a very important reminder that that’s not always true.

OJ: Oh, yeah, 100 percent. People think voting is the only course of action when it comes to affecting change, and it’s just not. And when there has been as much miseducation as there has been in Texas, a huge first step is getting people to understand that what the government does every single day impacts them.

MR: I think a lot of times the progressive movement is challenged because we have a very diverse coalition of people fighting for shared outcomes but with very different methods. We have activists, politicians, policymakers, and academics all in the same movement, and we have to navigate some competing needs. I’m so encouraged by your work because you hold a lot of those same perspectives and use them all in your advocacy. How do you decide in a particular moment if you are going to approach an issue as an activist, as a policy person, or as a political person?

OJ: The most important thing I ask is who am I talking to? Knowing my audience is always the most important piece. If I’m speaking at the Texas Capitol, my approach is going to be very different than if I’m sitting in a congressional office having a meeting with a member. But I actually think that it’s really simple. I think politics is much simpler than people make it out to be. And I think activism is much simpler than people make it out to be. Barbara Jordan said, “What people want is simple. They want an America as good as its promise.” And that’s true for all of us, which means whoever your audience is, that’s what we’re all looking for.