21 Under 21: Deja Foxx Says Homeless Students Like Her Need to Tell Their Stories
Deja Foxx is part of Teen Vogue’s 21 Under 21 class of 2018, which spotlights extraordinary young women, girls, and femmes making waves in their industries or passions of choice.
When asked where she hopes to see herself and her work in 21 years, Deja Foxx, 18, smiles and says, “I could run for president by then.” Deja is best known for her exchange with Arizona senator Jeff Flake regarding his support of legislation to take away Title X federal funding from Planned Parenthood. The exchange went viral last year, propelled her to the forefront of the reproductive justice movement, and landed her an interview on CNN.
“I feel like politicians like Jeff Flake think that because young people like me aren’t elected like they are, we don’t have power,” Deja says. “We’re not in these situations of power, we don’t have a lot of money, and we’re young. I definitely didn’t feel like he took me seriously, but the rest of the world did.”
The passionate activist and organizer from Tucson, Arizona, was called “the new face of Planned Parenthood” by The Washington Post. But Deja began making waves in her community the year before, when she experienced firsthand how the sex-education system puts low-income students, students facing homelessness, and students of color, like her, at a disadvantage.
“We already had sex ed, but it was abstinence-only, and there was no regulation on it,” she tells Teen Vogue. “I was most nervous about making it personal, and talking about my own experiences. Everyone knew it was a problem, but nobody wanted to do anything about it.”
Deja led a campaign for comprehensive sex education in her Tucson school district and developed her leadership from there. By her senior year, she was a founding member of the El Rio Community Health Center’s Reproductive Health Access Project, a grant-funded program that ensures all young people in Tucson have access to the reproductive health care they need during their lifetime. As she begins her studies at Columbia University, she continues her activism. While Columbia was always her dream school, Deja says her biggest accomplishment in life is buying her mom a car and a laptop after working at a gas station for two years — a job she quit right before she moved to New York City to start her freshman year in college.
“For most of my life, me and my mom didn’t have a car or transportation, which is so hard," she remembers. "In the years when my mom wasn’t able to find work, a lot of that came back to not having transportation, and it was a huge setback for us.”
Since starting college, Deja reflects a lot on living in a dorm, especially in light or her experience being homeless — something she says people are surprised to learn, even though she considers it “the biggest part of who I am.” She hopes other young people who don’t have a home know that their experiences are powerful, and that being vulnerable and shouting their stories is important and nothing to be embarrassed about.
“You have to be authentic with who you are, whenever you enter a space, because you never know who else will be there to listen to you,” Deja says. “I always have to remind myself that I am deserving. I earned everything. It’s really easy to say and think I’m lucky, but, actually, I did that.”
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