FLOWING FORWARD: FROM HARM TO HEALING
CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of Title IX, institutional betrayal, and campus sexual violence
By Andrew Echols, Executive Director and Every Voice New Mexico co-founder. Adapted from the Advocates Unplugged Roundtable as part of the National Organization of Victim Advocacy’s 51st Annual Training. Delivered on July 23, 2025.
Even six years later, I can’t believe I wasted a perfect June day in that Title IX office. I should’ve gone to the river instead.
I went in with one goal: to put back together the pieces of my education after the worst night of my life. I can still hear the creeks of the chair as I slid to the edge of my seat - I heard the creeks of my chair and nothing else. The audio had been cut out. The audio that was my lifeline in this investigation was gone. On my way out the door, the Title IX coordinator gave me a pat on the shoulder and said, “don’t worry. Sometimes we remember things that didn’t actually happen.”
Even though I didn’t know it at the time, this was my first experience of institutional betrayal: those responsible for supporting me chose to leave me behind instead. And since then, there’s been a fire in my gut that I haven’t been able to put out.
A year of hazy afternoons had gone by when I met a student activist named Kate with The Every Voice Coalition. She told me she was drafting a bill that expands the options and resources available to survivors of campus sexual violence. At the time, Every Voice was launching as a national movement, with teams of student activists in just 8 states. Needless to say, I was on board. I was still so angry about how my school failed me, and even more so, I felt powerless – until I learned about Every Voice’s legislative advocacy model. Maybe – just maybe – if we had enough student supporters, lawyers and experts would listen to us, which just might make legislators listen to us, and we could finally hold our schools accountable for their negligence.
Kate and I organized HARD that fall. We brought on about a dozen students from different community colleges and universities in NM, and together, we spoke with the entire state house and as many senators as were willing to pick up the phone. The work brought us together in ways I would’ve never expected: We would take pop-culture quizzes before meetings. We sent each other pictures of our pets while we were away for fall break. And, as just one of two Every Voice teams in the southwest, we jokingly called ourselves “EVC con fuego” – Every Voice with Fire. I have a small tattoo of a flame, inspired by them.
I want to be clear that I had never done the whole policy thing up to that point. I was an elementary education major. I had done some grassroots organizing for local and state-level issues, but I wasn’t in the driver’s seat for any of that. Honestly, it might be naivety, but the fact that I didn’t have any policy experience never crossed my mind. I was powered by anger and anger alone. But I showed up to everything I could: every workshop, every community space, I watched webcasts of every hearing in every state. I wanted it because I believed in it – and, more than anything, I believed in my community to catch me if I fell.
I had never really known what it meant to be held by a community until my first legislative session. At the time, my sleep schedule wasn’t really a schedule, but more like… a smattering of naps. I was SO nervous that I was going to sleep through a hearing and not get to testify with my team. Afterall, THAT was what we were building towards.
And so, on one of our many late night Zoom calls, I confided in my co-state directors – Kate and Emily – about my sleep…. Jackson Pollock. Just like his chaotic, paint-splattered canvases, my sleep habits were abstract, to say the least. But they heard me anyway. For the first time in my life, they approached me from a trauma-aware perspective: they thanked me for being transparent, asked me what I needed from them, and offered to meet me halfway. And yes, being trauma aware really was that easy!
From then on, before early-morning events, they made sure to give me at least one phone call to see how I was feeling. Not because they didn’t trust me, or because they thought I was unreliable – but because they cared for me and wanted to meet me where I was. Plus, it gave us a chance to make sure we were color coordinated.
I still really appreciate that they did that for me because it was about so much more than just the bill. It was about US: the student-survivors in New Mexico who KNEW that we deserved better. We were tired of seeing the same issues destroy our friends’ lives. We were willing to do whatever it took to make sure our legacies outlived our tenures.
Our bill did not pass that session. Long story short, it got caught up in a storm with other equity-related bills. Short story long, New Mexico has the only unpaid legislature in the country, which means our sessions are ridiculously short to allow policymakers to have full time jobs. Every year, it’s a race against the clock. Along with our bill, the equity-related bills I mentioned earlier all got assigned to a notoriously ruthless committee. At this point, we only needed two more “do pass” votes to pass our bill, so I was quite confident we’d make it across the finish line in time.
This Senate committee, however, had other plans. We'd get assigned for a hearing on Tuesday, then 20 minutes before, it'd get pushed back to Thursday. Then Saturday. Then Monday. Meanwhile, the clock kept ticking, and ticking, and ticking, and suddenly… It was noon on the 60th day of session and the legislature adjourned sine die without passing our bill.
I was devastated. Our team connected the dots a few years later when one of the most powerful Senators in New Mexico was accused of sexual misconduct in the workplace. I say this not to place blame or point fingers, but because it’s the reality of what we’re up against. Sometimes, no matter what we do, we might not make it, but it’s not our fault. Systems will continue to perpetuate harm, even in the efforts to prevent it.
Despite everything – the hundreds of phone calls in and out of legislators offices, late nights sorting through bill feedback and earlier mornings in hearings – we still lost. But we held each other through it, dusted off our jeans, and got back to work.
THAT is why we spent all of that time scouring the internet for cheesy dad jokes and taking pop-culture quizzes. That's how I know that Kate’s parents are like Liz and TJ from the TV show Gilmore Girls, Emily is most compatible with Niall from One Direction, and Victoria and I are going to have to have a real conversation with Harry Styles at some point about who his real soulmate oughta be.
As light-hearted as it felt at the time, each intentional moment together, – each thread we wove – prepared the safety net that eventually caught us.
It’s been a few years since that legislative session, and the fire in my gut hasn’t gotten any quieter. Instead, it’s transformed into something else: a fire fueled FOR my community, instead of AGAINST the systems that failed me.
This idea – a fire for, not against – is the most important thing we teach each other: we call it Unit Zero. Designed by one of my mentors, Nora, Unit Zero calls us back to the foundation of why we do this work: many of us have been hurt. All of us are tired of seeing the hurt. But we can’t let hurt be the only gas in the tank. Instead, Unit Zero encourages us to tend to our foundations through rest, radical joy, and community care. As survivors, we ended up in this work because of something that was out of our control – Unit Zero puts the control back in our hands.
This focus on community is why I choose Every Voice and our people every single day. Even though the lows can be the lowest, the highs are certainly the highest. In the last few years, together, we HAVE won: we’ve passed 12 state laws that protect over 2.7 million students. We’ve empowered countless leaders in the anti-sexual violence movement, coaching and supporting them as they advocate for Every Voice bills of their own across the country. We’ve worked with hundreds of colleges to ensure full compliance and sustainability of the protections granted by our laws. We’ve never compromised our student-led, survivor-centered values.
These wins are a testament to our focus on community, which call to our theory of change: if we uplift students and survivors to be movement leaders, then we’ll finally have policies for us, by us. These wins – the tangible change that is improving someone’s situation right now – are possible because of the advocates and policymakers who believe us when we say that something needs to change. It really is that simple, just three steps: believe us when we tell you what we need. Support us as we make it happen. Empower us to take a seat at the table. Believe, Support, Empower.
As I’ve been preparing to speak today, I’ve been spending a lot of evenings and weekends by the river. For those who don’t know, the stretch of the Rio Grande that runs through southern New Mexico is just a dry, empty bed for the vast majority of the year – it only flows in June and July. I guess you could say I’ve been making up for lost time.
From all of that time on the banks of the Rio, I’ve figured out that the fire in my gut is never going to get put out, but I’m POSITIVE I want to keep using it FOR US.
