Remembering Carmen González, a powerful voice for Boyle Heights and its youth

Carmen González, who spent much of her youth uplifting her Boyle Heights community through activism, journalism, and student mentorship — and served as Student Journalism Manager at Boyle Heights Beat — died on Saturday from heart failure. She was 24.

“Carmen was the pride and joy of the family. A powerhouse,” her family wrote in an Instagram post announcing her passing.

“If people ever think about Carmen, I just want them to know that she was very loving, very giving, and also a very logical person,” Alejandra González, her sister, told Boyle Heights Beat. “She just loved life. She loved the community. She loved people.”

In her young life, Carmen filled several roles: the eldest daughter to her two siblings, a “Swiftie” with an encyclopedic knowledge of Taylor lore, a staunch activist for immigrant and LGBTQ+ rights, a photographer with Las Fotos Project, and a reporter, radio host and producer for Boyle Heights Beat, where she also mentored student journalists. She graduated from Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez High in 2019 and earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Cal State Long Beach earlier this year.

Carmen began her journalism career as a youth reporter at Boyle Heights Beat in 2017. Kris Kelley, her mentor at the time who later served as executive director of the Beat, saw something special in Carmen.

“Carmen possessed a confidence and outlook beyond her years. She had a deep understanding of people and her community,” said Kelley.

Her first article for the Beat was about an unhoused community college student, a story she said, “changed my life,” and “solidified the fact that I wanted to be a journalist and tell these stories.”

Through the Beat’s Radio Pulso podcast, Carmen featured community members on air because, as she put it, “I get to hear what Boyle Heights is through their eyes.”

Journalism, Carmen once reflected, “made me a more empathetic person.”

“I can actually sit through someone talking on a viewpoint that’s not similar to mine,” she said.

In a 2023 essay, Carmen wrote about navigating life as an undocumented person, and her complicated feelings of eventually obtaining U.S. citizenship after years of feeling guilt and shame for “failing to be extraordinary, to be the exception, to be the ‘good Dreamer.’”

“Long story short, I survived,” she wrote, quoting Taylor Swift.

As a journalism mentor, Carmen sought to empower students to hold elected leaders accountable and encouraged them to look within their communities and families for story ideas.

To instill confidence, she shed light on her own experiences as a youth journalist. She recalled interviewing elected and civic leaders as a high school student, such as Antonio Villaraigosa, who in 2018 sought to become the next governor of California. In that 2018 interview, Carmen grilled Villaraigosa on his plans to address the high rates of lead contamination plaguing Boyle Heights and East L.A. residents.

Those lessons stayed with her students.

Kathryn Mora, a former Boyle Heights Beat youth journalist, now a student at UC Santa Cruz, remembers how Carmen helped her cope with stress before publishing a piece that explored the religious tensions between young Latinos and their parents. “Religion is such a big part of people’s lives. … It was hard,” she said.

“Carmen was really good at reminding you that that’s part of the work, to be patient, to wait for things to play out,” Mora said.

In her young journalism career, Mora also grappled over being a journalist or an activist at a time when her peers walked out of Mendez High to protest the removal of their principal. “She [Carmen] was the one who had the conversation with me about when I needed to be a journalist and when I just needed to be me,” Mora said.

As an activist, Carmen’s advocacy took her to Sacramento, where she and her GSA peers advocated for inclusive sex-ed for students across California.

“She brought the Eastside everywhere she went,” said Christopher Covington, who serves as GSA’s statewide advocacy and campaigns manager. “She brought the passion, the urgency, the agitation and the power behind the work into all of the programs and opportunities that we had.”

“Not only did she lead, but she brought other students with her,” he said.

Carmen became involved with GSA at Mendez High, where she and other students pushed for an all gender restroom on campus.

As part of that effort, Carmen and her fellow GSA members surveyed students and teachers and presented their case to “every single period to try to make sure that everybody knew about it and why it was important,” said Emily Grijalva, a community school coordinator at Mendez High.

“She’s our first Mendez GSA ancestor,” Grijalva said. “She was the reason we’ve been one of the most active and long-sustaining groups on campus.”

Carmen was active with Students Deserve, a youth-led organization working toward making Black Lives Matter in schools, and was present at the picket line during the LAUSD teachers’ strike in 2019. She even dispatched feeds about the strike to NPR.

“She was the eldest daughter and just took care of her siblings, so she had that elder sister protective persona here at Mendez, too,” Grijalva said. “Even with me, she would always be like, ‘Miss G, are you taking care of yourself?’”

That’s how Stephanie Perez — a former youth journalist with the Beat — remembers Carmen, like an older sister who would give her advice when she’d butt heads with her mom over religion or living in a dorm after high school.

Her mentorship extended beyond journalism.

“I felt like I could really tell her anything and she would just give me the best advice and it would change my perspective on so many things,” said Perez.

To Eric Ibarra, the former executive director of Las Fotos Project, Carmen “stood out.”

Ibarra met Carmen as a high school student when she joined Las Fotos Project’s “Digital Promotoras,” an initiative that uses imagery “to expose hidden truths” and “advocate for positive change.”

“Carmen was a natural leader,” Ibarra said. “Even at 15, her confidence and thoughtfulness made others look up to her. She had a way of commanding attention when she spoke, and her peers respected her deeply.”

That respect carried through in the spaces she entered — among her peers, her colleagues, and the community she served. She embodied the mission of Boyle Heights Beat, uplifting the voices of young people and community members.

“Carmen knew that local journalism matters. She made people feel heard and made stories feel important. Her contributions were countless and her legacy will inspire us and live on in our work and in the community,” said Kelley.

To those who knew her best, Carmen’s passion for journalism was rooted in her lifelong curiosity.

“Since she was young, people would describe her as a preguntona,” her sister said. “She wanted to know stuff, she loved to learn…she loved asking questions and journalism gave her the space to do it.”

Carmen is survived by her mother, Carmen Hugon; her father, Alejandro González; her sister, Alejandra González; and her brother, Diego González.

Boyle Heights Beat reporter Andrew Lopez contributed to this report.