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About me

My name’s Lorenzo Serna(they/them) I’m a Chicanx queer journalist and creator who’s been on the frontlines of multiple international movements. I’ve organized process and media assets in rural conflict zones and helped coordinate media efforts around massive mobilizations by creating horizontal workflows, and non-hierarchal methods of content creation.

From the streets of New York City to the rural plains of Standing Rock, I’ve created internationally recognized media– despite being shot at with rubber bullets, doused in pepper spray, and clouded with tear gas.

I co-founded an organization called Unicorn Riot, where I spent five years of my professional media career. Sharing and teaching front-line live video process, workflows, and the importance of centering frontline voices.

Now, the Director of Tactical Media at the NDN Collective I continue to work on decolonizing media and pushing oral story telling in live video productions through nonextractive media methods centered around consent.

I hold a Masters of Arts and a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of North Dakota where I studied creative writing and narrative construction.

Everyday I am thankful for the people who came before me and fought for me, many whose names I will never know. I hold that knowing in my actions and decisions in hope to only leave a better world for the next generations. None of my life would be possible without you.

Thank you.

Viva la Raza

Viva-Viva,

Lorenzo Serna

Blog Posts

Day Before the Movement was Renamed.

She crouches against a dumpster peaking the edge. The guard moves across the work site bathed in a waxy yellow light. His dull steps stop and the only sound a steady hum of a generator. He laughs as he aims a flashlight around and plays the focus ring – winking some unknown pattern. The flashlight […]

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We carry every jagged edge.

I’m in this coffee shop I hate. I don’t hate the people, just the décor. White tiled walls, a collection of minimalist furniture–hard angles, rigid edges. I want some color damn it, a foot stool, something soft to melt into as I sip my coffee. Well dressed twenty somethings with more self-groom skills than I’ll […]

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I can’t explain #NoDapl to you.

I’m in Grand Forks North Dakota, sitting at a booth I spent uncountable hours at, writing, reading, and grading. I’m back here now years after that education, after traveling the five hours from the #NoDapl resistance camps to Grand Forks to visit my family. The last time I visited my family was when the Morton […]

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Breaking the Silence…

Weeks have passed since I attended, “Break the Silence.” I think that someone will tell me that I should include a trigger warning. That I should prep people for what’s to come before it reminds them of whatever moment in their lives they survived through. That moment that keeps getting dragged into the present like […]

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Dreaming of conversations.

“I never told you this. So imagine me grabbing the words out of the air and popping them back into my mouth, swallowing them… I never told you this.” That’s what she told me? Can you believe it. Oh, her name was Emily, I forgot to tell you that. And I’m going to let you […]

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Famlia (r) History

Famlia (r) History Abuela told me stories of stories in thick accented English about ancestral oral prophets explaining the one two– step of Aztec blood rumor. Native American familial lines somehow delineated along the Rio Grande’s true, but imaginary boundary. Forced into place by colony, by imperial force, into the maw of history books that […]

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Battle of the Hundred in the Hand

     “They loved us. So we deserve to live good lives. This battlefield represents that love they had for us. Everything          that happened here, all our warriors that lived and died here- fought here, bled here. Our women, who only used          their knives, they followed them, […]

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The Stream

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