About
My Story & Why I Am Committed
To those who hold up the world, even knowing it may abandon them in return.
I have lived the American Dream and the American Nightmare.
My father fled discrimination following 9/11. My family then spent years in poverty and, often, homeless. We moved between around 30 homes across the Phoenix Valley—most temporary motels, Craigslist roommates, parking lots.
We struggled because work never paid what we deserved. My mom worked essential jobs and raised three children by herself, yet we did not even have basic stability.
My family’s struggles echoed the stories all around us.
My neighbors — recent immigrants, often without documents — worked hard, giving everything to a country that might turn on them at any moment.
My friends wanted to build a future and find work that mattered — and found that their country guarantees nothing of what it asks them to pledge allegiance to each day.
Our stories were the same in spirit, if not always in detail.
My mom and stepfather spent decades working and sacrificing to build our great economy. Then it abandoned them the moment they were no longer profitable.
My sisters teach children and create art — essential work that makes society possible and beautiful. Yet they receive little in return.
We want the best for each other, and we are willing to work to make it happen. I believe that.
Then, because of the people around me, I became the young man with a full scholarship to one of the nation’s most historic schools.
I went to Yale. I was out of place from the start — a kid from dirt road Arizona, thousands of miles from home, and first generation in my family to go to college. Classmates bragged about decor in their homes worth more than my family’s annual income.
But, I worked hard. And soon, people noticed. I was given opportunity after opportunity, including to learn from the leaders of our nation. Secretary of State John Kerry selected me to advise him on economic inequality.
I remember my first time entering our nation’s Capitol, realizing how far I had come from rusty trailers and motel rooms, from my biggest dream being my family getting into a homeless shelter.
There I was. From homelessness to testifying in Washington DC.
Then, when greater heights and starker contrast could not feel possible, the opportunity of a lifetime came.
I became one of thirty-two Americans to earn a Rhodes Scholarship. A full ride to Oxford. 1,000-year old Oxford!
It happened fast. Suddenly, I was appearing in press coverage by reporters I never spoke to. My hometown news station showed up at our apartment — tiny, aging, though cozy — and hundreds of congratulations messages came in. People I loved and people I never met were pointing to me as an example of the American Dream. In Facebook comments, Instagram posts, Reddit forums, the message was: He made it.
I was so grateful. I am so grateful.
But, I didn’t feel right.
It was praise for me. Celebration at me. Just a handful of years after blame at us, shame towards us. I held both feelings at once and didn’t know what to do with them.
Just as I felt when I was younger that the story being told about my family and community was not true—we were not poor because we were wrong, flawed, or bad—I knew the story being told about me now was not true. At least not fully.
I worked hard, yes. I fought. I did my best.
But so did so many others.
I arrived in Oxford and was asked what I wanted to study. Given a full scholarship and free reign of the university, what would it be?
I chose to study what I had lived: the two sides of America.
The side that is poor because we failed.
And the side that made it because we earned it.
I spent years researching where these stories came from — why we center individual responsibility as if it were the whole truth, and what we leave out when we do.
What we leave out is structure. The values built into our economy, our government, and our culture determine what effort can become. The same hard work produces radically different outcomes depending on where and when and to whom you were born.
Individual responsibility isn’t a guide to interpret the world — it’s a standard we’ve never actually met.
And that gap — between what we promise and what we deliver — is at the heart of everything.
America’s aspirations are clear: guarantee every person the opportunity to live the life they want, and especially honor those who live it in service of others.
These are beautiful values. They are what all of us want our country to be.
But too often we mistake the aspiration for the achievement. We skip from “we should become” to “we are.”
“We are the land of opportunity.” “If you work hard, you will succeed.”
In reality, these are goals — not descriptions. And when we treat a goal as an accomplished fact, we don’t just get the history wrong. We change what the present means.
If America is already a land of opportunity and if hard work already guarantees success, then where people end up becomes evidence. Our outcomes become verdicts: If you succeeded, you earned it. If you are struggling, you deserve it.
And the story we tell grows. It becomes how we view each other’s worth. It becomes how we treat each other. And so it becomes policy. We tell ourselves poor people are irresponsible, so we build systems that leave them unsupported. We tell ourselves the wealthy are uniquely virtuous, so we build systems that multiply their advantages.
Blame and praise circle endlessly. The inequalities beneath them remain unchanged.
I left America so I could look back at it. At the place that made me.
My years studying in Oxford affirmed what I learned growing up. It took earning a PhD to know what I always felt.
In America, deservingness is the battleground.
We judge every government policy — if not every single thing that happens to every single person — by whether we believe people got what they deserve. It is a fight being waged all the time around us.
And we know who is winning.
We have to bring a deservingness story to a deservingness fight.
Luckily, the story we have is a great one. Because it is not just a story, it is the truth:
People, through their sacrifices and their work, have built this country. They make all we are and all we plan to become possible. So they deserve the benefits.
Our country is what people put into it. It is the care we give, the time we sacrifice, the life poured into building and teaching and transporting and cleaning. The economy does not happen to us. It is us. We are the economy, and we are America.
And yet, every day, the people we most depend on are treated as disposable.
Whether the justification is that her skills became less valuable, that his body wore down, or that the local company found cheaper sources — it happens far too often.
Our system abandons people the moment they are no longer profitable. Even if they have given their life to sustaining it. Even if they built it.
It was my mom’s story. It is the story of millions. It is the truth about America.
It feels like getting lucky in today’s economy isn’t getting ahead — it’s not having been left behind. Work feels less like part of a good life and more like a life sentence.
As a result, everything is in question. If a lifetime of meaningful contribution cannot even guarantee basic dignity and security, then we have nothing.
We don’t have meaningful civil rights. We don’t share equal opportunity. Freedom is lost. Democracy is done. America is a lie.
But I have seen enough to know it doesn’t have to be.
People, in every part of our country every day, work to help it fulfill its possibility and promises. We share meals when one of us is hungry. We organize not only when our fates are connected, but when some of us are being targeted and need a champion.
We mourn losses that didn’t happen to us, celebrate wins that don’t benefit us, and show up for each other in ways no policy requires and no paycheck rewards — because we understand, without being told, that we are in this together.
This is also America. It has always been. What is missing is not the will of people. What is missing is a system that honors it.
From a childhood of nightmares, I have lived my dreams. I have enough to protect my family and help protect my friends.
So I am dedicating the rest of my life to a bigger project: building the country that we know is possible.
American Dreams & Nightmares is where I share that work — the insights, questions, and hard-won reflections that come from being inside it. From active campaigns with worker organizations. From research on work, technology, and the future of the economy. From asking, every day, how we make this country what it needs to be.
I’m glad you’re here.
With love,
Rayan
To learn more about what I’m working on, read Start Here.
