For decades, street vendor advocacy has been a critical movement for Latines in the U.S. Los Angeles’s first records of Mexican street vendors date back to the 1930s. In the 1980s, the city outlawed street vending amid a rise in Latin American immigrants. Since then, the street vendor economy has been targeted in countless “improvement” plans for cities across the country, like New York’s 2022 “quality-of-life” initiative, which charges vendors a $1,000 fine for operating without a permit. Coupled with the nation’s existing anti-Latine sentiments, these policies set the stage for a rise in street vendor harassment, which makes Latines’ presence in advocacy work more important than ever.