Race relations with Keep Runnin' Santa Ana
Aaron Garcia found himself leading a Latino community to a race in a city that declared itself unfriendly to immigrants. It was nothing new to him.
It’s long been proven that community-driven economies are more resilient to economic downturns, can improve the well-being of residents, and can create more local opportunities, all of which you’ll see evidence of throughout this story.
Keep Runnin’ Santa Ana is a community titan.
The man in charge of building that community? Aaron Garcia. A Santa Ana resident, born and bred, he laughs that he “was the kid who used to ditch baseball practice in high school because they used to make us run laps.” In his mid-20s he would run a couple of miles when “three miles was a big run,” but went on a health kick in late 2019 following a break-up.
When Ahmaud Arbery was murdered in February 2020, Garcia found it easy to fit the 2.23-mile tribute distance into his daily running routine (“It was the right thing to do to acknowledge what happened to him, and what was happening in other parts of the U.S.”), but then Covid-19 hit.
Aaron was already into running outside, so while everyone was busy building their home gyms, he carried on running outside. He even encouraged his closest friends to join him on socially-distanced runs, but it was still early in the pandemic. His friends shut his ill-timed healthy initiative down, citing the government’s stay-at-home directives.
Cut to September 2020 and Pharrell and Jay-Z released the video for ‘Entrepreneur,’ which featured Alrick ‘Butta’ Augustine of Keep It Run Hundred in Inglewood in amongst their celebration of modern Black leaders.
“I love highlighting small businesses. That's one thing I really love, and that's one thing that that video did. it highlighted different artists, an engineer, a mom-and-pop shop, and it highlighted Butta from Keep It Run Hundred. It was a Saturday evening, I was watching it on my TV, and I saw Butta running with the community of Inglewood behind him. I paused the video, I rewatched that part, and I Googled him.”
“I was like, ‘Santa Ana needs this.’ The same energy. The run club for its people.”
At this point, Aaron had never even joined another club’s run, but he threw himself into learning everything Butta had done, and took the three-mile Thursday runs as an inspirational template. He put the word out on Twitter (RIP), and the rest is history. Now KRSA hosts hundreds of runners every week.
Building a circular local economy for doing good
Keep Running’ Santa Ana recently provided 16 local high school kids with running shoes as part of their Running With Purpose program. They do this every month, and they involve the whole Santa Ana economy. It’s an impressively self-contained system.
“It began by me asking the runners, ‘How can we impact the community?’ Let's pool our money together and give back to local non-profits here in the city.”
Garcia started the program in November 2021, a year into KRSA’s life as a run club. Originally a raffle, where half the money donated by KRSA runners went to a local non-profit, and the other half went to one of the donors. Taking in over $300, he was taken aback by the group’s generosity. Soon, community members went further by opting out of the sweepstake part of their donation completely.
When a local high school track coach approached Aaron and introduced him to Joe Nakamura from Run Republic – a running specialty store in neighboring Walnut – the Running With Purpose formula came closer to completion. Nakamura would provide premium running shoes for the program at a reduced rate of $100.
The final form of KRSA’s Running With Purpose program came during a Thursday night community run. After the mileage is complete, the crew supports local businesses by hanging out “somewhere new in downtown Santa Ana.”
“Eventually these business owners started recognizing us, and then we began to grow in size. It reached the point where business owners were like, ‘How can I support you?’ That was when I got an idea: sponsor a kid every month.”
And so those businesses that the KRSA community indirectly supports buy a pair of shoes from a neighborhood independent running store, which goes towards benefitting the next generation of runners at a different local high school across the city every month.
Driving and steering the local economy to be a force for good? Like I said: This run club is a community titan.
The power of in-person community
With 310,000 residents, Santa Ana is the second largest city and the administrative center of Orange County, California. KRSA keeps the classic run club cadence of evening runs: social run, long run, and track night, but KRSA also serves as a civil rights leader for the 71% Latino population.
I joined KRSA on a Thursday evening community run in downtown Santa Ana a couple of weeks ago and was struck by Aaron introducing a community member to speak on what to do if confronted by ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), a government group likened to the Gestapo by many of those threatened by them. She had a handful of Red Cards to distribute among members, so they’d know their rights in case of a detainment.
“I give the floor to the community on Thursdays. Sometimes I have people message me saying, ‘Hey, I'm an ambassador for this race. Can I speak?’ It’s more about local community, like, ‘There’s a food drive happening over here.’ This is the type of stuff that I want people in our run community to hear: resources that are at their disposal that they probably wouldn't know about.”
That night’s conversation about what to do if stopped by ICE agents happened several days before it hit critical mass with the wider online community, and it isn’t a new thing for locals. Santa Ana’s 310,000 population is 77% Latino. It’s incredibly important to understand that ICE is not an organization that only acts during a Donald Trump administration. 271,000 people were deported in 2024 – the most since the 316,000 deported in 2014, during Obama’s second term. This has been a constant threat facing residents of Santa Ana regardless of who is president.
“I think it's special because our run community is a lot of local Latinos who aren't very social media savvy, and don't know how to find these resources if it isn't through their high school kids.”
Aaron goes on to tell me how it’s been suggested by peers that he sets up a Discord or Slack community for KRSA, but he explains that 50% of the community might not even know how to download the app. It’s the same issue as how the enforcement of digital-only payments only serves to exclude the most vulnerable in society. Some people need real-life interactions to function, whether that’s cash or an IRL conversation.
“That's the reality of it here. And I want to be inclusive to everybody.”
Running in enemy territory
Inclusivity isn’t of paramount importance to everyone, of course. Huntington Beach declaring themselves a “Non-Sanctuary City” was something else of note that happened while I was down in Orange County.
While the City of Los Angeles voted in November 2024 to establish itself permanently as a Sanctuary City, prohibiting city resources from being used by immigration agents or for immigration enforcement, on January 23rd 2025, the elected officials of neighboring Huntington Beach went out of their way to state the opposite was the case within their city limits.
On the one hand, it’s lucky that only 19% of Huntington Beach’s 190,000 inhabitants are Latino, but on the other hand, the Surf City Marathon was taking place just 10 days later. Working class runners from all over Orange County had paid their entry fees, booked their hotels, and spent months training for the race. If the City’s intent was to strike fear in non-white individuals, they got our attention.
“Why would you [spend money there] if the city doesn’t want you or your friends/family there?”
So asked Miguel Hernandez, founder of Watts Run Club. Hernandez called for a complete boycott of Huntington Beach races as he put area race directors on blast en masse for their lack of support for the running community that pays their salaries. As one race director appropriates Latino culture with a 'Cinco De Miles 5km” and Surf City opened registrations for 2026, he suspects that they’re all just “hoping this all blows over” as “people move on to the next news cycle.”
Is he wrong? No, but there’s always another way to protest.
“This was a really tough week for me,” Garcia tells me. “What do I do as a leader?”
“If I say we are not doing this, I'm gonna let some runners down who worked really hard with 12 weeks of dedicated training. If we pull out, they win. They’re gonna be like, ‘Cool. We scared them off.’”
Garcia looked for an alternative race to strike a deal with and sign his whole team up for, but there was nothing suitable.
“I ended up making the decision to support our runners by still going out there. A quote that I've heard multiple times throughout the years is that running in these spaces is its own type of protest.”
And he’s right. The radical geographies of protest hit the news more readily when we see Hollywood’s 101 Freeway shut down by thousands of people protesting Trump’ immigration policies, but with signs and placards provided by Iris Delgado of Huntington Park Run Club, they lined 13.1 miles of a city tarnished by bigoted officials (and those who voted them in) with proclamations of love and unity. That’s community. That’s standing strong together.
“We have people from all different walks of life coming together. I’ve been told that KRSA is the one space where people feel safe, and this city’s statement was trying to take that away from them.”
“I wanted to find a way to say you’re still safe here, we'll be there for you. We're going to be seen and we're gonna be known and we're gonna protect you if you need something. We're gonna be out there.”
While wanting to be a part of a community is natural for everyone, building a community from scratch is a tougher challenge to undertake.
With Keep Runnin’ Santa Ana, Aaron Garcia has used running to foster a bold sense of togetherness in an underserved community. He’s given people a voice where they might not have otherwise had one. He’s supported businesses, who have in turn helped him support local youth. He’s stood up for everything and everyone he believes in, especially when in hostile territory.
Aaron is still talking about the lack of alternative race on Surf City weekend. He’s talking about setting up his own race if he can find the right partners. Maybe it’s time for a new race director in The O.C. — one por la raza. Stay tuned. They run Santa Ana, after all.
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Thanks for reading
- Raz
Thank you for writing this piece. Keep Runnin Santa Ana is definitely a gem. Shout out to Aaron for doing everything he does for our community. 🇲🇽✨
I loved reading this piece.
The connection to community is something that has been 'talked' about and we are seeing more of in 2025 but oftentimes that is a virtual community.
This in-person community is so amazingly awesome.
Thanks for finding these stories and sharing them with us.