Across the Front Lines w/ Kalaya'an Mendoza

(S4, EP 3) Kalaya'an Mendoza (He / Him / SIya) shares his community organizing experience over the years, and more recently, during the 2020 racial civil unreast.  Kalaya'an discusses his work in helping to promote nonviolent civil resistance, and also through his co-founding work Across Frontlines, an organization that works alongside frontline human rights defenders to protest against state-sanctioned violence. We talk about the Asians for Black Lives solidarity work, the mental, spiritual, and physical challenges of movement work, and what the challenges from the President Biden administration would look like for this current movement.  For more on Kalay'aan's work, follow him on Instagram at @Kalamendoza and @acrossfrontlines

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bio:

Kalaya'an Mendoza [He/Him/Siya] resides on occupied Lenape territory (New York City). He is a Queer, Hard of Hearing Filipino American organizer and human rights activist who has been engaged in nonviolent civil resistance for the past two decades with frontline communities from Turtle Island to Myanmar to Aotearoa. His work in the last year has focused on voter protection, community defense and tactical safety and security training for human rights defenders during the uprisings for Black lives of this summer and the 2020 elections. He is the co-founder of Across Frontlines, an organization that works alongside frontline human rights defenders to keep their communities safe from state and non state actor violence.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Season 4 is sponsored by Red Scarf Revolution (RSR).  RSR aims to bring awareness to the tragedies, atrocities and cultural destruction that the Cambodian people endured from 1975 to 1979 under the communist Khmer Rouge regime and how that period impacts us today.  With that awareness, Red Scarf Revolution advocates the silenced art, music, culture,  and language, with designs that incite the resiliency of the Cambodian people.  Visit their website at www.redscarfrevolution.com to check out their merch line and to learn more about their work, or follow their Instagram at red_scarf_revolution or on their Facebook.