Todays Podcast is an interview with renowned Activist for the undocumented and unDACAmented Reyna Montoya from Aliento!

Aliento is a arts and healing collective which advocate for the rights of all undocumented people. They hold arts and healing workshops for children. More about Aliento:

We are immigrant families including LGBTQ people, single parent households, or however people define family who have been directly affected by the human cost of detention, prisons, and the division of the narrative of the “good vs. bad immigrant.”

We are people of color who acknowledge that prisons not only target us, but are not the answer for the wellbeing of our society.

We are people who believe that communities have the power to engage in collective problem-solving instead of blaming people and isolating them in cages.

We imagine a world without punitive practices, a world where everyone’s humanity is at the core and is the driving force. A world where healing and reconciliation is the norm, where we seek collective problem- solving when harm is done.

We imagine a world where people regardless of their immigration status, skin color, gender orientation, or religious belief can learn from their mistakes without being isolated from society. We imagine a world where everyone’s humanity and human rights are recognized.

In Aliento, we create community healing through art that leads to collective people power.  We create art that reflects  the humanity of undocumented immigrants who have been criminalized by the harsh and unjust U.S. detention and deportation system.

Through political education workshops, community building spaces, leadership development, and art creation, we seek to shift the U.S. society away from the belief that punitive practices lead to justice and safety for our society.

Through art we heal and build power to reimagine a community without a punitive system, where we create a healing and learning space instead of punishment and blame.

Reyna Montoya is a 2016 Soros Justice Fellow, a 2017 Echoing Green Fellow and a Forbes: 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur. 

Reyna was born in Tijuana, Mexico and migrated to Arizona in 2003 fleeing violence. She is an undocumented/DACAmented community organizer, an educator, and a dancer. She is a 2016 Soros Justice Fellow, which enable her to start Aliento. She also serves in the first Teach For America DACA Advisory Board. Reyna holds bachelor degrees in Political Science and Transborder Studies and a Dance minor from Arizona State University; she also holds a M.Ed in Secondary Education from Grand Canyon University. She has engaged in local, statewide and national platforms to advance justice for immigrant communities. In 2013, she was the lead organizer, who prevented an immigration bus of undocumented immigrants from deportation in Phoenix, AZ for the first time in the nation’s history. In the same year, with the help of the community, she stopped her father’s deportation. She was also recognized as 2017 #NBCLatino20. She hopes to share her talents and skills with the community to co-create healing spaces, political change, and leadership development of our immigrant youth.