In this episode we're joined by filmmaker, organizer, novelist, visual artist, and self described conjurer of stories, Paola Mendoza. For more than two decades, Paola has used every tool she can get her hands on.

Film, theater, public art, organizing, and literature to tell stories that expand our understanding of who counts, who belongs.

The daughter of Colombian immigrants, she's dedicated her artist force of nature life to portraying America's vital immigrant communities with dignity, complexity and humanity at a time when those qualities are often under attack.

In our conversation, we'll explore:

• the roots of Paola's story making practice,
• the role of art in resisting authoritarianism,
• what Paola's novel Sanctuary can teach us about building communities of care, dangerous times,
• and how artists across the country are using the 2026 World cup to create a powerful counter narrative through the no Ice in the cup campaign.

This is a conversation about storytelling, solidarity, and the enduring power of imagination to help us build the world we want to inhabit.

Notable Mentions

People

Paola Mendoza⁠: Colombian-born filmmaker, author, artist, and cultural organizer whose work focuses on immigration, belonging, democracy, and social change through storytelling.

Abby Sher⁠: Award-winning writer and co-author of Sanctuary, the young-adult novel that imagines a future America shaped by authoritarianism, immigrant persecution, and grassroots resistance.

Jordan Seaberry⁠: Artist, organizer, and founder of The Ulysses Initiative whose work bridges civic engagement, public art, and democracy-building. He coordinated the commissioning of artists for the No ICE in the Cup campaign.

Organizations & Initiatives

No ICE in the Cup⁠: A national artist-led and community-based campaign using art, storytelling, sports, and public action to promote belonging and oppose immigration enforcement activities connected to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

The Horizons Project⁠: A cross-ideological coalition of organizations working to strengthen democracy and prevent authoritarianism through civic action, strategic coordination, and public engagement.

The Center for the Study of Art & Community⁠: Bill Cleveland’s long-running organization dedicated to advancing arts-based community development, cultural organizing, and social change.

Publications

Sanctuary⁠: Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher’s bestselling novel set in a future America where undocumented immigrants are hunted by the government and communities must rely on mutual aid and solidarity to survive.

Solis⁠: Mendoza’s companion novel to Sanctuary, expanding the story’s exploration of authoritarianism, resistance, and immigrant survival.

Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Around the World⁠: Mendoza’s collaborative account of the Women’s March and the organizing lessons behind one of the largest mass mobilizations in U.S. history.

Events

2026 FIFA World Cup⁠: The largest sporting event in the world and the catalyst for No ICE in the Cup’s effort to promote welcome, inclusion, and democratic values across host cities.

New York State Cup⁠: New York’s premier youth soccer championship competition, referenced in the conversation as the tournament won by members of the youth team that later participated in a No ICE in the Cup community event.

Places & Institutions

Brooklyn, New York⁠: Mendoza’s home community and the location of one of the grassroots soccer and community-organizing events associated with No ICE in the Cup.

Statue of Liberty⁠: Iconic symbol of immigration and welcome that served as the backdrop for a No ICE in the Cup banner action marking the opening of the World Cup.

Minneapolis, Minnesota⁠: Frequently cited in the interview as an example of a city with deep organizing traditions and community networks capable of mobilizing mutual aid and resistance during times of crisis.

Lenape Homeland⁠: The ancestral homeland of the Lenape people, acknowledged by Mendoza when describing Brooklyn as the place from which she joined the conversation.

Arts & Cultural References

Jack in the Box⁠: The fast-food restaurant where Mendoza’s mother found one of her first jobs after immigrating to the United States, a formative part of the family’s immigrant story.

The Theater⁠: Described by Mendoza as the foundation of her creative practice—a place where she discovered storytelling, community, and her own voice as an artist.

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Art Is CHANGE is a podcast that chronicles the power of art and community transformation, providing a platform for activist artists to share their experiences and gain the skills and strategies they need to thrive as agents of social change.

Through compelling conversations with artist activists, artivists, and cultural organizers, the podcast explores how art and activism intersect to fuel cultural transformation and drive meaningful change. Guests discuss the challenges and triumphs of community arts, socially engaged art, and creative placemaking, offering insights into artist mentorship, building credibility, and communicating impact.

Episodes delve into the realities of artist isolation, burnout, and funding for artists, while celebrating the role of artists in residence and creative leadership in shaping a more just and inclusive world. Whether you’re an emerging or established artist for social justice, this podcast offers inspiration, practical advice, and a sense of solidarity in the journey toward art and social change.

Hey there. What if the most powerful force standing between a cruel tyranny and democracy is a story? From the center for the Study of Art and Community.

This is Art is Change chronicle of art and social change, where activist artists and cultural organizers share the strategies and skills they need to thrive as creative community leaders. My name, this is Bill Cleveland.

Today we're joined by filmmaker, organizer, novelist, visual artist, and self described conjurer of stories, Paola Mendoza. For more than two decades, Paola has used every tool she can get her hands on.

Film, theater, public art, organizing, and literature to tell stories that expand our understanding of who counts, who belongs.

The daughter of Colombian immigrants, she's dedicated her artist force of nature life to portraying America's vital immigrant communities with dignity, complexity and humanity at a time when those qualities are often under attack.

Part 1 Jack in the Box. So, Paola, how are you overall?

I'm good, I'm good. The World cup is starting and that's fun times for my son and I. New York Knicks are gonna hopefully shut it down tomorrow.

New York City alive on the streets.

That's good. Yeah. All right, let's set the stage. Paola, welcome to artist Change. Tell me, where are you calling from?

I am calling from Brooklyn, New York Lenape land on a hot summer, beautiful day, ready to talk about the thing that I love the most, which is art, and how art can change the world.

Great. So maybe a trivial question, but one that sometimes is very revealing. Have you ever had a street name or a handle? And if you have, what was it?

And if you don't, what would it be like?

How I'd been known on the streets of Brooklyn?

Absolutely, yes.

Any name that I might have had on the streets, I'm unaware of, which is probably best. I think the name that I would be is a conjurer of stories.

Okay, great. That comes across big time. And the time that I've spent wandering through your FBI file, it's a very thick. It's gigantic.

So how does conjurer of stories manifest? What is your work in the world?

You know, my work in the world is that of A storyteller. And there are stories that I have gravitated to for the past 20 years since graduating from college and really focused my entire life on.

On being an artist. And those tend to be stories around immigration, immigrants and women and children.

And that is deeply connected to my own personal story of having immigrated to this country when I was quite young and having a very specific experience with a single mom as an immigrant.

And both having a quite difficult first few years, a chunk full of years here in the United States, and watching my community both come together, help celebrate, overcome, and then seeing this country try to destroy the communities that have in many ways built this country where we are today. Right. So that is the arc of my storytelling.

I try for it to be stories of immigrants that are dignified because I think this administration in particular. But for many, many years, the dignity of immigrants has been. Has been stripped of us.

So I try to focus my stories on dignity and love and care and also allowing the people in my stories to be flawed human beings, because we're all flawed. There is no narrative of a perfect immigrant. That's what the right wants us to believe. Right?

The quote, unquote, good immigrants versus bad immigrants. And so I reject that and allow my characters to be full, flawed, beautiful, complicated human beings.

Just like the neighborhood. Yeah. So what, what took you on that path?

Well, I came to this country when I was around 2 years old, 3 years old, with my mom, my brother and my father. My brother was four years older than me. And we were the first of my family to leave Colombia, which is where I'm from.

And we went to LA, and we went to the, to LA in the 80s, which was a very specific LA. And there wasn't a lot of Colombians at that time in la. We had no family. My mom didn't speak English, my father didn't speak English.

We did have papers, which was very helpful. And then a few months after we arrived, my father told my mother that he was going to work and never came back. So he abandoned the family.

My mom, who was in her mid-20s with a 7 year old and a 3 year old, no family, no English, no money, was left to fend for herself. And she did what so many immigrants and so many mothers have done before her, which is she made miracles happen every day with absolutely nothing.

There was a time we were homeless. We lived in government housing for quite some time.

My mom's first job was at a fast food restaurant in California called Jack in the Box, and you might know it. And she, she says that she learned how to speak English from an Italian woman that didn't know English, which is the epitome of the United States.

And I remember growing up, I always, always had hamburgers for lunch and dinner. And it wasn't until later in life that I realized that my mother would get free lunch and she would not eat.

And so she would bring that food home for my brother and I. Right. So that's how I grew up. And that was my normal, because I didn't know anything else. And then life stabilized after a few years.

And then we just started to, you know, quote, unquote, live the American dream, whatever that meant for us. And there was a sense of displacement, a sense of belonging, a sense of solitude, because my family was in Colombia.

And going to Colombia at that time was not easy. My grandmother would manage to come almost every year and visit us, but we didn't have any family.

But, long story, I eventually fell into the theater my senior year of high school by accident, and I fell in love with the theater. I had a lot of anger for my father's abandonment and for how my life had proceeded.

I was a teenager, so we're all angry, if we're lucky, when we're teenagers. And the theater provided an outlet for me to express that anger in a productive way, rather than how I had been expressing it was with.

Which was not good at all for anyone. And I found my place, and I found my people, and I literally found my voice in the theater.

And one of the hardest things that I had to do two years after I graduated from high school, because I went to a community college, was tell my mom that I was going to be an artist. And the reason that was so hard was. And my mother never put this on me.

But as children of immigrants, there is a huge responsibility on our shoulders.

I always get really emotional when I talk about this, but because we want to make sure that the sacrifices that our parents make were ultimately worth it. My mother didn't live the life that she thought she was going to live because she sacrificed so much for me.

So her image, her story that she told herself about her daughter was not that of one that was going to be an artist. It was someone that was in a much more stable career.

The joke amongst children of immigrants is like, you can be a doctor, a lawyer, or an accountant. Those are your job choices.

That's it. Yes.

And so when I told my mom that I was going to be an artist, she flipped the fuck out. She was like, I did not come to this country for you to starve. That was not the plan.

And she didn't talk to me for a few weeks because she was so mad. And it was really hard because I was not going against my mom.

I had been rebelling against my mom my whole life, but rebelling against my mom in this very poor way that was deeply disappointing to her in not reflective of her sacrifices. But she came around. Of course she did. And now she's my biggest fan.

And because of that background, because of where I came from, my personal story, the difficulty with my mom, those are the stories that I'm attracted to. Because when I was growing up, there was not stories how I lived them of the immigrant experience.

We were completely erased in what was the fabric of this country. And so I didn't know I was doing it so much at the time when I first started.

But that journey became very clear to me that my life's work is to tell the stories of immigrants. Because I love it, because I'm proud of it, because this country needs it desperately, because I know it.

Because had the honor to listen to immigrants tell me their stories. For over 20 years, I had literally thousands of stories inside of me, both lived, imagined and told to. And so that's where it comes from.

Part 2 foundations.

One of the things about art making and storytellers is resourcefulness.

And while some makers hitch a ride to a discipline and they ride it all the way, you have gone to the marketplace of creative practice and grabbed whatever you needed. You've been a filmmaker, a public artist, you've been an organizer. You're a novelist, you have your roots in the theater.

Could you talk about how those practices are your foundation in service to the story? And I guess you're picking whatever it takes to tell it. Is that true?

Yes, that is 100% true.

I get an idea in my head, a story that I want to tell, and I sit with that story for a little bit to make sure it is the thing that I want to dedicate a large part of my life too.

Because whether it's film, you know, writing a screenplay, directing a film, whether it's writing a book, whether it's a visual art project, like those things take years. I don't choose the stories that I'm going to tell lightly. I sit with them for a long time to make sure that they're the right one.

And if they are, then my next question to myself is, what is the best medium for this story? Sometimes certain stories require 300 pages in a novel, Sometimes it's a short film. That's 10 minutes.

Sometimes it's a feature film that takes years also to make. And, you know, as for all artists, is for you to build. Like ideas sit in your brain for years until the moment comes that you're able to make them.

And I think in the end, why I said I was a conjurer of stories, I think what the theater provided for me, the foundation for me. Now I don't work in the theater professionally, and while I miss it, I'm also very grateful for it because I'm able to keep the theater as my temple.

It is my place of rest, inspiration, personal reckoning.

In the theater, I learned the basis of all storytelling and how stories are in our DNA and how we use stories to explain the world from the very beginning when we were gathered around the fire pits. And that basic and intrinsic human desire is the blueprint for how I try to explore and tell the stories of today.

I think of theater as embodied stories rising up from our communities.

You know, communities which are really story farms that are constantly sowing story seeds and growing the nutrients necessary for human learning and connection. You know, stories are not one of those nice to haves.

I think they're essential to our functioning together, to our survival, because they're feeding our innate curiosity and imagination.

And I think stories in theater have shown up in every human society because we've always needed a place to store the endless stream of questions and answers and ideas that are always bubbling up. I can't imagine anything more foundational.

Yes, I say that the theater is the foundation of everything I do. And whenever I'm lost, I go back to the theater and everything else is just an exploration. I learned how to make films by doing films.

I learned how to organize by just going out and organizing.

I learned how to do art installations in public spaces because I had an idea and I had some money and some people, and I was like, fuck it, let's just do it. I, as a teacher, also tell my students, and it's something that took me a long time to understand, and it's still scary.

But I really try to live by the ethos of make bad art. It's okay. I just go out and do, everyone's going to make bad art.

I've made some amazing things that I'm super proud of, and I made some mediocre things that I'm just like, I missed it. Neither one of those dictate who I am as an artist. They balance one another out. And my focus is the breadth of my entire life's Work. Not one thing.

I want to be able to give to this planet and give to this moment and to this earth when I pass. A gift of stories over 40 years that will touch people in different ways.

Well, and I think they already have. And actually, one of the central themes in the sampling of your stories that I've been able to enjoy is belonging with a question. Who gets to speak?

Who gets to decide? Who matters? Who belongs? And it's a central question of this imperfect world that we live in.

You've addressed this to some degree, but what unique role do you think that art makers can play in expanding the sense of who we are?

No, I think the power and the beauty that we have as people who create, as people who have an idea and then bring that idea to fruition and reality for others.

It's an extraordinary thing to be able to gather community, to help birth that into the world, and then to have it come out in a way that probably is not perfectly how one envisioned it. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's not. But nonetheless, you literally birthed an idea into physical reality.

And to me, that is such a superpower, because we as artists are able to envision a world, a moment, a story that does not exist in our reality. And then we're able to get people to believe in it, to be moved by it, to be inspired by inspired by it, to learn by it.

And then, hopefully, from that, things change for that person, for society, for moments in time, make history. I don't know if there's anything else in the world that does that.

There's a reason why, when we don't have words in moments of great calamity, of great tragedy, people go back to art because it speaks for us in a way that we as individuals, can't do it.

That is the power of art, and that is the power of storytelling, and that is the power that artists have when we are living under fascism and dictatorships. And that's what's so important to me, for artists to flex that muscle for this moment in time.

So that leads me to ask you about your novel Sanctuary, which, when it was published, imagined a time in the future shaped by fear and exclusion and immigrant crackdowns. That is not unlike this moment. So given that, what do you hope readers understand about the power of the. Imagination as we confront the reality of. The story that you conjured in your. Mind's eye back then?

It's a great question, one that I'm constantly grappling with because I have many people reaching out to me. Throughout the years, especially since Donald Trump got back into office, being like you predicted the future, what are we supposed to do now?

What's going to happen?

The country's falling apart, and California seceded from the union, and it's just chaos. At the heart of the story is Valentina. She's 16 years undocumented. Unlike in Hunger Games, Katniss has a superpower.

Valentina, really, she's just regular, normal, no superpower. And that was very important because it was my way to remind people to say, you, you are the Valentinas.

You, whoever you are, how you are, we can't do this without you.

Now I see Sanctuary more as a blueprint, a blueprint for how to fight against fascism and a blueprint for how to take care of one another when your government is trying to annihilate you and trying to disappear you. And I think what. What was extraordinary is what we saw in Minneapolis was the pushback, the fight back.

The care in Minneapolis was central with people to people, neighbor to neighbor, person to person. Communities of care were built slowly, surely, and also very quickly.

That protected so many people and that ultimately, at the sacrifice of lives, people being detained disappeared, at the sacrifice of people being physically harmed by ICE agents, by tear gas, by everything that was there. Government.

With all that sacrifice, the people of Minneapolis were able to shut down the tactics that administration had employed against immigrant communities in various cities. We had seen before, Chicago and L. A and Charlottesville, they were just rampaged by ice.

The government is still deploying ICE to harm people, but their strategy has changed. And so in Sanctuary as our blueprint, Valentina used the small community that she builds to protect one another.

Those neighborly moments that individual care less about big organizations and more about taking care of one another and getting to know one another. And that is how we push back and fight and change the narrative against fascism.

So that's how I see Sanctuary now, as hopefully inspiration and as a blueprint of how to fight back and win.

So reflecting on Minneapolis, which was my home place for 12 years, one of the things that's in your book that I think is personified in a part of this Minneapolis story that many people aren't aware of and that is in your book. It's not PowerPoint tactics and strategy that people follow step by step in order to change things.

It is these relationships that are based on in the trenches, building of trust and learning from each other through struggle over time. One of the things people don't know about Minneapolis is that it has an organizing culture that is dozens and dozens of years old.

I was privileged to be a part of it. And many of those people who were in those streets locking arms and singing and showing up, they've been doing that for a long time.

And the trust was in the water. You don't do that overnight because you need people who have your back in a way that's visceral. Part 3 no ice.

You and I are both involved in something that is percolating as we speak. The World cup is in, in town, as they say, across the country.

And you have been involved in a project that really sees the World cup as a cultural moment, a sports moment, an organizing moment. Could you talk about no Ice in the Cup?

Yes, I would be thrilled to. And please, Bill, you jump in, too. We've been working on no Ice in the Cup, I don't know, maybe for 10 months now.

It feels time is relative with where we are. But no Eyes in the cup is an initiative from the Horizons Project.

And the Horizons Project is leading a coalition of over 70 organizations across, across the country that are both cross ideological and cross sectoral.

So some from various sectors of society, and that means lefty, lefty to righty, righty, all working together with one goal, which is to save democracy and make sure that fascism doesn't win. And there's various ways in which that's happening, and no Ice in the cup is one of those initiatives.

And what we've seen historically, oftentimes is that dictators and fascists take sporting events, twist them around, and try to make them for their own benefit in their own image.

And we believe that this was a possible moment that would be happening here in the United States, that Eyes of the World would be on the United States. And the Trump administration would use that to tell the story that they wanted to tell about this moment in time.

And so no Ice in the cup was an idea that was brought up. I was not in the room? I don't know. Bill, were you in the room?

Yes. Yes.

Okay, so tell us how that happened, because I wasn't there, so please.

Well, actually, it was one of those spontaneous things. The minute that they started to talk about it, the idea that the cup was important, that it could be a target.

Minneapolis was in the air at the time, and so it became obvious that.

That some people could be vulnerable and that there needs to be a counter narrative to that in real ways, in real places that basically said, no, no, no, no. This is not a place you want to go.

And so, out of that brilliant moment and meeting, a bunch of us, including Bill and about five other artists came together, and we really wanted to take the idea of no Ice in the cup, but focus it around artists and how artists could get involved in this moment to shift the narrative. And so alongside Jordan, who you had as a guest on your podcast recently.

Yes, that's Jordan Seabury, episode 172.

Jordan led the commissioning of 11 visual artists across the country in 11 host cities. And artists were just told, create something from no Ice in the Cup. That's the tag. That's the title. Go off and create. And as artists do, artists did.

And they created amazing visual artworks from the 11 host cities inspired by no Ice in the Cup. And what I love about the art is the regions inspired the arts.

And so we have 11 pieces of artwork that are distinct, visually united in one story, but take different tactics in order to tell that story. There's humor, there's drama, there's irony in all of these various visual explorations of Noise in the Cup.

And the next step to that is supporting community members to come in and create artwork. And we've had incredible submissions from all over, and I'm seeing it pop up on Instagram, on social media.

Someone sent me a picture of a Noise in the cup, one of our commissioned artists, but in a school public library with all the information and QR codes. And that's. That's part of what we wanted to create.

We wanted to create something that lived on its own, an organism that just kind of went out into the world and found life in unexpected places that we had nothing to do with. Also, there's been soccer tournaments that have been organized.

I organized a soccer tournament in Brooklyn with kids with my son's soccer team, which was fun.

And an important story about that is the day before the soccer tournament in Brooklyn, my son's soccer team won the State cup championship, which was great and amazing.

But then what was so beautiful to Me is the very next day, 12 of the 14 kids, so basically his entire team came to the soccer tournament and were standing up for immigrants. And I think that that's a very important lesson to teach these boys. The State cup was a big deal for these kids.

They had been working for a year for this moment and they won. And then they come and they're like, and we're taking that and we're going to protect immigrants.

And they had a four hour tournament where they played soccer to help immigrants, of which kids on his own team are both children of immigrants, children of impacted family members. So it's just a. That's part of what this is.

It's building community, it's building those connections as we were talking about earlier with regards to Minneapolis.

And then just yesterday, we launched a video for the opening of the World cup with a huge banner that went around the Statue of Liberty saying, no ice in the Cup. And that was really fun to make and really extraordinary to see and an important stake in the ground to say, we are here, we are loud. We are clear.

We don't want ice in the Cup. And just as importantly is we don't want ice in airports and stadiums, on the streets.

We want ice out of our elections, which are happening in November. We want ice out of our public and private spaces. And this is a way in which to do that and to use sports as the uniting aspect that sports is.

We want to take that and unite people around our common values of joy, celebration and protection.

So well said. And here's something else we've created in support of no ice in the Cup. So if any of you out there happen to be at a World cup. Game or at a watch party, say. It loud and proud. What's up? What's up? No ice in the Cup.

And you know, to follow on that, some people talk about the Zeitgeist. So in the last three weeks, I've been to a number of graduations, which is a great celebratory moment for families and communities.

It actually reminds me of this coming together of sport. You know, we're really all in this together, even though we all have very different stories.

And one of the things that rose up over and over and over again from the graduation talks that young people gave was the importance of kindness.

When I think about ice in the cup, the first thing that comes to mind is there's this event and there's this looming threat to the games and the election called ice. But ice is more. In fact, it's a metaphor for Cruelty. And the zeitgeist is, that's not acceptable.

You know, regardless of your way of life or your governmental system, cruelty is not acceptable. And there is no antidote for cruelty other than the kindness of humans to each other and pushing back hard in service to that kindness.

Then I think about those kids on that field playing their heart out for. Vulnerable people they don't know. That's, you know, that's kindness and that's solidarity, isn't it? That is. Yeah, absolutely.

That is. And to be practicing that at such a young age gives me hope and inspiration.

And I, I think a lot about the young people living under this moment in time with the culture of what Trump is creating in this country. And I worry about that. You know, I have a 13 year old boy, so I worry specifically about him.

In a country where sexism and patriarchy is being celebrated and pushed down their throats. And I am trying desperately to keep it at bay.

But then when we have moments like this where these kids are able to show their values a, that they're exploring and learning and expanding into, it gives me hope. It gives me hope that this moment that we're living through, which is cruel, as you. Beautifully said, Bill.

The young people will see through that and choose kindness over cruelty at the end. I have to believe that. And I believe that's when we win, when we are all choosing kindness over intentional cruelty.

Yep, absolutely. Well, I'm happy to say we finally had this opportunity to hear your stories. Thank you, Paola.

Thank you, Bill.

And thanks to you out there for joining us in this conversation in which Paola has reminded us again that stories are never simply entertainment. They're maps, warnings, invitations, and sometimes survival tools. Before we go, here are three things. That rose up for me.

First, storytelling is an act of dignity. Paola's work challenges narratives that reduce people to stereotypes and instead shares stories about humans who are complicated and deeply human.

Second, democracy grows through relationships. Again and again, whether in Sanctuary in Minneapolis or no Ice in the cup, we hear the same lesson.

Lasting change is built through trust, mutual aid, and communities that learn how to care for one another. And third, kindness is not weakness.

In a political culture that often rewards cruelty, artists have a unique ability to model another way of being together. The choice between kindness and cruelty is not merely personal. It's civic, cultural, and ultimately at the heart of a healthy and thriving democracy.

Artist Change is a production of the. Center for the Study of Art and Community. Our theme and soundscapes spring forth from the head, heart and hand of the Maestro Judy Munson.

Our text editing is by Andre Nebbe, our effects come from freesound.org and our. Inspiration comes from the ever present spirit of OOC235. So until next time, stay well, do good and spread the good word. Sa.