Two Years of Leadership
Gillian Mendoza is a community organizer and the Associate of the Action Committee Subcommittee (BBSC) YA-YA’s core organizing body. Alongside Organizing Director Shaktii Mann, and the youth activists of BBSC, she helps lead YA-YA’s grassroots advocacy.
Gillian first joined YA-YA in 2018 as a youth activist in YA-YA’s Summer Social Justice Institute. In the two years since, she has helped develop numerous projects and grassroots campaigns across multiple YA-YA programs.
"Do we want to traumatize our kids?" Gillian speaks at the Panel for Educational Policy, in February 2020
To say that Gillian has been an integral part of YA-YA is an understatement. In these past two years, Gillian has become an essential contributor to the fight against metal detectors in schools and, more recently, a youth leader of the #PoliceFreeSchools movement. At YA-YA, Gillian is a source of guidance and support to her peers.
“Gillian has taught me so much,” says Divine Ndombo, Director of Youth Development and YA-YA alumna, “She has challenged me countless times to think critically about my opinions on issues ranging from gun violence to voting, she helped hold down a three-person team, that whittled down to just the two of us carrying the vision and work of our media campaign for a short time…and each time she steps out and does more with other comrades in this fight for education justice. I’m in awe."
Gillian at the Panel for Educational Policy in 2019
At YA-YA, Gillian seized every opportunity to grow, and with her YA-YA grew too. When asked to talk about an experience at YA-YA she takes pride in, Gillian described the time she was selected to be a youth speaker at the Free Minds, Free People conference in Minnesota. “Being selected to even go…the workshop we did, the people we met; the entire experience was very transformative and informative.”
As Gillian developed her political voice, she investigated new ways to break the school to prison pipeline. Over the last year, she has helped lead YA-YA’s research on the use of metal detectors in NYC Public Schools and its impact on students, 90% of whom are Black or Latinx.
As a member of BBSC, she regularly meets with council members and other public advocates to challenge the decisions perpetuating the DOE’s criminal failure to serve its Black and Latinx students. With her peers at BBSC, Gillian testifies regularly at the monthly Panel for Educational Policy (PEP), to demand that the DOE divest from law enforcement and invest in education.
“Gillian injects equal part joy and passion in her organizing,” says Organizing Director Shaktii Man, herself a YA-YA alumna. “When I first met her she was on the shy side. Young women of color are taught to shrink themselves and it can take a lifetime to unlearn," she explains. “For Gillian it was only a matter of several weeks, blossoming into a powerful advocate for her peers, always critical of authority and public officials, constantly disrupting injustice whenever she saw it.”
Shaktii continues, “In her time here she has flourished as a core organizer in the fight against the racist deployment of metal detectors and police in schools, and has always agitated for the actual resources that make schools supportive. Gillian is a talented interventionist the world desperately needs-- bringing dissent where there is injustice, injecting laughter where there is quiet.”
