Ep 18: Ary Mondragon, Dia de los Muertos, D.C.: Honoring Your Roots, Flourishing with Freedom

Equality Talks: The Official ERA Podcast

In episode 18 of the Equality Talks podcast, host Elisa Parker introduces us to activist, community organizer and radio host, Ary Mondragon-Mimms, co-founder of Dia de los Muertos, D.C. Mondragon has helped bring together thousands to the National Mall in D.C. to honor and celebrate our ancestors and inspire action and social change through arts and culture. Having engaged with her own fight for freedom in the United States as an immigrant from Mexico she connects with others like herself to ensure they receive the proper resources, tools, support and protection.

Elisa speaks with Mondragon on the values of honoring our ancestors, our roots and ultimately, death in order to honor ourselves and each other in life. They discuss the importance in taking a leap and the courage necessary to land with confidence and how she integrates her work through Dia de Los Muertos, D.C. to support immigration reforms, marginalized families and women's empowerment. She is a wonderful force of light and possibilities and her enthusiasm for social change is contagious.

Hosted by nationally acclaimed radio host and Equal Voices/ERA Coalition, Elisa Parker, Equality Talks bridges the intersections of equality, justice, and social activism to unify as a collective and change the status quo.

Equality Talks focuses on the key facets of equality across all communities, including everything from gender, racial, economic and reproductive justice, to labor, immigrant, and LGBTQ+ rights.

For more information on Equality Talks go to www.ERACoaltion.org and www.EqualVoice.org.

Moving from silos to solidarity.

The ERA Coalition was founded in 2014 to bring concerted, organized action to the effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA Coalition has a sister organization, the Fund for Women’s Equality, which promotes public education and outreach on the need for constitutional equality. Composed of more than 290 organizations across the country representing millions of people, the Coalition is a movement of movements focused on overall equality in the United States.

While the effort to amend the constitution to include sex equality began nearly a century ago, our renewed efforts are centered on women of color (African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Latina, and Native American), gender-nonconforming and transgender women and girls, and nonbinary people – those who are most impacted by systemic inequities.

www.eracoalition.org | www.fundforwomensequality.org

About Ary:

Ary Mondragon-Mimms, co-founder of Día de los Muertos DC, Activist, community organizer, co-host of The Pedro Biaggi Show

Ary Mondragon is a native born Mexican, local activist and community organizer in the DMV area. She has spent six years advocating for a number of different social causes that have directly affected her community including, the decriminalization of Marijiuana, female empowerment, support for marginalized families and immigration reform.