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KPFA - APEX Express

KPFA - APEX Express

By: KPFA
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APEX Express is a weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asian and Pasifika folx from all corners of the community. We are dedicated to highlighting the artists and changemakers that make up our diverse community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, artists, and activists and airs each week on KPFA 94.1FM.2026KPFA 312700 Political Science Politics & Government
Episodes
  • APEX Express – 7.16.26 – South Asians and The Labor Justice Movement

    APEX Express – 7.16.26 – South Asians and The Labor Justice Movement
    Jul 16 2026
    APEX Express is a weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. This Thursday APEX Express proudly presents “South Asians and The Labor Justice Movement.” This episode highlights Sandhya Jha, a pastor, founder and former Executive Director of the Oakland Peace Center, and racial, housing, and labor justice activist. In the first half of the episode, we discuss Sandhya’s life, their path into organizing, and what they’re up to now. The second half is dedicated to their recent project with the South Asian American Digital Archive’s Archival Creators Fellowship Program. This episode was interviewed, produced, and edited by Swati Rayasam Follow @Sandhya Jha on Facebook and check out Sandhya’s website https://sandhyajha.com/ APEX Express is a weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Listen to the episode live on KPFA 94.1 in San Francisco, 89.3 in Berkeley, and online at KPFA.org. References throughout the Show and Links: Without Fear Consulting Interfaith Alliance Oakland Peace Center Book – Blueprint for a Revolution Book – The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad Podcast – Bending Toward Justice: Avatar the Last Airbender for the Global Majority The Alliance of South Asians Taking Action – ASATA Bay Area Solidarity Summer South Asian American Digital Archive Archival Creators Fellowship Program Sandhya Jha’s project, you can listen to all of the oral histories here. Solidarity Forever Online Exhibit Arab Resource and Organizing Center Block the Boat No Tech for Apartheid University of California Labor Center Equality Labs California Trade Justice Coalition NAFCON – National Alliance for Filipino Concerns Filipino Community Center Madhvi Trivedi Patak Transcript ​[00:00:00] Miata Tan: Hello and welcome! You are tuning in to APEX Express—a weekly radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. I’m your host, Miata Tan. Tonight we’re revisiting an episode from our archives, first aired January 5th, 2023. We’re bringing it back this week in honor of South Asian American Heritage Month. This one centers Sandhya Jha — a pastor, organizer, and founder of the Oakland Peace Center — in conversation with APEX producer Swati Rayasam. The first half traces Sandhya’s path into organizing, from a labor campaign at Johns Hopkins to two decades of interfaith and racial justice work. The second half digs into Sandhya’s project with the South Asian American Digital Archive, where she spent a year interviewing South Asian workers inside the labor movement — collecting stories that don’t usually make it into the archive. Here’s Swati Rayasam in conversation with Sandhya Jha. [00:01:00] Swati Rayasam: I’m really excited actually today to talk to Sandhya Jha, who is a really close friend of mine. Hi Sandhya. Hi there. Sandhya is, a Pastor is a consultant and has been working on this really amazing project with the South Asian American Digital Archive that will get into later in the episode. But yeah, Sandhya I’m just really excited to learn more about you and to hear more of your story and, let’s just dive in. [00:01:26] Swati Rayasam: Absolutely. [00:01:27] Swati Rayasam: We should first talk a little bit about how we know each other, you have this long organizing background. I’ve been in the Bay Area for the past seven years and I would be totally lying if I said I have not historically been, or I’m not even currently an active fangirl of yours. You are literally a pastor. You are a movement worker, how did you get involved in organizing? [00:01:53] Sandhya Jha: Yeah. So I am the product of my parents who were generous, compassionate [00:02:00] people who thought about the world beyond themselves, but were never involved in organizing or activism or anything like that. I think for anybody who comes from immigrant backgrounds, it’s hard to tell our stories without naming who we come from. Right. And so my father was Sunil Kumar Jha from the village of Tildanga in West Bengal. My mother, who is still alive is Jeanette Campbell Jha. She is from Glasgow. So I come from a mixed religion and mixed race home. My parents chose not to name me Sandhya Campbell Jha not to give me that kind of grounding, but I was called Sandhya Rani Jha, which is a lot to live up to, well, yes, Rani does mean Queen. But it was actually handed down to me, part of the reason they wanted that middle name was it was my aunt’s name, Durga Rani Upadhyay and she was the one who really [00:03:00] brokered my mother’s acceptance into the Indian family and I think that there was something about being accepted on the Indian side of the family and not for many, many years on the Scottish side. That ...
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    1 hr
  • APEX Express – 6.25.26 – Spitting Fire: Doktora Robyn Speaks

    APEX Express – 6.25.26 – Spitting Fire: Doktora Robyn Speaks
    Jun 25 2026
    A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Host Miko Lee checks in with Dr. Robyn Rodriguez and we get to check out her podcast Spitting Fire: Doktora Robyn Speaks. SHOW TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Opening: Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It’s time to get on board the Apex Express. [00:00:34] Miko Lee: Welcome to Apex Express. I’m your host, Miko Lee, and tonight I’m so excited to talk to my lovely colleague, Dr. Robyn Rodriguez. Robyn is such a powerful leader. She’s often called the people’s professor. She was a professor of Asian studies at UC Davis, and now runs the Reimagination Lab. She has created a farm that is a collective action space, and she is really thinking about new ways to reimagine our world. I’m so excited for you to learn more about Dr. Robyn and you’re gonna get to hear from her new podcast, which is called appropriately, Spitting Fire: Doktora Robyn Speaks. And I just love this, ’cause spitting fire is this term for women that can speak out and share their stories, and Robyn has so much to tell. So I’m gonna interview her, and then you’re gonna get to listen to her new podcast, Spitting Fire. Thanks so much for joining us on Apex Express. [00:01:36] Welcome back Dr. Robyn Rodriguez to Apex Express. [00:01:41] Dr Robyn Rodriguez : Oh, thank you so much for having me. [00:01:44] Miko Lee: I’m so happy to have you with us once again. And I have asked you this before, but sometimes things change in the amount of years we’ve spoken to each other. So I’m gonna ask again, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you? [00:02:00] Dr Robyn Rodriguez : Yeah, who are my people? I think about folks of color broadly as my people. Whenever I refer to my people, I really do think about those of us who share intertwined and yet also distinct histories of colonization, empire, War, Violence. I think of all of us who’ve descend from peoples who’ve survived, fought back thrived, in spite of all that as my people and the legacy I hope to leave is lessons on continuing to not just dismantle the systems that caused harm on our ancestors and continue to cause harm for us now, but to offer also lessons on liberation and what it can look like and feel like so that we can continue to not just again, dismantle, but also build out the worlds we want. [00:03:15] Miko Lee: Speaking of lessons, you have a brand new podcast series called Spitting Fire Doc. Robyn Speaks, and I wonder if you can talk to me about how this podcast came to be. [00:03:27] Dr Robyn Rodriguez : You’re gonna laugh. Well, there are a couple of things I think that lead to the podcast. I’ve always wanted to do a podcast. I did college radio when I was an undergrad at UC Santa Barbara. I had a co-host for a show called WAR Women in the Act of Resistance, and we used to love to always say, we declare war on. [00:03:53] Miko Lee: I love that. [00:03:53] Dr Robyn Rodriguez : Whatever it is that we, yeah, [00:03:58] Miko Lee: that’s so good. [00:03:59] Dr Robyn Rodriguez : I, I, yeah. So I, I love doing college radio and have always, you know, people would joke or I don’t know if it was a joke, but compliment me on having a kind of good radio voice. I don’t know how true that is. [00:04:16] Miko Lee: Very true, true. [00:04:16] Dr Robyn Rodriguez : But I’ve always had a, an interest in, podcasting as a platform. I think in general I prefer the long form platform. I prefer storytelling and, uh, there’s something really powerful about podcasts is I think for me, really connected to radio programming. I don’t see them, I guess, in very different ways. So I’d always wanted to do podcasts even when I was still teaching at, uc Davis, in Asian American Studies. I always thought podcasts are a really, really powerful way to share the knowledges of ethnic studies beyond the classroom. So I’d actually clipped on a recorder while I was lecturing and had uploaded a bunch of a raw unedited audio to what used to be iTunes University. So in some ways that might have been like the first podcast in a way. And then the funny thing about, uh, Spitting Fire it was kind of launched a little sooner than I was ready to be honest. I basically messed up on what was supposed to be a Zoom video. I don’t know exactly what happened, but we only had audio and I thought, you know what? We’re slapping that together, editing it and putting it out there, because I thought that the conversation that we had over Zoom was so, just really powerful and informative, and I didn’t want to not have it circulate in the world. And so I’ve sort of tried to proceed in ...
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    1 hr
  • APEX Express – 7.9.26 – Connie Wun & Think Twice

    APEX Express – 7.9.26 – Connie Wun & Think Twice
    Jul 9 2026
    A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Host Miko Lee speaks with Dr. Connie Wun and we get to hear her new podcast Think Twice. The post APEX Express – 7.9.26 – Connie Wun & Think Twice appeared first on KPFA.
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    41 mins
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