Rising Up With Sonali: Recent Episodes
Rising Up With Sonali
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Click here to start your subscription FEATURING DR. YOHURU WILLIAMS - Five years ago, the racial justice uprising in the wake of George Floyd’s murder was in full swing, and Donald Trump during his first term pledged to “make Juneteenth famous.” June 19th is an important historical marker of the day in 1865 when a group of enslaved African Americans were finally told of the news of the emancipation proclamation that ensured their freedom – almost two and a half years after it was signed by President Abraham Lincoln.
🔓*Special feature for paid subscribers!* Read the rough transcript of the interview below the video.Now, during Trump’s second term, when his attacks on communities of color, Black history, DEI initiatives, and more have escalated, how can we reset Juneteeth within the context of authoritarian white supremacy?
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Subscribe NOW (5-day free trial) This past week the Los Angeles area has been marked by the terror of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, and by the resistance of ordinary people. Every day in cities across Southern California, people have been gathering in public spaces to demand an end to the raids, for city officials to pull back police and end an evening curfew in downtown LA.
On Thursday June 12, hundreds of young people gathered in front of Pasadena City Hall in a protest that was publicized on social media by highschoolers on summer break. As part of our series Rising Up in the Streets, Sonali Kolhatkar spoke with some of the young folks gathered there, as well as a teacher, and a local activist with Black Lives Matter.
✊*Available only to paid subscribers:* Read the rough transcript of this report below the video.Just two days later, an estimated 30,000 people mobilized in downtown LA for the No Kings march and rally, part of a nationwide series of actions that was organized well before the ICE raids, to coincide with Donald Trump’s military parade in Washington DC. While reports from DC suggest Trump’s spectacle was a bust, an estimated 6-12 million people marched against his policies in more than 2000 cities nationwide. Sonali Kolhatkar brings you these sights, sounds, and voices from LA.
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Subscribe now with a 5-day free trial FEATURING PABLO ALVARADO, RICK COLE, AND OTHERS - On Sunday June 8, hundreds of protesters mobilized in the town of Pasadena, California, where I live, just a few miles from the border of the town of Altadena which was destroyed by the Eaton Fire. The protesters gathered outside AC Hotel near Old Town Pasadena, upon hearing reports that agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were hotel guests. ICE vans were spotted on the hotel’s rooftop parking structure and workers sent word that they were being questioned by ICE agents in their hotel rooms.
✍️*Included with paid subscription: Rough transcript of the report below the video.As part of our on-going series Rising Up in the Streets, we bring you this special report featuring interviews with Pablo Alvarado, Executive Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and Rick Cole, Pasadena City Council member*.
We’ll also hear an impassioned report from Griselda Diaz, a resident of South LA who was at a mass protest in Paramount, LA where ICE agents raided the area outside a Home Depot, and we’ll hear from poet Alejandro who rapped about being an immigrant at the impromptu Pasadena rally. Finally, we’ll go to Monrovia where ICE Agents reportedly transferred to a Courtyard Marriott Hotel. Protester Gloria will explain why she showed up outside the hotel.
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Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) Barely five months after surviving wildfires that destroyed the towns of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, Southern California was hit by another invasion–this time consisting of federal agents swarming into workplaces to round up people suspected of being undocumented, and disappearing them.
Tens of thousands of people have been gathering in downtown Los Angeles since June 5, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents showed up at a Southern California Home Depot and an outlet in the garment district, detaining immigrant workers. A few hours later, ICE agents also violently arrested and detained prominent union leader David Huerta, President of the Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West (SEIU-USWW).
✍️Your paid subscription includes a rough transcript of this story below! LA has become an epicenter of the resistance to President Donald Trump’s policy to criminalize and deport undocumented people. In this immigrant-rich city, cultures, nationalities, and races have mixed and mingled for generations.
I was on the streets of downtown LA on Monday June 9, and bring you this special report as part of our Rising Up in the Streets series.
You’ll hear the voices of April Verrett, SEIU’s first Black president, and Dolores Huerta, legendary labor leader, speaking from the stage at Grand Park at a rally for David Huerta. (Mr. Huerta was charged and freed from ICE custody later in the day.) I also spoke with Pastor Cue of Clergy and Laity United for Justice, former West Covina mayor Brian Calderón Tabatabai, of Working Families Party, Hussam Ayloush, Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations LA, and State Assembly member Isaac Bryan.
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Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) FEATURING JUDY KAROFSKY - There are tens of thousands of assisted living facilities in the United States, institutions where elderly people live and die, their families hoping to have their needs met professionally and with dignity. But not only are such facilities unaffordable, they are riddled with problems.
✍️*New feature for paid subscribers! Read the rough transcript of the interview below.Through personal experience with navigating the system to care for her mother, Judy Karofsky explores how elder care is broken and how to fix it, in a new book called DisElderly Conduct: The Flawed Business of Assisted Living and Hospice*.
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Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) FEATURING CASSIE OWENS - Journalism is meant to be a practice that informs and educates the public to make good decisions for a democratic society. But, journalism in a white supremacist setting has been, well, white supremacist, which in turn, has deeply harmed communities of color. When journalism is steeped in racist framing, it does more harm than good.
✍️*New feature for paid subscribers!* Read the rough transcript of the interview below the video.Now, a new project in Philadelphia aims to fix that. The Philadelphia Safer Journalism Project brings together community members, journalists, therapists, researchers, lawyers and artists to change harmful crime coverage.
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Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) FEATURING HUWAIDA ARRAF - A dozen anti-genocide international activists are on board a ship called the Madleen, sailing to Gaza to break Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid. A previous ship, the Conscience, was attacked by drones earlier this year while in waters near Malta, in an incident that has been linked to Israel.
💡*New feature for paid subscribers!* Read the rough transcript of the interview below.Now, the Madleen will make another attempt to enter Gaza and deliver humanitarian supplies. The Gaza Freedom Flotilla has sailed to Gaza for years, creating a powerful moral lifeline for Palestinians living under Israeli apartheid and genocide. Fifteen years ago, Israeli forces attacked one of the flotilla’s ships, the Mavi Marmara, killing ten activists on board and wounding dozens more.
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Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) FEATURING MARA EINSTEIN - Ever watch people in line at the grocery store or the post office scrolling their phones on Instagram or TikTok? Perhaps you are one of those people, swiping up from one video to the other, enjoying entertaining content created by ordinary people just like you.
💡*New feature for paid subscribers!* Read the rough transcript of the interview below the video.A new book makes the compelling case that most social media feeds are now filled with content that’s been created using the same marketing tactics as cults do. You’re not watching content as much as you’re endlessly scrolling through ads. Former marketing executive and media studies professor Mara Einstein helps us sharpen our radar for branded content.
Extended Cut of Dr. Mara Einstein on her book Hoodwinked
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FEATURING MARA EINSTEIN - Ever watch people in line at the grocery store or the post office scrolling their phones on Instagram or TikTok? Perhaps you are one of those people, swiping up from one video to the other, enjoying entertaining content created by ordinary people just like you.
📖*New feature for paid subscribers!* Read the rough transcript of the interview below the video.A new book makes the compelling case that most social media feeds are now filled with content that’s been created using the same marketing tactics as cults do. You’re not watching content as much as you’re endlessly scrolling through ads. Former marketing executive and media studies professor Mara Einstein helps us sharpen our radar for branded content.
Extended Cut of Dr. Mara Einstein on her book Hoodwinked
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Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) FEATURING NOAH WEIGHT & NYLA MOXLEY - When the Boeing corporation donated $10 million to the University of Washington campus for a new Interdisciplinary Engineering Building (IEB), university officials likely didn’t expect it to become the focus of student activism. In early May 2025, dozens of students and activists occupied the building in protest of UW’s ties to Boeing, a company whose weapons Israel is actively using to massacre Palestinians in an on-going genocide.
💡*New feature for paid subscribers!* Read the rough transcript of the interview below the video.University officials, rather than meeting student demands, appear to be siding with Boeing and Israel, and have suspended students involved in the IEB occupation. Students have organized themselves into a formation called SUPER, which stands for Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return.
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Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) FEATURING CHRISTINE NEUMANN-ORTIZ - The state of Wisconsin has become a frontline in the fight for immigrant rights against Donald Trump’s regime. Not only did federal agents arrest Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan and charge her with breaking federal law over an immigrant’s capture by ICE agents, but Homeland Security Secretary Tom Homan has threatened to arrest Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers. Homan warned Evers with arrest for issuing guidance of their rights to state employees.
💡*New feature for paid subscribers!* Read the rough transcript of the interview below.But Wisconsin’s immigrant rights movement is strong and is standing up to the Trump regime’s attacks creatively and persistently.
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Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) FEATURING REV. JENNIFER GUTIERREZ - Two thousand four hundred mental health workers with Kaiser Permanente in Southern California are celebrating a major union win after more than half a year on the picket line. The workers, who are members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers won a contract that is retroactive to September 2024, that includes a 20% pay raise over four years and a new pension plan.
The struggle was tough, with union members engaging in civil disobedience, risking arrest, and suffering without work for more than six months. The strike came just as the demand for mental health therapies in Southern California skyrocketed with tens of thousands of people losing their homes to wildfires.
💡*New feature for paid subscribers!* Read the rough transcript of the interview below.The success of Kaiser’s mental health workers comes at the same time as more than 55,000 Los Angeles County workers went on strike in late April, and, just as the Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution raising the minimum wage for tourism workers to $30 an hour, the highest minimum in the nation.
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Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) FEATURING MELINA ABDULLAH - Five years ago on May 25, 2020, just months into a global shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the videotaped brutal murder of a Minneapolis Black man named George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer sparked a historic movement. The streets of US cities erupted into one of the most massive movements for social justice in history. Black Lives Matter, a rallying cry coined years earlier, now emerged from the lips of politicians and pundits as a broad consensus was reached that police had gone too far.
💡*New feature for paid subscribers! Read the rough transcript of the interview below.This latest chapter in the movement for racial justice didn’t come from nowhere. It was simmering for years, even decades, and leaders demanded an abolition of police and prisons, or at the very least, a defunding of police and a re-funding public safety institutions. Where is that movement today?*
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Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) FEATURING MARA KRONENFELD - This May 15 marked the 77th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, the “catastrophe” that led to a mass displacement of Palestinians upon the creation of the state of Israel. Palestinians in Gaza are struggling for their very existence as Israel continues to bombard the narrow strip of land with full throated logistical and moral US support.
Israel has launched a ground assault, escalating an already-fully fledged genocide, killing hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza each day. Meanwhile, Israel also continues to enforce a policy of mass starvation, largely blocking UN aid trucks from entering.
💡*New feature for paid subscribers!* Read the rough transcript of the interview below.Most mainstream media are missing the mass global solidarity movement rising up in support of Palestinians. An estimated hundred thousand people protested in the Netherlands, and half a million in London. Large protests have also been held in US cities.
FEATURING KAMAU FRANKLIN - In our on-going coverage of the failure of the Democratic Party in the general election, with the loss of Senate control and the White House, the question arises: what could organizers have done more of or better? And can we organize our way out of the mess we’re now in?
FEATURING DR. JENN JACKSON - Donald Trump is president-elect, winning his second term and beating Vice President Kamala Harris. Pre-election polls did not capture his popularity and on election night Trump made gains in all seven swing states early on, ultimately winning five out of seven. In addition to winning the electoral college vote, Trump also won the popular vote. However, turnout was lower this year than in 2020.
We face a future where fossil fuels will likely be entirely unleashed, leading to faster, more catastrophic climate change than the one we now have, federal government workers will be fired en masse in an attempt to destroy the regulatory state in favor of businesses, and immigrants will be deported en masse.
FEATURING SILKY SHAH - Ahead of the polls opening on election day, Donald Trump made his final pitch to voters, and, unsurprisingly, he relied on demonizing immigrants as a way to mobilize support. He described the U.S. as an “occupied country,” which referenced both undocumented people and those with documents and said he would “rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered.”
Meanwhile, billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s biggest supporter, has been outed as having violated immigration law in the past. Musk has been beating the anti-immigrant drums nearly as hard as Trump.
Regardless of who wins on election day, immigrants have suffered from relentless dehumanization in terms of rhetoric and policy. While the Biden Harris administration hasn't chanted “Mass deportations now,” it has adopted Trumpian anti-immigrant policies at the border. What can immigrants’ rights activists do to prepare for the future, no matter who ends up in the White House?
FEATURING SERENE KHADER - Election 2024 is upon us and today we’ll examine the ways in which women have been politicized and mobilized by numerous issues, including the attacks on their bodily autonomy. Most recently Donald Trump vowed to “protect women…whether they like it or not.”
By the time audiences hear this interview, we may know the outcome of the election. Regardless, we’ll examine today the role of women in the election, how candidates spoke to them and of them, and what a future presidential administration can do to serve women and their rights.
FEATURING KHURY PETERSEN-SMITH - The genocide in Gaza has been front and center of our political landscape since last October. Leading up to Election 2024, a movement of “uncommitted” voters vowed to use their power to force the hand of the Biden Harris administration into embargoing U.S. weapons to Israel.
As of election day, which is the day this program is being recorded, the Arab American-rich state of Michigan–a crucial swing state–has yet to turn toward Kamala Harris and it’s possible the outcome of the election may depend on her refusal to end U.S. facilitation of the genocide in Gaza. Regardless of how the election transpires, we’ll examine today the way in which Palestine has played a role in the election and how a future administration can be held accountable.
FEATURING DORTELL WILLIAMS - There are two initiatives on the ballot in California this November dealing with the prison industrial complex. Proposition 36 would worsen penalties for petty crimes, increasing the prison population and reversing more than a decade of decarceration efforts. Meanwhile, Proposition 6 would end forced slavery inside California prisons. Prison abolitionists are calling for a No vote on 36 and a Yes vote on 6. With little public education on the propositions, polls show the reverse is likely.
Our prison correspondent Dortell Williams in a past episode explained how California’s Proposition 36 would increase harms, particularly to low-income communities of color and how similar initiatives in other cities and states are reversing progress. Today he makes the case for why Proposition 6, if passed, would end the forced labor loophole in California, and puts it into a national context.
FEATURING ERICA ENGLAND - There are only days left before the November 5, 2024 election, and all eyes are on a handful of swing states–a disturbing and direct outcome of the electoral college system. Not only are party nominees holding relentless rallies and campaign events in states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina, but grassroots activists are mobilizing voters to the polls.
In hurricane ravaged North Carolina, there is the added complication of climate disaster in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene with thousands left homeless, grieving those they lost, devastated infrastructure, a ruined economy, lost businesses, and more.
FEATURING ARUN GUPTA - Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump held a rally this past weekend at Madison Square Garden, which, in the words of the New York Times was A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism.
From Tucker Carlson to Stephen Miller, Trump brought out his favored cast of conspiracists and racist fearmongers. Among them were some new faces too, most controversially, a little-known comedian named Tony Hinchcliffe who referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean,” and made a racist joke about Black people carving watermelons for Halloween.
Today we’ll get a report back from a journalist and frequent guest on this show who attended the rally and whose analysis goes far deeper than mainstream news media’s assessment of Trump’s Madison Square Garden gathering.
FEATURING CHUCK COLLINS - With just weeks to go before the November 5 election, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are crisscrossing the country making speeches and campaign stops. Among the economic issues plaguing voters, housing is close to the top of the list and Harris has unveiled some specific plans such as offering first time home buyers $25,000 in aid toward down payments, and building millions of new housing units.
A new report by the Institute for Policy Studies called Billionaire Blowback on Housing highlights the worst culprits of the housing crisis, rarely blamed by politicians: billionaire investors who, for years, have been scooping up residential properties simply because they are so flush with cash, and entering the long term rental and short term vacation markets, as well as engaging in real estate speculation. The report also documents how grassroots housing rights and tenant rights groups are fighting back.
FEATURING ERICKA WILEY - Among some down-ballot races on November 5, 2024 will be judicial elections –but only a handful of states and localities. Local judges are elected in partisan or nonpartisan races, or, more often than not, simply appointed by state legislatures or by governors.
Given the critical role that judges play in the criminal justice system which entraps poor people and people of color disproportionately, activists are calling for a need to democratize judicial selection.
FEATURING ALEXSIS RODGERS - Polls around the nation show Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in a dead heat in several decision-making swing states ahead of the November 5 election. With enormous amounts of disinformation swirling in the media ecosphere, including from prominent figures like billionaire Elon Musk, little is guaranteed as voters begin mailing in ballots or readying their sample ballots to take into the voting booth.
Much depends on increasing turnout and a newly formed coalition called Black Power Voters Alliance is ratcheting up its organizing in a critical Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) effort which includes on-the-ground canvassing, door-to-door outreach, targeted phone banking, and text message voter outreach, as well as in-person gatherings.
FEATURING GIDEON LEVY - It’s been more than a year since the start of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza that has left more than 40,000 dead, including 17,000 children. Israel has since expanded the war to Lebanon and is threatening to strike Iran.
The Biden-Harris administration in the United States has wholeheartedly supported Israel’s genocide, sending weapons to kill Gazans, and President Biden recently committed one hundred U.S. troops to join Israel, this, in spite of a lack of public support for such a move.
Gideon Levy is a prominent Israeli journalist, who for decades has spoken out against the oppression of Palestinians in his column in Ha’aretz called “Twilight Zone.” In 2010, he wrote a book called The Punishment of Gaza and has followed that up with a new book released in October 2024 called The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe. Levy spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali fromTel Aviv about his new book and the on-going genocide of Palestinians.
FEATURING DR. ROSA ALICIA CLEMENTE - Just weeks before the United States presidential election on November 5, 2024, all eyes are on a handful of swing states where the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris remains tight.
In those states–such as Michigan, Arizona, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania –disaffected progressives may end up choosing third party candidates such as Jill Stein and Cornel West. The Biden-Harris administration’s unequivocal backing of Israel’s genocide in Gaza is one of the main reasons why some voters feel alienated from Democrats. But, economic justice issues such as the high cost of living and low wages, are also a central concern.
Democratic Party stalwarts are blaming Stein and West more than Harris, pointing to Trump as an existential threat to democracy. Indeed, Trump’s supporters, understanding this, have fueled Stein and West’s candidacies with money and ballot access.
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FEATURING ANGÉLICA CHÁZARO - The rightwing Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 justifies the racist impact of policing by empowering the Department of Justice to focus on violent crime, in spite of the fact that violent crime has fallen dramatically. Its authors denounce criminal justice reform efforts, and promote federal oversight of jurisdictions where police divestment efforts have had some success.
The “tough-on-crime” approach has champions both among Republicans and Democrats, in spite of the fact that in 2020, many elites claiming to support racial justice vowed changes to violent policing in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis.
What would a progressive vision of racial justice and policing look like? There has been for decades an active movement to divest from policing with an eye toward abolishing police and prisons altogether. That movement offers some answers to the question.
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FEATURING NICK TILSEN - The rightwing extremist Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 argues that too much public land is not being used to its full potential and should be sold to private interests for development and fossil fuel extraction. The authors want to strengthen the U.S. military and call for increasing the army’s budget in order to “defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.” They also back increasing investment in weapons development and expanding nuclear arsenals.
What would a progressive vision of sovereignty look like? As climate catastrophes such as Hurricane Helene in the U.S. and Europe’s historic flooding damage communities, and as Israel with U.S. help is carrying out a genocide in Gaza and expanding its war into Lebanon and Yemen, how are Indigenous communities expressing what’s most needed to ensure sovereignty and justice?
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FEATURING PARDISS KEBRIAEI - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court in early October will hear arguments in an important case that could have national implications. The case seeks to end mandatory life in prison without parole–what many refer to as “death by incarceration”--sentences for felony murder.
The plaintiff in the case is one Derek Lee who is serving a life sentence without parole for a felony murder conviction. Except that he never killed anyone, nor intended to kill. Pennsylvania has mandatory life without parole sentencing for people involved in felony murders whether or not they are directly culpable–and practice that disproportionately impacts Black Americans.
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https://ia800701.us.archive.org/5/items/2024-08-20-RUWS/2024_08_20_Progress2025.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 5:46)
Many of us have by now heard about Project 2025, a 922-page document crafted by the ultra-conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. The authors of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” gives a future conservative president a roadmap for how to decimate reproductive and LGBTQ rights, undermine racial justice, dehumanize immigrants, privatize government services, accelerate climate change, and so much more.
So, how are people responding to that? Is there a comprehensive progressive counter-agenda designed to improve conditions for and safeguard the rights of all people?
At YES! Media, for nearly 30 years we’ve been reporting on the solutions that center human and planetary needs. That’s why we’ve launched Progress 2025, a hub for the big ideas—and grassroots methods—that offers a hopeful, collective vision countering the toxic individualism and authoritarianism of Project 2025. We will be publishing new, original stories every week that expand the framework of what is possible under a Progress 2025 vision.
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FEATURING JORDAN IFUEKO - Jordan Ifueko was only 13 years old when she first wrote her debut novel, Raybearer, an Afrofantasy for young readers. When the book was finally published it ended up on the New York Times best-seller list and is now being developed as a Netflix show.
Born to Nigerian immigrant parents, Ifueko wanted to see characters like herself in fiction and literature. Her third novel, just out in August 2024, is called The Maid and the Crocodile and is set in the same universe as the Raybearer duology. In addition to upending racial stereotypes, also subverts tropes about essential and domestic workers.
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FEATURING AHMAD ABUZNAID - Israel’s Channel 12 recently broadcast footage that it says is from Sde Teiman, a secret detention center that many have likened to a concentration camp. Israel has held hundreds of Palestinian prisoners at the camp since last October and the footage that was broadcast shows dozens of men lying face down on the ground while a group of Israeli soldiers pick one out and lead him to an area where they proceed to rape him.
It is thought that this footage corroborates the recent news of the gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman. The doctor treating the victim was horrified by his injuries and felt compelled to speak out. So far the perpetrators of the attack have been placed only under house arrest. In July Israeli authorities arrested the soldiers involved after a damning report by the rights group B’Tselem documented widespread torture and rape at the facility.
While U.S. news media covered alleged sexual abuses by Hamas forces on October 7th in extensive detail and with scant evidence, there has been deafening silence on the documented sexual abuse of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers.
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FEATURING HEIDI BEIRICH - “Unaccountable federal spending is the secret lifeblood of the Great Awokening,” write the authors of Mandate for Leadership, the Conservative Promise on page 6 of their 922-page document. The so-called Mandate is the centerpiece of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan to rewrite the rules of government in a second Donald Trump administration. These days it seems everyone is talking about Project 2025. But the former president claims he knows nothing about it even though more than a hundred people who once worked for him are involved in it.
In fact, in 2022, Trump spoke at a dinner sponsored by the Heritage Foundation where he said, “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
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FEATURING KAMAU FRANKLIN - Among the themes at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week is “Make America Safe Once Again,” which apparently refers to “supporting law enforcement, border security and battling human and drug trafficking.” According to a press release from the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, his plan is to end “the endless crime spree and drug flow that plague America.” This, in spite of the fact that crime levels have dropped dramatically since the 1990s.
There seems to be little concern about young disaffected Republican men as the source of violence however, just days after Trump survived an assassination attempt. The man suspected to have been the shooter was a 20-year old registered Republican who used a legally obtained AR-15 rifle. The odds that gun violence will be on the RNC agenda, in light of the fact that gun-related deaths are rising each year, are slim to zero.
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FEATURING ALEX PRESS - As extreme heat envelopes large swaths of the United States this summer–in line with predictions that climate scientists have been making for decades–workers face deadly risks. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently published the text of a proposed rule that, if it were to become official, would become the first ever federal regulation protecting millions of workers from heat-related stress.
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FEATURING LISA GRAVES - Of all the rulings made by conservative justices on the United States Supreme Court this term, perhaps none is as consequential as the decision that former president Donald Trump is immune from being criminally prosecuted for actions considered “official” while he was in the White House. The ruling has not only upended all of the criminal indictments against him but has rewritten the definition of the presidency and law.
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FEATURING DÉBORA SOUZA SILVA AND REV. WANDA JOHNSON - A new documentary, released by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY ahead of the 4th anniversary of the police murder of George Floyd, highlights how Black mothers cope with the most unimaginable loss of their lives.
The film For Our Children, by award winning Brazilian documentarian Débora Souza Silva, centers Rev. Wanda Johnson, the mother of Oscar Grant. Johnson acts as a mentor to other women like her whose sons and daughters have been beaten, brutalized, and murdered by police and explores a movement of mothers determined to prevent others’ children from being victimized by the same system.
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FEATURING LAJWARD ZAHRA - The campus protests that swept the nation in recent weeks are as clear a sign as any that young people are politically aware, active, and willing to put their bodies on the line for their beliefs. But, as we hurtle toward another make-or-break election in November, many are asking, will this political engagement in the streets translate into action at the polls?
In a new story for YES!, a young journalist and Rice University freshman, Lajward Zahra, explored “Gen Z’s Political Paradox.”
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FEATURING JENNIFER WELLS - Thousands of childcare workers walked off their jobs the day after Mother’s Day, for the national Day Without Child Care. It was the third annual commemoration of a day intended to draw attention to the unsustainable costs of child care to parents and child care providers. Child care costs are often the biggest expense for parents of young children, even as child care providers are unable to make a living wage.
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The same day that UCLA student activists were reeling from their Free Gaza encampment being attacked by pro-Israel supporters and police officers, students at California State University of Los Angeles (Cal State LA) were busy setting up their brand new campus protest. Dozens of tents were erected just across from the campus student union on May 1st and the area barricaded by benches and tables. Young people wearing masks and keffiyahs sat and prayed, studied, quietly conversed, participated in group activities or staffed tents dedicated to food and medical aid. Members of the community who were not enrolled at the school also showed up to support.
Special thanks to Anna Buss for production assistance.
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FEATURING ROBIN D G KELLEY - Students at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are returning to their campus after a week of violent attacks aimed at a student encampment set up to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The University has moved to create a safety officer role to oversee a new Office of Campus Safety. Late in the evening on April 30th, into the early morning hours of May 1st, a group of pro-Israel supporters destroyed parts of the encampment on campus and injured students, while police took no action for hours. Then, on May 2nd, police dismantled the camp. Students are facing serious repression in the face of their activism and there is widespread outrage over UCLA’s treatment of its young activists.
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FEATURING DORTELL WILLIAMS - California imprisons nearly 200,000 people in various types of detention centers, including prisons and jails. If California was a country, it would have one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world. Of this number, thousands are serving sentences of “life in prison without the possibility of parole” (LWOP), meaning they will live and die behind bars.
According to Human Rights Watch, “More than 5,000 of the nearly 56,000 men and women sentenced to LWOP in the United States are in California, the third largest number of any US jurisdiction.” Now, states such as Pennsylvania are considering overturning LWOP as unconstitutional.
For the last 20 years Rising Up host Sonali Kolhatkar has been communicating via letters with Dortell Williams, who has been imprisoned in California under an LWOP sentence.
Williams has filed commentaries for Prison Radio, written books and earned multiple academic degrees during a life that has mostly been behind bars. For the first time in their decades-long correspondence, thanks to newly enacted reforms in prison communication, Williams was able to speak face-to-face with Kolhatkar and appeared as a guest on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali. He shared what it has been like for him to be incarcerated for decades with no prospects of freedom.
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FEATURING ELEZ BERESIN-SCHER - As university students continue to hold their ground at Free Gaza encampments on campuses around the nation, Jewish students remain central to the movement.
In January 2024, a Bryn Mawr College sociology major Elez Beresin-Scher spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar about the Shabbat for Ceasefire campus actions she was organizing.
Beresin-Scher, a junior who has been active with Jewish Voice for Peace since her freshman year, has now joined a newly set-up Free Gaza encampment on her college campus. She returned to YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali from the Bryn Mawr encampment to explain why she was protesting.
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FEATURING JACOB AND RITHIK - A nationwide uprising led by college students has sprung up to demand an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, it’s on-going occupation, and U.S. arms sales to Israel, as well as for universities to divest from Israel.
Students have set up encampments, reminiscent of Occupy Wall Street and other movements for social justice and have been met by violent police repression.
Epicenters include Columbia University in New York, University of Southern California, and the University of Texas at Austin. But the list of campus encampments has continued to grow and students remain undeterred by arrests, suspensions, threats of censure and accusations of antisemitism. In fact, many of the protests are dominated by Jewish students.
San Francisco State University students on Monday set up their encampment, and two student organizers give us an inside view of the protest actions.
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FEATURING AMY FITCH-HEACOCK - The Arizona Supreme Court earlier this month restored a civil war era law banning abortion in all cases except when the life of the biological parent was in jeopardy. It is currently considered the most draconian abortion ban in the nation. When that law was first enacted in 1864, scientists did not even understand how ovulation worked. The ruling comes ahead of a ballot measure in the November election that seeks to enshrine abortion access in the state’s constitution. Pro-choice advocates say there is an increased surge of interest in passing the measure now.
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FEATURING CEDRIC DE LEON - Workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers (UAW) last week in a historic win for organized labor. Volkswagen is a German automaker and its Chattanooga plant was the only one in the entire company to not have union representation. It was also the first time a foreign-owned auto manufacturing factory in the southern United States unionized. UAW’s next union vote will take place at two Mercedes plants in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in mid-May.
Republican governors in Southern states have taken a hard line against UAW. The Governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas signed on to a letter referring to the UAW as, “special interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by.”
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FEATURING SHANA L. REDMOND - Several elite college campuses such as those of Columbia University, New York University, Harvard and Yale were closed on Monday following major protest actions in support of Palestinian rights and against Israel’s on-going genocide in Gaza. This comes days after more than a 100 activists at an encampment were arrested at Columbia.
Protesters have been vilified as antisemitic even though they include sizeable numbers of Jewish students. Many of those students joined in a seder at the Columbia encampment to mark Passover on Monday. Similar encampments have cropped up at college campuses across the United States.
Meanwhile, news emerged of the discovery of a mass grave containing more than 300 bodies in southern Gaza, lending even greater credibility to genocide accusations against Israel. The United Nations reported that victims were found stripped naked with their hands tied.
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FEATURING STEPHANIE ABRAHAM - April is Arab American Heritage month, a time of year meant to celebrate the history and culture of Americans who claim ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
Such recognition was hard fought in light of the decades of demonization that Arab Americans faced after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
But in 2024 when Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza fueled by U.S. weapons, Arab Americans face a dilemma about how to celebrate their heritage—one that Stephanie Abraham writes about in YES! Magazine.
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FEATURING HARRY FEDER - Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology last week announced they would return to requiring SAT and ACT test scores as part of their admissions processes. Starting before the COVID-19 pandemic, universities had begun to drop test requirements. The pandemic lockdowns accelerated the trend and soon thousands of institutions had become test-free or test-optional, including all University of California schools. Now, elite universities like Harvard are backtracking, in spite of decades of research showing the SAT is biased against women, people of color, and low-income applicants.
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FEATURING MARK DUMMETT - It has been nearly 40 years since the world’s worst industrial disaster claimed the lives of thousands of people and continues to impact more than half a million. Justice remains elusive for the survivors of the Bhopal disaster in India who are living with the impacts of an unprecedented chemical leak from a plant run by Union Carbide Corporation in 1984.
Dow Chemical, which owns Union Carbide, has refused to properly compensate victims and conduct a thorough clean up. Litigation is on-going in both India and the U.S. Amnesty International, which has been documenting the disaster for years, has just released a new report called Bhopal: 40 Years of Injustice.
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FEATURING JOCELYN MCCALLA - Weeks of chaos and violence in Haiti may be coming to an end as an agreement for a transitional government is drawn up this week. Haiti’s political parties and numerous stakeholding civil society groups have coalesced around the idea of a 9-member council that will remain in power for 22 months before elections can be held for a new president.
The current crisis peaked when violence broke out across Haiti, prompting Haitian President Ariel Henry to announce his resignation in response to pressure from the United States. He had been in Kenya, on the verge of authorizing a thousand Kenyan forces to deploy to Haiti to tackle political violence. Mr. Henry had taken over the presidency from Jovenel Moïse who was assassinated in 2021.
Many Haitians are desperate to flee the violence but face hostile politicians such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who has deployed National Guardsmen to the southern part of his state.
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FEATURING HUWAIDA ARRAF - It has been six months since Israel’s latest war on Palestinians began and the death toll has surpassed 33,000. Human Rights Watch has just released a report accusing Israel of using starvation “as a weapon of war” against Palestinians and particularly children.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterrez issued an urgent call to end Israel’s war saying it has unleashed, “relentless death and destruction to Palestinians in Gaza.”
Meanwhile Doctors Without Borders has accused the Israel Defense Forces of targeting aid workers after the killings of 7 World Central Kitchen staff, saying “the pattern of attacks is either intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence.”
Responding to the on-going genocide, activists and advocates of Palestinian rights are planning to set sail on a number of ships carrying aid directly to the people of Gaza as part of a Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
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FEATURING IMAN HUSAIN - Actor Ramy Youssef recently said the words “Free Palestine” on live television as part of his Saturday Night Live monologue. And film director Jonathan Glazer in his Oscars’ acceptance speech denounced the use of Judaism to justify the genocide in Gaza.
The issue of justice for Palestine has not always been welcomed in the arts. But, as Youssef and Glazer demonstrated, the tide is slowly turning. Part of that tide is the reissue of a protest song performed in 1972 by Egyptian-born Palestinian singer Zeinab Shaath.
The master copy of the song, called “The Urgent Call of Palestine” was thought to be lost to Israeli theft for decades. Writing about its resurrection at In These Times magazine is Iman Husain.
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FEATURING TORY STEPHENS - When we think about climate change, we often think in terms of statistics, studies, and measurements of melting glaciers, dwindling wildlife populations, and mass human migration. It’s a grim reality. But, Grist, one of the leading climate solutions media outlets in the nation, asks us to imagine a future inspired by contemporary climate-related fiction.
Grist has partnered with YES! on its new project, Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, an annual contest to celebrate short stories rooted in environmental justice and climate solutions. Grist’s Climate Fiction Creative Manager Tory Stephens discussed the project with YES! Senior Editor Breanna Draxler, guest hosting YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali.
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FEATURING REV. LENNOX YEARWOOD JR. - The Biden Administration last week announced the strictest ever rule to regulate tailpipe emissions–one of the most significant sources of carbon emissions globally. But, it watered down the rule by giving automakers more time to comply–time being precisely what the planet is running out of as the climate continues to warm.
Rather than requiring the auto industry to produce more electric vehicles (EVs), the federal government says car manufacturers have to comply with the strict emissions rules and could do so by ensuring that about 56% of all new car sales are EVs by the year 2032– a challenge for American car makers. Meanwhile, Chinese-made EVs are flooding the global market and could easily help meet Biden’s climate goals. But the U.S. has imposed strict tariffs to keep out Chinese EVs and claimed that the smart cars are a national security threat.
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FEATURING SARAH ANDERSON - As Americans prepare their tax returns ahead of the IRS’s annual filing deadline, a new report highlights just how much large corporate CEO pay packages rival corporate taxes. Examining the five year period of 2018 to 2022, the Institute for Policy Studies, together with Americans for Tax Fairness cataloged 35 companies that paid their top executives more than they paid the federal government. This is thanks in large part to the 2017 Republican-led American Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
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FEATURING JESS BRAVERMAN - The United States Supreme Court this week heard arguments in a case against the sale of medication abortion - a drug named Mifepristone. Just weeks ago drug stores such as Walgreens and CVS announced they would start carrying the abortion pill. Nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the US last year were medication abortions - a procedure that remains legal in 36 states. Will the nation’s highest court–which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion two years ago, now do away with the abortion pill as well?
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FEATURING SUNNIVIE BRYDUM - New issues of YES! Magazine have hit newsstands and mailboxes all over the nation, and this Spring 2024 issue is themed around “Connections” - a deeply relevant idea at a time when more people are digitally connected than ever before at the same time as we are still grappling with pandemic-related physical isolation.
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FEATURING FRANK HOPPER - A police reform initiative in Washington to hold law enforcement accountable is facing a test of its effectiveness. Initiative 940, the first of its kind in the nation, strips police of so-called qualified immunity.
In 2018, Washington state voters passed the initiative after members of the Puyallup Tribe mobilized in the wake of the police killing of a young Indigenous woman named Jacqueline Salyers.
Two years later, when police killed a Black man named Manuel Ellis, weeks before George Floyd’s similar police murder in Minnesota, Initiative 940 was put to the test.
Autoworkers are readying themselves for a potential strike as contract negotiations with the so-called “Big Three” drag on.
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FEATURING ARMANDO IBAÑEZ - Hollywood has always had a serious problem of racial representation. A white dominated narrative-setting industry has been especially problematic in its portrayal of immigrants and Latinx people, more often than not, casting them as domestic help or drug traffickers and criminals. Independent filmmaker Armando Ibañez, is breaking such boundaries with his award winning web series Undocumented Tales, now in its newly released 4th season.
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FEATURING LINDSAY TOCZYLOWSKI - The state of Texas has been sending hundreds of migrants by bus to Los Angeles in what appears to be a political stunt. This past Sunday, L.A. received the 12th bus from Texas since mid-June. Immigrant rights organizations who are receiving the migrants, say there were 11 families hailing from Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Russia, and that about half the bus’s occupants were children. The goal of Republican governors like Texas’ Greg Abbott seems to be to force cities that have declared themselves “Sanctuary cities,” to disavow their compassionate stand of welcoming migrants. The opposite seems to have happened.
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FEATURING MERITH BASEY - The cost of prescription drugs have long been out of control in the United States, with the federal government being barred from using its buying power to negotiate down sticker prices. Now, thanks to a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services can begin negotiating lower drug prices. But pharmaceutical companies are already fighting back, with numerous lawsuits, placements of op-eds, and support from conservative lawmakers.
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FEATURING GRACE COTANGCO - We live in an era of global warming. Although climate change is often described in global terms, its effects are localized and tend to disproportionately affect low-income communities of color who are less likely to live next to parks and more likely to live next to industrial sources of pollution. A growing movement for what’s being called “park equity” is working to ensure fairness in the distribution of green spaces and all the health benefits they provide.
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FEATURING CHRIS WINTERS - The first Republican Party candidate debate for the 2024 presidential election featured Donald Trump in spirit but not in person. Most of the gathered candidates raised their hands when asked if they would support the former president if he were to win their party’s nomination–they would do so even if he is convicted of crimes. Trump faces a whopping 91 felony charges.
YES! Magazine’s Senior Editor Chris Winters writes that if that sounds like a lot, “it’s because Donald Trump was excessive in committing crimes in multiple jurisdictions.”
The newest issue of YES! Magazine is arriving in subscriber mailboxes and on newsstands now, chock full of stories and ideas revolving around the idea of “Growth.”
It’s been 60 years since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. While there have been gains made since 1963 on the question of closing the racial wealth gap, there is still a long way to go.
Thirty-two year old Porcha Woodruff is suing the city of Detroit and the Detroit Police Department over her false arrest earlier this year.
Not only will voters pick a new president on August 20th, but also decide on a ballot measure that allows for a major fossil fuel reserve to be left unextracted.
Nearly a hundred people have so far been documented to have died in the devastating wildfires that swept the Hawaiian island of Maui, making it one of the deadliest such disasters in U.S. history.
Former President Donald Trump has been indicted yet again, in what may be the most consequential case he faces amid his myriad federal and state charges.
In a new book Thom Hartmann explains that in fact democracy is “the default state of virtually every animal species on Earth, and humanity is no exception.”
On Wednesday July 26th, Rising Up host Sonali Kolhatkar spent the morning at a picket line with striking writers and actors in Burbank, California, outside Disney headquarters and asked them why their unions were striking.
Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2023 at Alight, Align, Arise, an invitation-only conference on reparations organized by the Decolonizing Wealth Project.
Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2023 at Alight, Align, Arise, an invitation-only conference on reparations organized by the Decolonizing Wealth Project.
Tens of thousands of American voters have seen their right to vote restored over the past year in states around the country. These are folks who have had felony convictions and were once upon a time barred from ever voting again.
If you missed Sonali Kolhatkar's book launch at the Berkeley Public Library, or her appearances at Skylight Books in Los Angeles and Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, there are still some opportunities to see her!
07/25 @ 7pm, North Figueroa Bookshop, Highland Park, LALOS ANGELES, CA
Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2023 at Alight, Align, Arise, an invitation-only conference on reparations organized by the Decolonizing Wealth Project.
Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2023 at Alight, Align, Arise, an invitation-only conference on reparations organized by the Decolonizing Wealth Project.
Hollywood has come to a standstill this summer as actors join their writer colleagues on the picket line.
Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2023 at Alight, Align, Arise, an invitation-only conference on reparations.
Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2023 at Alight, Align, Arise, an invitation-only conference on reparations.
Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2023 at Alight, Align, Arise.
Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2023 at Alight, Align, Arise.
The United States Supreme Court last week ruled in a case on race-based affirmative action policies used by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2023 at Alight, Align, Arise, an invitation-only conference on reparations organized by the Decolonizing Wealth Project.
Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2023 at Alight, Align, Arise, an invitation-only conference on reparations organized by the Decolonizing Wealth Project.
It has been a year since the United States Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion in its decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2023 at Alight, Align, Arise, an invitation-only conference on reparations organized by the Decolonizing Wealth Project.
To commemorate Juneteenth YES! Media is launching a series of interviews conducted in Atlanta, Georgia, at a recent conference organized by the Decolonizing Wealth Project called Alight, Align, Arise, to achieve reparations for Black Americans.
Purpose-driven activism can have a profound impact on personal well-being, resilience, and overall human integration.
Climate activists braved hazardous air last week in Washington D.C. to gather outside the White House and demand that President Joe Biden cancel the Mountain Valley Pipeline and declare a climate emergency.
Donald Trump appeared in a Miami court on Tuesday, becoming the first former president ever to be arrested and arraigned on federal charges.
Thirst, as defined by basic individual and community needs, shapes the latest issue of YES! Magazine.
Today we’ll continue our coverage of abolition, but specifically at one part of the equation that gets little attention: the judiciary.
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FEATURING BILL FLETCHER JR. - Five years after his first work of fiction, The Man Who Fell From the Sky, well known activist and journalist Bill Fletcher Jr. brings back his protagonist David Gomes in a follow-up novel, The Man Who Changed Colors.
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FEATURING BETSY WOOD - Multiple states led by Republican lawmakers are undoing child labor regulations in what seems to be an unimaginable trend in the United States. According to the Economic Policy Institute, “at least 10 states introduced or passed laws rolling back child labor protections in the past two years.” In a story for YES! Magazine, Marianne Dhenin writes, “bolstering federal legislation on child labor is the best way to prevent children from being forced into the workforce. It is also the surest way to protect kids in the face of Republican-led efforts to weaken restrictions on child labor in some states, because employers nationwide must follow federal employment law.”
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FEATURING DAVEY D - The origins of Hip Hop–one of the most influential genres of music and culture in the U.S. and globally–can be traced back to 1973 New York. Rising out of Caribbean and African diasporic music influences, DJs used turntables to stretch out the beats in songs for dancers.
In the 50 years since, Hip Hop has become a formidable global industry, encompassing music, dance, fashion, and a way of life. But its origins, in disenfranchised Black and Brown communities, meant that there was always a strong tendency to speak out against injustice. How has Hip Hop been a vehicle for social and racial justice and cultural power over the past half century?
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FEATURING ANNIE STAMELL - It’s been more than 3 weeks since Hollywood writers went on strike. Contract negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) broke down at the beginning of May. At stake are streaming residuals that writers rely on for financial sustenance, among other things.
A flashpoint in the strike was a commencement speech at Boston University given over the weekend by David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, who received an honorary doctorate. Graduating students and picketing writers booed Zaslav throughout his speech demanding that he pay writers more.
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FEATURING JEFF HAUSER - Democrats and Republicans remain far apart on raising the U.S. debt ceiling and prevent a catastrophic default on June 1. President Joe Biden met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday but the two remain far apart. Republicans want to extract spending cuts from Democrats in exchange for voting to raise the debt ceiling. It’s a battle that has been fought many times in the past.
Meanwhile, unionized government employees are stepping in. The National Association of Government Employees has filed a lawsuit urging Biden to invoke the 14th Amendment and raise the debt ceiling himself. NAGE president David Holway explained that, “This litigation is both an effort to protect our members from illegal furloughs and to correct an unconstitutional statute that frequently creates uncertainty and anxiety for millions of Americans.”
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FEATURING CHRISTOPHER REDDY - When the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in spring 2020, political leaders, state officials, and media pundits were at a loss as to the explanation of what was happening and how members of the public could protect themselves from a deadly disease. There was misunderstanding of the scientific method, and recommendations from government officials were muddled and sometimes contradictory. While hind-sight is always 20-20, in a crisis how scientists communicate and how the public receives that information can be a matter of life and death.
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FEATURING LISA HOLDER - The California Reparations Task Force is readying its final report by July 1st. The task force was established by the state legislature via AB 3121. Its members were appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021, and among them was Lisa Holder.
A few months into the task force’s hearings, Holder told YES! Magazine that its goal was to make “evidence-based recommendations” drawn from two years of gathering testimony and documenting the harms arising from “the original systems of oppression, like slavery and Jim Crow segregation, and the continuing and ongoing systems of oppression that we’re seeing in institutional racism and structural racism.”
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FEATURING GINA CLAYTON-JOHNSON - Every year, groups organize with the National Bail Out campaign help to ensure that as many jailed Black mothers get to spend Mother’s Day with their families as possible. The Essie Justice group, a founding member of National Bail Out, has led the campaign Black Mama’s Bail Out in California.
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FEATURING NOELLE HANRAHAN - The injustice of the carceral state remains high with violent police arrests, unfair criminal courts, and a dehumanizing prison system. Abolitionists are playing the long game however, and in spite of lowered media coverage, the demands made during the 2020 racial justice uprisings remain alive.
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FEATURING DAMIEN KEVITT - The Los Angeles Times reports that, “312 people were killed in traffic collisions in 2022, a 5% increase over the previous year and a 29% increase over 2020.” Additionally, “159 people [were] killed in collisions involving pedestrians and motorists last year. This is a 19% rise compared with 2021, LAPD data show. An additional 20 people died in collisions involving bicyclists and motorists, an 11% rise.”
Taken together with the violence of police interactions during traffic stops these statistics mean that Los Angeles has among the deadliest streets in the nation.
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FEATURING ARI HORNAVAR - Writing for YES! Magazine, Ari Hornavar said in a recent story, “As a girl who grew up in Iran during the rise of the Islamist regime, I witnessed firsthand the impact of the morality police on our daily lives,” But, she says, “recently I’ve observed that ‘morality police’ are not limited to Iran’s paramilitary enforcers. They’re a global force, and they’re spreading.”
Here in the U.S. our own morality police have legislated bans against abortion and gender affirming care, the teaching of history and even the reading of books deemed objectionable.
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FEATURING KEEGAN MEDRANO - Montana’s governor, Greg Gianforte signed a bill banning gender affirming treatment for minors this week just days after Republicans in the state legislature censured Representative Zooey Zephyr, the first and only openly transgender state lawmaker for speaking out against the bill. Gianforte signed the bill even though his own son, who is non-binary, pleaded with his father to veto it.
Meanwhile Ms. Zephyr has filed a lawsuit against her censure. She was silenced from speaking against the bill after she accused her fellow lawmakers of having blood on their hands in passing anti-transgender bills.
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FEATURING DOUG HENWOOD - JP Morgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, on Monday became even bigger after it bought First Republic Bank, a San Francisco based regional bank. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) brokered the sale after it was revealed that First Republic had lost $100 billion in deposits.
It’s the second bank to face collapse this year after Silicon Valley bank folded in March, sparking fears that more regional banks will follow.
Economists point out that consumer spending is finally slowing down as inflation remains high and as tech and media industries are cutting tens of thousands of jobs.
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FEATURING FARAH TANIS - The prevailing ethos in mainstream United States for centuries has been an unrealistic ideal of “rugged individualism.” But crises like the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the notion that we can get by without relying on one another. In a new op-ed for YES! Magazine, Farah Tanis writes “American individualism has not worked for BIPOC individuals and families, who have historically leaned on each other for support and survival.” She makes the case that “Black land collectives, whether through deeded lands or land trusts, are a remedy for the collective grief from which Black people have struggled to recover.”
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FEATURING MATT GERTZ - In a shocking announcement on Monday, Fox News and its most virulently white supremacist host Tucker Carlson parted ways. Carlson had enjoyed the popular platform for decades, and had a solo slot since 2016. He was not permitted to bid his audience farewell. His firing by Fox came just days after the outlet settled a massive defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems to the tune of $787.5 million.
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FEATURING IMANI GANDY - The United States Supreme Court last Friday allowed sales of a medication abortion pill called mifepristone to continue while a lawsuit brought by a Christian fundamentalist group wends its way through courts. The ruling brought a sigh of relief to a nation where not even a year has passed since the Supreme Court overturned the Roe V. Wade abortion precedent. But the future of accessible medication-induced abortion remains highly uncertain.
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FEATURING STEVE PHILLIPS - The shooting of a 16-year old Black child named Ralph Yarl by an 84-year-old white man named Andrew Lester in Kansas City, Missouri, has renewed calls for gun control and revoking so-called “Stand your ground” laws. But it also brings up the question of violent white supremacist backlash to an increasingly diverse nation.
More than 7 years ago, writer and thinker Steve Phillips was among the first to tackle this issue in his book Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority, which became a bestseller.
Phillips’ new book is called How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good.
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FEATURING ERIC LECOMPTE - A month after the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund met in Washington DC. The meetings, which just wrapped up, were expected to focus on global economic stability, within the context of rising inflation, central bank interest rate hikes, and the war in Ukraine. But most discussions appeared to have taken place behind closed doors. Meanwhile the G20 Finance Ministers meeting also took place in Washington DC, wrapping up last week. In all these high-level international meetings, how did issues of debt, poverty, inequality, and the climate crisis play out?
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FEATURING ANALILIA MEJIA - A pair of new investigative reports from ProPublica about Clarence Thomas have fueled calls for the Supreme Court Justice’s resignation. The first bombshell story, “Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire,” highlighted how a wealthy man named Harlan Crow befriended Thomas after he became a Supreme Court justice and treated him (and often his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas) to luxurious vacations on a near-annual basis. Thomas did not disclose the trips as he was required to. ProPublica followed that up just days later with another story whose title says it all: “Billionaire Harlan Crow Bought Property From Clarence Thomas. The Justice Didn’t Disclose the Deal.” Now, groups like the Center for Popular Democracy are calling on Thomas to resign and for the court to be expanded.
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FEATURING KATHERINE ELLSWORTH-KREBS - A new study published in Environmental Research Letters has quantified the impact of air travel on the climate and concluded that it contributes “approximately 4% to observed human-induced global warming.” Although only a small percentage of people fly, wealthy people disproportionately take advantage of the luxury of air travel. There is now a growing consensus that governments must address the climate impacts of flight. Writing about a progressive carbon tax for air travel in YES! Magazine is Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs.
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FEATURING LISA SHERMAN LUNA & DAMAREO COOPER - Justin Jones, one of two Black lawmakers in Tennessee ousted by the Republican majority, was reinstated on Monday to his position on the state House of Representatives by a unanimous vote of the Nashville Metropolitan Council. Jones and his fellow Democrat Justin Pearson were both stripped of their seats after they led protests against gun violence in the wake of a mass school shooting in Nashville. Their fellow Democrat, a white representative named Gloria Johnson, survived expulsion by one vote. The three lawmakers, known as the “Tennessee Three,” have faced accusations by Republicans of bringing “disorder and dishonor to the House.” They have countered that Republicans are distracting from their inaction over on-going gun violence.
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Randall Robinson, the towering intellectual who founded and led the TransAfrica Forum, passed away at the age of 81 on March 24, 2023. Robinson was active in the civil rights movement and attended Harvard Law School. His internationalist approach to racial justice and foreign policy led him to lead protests against the Apartheid terror of South Africa. He helped to influence U.S. policy toward South Africa and pushed for the release of Nelson Mandela. He was also active in broader efforts for humane and just policies toward African and Caribbean nations. He relocated from the U.S. to St. Kitts, a nation in the West Indies, where he lived until his passing.
On June 18, 2015, Professor Robinson joined host Sonali Kolhatkar in person at the studios of KPFK Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles for a sweeping discussion about his life’s work and his many books–mostly non-fiction including The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks and Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from his Native Land–as well as a fiction book named Makeda. Here, to mark Randall Robinson’s legacy, is an edited version of that discussion, which took place just one day after a white supremacist man gunned down nine African Americans at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
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FEATURING RAJ PATEL - A powerful documentary about climate change has hit select theaters around the U.S. Directed and produced by activist and writer Raj Patel, The Ants & the Grasshopper follows a Malawian farmer named Anita Chitaya from her rural village to midwest American farms and the halls of Congress as she navigates the political gridlock that fuels climate change. Chitaya is a popular local leader, who, when she’s not farming her 1 acre of land, uses her powers of persuasion for social justice.
The Ants & The Grasshopper will be in theaters for select dates starting on March 31st and will be available digitally on April 11th through Giant Pictures.
Drafthouse Cinemas across the country:
- Friday, March 31: Los Angeles, CA – Alamo Drafthouse DTLA
- Saturday, April 1: San Francisco, CA – Alamo Drafthouse New Mission
- Sunday, April 2: Denver, CO – Alamo Drafthouse Sloans Lake
- Monday, April 3: Chicago, IL – Alamo Drafthouse Wrigleyville
- Tuesday, April 4: Austin, TX – Alamo Drafthouse Mueller
- Thursday, April 6: New York, NY – Alamo Drafthouse Liberty
- Digital Date: Tuesday, April 11
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FEATURING CARL CHARLES, EBONY HARPER, MAEBE A. GIRL - March 31 marks Transgender Day of Visibility around the world. It was founded in 2009 by Rachel Crandall-Crocker, who used a Facebook post to encourage people to celebrate the rights and dignity of transgender people, instead of mourning them. At that time, Transgender Day of Remembrance marking the victims of murder was the only formal day recognizing the community. In 2021 President Joe Biden issued the first-ever presidential proclamation marking Transgender Day of Visibility.
Today the rightwing culture war that has taken aim at “wokeness,” the right to an abortion, and the teaching of history in schools, has also targeted LGBTQ folks, and especially transgender people. There are currently at least 340 state-level legislative attacks on LGBTQ people, according to the Human Rights Campaign. A hundred and fifty of them are specifically targeting transgender people–the largest number ever.
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FEATURING HAZEL GURLAND-POOLER, SONDRA PHILLIPS-GILBERT - A new documentary examines the inspiring story of how low-income Black mothers in Nevada took on government officials over welfare rights. Led by the fearless matriarch Ruby Duncan, women in the 1960s and 70s organized against sexist and racist targeting, stormed Las Vegas strip hotels, and engaged in creative forms of disruption to make their demands. Telling the story of what happened is a new documentary called Storming Caesar’s Palace, airing on PBS stations. The film is also currently available to stream for free on the PBS app.
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FEATURING CYNTHIA CHOI - It’s been just over 2 years since a white shooter took the lives of 8 people at several spas in Atlanta, Georgia on March 16, 2021. Most of the victims of the mass shooting were Asian women. Since then, as per a new report by the group Stop AAPI Hate, anti-Asian attacks have continued.
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FEATURING PHYLLIS BENNIS - Twenty years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, former president George W. Bush, who authorized the war, apparently thinks the world is better off without Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein. What do others think?
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FEATURING DAVID DELMAR SENTIÉS - The United States’ technology industry is considered the driving force of the national and even global economy. Tech workers, however, suffer from many of the same problems seen in other parts of the economy: stratification along racial and gender lines, low pay and long hours, and job insecurity. A new book called What We Build With Power, offers a manifesto on worker-led tech sector organizing, particularly in communities of color.
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FEATURING IVETTE ALÉ - Of the nearly 2 million people incarcerated in the United States at any given time, more than half a million are held in local jails. And, a majority of those are being held before trial, which means they are innocent until proven guilty. The decision makers with most power to determine who is jailed and who isn’t are local judges, usually elected, but often operating without much accountability. Now, there is a growing effort toward judicial accountability, led by abolitionist organizations in Los Angeles. Now, Ivette Alé of La Defensa, has written about how to hold judges accountable, for YES! Magazine.
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FEATURING MICHELE KILPATRICK - March 14th marks Equal Pay Day–the day that indicates how far into the year women must work in order to reach pay parity with their male counterparts from the previous year. Although there has been progress on some aspects of women’s rights over the decade, the pay gap between men and women has stubbornly persisted for 2 decades.
On average, women who are employed full time earn only 84% of their male peers. The pay gap increases for women of color, with Black women earning 67% and Latina and Indigenous women earning 57% of what men earn.
Sonali Kolhatkar’s new book, Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice will be published by City Lights books on June 27, 2023. Available now for pre-order. Foreword by Rinku Sen.
Overview*Rising Up* offers a timely exploration of how truthful narratives by and about people of color can be used to advance social justice in the United States.
While people of color are fast becoming the majority population in the United States, the perspectives of white American still dominate the vast majority of the media created and consumed every day. Media makers of color, long shut out of the decision-making process, are rising up to advance a set of different narratives, offering stories and perspectives to counter the racism and disinformation that have long dominated America’s political and cultural landscape.
In Rising Up, award-winning journalist Sonali Kolhatkar delivers a guide to racial justice narrative-setting. With a focus on shifting perspectives in news media, entertainment, and individual discourse, she highlights the writers, creators, educators, and influencers who are successfully building a culture of affirmation and inclusion.
“Sonali Kolhatkar reminds us we are the stories we tell. Our stories can cast a spell of hate, division, and fear, or they can break the powerful grip of racial injustices that have held us since our country’s beginning. With personal and collective wisdom, Kolhatkar guides us in the storytelling that liberates.”–Luis J. Rodríguez, author of *Always Running: La Vida Loco/Gang Days in L.A.*
“Rising Up challenges the reader to not only rethink their assumptions, but to understand the critical importance of the creation of progressive narratives as an instrument in the struggles for human liberation.”–Bill Fletcher, Jr., author of The Man Who Fell From the Sky****
“Prometheus transferred fire away from gods to mortals, but this book shows that we don’t need a Prometheus. We transfer narrative power from the few to the many–by claiming it and using it–in revolutionary acts that both catalyze the national consciousness and transform material conditions.” –Rinku Sen, Executive Director of Narratives Initiative, and author of The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization****
“For two decades, Sonali Kolhatkar has been a leading voice for truth against the lies of the powerful, unflinchingly exploding prevailing myths that pass as prevailing wisdom. She understands that shifting the narrative is radical anti-racist work, and if you don’t believe it just look at the firing of schoolteachers and journalists for telling the truth about racism, slavery, gender, or Palestine.”–Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination****
“Like her groundbreaking journalism, Sonali Kolhatkar’s inaugural book spotlights voices across various news, entertainment, and social-media platforms that exemplify movement building for racial justice through troubling narratives. This book could not come at a better time–let’s all read, discuss, and act on it today!”–Kevin Kumashiro, Ph.D., author of Surrendered: Why Progressives are Losing the Biggest Battles in Education****
“A brilliantly outlined argument for independent media’s historic role in humanizing those who have been othered through the society’s architectures of power, Rising Up highlights the crucial role of courageous storytelling in combating white supremacy and building a more just world.”–Rupa Marya, co-author of Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice****
“Foundational and guiding, Sonali’s book gifts us a piercing map of the dangers of illegitimate stories, as well as a guide towards the unrelenting power of truthful ones. This book I had been waiting for, and it is here to make its stay. Read it. Share it. And we shall surely rise.”–Dr. Oriel María Siu, PhD, author of Christopher the Ogre Cologre, It’s Over!****
“Written in the thick of a new phase of reactionary cultural warfare within and beyond the United States, Rising Up provides diagnosis, context, and potential correctives. Contrary to common parlance, Sonali’s work demonstrates that there is no such thing as “the media,” only a disparate ensemble of competing narrative forces that consolidate in corporate news, Hollywood entertainment, independent grassroots journalism, and industrialized social media. Conceptualizing the terrain of storytelling as a dynamic, complex one that is constantly open to new forms of radical, autonomous, collective mobilization, Rising Up is a reinvigorated call for journalism, art, and aesthetics that advance abolitionist, decolonizing, and anti-racist movements.”–Dylan Rodríguez, author of White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide****
Praise for Sonali Kolhatkar:
“Kolhatkar’s conversations with guests go deep. Even when she’s covering topics everyone else is covering–like impeachment–she infuses the discussion with economic, social, and racial justice perspectives that reframe and expand the debate.”–John Nichols on the “Top Progressive People and Ideas Shaping the Future,” The Nation****
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FEATURING EVETTE DIONNE - As the latest issue of YES! Magazine hits newsstands and lands in mail boxes, we’ll get a look today at what the Spring issue of the solutions journalism magazine has in store for readers. In addition to being the host of Rising Up With Sonali, Sonali Kolhatkar is also the racial justice and civil liberties editor at YES! She spoke with YES!’s executive editor Evette Dionne.
Subscribe to YES! Magazine here.
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FEATURING KAMAU FRANKLIN - A week of action this week aimed at Atlanta’s Cop City is in full force. Activists from across Georgia have converged to oppose a new facility spearheaded by the Atlanta Police Foundation that would be the nation’s largest police training center. Over the weekend, a group of activists participated in an action to breach the construction site. At least one vehicle was set ablaze and dozens were arrested. Twenty three people now face charges of terrorism.
Meanwhile, protests are continuing throughout the week by those opposing the expansion of police power as well as the violation of the Atlanta Forest where the facility will be built.
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FEATURING SHEENA ROLLE - Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis has, for many months now, kept his name in the news headlines with announcements around banning books, attacks on gay and transgender rights, undermining educational curricula, and waging a general “war on wokeness.” It has been a long lead up to his expected announcement of a 2024 presidential run. DeSantis has been adept at recasting attacks on people’s humanity as defending Floridians. Now, the progressive organization Florida Rising is readying its own strategy to take back the narrative of equality, fairness, safety, and democracy with a new campaign called Wake-Up Wednesdays.
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FEATURING COLLETTE WATSON & ALICIA BELL - Since the inception of American journalism, newspapers and other media have reflected the same white supremacist culture that exists in society. Often, they have even fueled it. Addressing this ugly history and calling for media justice and reparations, Collette Watson, of Media2070 writes in YES! Magazine that, “Media reparations means redistributing power and resources to realize a future in which Black people control their own stories and narratives from ideation through production and distribution.”
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FEATURING THENMOZHI SOUNDARARAJAN - The city of Seattle last week became the nation’s first to ban discrimination on the basis of caste. South Asian workers, particularly in the tech industry, and beyond, have experienced caste-based discrimination at the hands of upper-caste Hindus in ways that have been invisible to non-South Asians. Now, activists who passed the Seattle ordinance hope to replicate their success in other cities.
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FEATURING COSETTE AYELE - Among the most common counter-arguments to police abolition is the question of what to do in an emergency. In 2017, a group of Black-led tech entrepreneurs created an independent online police reporting service. Some years later, realizing that it did little to curb police violence, the group, named RAHEEM, pivoted to building a new system, called PATCH. Its creators call it, “an unprecedented, nationwide network of mobile crisis teams, health and social services, and abolitionist organizations responding to crises with care, not violence.”
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FEATURING REINA SULTAN - Police violence remains a serious issue in spite of lowered news coverage. The number of people brutalized and killed by police continues to increase each year with no end in sight and no federal plan to reduce violence. But, in the wake of George Floyd killing in Minneapolis in May 2020, a group of activists and thinkers articulated a clear 8-step plan to abolish policing.
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FEATURING CAT BROOKS - When Tyre Nichols died of injuries sustained at the hands of multiple police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, the video of the vicious assault had many making comparisons to what the nation witnessed in 1991.
Attorney Benjamin Crump responded to the video of Nichols’ assault saying, “Regrettably, it reminded us of the Rodney King video…and unlike Rodney King, Tyre didn’t survive.”
So far 5 police officers have been fired and charged with murder. Four out of five of them had prior infractions on their record. During his recent State of the Union address, President Joe Biden, who invited Nichols’ parents to join him, said that what was needed was to, “Give law enforcement the training they need, hold them to higher standards, and help them succeed in keeping everyone safe.” But that’s precisely what has already happened over the decades since King’s assault.
What should Biden have said? What will it take to end police violence?
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FEATURING ARIA FLORANT & TREVOR SMITH - The attacks on education about accurate American history continue to gain steam, particularly with respect to teaching accounts of Black history and racial injustices. Now, a new report by Liberation Ventures focuses on reparations and how changing anti-Black narratives and reducing the racial wealth gap are central to the project of reparative work for historical injustice.
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FEATURING CHRIS WINTERS - President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address last week appeared defiant, energized, and ready to take on the Republican Party. YES! Magazine’s Chris Winters called such addresses, “the best uninterrupted opportunity presidents have to shape public perceptions of their administration and the country as a whole.” But he concluded that, “Biden is past his prime.”
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FEATURING MUMIA ABU JAMAL - Mumia Abu Jamal is a political prisoner and award winning journalist. He filed this commentary for Prison Radio about the police killing of Tyre Nichols.
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FEATURING CLARENCE LUSANE - The question of who represents the United States via their face on the nation’s paper currency came to head under the white supremacist leadership of former president Donald Trump. After it was decided that the great abolitionist and freedom fighter Harriet Tubman would grace the $20 bill, Trump reversed the formal process. It has now been taken up by the Biden administration.
In a new book detailing the context of race and democracy that frames the reasons why Tubman and not, say, Andrew Jackson, belongs on the bill, author Clarence Lusane takes us on a critically important historical tour.
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FEATURING KHURY PETERSEN-SMITH - House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, last week led a vote to oust Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee over her alleged antisemitism because she has criticized the state of Israel. McCarthy has instead embraced two GOP representatives, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar(R-AZ), whose antisemitism is well documented, and who are now poised to regain their committee seats.
In a speech on the House floor, Omar pointed out that the Republican attack was about “who gets to be an American.” She called out the GOP for its earlier culture war aimed at the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama, and for spreading rumors that he was a secret Muslim and not a natural born U.S. citizen.
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FEATURING ELIZER DARRIS - A new rightwing strategy to undo progress on discrimination in the criminal justice system is taking aim at non-profit bail funds. After a victim of a gunshot wound successfully sued a bail fund for helping free his shooter, The Bail Project was forced to shut down one of its chapters. Now, rightwing groups are going after similar projects, including the Minnesota Freedom Fund.
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FEATURING CHARDÉ HOLLINS - As we enter Black History month, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken his war on Black History to new heights, banning an AP highschool course. The governor, who appears to be engaging in a political strategy to catapult him into the Republican Presidential nomination in 2024, has accused educators of Black History of trying to indoctrinate American children. The course was developed over many years by the College Board and is being piloted at 60 schools around the country including in Florida. Aside from their impact on education, how do such history bans affect the mental health of young people of color?
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FEATURING JULIA PETER - The United States Supreme Court’s conservative justices have been busy challenging democratic guardrails. The court has a 6-3 conservative super majority, courtesy of former President Donald Trump, who appointed 3 rightwing justices. It’s no wonder the court has dramatically lost popular support. Now, as these justices take up a case that threatens the voting rights of people of color, Julia Peter of the Center for Popular Democracy offers her solutions to restore the legitimacy of the nation’s highest court in a story for YES! Magazine.
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FEATURING ALLISON T. BUTLER - Young people are increasingly spending more time consuming media on their digital devices, whether through social media, streaming movies and TV, news outlets, YouTube videos created by influencers, and more.
Navigating this bewildering array of images and ideas can be overwhelming. Now, the newly formed Media Revolution Collective has written its first book, The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People. The book was written in conjunction with Project Censored, one of the preeminent anti-censorship and media literacy advocacy organizations in the United States for nearly fifty years.
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FEATURING MELISSA HOPE DITMORE - President Joe Biden recently proclaimed January 2023 as “National Human Trafficking Prevention Month.” According to an announcement on the U.S. State Department’s website, trafficking “undermines the rule of law, robs millions of their dignity and freedom, enriches transnational criminals and terrorists, and threatens public safety and national security everywhere.”
But, what Biden and the U.S. government have avoided mentioning is how deeply the American economy relies on trafficked human labor.
Please join Sonali Kolhatkar in celebrating the release of Howard University professor Dr. Clarence Lusane’s newest book Twenty Dollars and Change, out now from City Lights Books. Clarence and Sonali are partnering with 44th and 3rd Bookseller in Atlanta for a virtual event on Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 7:00 pm ET/4:00 pm PT to mark the release of this important work.
Click here to register for the event.
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As the new Congress of 2023 begins taking up legislation, fresh from a bizarre internal Republican Party fight over the position of House Speaker, already political strategists are thinking about the presidential race of 2024. Voting rights are still under attack and gerrymandered districting remains prevalent. But the painstaking work of grassroots organizing is also going strong.
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FEATURING FRANK HOPPER - Billionaire Elon Musk’s poor leadership of Twitter and Tesla has made headlines for months now. But a story that has received little national attention is his years’ long takeover of a part of a Texas community near the border for his space technology company, SpaceX.
Writing in YES! Magazine, indigenous journalist Frank Hopper details how the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas has been fighting Musk for control of lands that are sacred to them and that they are regularly cut off from because of SpaceX’s launch pad.
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FEATURING RUTHIE WILSON GILMORE - Since the racial justice uprisings of 2020, the idea of abolishing prisons and policing has entered mainstream discourse. But it is not a new idea. For decades, grassroots organizations like Critical Resistance envisioned a world without the carceral state.
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FEATURING ABDUL NASSER RAD - United States police forces killed a record number of people in 2022. Projects like Mapping Police Violence, which track individuals killed by police, concluded that at least 1,176 people were killed at the hands of police last year. That number is just a preliminary count and likely an underestimate. In comparison, police killed 1,145 people the year before. Police violence is correlated to the race of victims. Black people are nearly 3 times more likely to be killed at the hands of law enforcement than whites.
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FEATURING ALAN JENKINS, GAN GOLAN - It’s been 2 years since the violent attack on the U.S. capitol in Washington D.C. Thousands of people, egged on by then-president Donald Trump, gathered in the nation’s capital to “Stop the Steal,” based on an assumption that the 2020 election had been stolen. That historic attack has spawned multiple investigations, criminal trials, Congressional hearings, and… a graphic novel.
A 4-part series 1/6: What if the Attack on the US Capitol Succeeded? imagines an alternative timeline where the pro-Trump mob succeeded in overthrowing the election results and imposing martial law.
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There has long been a housing crisis in American cities–well before COVID-19 struck. Now, 3 years into the pandemic, there is an on-going crisis in housing. But, in cities like Los Angeles and Baltimore, residents are organizing and resisting. Even more importantly, they’re envisioning and implementing innovative solutions based in housing justice. Writing about this for YES! Magazine as part of a series called Building the Block is journalist Jaisal Noor.
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FEATURING DEBORAH BARSKY - Many of us recall our history teachers telling us in school that knowing history helps us understand the present and ensure we aren’t doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. A new book by a researcher of human prehistory says that exploring the past can help us understand the future.
In her book Human Prehistory, Deborah Barsky focuses on the invention of the earliest stone tools that homosapiens and their ancestors built and how they help define what it means to be human.
More about Human Prehistory: Exploring the Past to Understand the Future.
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FEATURING ANDY LEE ROTH - Public opinion is deeply shaped by what we read, see, and hear. It is why the role of a free press is critical to a democracy – only a well-informed electorate can best govern themselves. But given the skewed coverage of critically important stories in today’s corporate-dominated media landscape, it’s no wonder that our democracy is in deep trouble.
Each year the group Project Censored gathers together the most censored or under-covered stories of the past year and edits them into a book and today we’ll learn what some of those stories were from the past year.
Find more about State of the Free Press, 2023.
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FEATURING ANONYMOUS - Protests in Iran are going strong, coalescing around a simple demand captured in the words, “Zan, Zindegi, Azadi,” which translates into “Woman, Life, Freedom.”
The massive movement was triggered by the mid-September death of a 22-year old Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini in police custody. Amini had been jailed for reportedly flouting Iran’s strict dress code for women.
Now, as Iran’s government is facing its most serious crisis of legitimacy to date, there are reports of a potential dissolution of the so-called morality police. Meanwhile the government has been executing protesters and threatening others with execution.
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FEATURING EVETTE DIONNE - The United States’ obsession with thinness has resulted in what YES! Magazine executive editor Evette Dionne calls a “culture that hates fat people and [that] uses institutions, including media, medicine, and marriage, to reinforce that repulsion.”
In her new book Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul, Dionne takes readers on a personal and political journey that begins with her own health issues and her resultant encounters with fatphobia in the medical establishment.
Although the medical industry has, for decades, warned about an “obesity epidemic,” the real health hazard, as Dionne points out, is systemic fat shaming that can have deadly consequences for children and adults.
But there is a shift, as a growing fat liberation movement has begun pushing government, medical, and cultural institutions to begin dismantling biases against fat people.
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FEATURING JEFF COHEN - Now that the midterm elections have ended, President Joe Biden has asked the Democratic National Committee to change the primary election calendar so that South Carolina votes before the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, which are traditionally the first in the nation. The move is being interpreted as a brazen ploy by Biden to ensure he is favored as the next Democratic presidential nominee for 2024.
Progressives have long battled Biden’s propensity to move to the right, and are calling on him to not only refrain from changing the primary election calendar, but to not run for reelection altogether.
In a new book, You Can't Always Say What You Want, Dennis Baron says, “Two forces threaten free speech in America: people who assert their free speech rights in order to suppress the speech of others; and people who exercise their right to bear arms to silence whoever they do not like."
Fascism is at this nation’s doorstep and to fight it, we need an antifascist movement, which, according to expert Shane Burley, must “confront violence, both structurally and ideologically, in an effort to unseat its very foundations.”
After more than 3 and a half decades in prison, Dr. Mutulu Shakur has been granted freedom by the U.S. Parole Board.
Joe Biden has been stymied in his plans to cancel limited amounts of student debt. After making an August announcement for a cancellation of up to $20,000 in debt,...
As the COP 27 UN climate meeting in Sharm El-Shaikh, Egypt, wrapped up, newspapers blared triumphant headlines, saying that finally rich countries agreed to a plan to pay poorer nations...
Nearly 50,000 academic workers at 10 University of California campuses began a strike on November 14th to bargain for better working conditions.
Thousands of government officials, corporate executives, public relations experts, and climate activists have convened in Sharm El-Shaikh, Egypt for the United Nations’ 27th Conference of Parties to tackle climate change.
Democrats have retained control of the U.S. Senate in the 2022 midterm elections, flipping one seat from red to blue. But Republicans are on the verge of wresting control of the House from Democrats.
When the Supreme Court earlier this year overturned nearly 50 years of settled constitutional law protecting the right to an abortion, Democrats hoped the momentum from public anger over the decision would pull voters to the polls in the 2022 midterms.
Voters often turn out in larger numbers during presidential races compared to midterms. But this year, with former president Trump raring to make a comeback and Republicans spreading misinformation in order to regain political power...
The 2022 midterm elections are upon us and given the new calculus of polling since the 2016 presidential race, there is little that we can confidently predict.
As the economy continues to be touted as the number 1 issue for voters ahead of the November 8 election, the Federal Reserve this week plans to bump interest rates up once more.
As we head into the November 8th elections, we’ll focus today on women of color. According to Politico, “Of the 259 women nominated in House primaries this year, 43 percent are women of color — the highest percentage for the demographic in recent cycles.”
As we head into the November 8th elections, we’ll focus today on women of color. According to Politico, “Of the 259 women nominated in House primaries this year, 43 percent are women of color — the highest percentage for the demographic in recent cycles.”
As we head into the November 8th elections, we’ll focus today on women of color. According to Politico, “Of the 259 women nominated in House primaries this year, 43 percent are women of color — the highest percentage for the demographic in recent cycles.”
As we head into the November 8th elections, we’ll focus today on women of color. According to Politico, “Of the 259 women nominated in House primaries this year, 43 percent are women of color — the highest percentage for the demographic in recent cycles.”
A searing new book by Dalit American activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan has laid bare Hinduism’s dirty secret: caste apartheid.
A searing new book by Dalit American activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan has laid bare Hinduism’s dirty secret: caste apartheid.
A searing new book by Dalit American activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan has laid bare Hinduism’s dirty secret: caste apartheid.
A searing new book by Dalit American activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan has laid bare Hinduism’s dirty secret: caste apartheid.
More than a quarter of a million Georgia voters are seeing their right to vote being challenged. It’s not state officials challenging them, but other Georgians, using a law, Senate Bill 202.
More than a quarter of a million Georgia voters are seeing their right to vote being challenged. It’s not state officials challenging them, but other Georgians, using a law, Senate Bill 202.
More than a quarter of a million Georgia voters are seeing their right to vote being challenged. It’s not state officials challenging them, but other Georgians, using a law, Senate Bill 202.
More than a quarter of a million Georgia voters are seeing their right to vote being challenged. It’s not state officials challenging them, but other Georgians, using a law, Senate Bill 202.
British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned last week after a mere 45 days in office. Truss, disgraced by the consequences of her own economic prescriptions, had the shortest term of any British prime minister in history.
British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned last week after a mere 45 days in office. Truss, disgraced by the consequences of her own economic prescriptions, had the shortest term of any British prime minister in history.
British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned last week after a mere 45 days in office. Truss, disgraced by the consequences of her own economic prescriptions, had the shortest term of any British prime minister in history.
British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned last week after a mere 45 days in office. Truss, disgraced by the consequences of her own economic prescriptions, had the shortest term of any British prime minister in history.
A new book by journalist Joshua Frank tells the story of one of the world’s major nuclear waste sites–a place right here in the United States that most of you have likely never heard of.
Los Angeles has been roiled by scandal of national proportions over the past week, centered on a leaked audio recording of a meeting last year between 3 City Council members and Ron Herrera, president of the L.A. County Federation of Labor.
A fiery debate on Monday between Ohio’s candidates vying for a Senate seat symbolizes a major political dynamic across the country as we head toward the November 8 midterm elections.
Italians will soon get their first ever woman Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni. Meloni’s rise to power however may be a serious set-back for the rights of women, as well as immigrants, the LGBTQ community, the environment, and more.
Brazilians went to the polls on October 2nd in an election that was widely expected to bring clear cut victory to former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The final outcome of Lula’s 48.4% to Bolsonaro’s 43.2% means that the two will be matched up in a run-off election on October 30th.
Hurricane Ian was one of the strongest to ever make landfall in the United States, bringing catastrophic flooding, cutting off coastal islands from the mainland, cutting off electrical power to millions of residents, and causing nearly $50 billion in damage.
The U.S.’s largest Protestant denomination, Southern Baptists, have had a good year, with the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe Vs. Wade abortion precedent.
The U.S.’s largest Protestant denomination, Southern Baptists, have had a good year, with the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe Vs. Wade abortion precedent.
A 22-year old Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody in mid-September, sparking mass, historic protests across Iran.
A 22-year old Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody in mid-September, sparking mass, historic protests across Iran.
The reports of violence against people being held at Men’s Central are so disturbing that they have been dubbed “barbaric.”
The reports of violence against people being held at Men’s Central are so disturbing that they have been dubbed “barbaric.”
Israeli forces are in the midst of a major demolition of Palestinian homes and infrastructure in the southern part of the occupied West Bank that is going largely unreported.
Israeli forces are in the midst of a major demolition of Palestinian homes and infrastructure in the southern part of the occupied West Bank that is going largely unreported.
Hurricane Fiona has caused major damage across the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, including severe flooding, mudslides, and power outages, five years after Hurricane Maria caused similar devastation.
Hurricane Fiona has caused major damage across the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, including severe flooding, mudslides, and power outages, five years after Hurricane Maria caused similar devastation.
A Texas county sheriff says he has launched a criminal investigation into two charter flights carrying about 50 migrants from his state to Massachusetts last week–an action that Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has openly taken credit for.
A Texas county sheriff says he has launched a criminal investigation into two charter flights carrying about 50 migrants from his state to Massachusetts last week–an action that Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has openly taken credit for.
As mourners across the U.K. prepare for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II–the longest serving monarch in British history–reactions to her death have varied dramatically.
As mourners across the U.K. prepare for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II–the longest serving monarch in British history–reactions to her death have varied dramatically.
It has been more than a month since residents of the majority-Black and Brown city of Jackson, Mississippi are without clean drinking water...
It has been more than a month since residents of the majority-Black and Brown city of Jackson, Mississippi are without clean drinking water...
A legal victory in New Mexico, disqualifying a county commissioner from running for office because of his participation in the January 6th 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, may have repercussions for Donald Trump.
A legal victory in New Mexico, disqualifying a county commissioner from running for office because of his participation in the January 6th 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, may have repercussions for Donald Trump.
The great Barbara Ehrenreich has died. A towering intellectual, journalist, and thinker, she was the author of numerous groundbreaking books about the U.S. economy, health care, the wellness industry, feminism and more.
The great Barbara Ehrenreich has died. A towering intellectual, journalist, and thinker, she was the author of numerous groundbreaking books about the U.S. economy, health care, the wellness industry, feminism and more.
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed in stark terms that when disaster strikes it does not affect people equally. Although many people insisted that “we are all in this together,” disparities became starkly visible along lines of race, gender, immigration, and of course wealth.
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed in stark terms that when disaster strikes it does not affect people equally. Although many people insisted that “we are all in this together,” disparities became starkly visible along lines of race, gender, immigration, and of course wealth.
Unprecedented floods are devastating Pakistan. More than a thousand people have been killed and 30 million people have been affected since June. The deadly summer rains have filled reservoirs...
Unprecedented floods are devastating Pakistan. More than a thousand people have been killed and 30 million people have been affected since June. The deadly summer rains have filled reservoirs...
It’s been more than 2 years since the largest social movement in the U.S.s history mobilized to demand justice for racist police brutality. An estimated 15 million and 26 million people took to the streets of cities across the nation...
President Joe Biden last week announced a plan to forgive a portion of federal college loan debt for millions of Americans. In a speech from the White House, he explained that the Department of Education would “forgive...
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, in a speech last Friday announced that he would be raising interest rates once more in an effort to bring down inflation.
Nichelle Nichols, the pioneering Black actress who broke boundaries on screen with her role as Lt. Nyota Uhura on Star Trek, passed away on July 30th of this year. She was 89.
During the 2020 mass racial justice uprisings, many Americans understood for the first time that racist police brutality was a critically important issue.
The recent raid by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at Donald Trump’s residence in his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort, has pro-Trump forces up in arms.
When historian Robin D. G. Kelley published his seminal book Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination in 2002, he hoped to inspire the racial justice activists of time to find hope in the ideas of visionaries like Malcolm X and CLR James.
Reproductive rights activists are eyeing the resounding victory for abortion access in Kansas where a week ago, nearly 60% of voters defeated a ban on the politicized medical procedure.
The United States Senate on Saturday passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a sprawling bill on climate, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and taxes. Extracting a steep price for her support of the bill, Arizona’s Democratic senator, Kyrsten Sinema demanded that a provision cutting back the carried...
Amid high inflation and a federal minimum wage stuck at $7.25 an hour for more than a decade, many states are found to be denying benefits to a majority of their welfare applicants.
Pope Francis last week paid an historic visit to Canada, appearing in person in Maskwacis in Central Alberta to apologize for the role of the Catholic Church in perpetuating the horrors and abuses...
After surprisingly refusing to support President Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has now announced support for a new compromise bill being dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act.
This summer it has seemed that everyone was catching the COVID-19 virus, including people who had stayed safe from it for more than 2 years, respecting lockdowns and quarantines, getting vaccinated, and wearing masks.
The House of Representatives recently passed the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill intended to codify into law the right of all couples, including same-sex couples, to marry.
A Cleveland, Ohio branch of Starbucks has just become the 200th store in the corporate coffee chain to vote to join the newly formed independent union, Starbucks Workers United (SWU).
Trader Joe’s, the iconic grocery store chain that originated in Southern California and has stores all over the country, is joining the new union wave.
President Joe Biden is reportedly considering declaring a climate emergency– a step that hundreds of environmental groups have been calling on him to take.
President Joe Biden has just wrapped up a 4-day trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, affirming ties to both nations and between both nations.
The House Select Committee on the January 6th insurrection has been holding hearings for weeks now, unraveling in detail a high-level plot for the U.S. Capitol to be overrun by a mob in order to pressure key decision makers to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 6 conservatives are ascendant this term, using their supermajority to deliver win after win for extremist conservatives. From overturning the right to an abortion, to asserting gun owners’ right to openly carry their weapons, to undermining the EPA’s ability to regulate...
Even though it was utterly predictable to observers of abortion rights that the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn Roe Vs. Wade, Democratic politicians appear to be caught off guard. President Joe Biden responded to activist pressure by signing an executive order promoting...
FEATURING PARKER MOLLOY – The January 6th far right mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol building will go down in history as the violent and inevitable culmination of Donald Trump’s Presidency. But how did his favorite news media outlets cover the attack? And, more importantly what did Fox News and th
Immigrants are rarely portrayed in Hollywood film or television projects, except as caricatures and stereotypes. The human cost of our harsh immigration policies is not a common film trope in spite of the harm that countless people face.
For the first time ever, Colombia, the third most populous nation in Latin America, has elected a president who is not conservative. The stalwart U.S. ally has just chosen the former mayor of Bogota, Gustavo Petro, as leader in a runoff election.
Until the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd and the mass uprising it sparked, most non-Black Americans had never heard of Juneteenth. The name Juneteenth is short for June 19th, the day in 1865 when enslaved African Americans in Texas were finally informed of the Emancipation Proclamation...
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol has been holding public, televised hearings since last week, presenting damning evidence never-before-seen footage, previously recorded testimony rom former White House insiders...
For those who are immunocompromised, COVID-19 remains a serious threat, especially as they are likely to develop long term infections.
Roger Stahl wrote a recent op-ed in the LA Times, saying, “Americans should have a right to know the extent of the military’s influence on the shows and films they consume.”
Bishop William Barber II and Rev. Liz Theoharis, the co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign, have written a letter to President Joe Biden requesting a meeting with the White House ahead of their June 18th March on Washington.
Henry Giroux writes in Truthout, “what is ignored is a neoliberal economic system that feeds on self-interest, inequality, cruelty, punishment, precarity and loneliness.”
Michael Siegel writes, “evidence shows that the culture around guns contributes significantly to gun violence. And firearm manufacturers have played a major role in influencing American gun culture.”
The horror of last week’s mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas that claimed 21 lives, 19 of them children, revealed in stark terms just how ill-equipped police were to deal with such a situation.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) earlier this year rebranded an aspect of the Medicare program that used to be called Direct Contracting. The newly named ACO REACH stands for “Accountable Care Organization (ACO) Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health.”
President Joe Biden signed into law a $40 billion aid package to fund security, humanitarian, and economic aid to Ukraine. While progressive lawmakers like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and House Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voted for the bill, some activists criticized the move.
Global leaders and corporate executives are hobnobbing this week in Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum.
The Brookings Institution recently published findings about the racial wealth gap and how, while White families have a median wealth of $188,200, Black families have only $24,100.
A white supremacist teenage man shot and killed ten people and injured three at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York on Saturday. The vast majority of the victims were Black in what has been confirmed to be a racist shooting spree.
The World Meteorological Organization on Tuesday announced that “there is a 50:50 chance of average global temperature reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the next five years, and the likelihood is increasing with time.”
If abortion rights are overturned, what is next? LGBTQ advocates worry about the overturning of same sex marriage and the criminalization of gender affirming procedures.
State lawmakers and attorneys general are scrambling to preserve reproductive rights in the wake of a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion to overturn the Roe Vs. Wade precedent.
Police at the California State University of Los Angeles on Sunday forcibly and bodily removed a tenured professor and leader of the LA Black Lives Matter movement, Melina Abdullah from a campus event.
Millions of debt-burdened Americans are awaiting President Joe Biden’s decision over debt forgiveness–an issue he campaigned on.
Politico on Monday published a bombshell report on a leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision to overturn the Roe Vs. Wade abortion precedent. Although abortion rights advocates were expecting the six conservatives on the court to do this, it still came as a gut-punch.
Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene recently testified at a hearing to determine whether she should be allowed to run for reelection given her role in supporting the January 6th 2021 attack on the capitol.
The world’s richest man has made a successful bid to purchase one of the world’s biggest social media platforms. Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s $44 billion cash buyout offer.
Dozens of Starbucks cafes across the United States have held successful union votes and hundreds more have filed to hold votes, in what is the most prominent flurry of labor organizing activity in decades.
Each time it appears as though a criminal charge may be brought against Donald Trump, the effort fizzles out and Trump remains free from accountability. The former president is under investigation from many sides, chief among them...
The Brooklyn subway shooting on April 12th miraculously resulted in no deaths, although nearly 2 dozen people suffered injuries. While a massive manhunt for the shooter was underway, in the end the suspect tipped police off and turned himself in.
First it was the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Then, a 15-week abortion ban. Then, perhaps most ludicrously, the banning of more than 50 math books from public schools because of “Critical Race Theory.”
In a new book, authors Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff make the case for critical dialogue and communication.
Amazon's Staten Island warehouse became the first location in the retail giant to successfully unionize and it is notable that it did so via a new union.
As reproductive justice advocates expect the “Roe Vs. Wade” precedent to be overturned by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, the Senate just narrowly voted in the nation’s first Black woman Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
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FEATURING DARNELL HUNT– Each year the Hollywood Diversity report tracks the progress made by the film and television industry on race and gender representations in front of and behind the camera. The latest report on film is just out and in a landscape where streaming services are leading traditional theatrical releases, we see significant gains in on-screen representation. However, there is less progress on the demographics of directors and writers.
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FEATURING KATIE GOLDSTEIN– As inflation continues to drive up the price of goods, and increased gas prices strain the wallets of Americans, wages, especially in the low-wage sectors remain appallingly low. One of the predictable outcomes of this grim scenario is increased homelessness. Yet, instead of investing in affordable housing and low-cost rentals, cities are seeing a sharp rise in luxury housing and rentals.
Now, the Center for Popular Democracy, along with a number of other social justice organizations, has released a new report demanding what it calls, “Social Housing for All.” The report outlines “A Vision for Thriving Communities, Renter Power and Racial Justice.” It comes just as Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar reintroduced her Homes For All Act.
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FEATURING LINDSAY KOSHGARIAN – President Joe Biden has announced a $5.8 trillion federal budget whose key priorities are out of line with his campaign platform. His budget includes significant increases in military and police spending. In an attempt to center the progressive aspects of his budget, Biden announced in a statement that he was taking steps to overturn his predecessor’s tax cuts on the rich. But there was no significant spending on social issues, economic justice, or combating climate change. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, head of the Senate Budget Committee said firmly that, “We do not need a massive increase in the defense budget.”
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FEATURING JENIFER MCKENNA - As states like Texas roll back people’s reproductive rights and specifically, the right to an abortion, a new report by The Alliance: State Advocates for Women’s Rights & Gender Equality, hones in on a little-known, but pernicious front in the abortion battle. Anti-abortion groups for years have funded so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), benign-looking store-front approximations of clinics that lure people in who suspect they might be pregnant, and instead push anti-abortion, religious ideology onto them. The study focused on nine states and found that many of these CPCs receive public funding with little to no government oversight.
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FEATURING DR. KAITLYN HENDERSON - Amid all the discussions among lawmakers of inflation, rising interest rates, and high gas prices, very little is raised on the shockingly low minimum wages that low-wage workers continue to earn. A newly released Oxfam report finds that more than 50 million American workers earn less than $15 an hour. People of color and women are disproportionately impacted. Women of color are the hardest hit, with up to 70% of working women in some states earning less than $15 an hour.
Find out more about the Oxfam report here.
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FEATURING DR. NADIA BROWN - The United States Senate this week holds confirmation hearings for the nation’s first ever Black woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court. Nominated by President Joe Biden, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in her opening statements on Monday promised to decide cases from a neutral position. She has authored hundreds of decisions in her various judicial roles and faced Senate confirmation hearings for a position on the D.C. Circuit court less than a year ago where she was confirmed by members of both parties.
But this week, Republican Senators grilled her on her work as a federal public defender for Guantanamo detainees more than 10 years ago. Senator Josh Hawley in particular, honed in on her decisions in child pornography cases, cherry picking her statements to suggest that she was “soft on crime.” Senator Lindsey Graham appeared intent on punishing Judge Jackson for what he perceived as poor treatment of rightwing justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett during their confirmation hearings. And, the same week that the hearings were held, the GOP released an ad bizarrely conflating Judge Jackson with Critical Race Theory by superimposing the acronym CRT over her initial KBJ.
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FEATURING MONIQUE MORRISSEY - Breaking legislative gridlock, the U.S. Senate recently passed the Postal Service Reform Act by a vote of 79 to 19. The House of Representatives had passed the same bill last month by a vote of 342 to 92. The bill now goes to President Biden’s desk to be signed into law.
The US Postal Service became deeply politicized during Donald Trump’s administration. US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump appointee, took steps designed to undermine the efficiency and solvency of a government agency that Americans rely on.
Is the Postal Service Reform Act enough to fix all or most of USPS’s problems?
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FEATURING MEGAN ESSAHEB - Russia’s devastating war on Ukraine has consumed the news and Washington D.C. for the past few weeks. But, as the price of consumer goods and gas rises, wages remain stagnant, and many are wondering what has become of President Joe Biden’s ambitious social agenda on climate change, economic justice, and more.
Now, more than 120 progressive organizations have signed on to a letter to Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, demanding that he not allow the president’s agenda to languish in the face of obstruction from Republicans and conservative Democrats.
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FEATURING BILL BLUM - Russia’s war on Ukraine is continuing relentlessly, in spite of a stiff groundswell of opposition from inside Ukraine. Russian forces, as of this recording, have been attacking the capital Kyiv. Earlier, Russian forces bombed the city of Mariupol, hitting a children’s hospital and maternity ward, killing helpless women and children.
As Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky implores NATO to impose a No-Fly Zone over his nation, the question arises, what is the least destructive response to such a brutal war?
Legal expert Bill Blum recently wrote, “when it comes to Ukraine, the jungle has overtaken the rule of law. Yet even as the carnage accelerates, there are some hopeful signs in the legal proceedings currently underway at the world's two most prominent tribunals--the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).”
Read Bill Blum’s latest piece here.
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FEATURING CONRAD MACKERRON - The United Nations Environment Assembly, in a little-noticed move passed a historic resolution in early March to pave the way for a legally binding international treaty ending plastic pollution. Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme called it, “a triumph by planet earth over single-use plastics,” and “the most significant environmental multilateral deal since the Paris accord.” Global plastic pollution has increased dramatically in recent years just as plastic recycling has been shown to be largely a sham.
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FEATURING KAREN LOEWY - Texas Governor Greg Abbott in late February informed his state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to review whether or not gender affirming treatment for transgender children in his state constituted child abuse. The directive was based on a letter by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton where he expressed a non-binding opinion suggesting that such medical treatment was tantamount to abuse. Although Abbott and Paxton’s moves are not legally binding, Texas Children’s Hospital has just announced it will stop hormone therapies for transgender children in response. And, families of transgender kids are understandably worried about child services separating them.
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FEATURING COLLIN REES - President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced a ban on oil imports from Russia, saying it was a way to deal "another powerful blow to Putin's war machine." A week earlier, during his State of the Union address, Biden had said he would use “every tool at our disposal” to blunt the effect of sanctions on the price of oil. Americans are seeing gas prices increase over the past few weeks. But Russian oil imports are less than ten percent of U.S. energy imports.
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FEATURING SERENA PAREKH - Russia’s war on Ukraine has caused a massive exodus of refugees within Europe. Contrary to how many nations have closed their borders to those fleeing wars in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and other non-European nations, Ukrainians are generally being welcomed with open arms. Many leaders and even journalists are fueling the notion that Ukrainian refugees are somehow more deserving than their non-white counterparts. CBS News correspondent Charlie D’Agata on February 26th said, “this isn't a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European — I have to choose those words carefully, too — city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.” The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association pointed out his statements as an example of “racist news coverage that ascribes more importance to some victims of war over others.”
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FEATURING ELIE MYSTAL - President Joe Biden’s recent nomination of Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court is unprecedented. There has never before been a Black woman nominated to the nation’s highest court—a court that is the final arbiter of how the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the laws of the nation are applied. Yet Biden’s nomination is likely to make little difference in the larger balance of power on the court, given that the opinions of the six conservative justices will still overwhelm the decisions of the three more liberal justices.
In his newly released first book, Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution, legal scholar Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation, argues that the founders wrote the original Constitution narrowly and with such haste that they were forced to add on the Bill of Rights to remedy its gaping holes, rather like a “day-one patch” to a piece of prematurely released software.
Sonali Kolhatkar, host of Rising Up With Sonali, spoke with Mystal for YES! Magazine where she works as the racial justice editor. Enjoy this excerpt of the conversation. You can read a transcript and watch a video of the full interview at YesMagazine.org.
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FEATURING PHYLLIS BENNIS - Russian forces have attacked Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv, destroying government buildings, an opera house and a concert hall. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the attack saying, “A missile targeting the central square of a city is open, undisguised terrorism.” Meanwhile, a 40-mile Russian convoy has been heading toward the Ukrainian capital Kiev.
Writing for In These Times, foreign policy expert Phyllis Bennis says, “Right now we need an immediate ceasefire and serious negotiations on broader issues. That means urgent diplomacy — not more military force — to end this war.”
Read her article In These Times entitled, “The U.S. Should Respond to Putin’s Unconscionable Invasion of Ukraine With Diplomacy, Not War.”
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FEATURING TIANNA MAYS - Kim Potter, the White Minnesota police officer who killed the 20-year old Daunte Wright saying she mistook her gun for her taser, has just been sentenced to 2 years in prison for manslaughter. The sentence is far lower than the average 7-year sentence for such charges. Judge Regina Chu invoked the police killing of George Floyd to justify the light sentence, saying, “This is not a cop found guilty of murder for using his knee to pin down a person for nine-and-a-half minutes as he gasped for air.”
But Wright’s mother, angered by the light sentence, said, “the justice system murdered him all over again.”
Minnesota has also been rocked by the police murder of 22-year old Amir Locke who was killed by a SWAT team that broke into his home while he was asleep and, in the words of his parents, “executed” him on the spot.
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FEATURING RAMZY BAROUD - The Biden Administration has spent weeks fixated on Russia’s encroachment of Eastern Ukraine, readying responses such as troops and sanctions. In fact, Ukraine and Russia have occupied the headlines of newspapers and dominated broadcast news coverage so heavily that one might imagine the weight of the world rests on the U.S. keeping Russia in check. This may be unsurprising considering Biden’s falling popularity–war has been a sure-fire booster of Presidents in the past.
But, journalist Ramzy Baroud warns that Biden’s real challenge is not Russia (or China), but poverty in America.
Read Ramzy Baroud’s article here.
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FEATURING RAHUL MAHAJAN - The Biden Administration this week insisted that Russia’s mounting actions on the border of Ukraine were an invasion. Jon Finer, an advisor to Biden, said on CNN, “We think this is, yes, the beginning of an invasion, Russia's latest invasion into Ukraine.” He then added more strongly, “An invasion is an invasion and that is what is underway…I am calling it an invasion.” Russian troops are close to the Eastern Ukraine provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. These are areas controlled by separatist Ukrainian forces that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has now recognized as independent. For weeks now the U.S. and NATO have threatened a swift and harsh response to Russia’s encroachment of Ukraine.
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FEATURING ANNA GIFTY OPOKU-AGYEMAN - Nearly 2 years after massive nationwide uprisings for racial justice rocked the United States, Black leaders and activists remain frustrated with the slow pace of change–and with good reason. Beyond vague gestures toward Diversity-Equity-Inclusion policies and calls for “racial healing,” little appears to have changed. Now, a new book called The Black Agenda: Bold Solutions for a Broken System, brings together a collection of demands to center Black leadership and Black-led solutions across the spectrum of social problems in the nation today.
For more information visit https://www.blackagendabook.com.
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FEATURING MELISSA VALLIANT - The COVID-19 pandemic was by all accounts disastrous for humanity with nearly a million people in the United States alone having lost their lives. But it has also been an environmental disaster with an explosion of plastic-based protective products being consumed and discarded, and many localities rolling back pre-pandemic regulations that reduced or banned single-use plastic. The good news is that a new poll finds broad public support for addressing the on-going plastic pollution crisis that threatens our oceans, our biodiversity, and us.
Download the poll results here.
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FEATURING KEVIN MARTIN - As the tensions between Russia and the U.S. over Ukraine continue, the Russian government says it has pulled back some of its troops surrounding Ukraine. But the U.S. and its NATO allies say they want proof. President Joe Biden has threatened action against Russia in the event of an invasion and the White House this week released a statement in support of Ukraine that said in part, “President Biden made clear that the United States would respond swiftly and decisively, together with its allies and partners, to any further Russian aggression against Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, where mass starvation is so rampant that Afghan families are selling off their children and organs to stave off death, the Biden administration has decided to seize half of a $7 billion fund from the Afghan Central Bank for families of victims of the September 11th 2001 attacks carried out by Saudi Arabian terrorists.
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FEATURING REV. PAUL DUNN - Democratic Party leaders are scrambling to remain relevant ahead of the November midterm elections after major pieces of legislation have stalled in the Senate. Both the Build Back Better proposal and a major voting rights overhaul have suffered from political gridlock that two Democrats in particular are helping to fuel. Senators Krysten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia in particular, appear determined to help Republicans and conservatives stymie Democratic-led progress. My guest, Reverend Paul Dunn from First Baptist Church in Charleston, West Virginia, has recently withdrawn his support of Senator Manchin.
Find out more about the Poor People’s Campaign event in June here.
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FEATURING JOHN BARRY - Americans are tired of the pandemic. They are tired of changing government guidelines, of uncertain recommendations on mask wearing, of restrictions on gatherings, and more. And so, we are more receptive to pronouncements that the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus is milder and therefore spells the end of the pandemic.
Author John Barry, who wrote a definitive book about the 1918 Influenza pandemic warns that it’s too soon to declare the end.
Read John Barry’s New York Times op-ed here.
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FEATURING ZACK NESTEL-PATT - After legendary singer Neil Young forced the audio streaming giant Spotify to remove his music in protest of Joe Rogan’s podcast, several other musicians have joined suit: Joni Mitchell and India Arie among them. The musicians are angry over Spotify’s refusal to hold Rogan accountable for spreading misinformation and disinformation especially related to the COVID-19 pandemic, on his wildly popular podcast.
But musicians have long protested Spotify for putting profits ahead of principles. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers has been demanding just pay scales from the streaming platform for years.
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FEATURING DR. JUDY LUBIN - Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has finally announced his retirement. The oldest member of the nation’s highest court, Breyer, was one of 3 liberal justices left on the court and served 27 years. Democrats had been urging him to retire while President Joe Biden remains in power, and while their party holds a slim Senate majority.
The President, in keeping with a campaign promise said, “The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity. And that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.”
Republicans and conservatives have jumped on the announcement claiming that Biden is unfairly disqualifying Whites and people of other races. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell warned Biden against nominating a “radical.”
For more information visit www.urbanandracialequity.org.
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FEATURING JOHN NICHOLS - Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, the United States has had more than 2,600 deaths per million people from COVID-19. That’s the fifth worst outcome in the world - worse than most nations, and more than twice the death rate of say, Albania. Added to that, American billionaires, together with their allied politicians have obscenely profited from the pandemic while the rest of us have struggled. Now, journalist John Nichols has clearly identified what he calls “Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers” in his new book.
Read John Nichols’ writings atwww.thenation.com and find out more about his book here.
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FEATURING CARMEN COMSTI - A major bill in California to guarantee healthcare for all has recently cleared a legislative hurdle after passing out of a state health committee. AB 1400, introduced by Assembly member Ash Kalra, sets in motion a Single Payer healthcare system called Calcare in the nation’s most populous state. An accompanying amendment ACA 11 outlines how the bill would be funded. Already, opponents of a guaranteed healthcare system are sharpening their attacks by questioning the cost and complexity of such a publicly funded healthcare system–this in spite of its popularity among Californians.
Find out more at CalNurses.org.
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FEATURING BOOKE ADAMS - One year into Joe Biden’s presidency, Democrats, who have a razor thin control of the Senate and House, have had little success in passing visionary progressive legislation. With the ambitious Build Back Better bill stalled, and two corporate Democrats (Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin) stymying filibuster reform, we turn today to Booke Adams, Director of Movement Politics at People’s Action to understand this grim status quo and how to change it.
Read more from Brooke Adams on USA Today (oped with Reps. Tlaib and Omar), Democrats must be bold to save America from Republican attack and The Hill (op-ed), A progressive path forward.
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FEATURING MICKEY HUFF - The latest edition of Project Censored’s annual survey of stories that the corporate news media failed to cover or badly misrepresented, is out. State of the Free Press 2022 is a compendium of the top 25 censored stories of the year and includes stories such as how conservative Christian groups are spending money globally to promote anti LGBTQ campaigns, and how police are increasingly using dogs as weapons of violence against communities of color.
Project Censored says its mission is to, “expose and oppose news censorship and … promote independent investigative journalism, media literacy, and critical thinking.”
Click here to order a copy of Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2022.
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FEATURING ABBY MAXMAN - A new report by Oxfam examines the startling increase in global inequality during the course of the coronavirus pandemic. Inequality was already a serious problem worldwide and here in the United States, with rich elites amassing obscene amounts of wealth while the working poor increasingly struggled to subsist. But over the past couple of years, the pandemic has fueled an ever more widening gap.
According to the Oxfam report Inequality Kills which was released on January 17,“a new billionaire is created every 26 hours while inequality contributes to the death of one person every four seconds.”
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FEATURING DAVID MARPLES – A bi-partisan group of U.S. Senators met with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday in a show of American support amid increasing tensions with Russia. On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced he would also be meeting with Mr. Zelensky. U.S. talks with Russian leaders over Ukraine broke down last week. American intelligence reports apparently suspect Russian troops may attempt a provocative so-called “false flag” operation inside Ukraine to create a justification for invasion and war.
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FEATURING PETER KALMUS - Perhaps no recent Hollywood offering has polarized critics and viewers as much as Adam McKay’s Netflix holiday release Don’t Look Up. The star-studded movie details the maddening inaction of politicians and the media in response to a deadly comet that is certain to wipe out life on earth – a not-so-subtle analogy of the climate crisis.
While many professional reviewers excoriated Don’t Look Up, earning the film a mere 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, viewers gave it high marks. The film has amassed 150 million viewing hours on Netflix, making it the most viewed film in a single week and the third most viewed film ever on the streaming platform.
Read his film review for the Guardian entitled, I’m a climate scientist. Don’t Look Up captures the madness I see every day.
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https://ia601406.us.archive.org/21/items/2022-01-11-RUWS/2022_01_11_Liza_Featherstone.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 16:21)
FEATURING LIZA FEATHERSTONE - The Chicago Teachers Union signed off on a plan to resume classes this week after a 4-day standoff with the school district and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. The nation’s third largest school district will resume in-person classes after the union won pledges of enhanced safety measures as the Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus rages through the city.
The high-stakes standoff began last week as schools were set to reopen after the winter break but the teachers union voted to return to remote schooling in light of surging Covid cases. In response, the school district simply canceled classes, leading the union to dub the move #LoriLockout.
Read Liza's new piece on JacobincalledChildren Belong in School. That’s Why We Support the Chicago Teachers Union.
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https://ia601406.us.archive.org/21/items/2022-01-11-RUWS/2022_01_11_Arun_Gupta.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 20:56)
FEATURING ARUN GUPTA - The first anniversary of the January 6th 2021 insurrection was marked by supporters of Donald Trump showing up in meager numbers at the nation’s capital. And while there is a major federal investigation underway as well as a House Select committee investigation, little has been done to examine the roots of the insurrection. My guest Arun Gupta writes in Raw Story, “The sight of violent Trump supporters invading the Capitol a year ago may have been shocking but it was not surprising. It was the direct result of the government allowing right-wing political violence to smolder for years until it burst into a conflagration on Jan. 6.”
Read Arun Gupta's articles in Raw Story here.
Dear friends and subscribers, the Rising Up With Sonali crew is off work from 12/21/21 to 12/28/21. We'll see you in the new year with all new programming!
Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription if you haven't already done so, or make a year-end donation to ensure we remain on the air.
Thank you so much for a wonderful year of transitions and wishing you a safe, healthy holiday season full of joy.
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https://ia801404.us.archive.org/21/items/2021-12-14-RUWS/2021_12_14_Craig_Harrington.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 17:26)
FEATURING CRAIG HARRINGTON - Newly revealed text messages in on-going investigations of the January 6th riots show that several Trump allies including 3 Fox News hosts implored then-Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows to urge President Trump to stop the violence. Representative Liz Cheney, Vice Chair of the Select Committee to investigate the riots read some of those texts during a hearing.
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https://ia601404.us.archive.org/21/items/2021-12-14-RUWS/2021_12_14_Marcus_Baram.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 17:38)
FEATURING MARCUS BARAM - As union organizing activity ramps up across the United States, the dirty tactics of corporate employers at combating unionizing remain out of public view. Now, a new series by Capital and Main seeks to expose the lengths that employers like Amazon go to in order to undermine workers’ rights. Journalist Marcus Baram has written about the hundreds of millions of dollars that companies spend to bust unions.
Read the series on Union Busting here.