Rising Up With Sonali

Listen to story:https://dn721807.ca.archive.org/0/items/2025-10-14-RUWS/2025_10_14_Omar_Zahzah.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 22:32) Make this paywall disappear for only $4 a month! Upgrade to paid FEATURING OMAR ZAHZAH - After two long and horrific years, a relentless Israeli bombing campaign centered on a genocidal project of erasing Palestinians in Gaza, has been put on hold. A ceasefire agreement enabled the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian hostages, in exchange for about 20 Israeli hostages–a mathematical ratio that starkly symbolizes the dehumanization of Palestinians. It’s not just physical attacks and erasure that Palestinians have been subject to, but, as Omar Zahzah suggests in a new book, “digital settler colonialism.” Zahzah is a writer, poet, organizer of Lebanese Palestinian descent, and Assistant Professor of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies at San Francisco State University. He is the author of Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestine Liberation Struggle. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the ceasefire agreement and his new book. ROUGH TRANSCRIPT: Sonali Kolhatkar: Before we talk about what's happening in your and what you write about, rather in your book, let's discuss the big news since late last week in what seems to have been a desperate bid to win the Nobel Peace Prize, President Donald Trump basically pushed Benjamin Netanyahu into doing what he and Joe Biden could have pushed him to do for two long years, which is to basically have a ceasefire. And I'm wondering if you have any opinions on the way in which the ceasefire is being talked about in the media. It's being seen as this big diplomatic coup for Trump, and it is also being seen as the end of something really, really terrible and the beginning of something bright and beautiful and wonderful. How do you view it? Omar Zahzah: That's… it's an important question and I think we need to sort of remind ourselves that what we've witnessed for the past two years is the problem of an unchecked colonial expansionist project being allowed to inflict its violence and devastation with total impunity. And so, that essential formulation, I don't think is gonna drastically change. Now, I hope that a ceasefire would result in a paradigm shift, but you really cannot have a substantive paradigm shift unless you actually have international pressure being applied to the Israeli state, which, although we've seen, you know, Trump, and there's been a lot of reporting of his dissatisfaction, you know, his anger at Netanyahu, the kinds of international pressure that needed to be applied against Israel in light of what it has done, which is a genocide and only the most recent genocide in terms of the Palestinian context, is strikingly low.  This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

Listen to story:https://dn721509.ca.archive.org/0/items/RUFJ_Ranjani_Prabhakar/RUFJ_2025_10_13_Ranjani_Prabhakar.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 28:458 Upgrade your subscription now to access the EXTENDED CUT of this interview, not available to anyone except Rising Up paid subscribers. Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) 🤩ENJOY THE LATEST EPISODE OF OUR NEW SERIES, RISING UP FOR JUSTICE. Every Tuesday, Rising Up subscribers get the EXTENDED UNCUT version of the interview airing Mondays on Free Speech TV.FEATURING RANJANI PRABHAKAR - Our nation and our world is overrun with billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. This week, Ranjani Prabhakar, Legislative Director of Earthjustice's Healthy Communities program, joins us. She is an environmental policy leader, musician, and educator, based in Washington, DC. In her work with Earthjustice, Ranjani leads a team of lobbyists dedicated to advancing legislative and advocacy strategies at the nexus of public health and the environment, ensuring peoples' rights to clean air, clean water, and toxic-free communities. She is also the founder of the Mycelia Arts Lab, an incubator for climate storytelling and creative expression as a means to drive change. ROUGH TRANSCRIPT: Sonali Kolhatkar: So first, tell us specifically what Earthjustice does. It is clearly a climate justice organization, and it has something to do with legal victories, legal battles, but for those among us who don't know much more than that, how do you explain it? Ranjani Prabhakar: So, Earthjustice is the country's largest nonprofit environmental law organization. We go to court on behalf of communities, tribes, organizations, at no cost to them, to fight for clean air, safe water, healthy ecosystems and a thriving climate. Many folks might hear our slogan become very popular, “The earth needs a good lawyer,” and that is sort of the bread and butter of what we do, sort of wielding the power of the law, on behalf of our clients pro bono.  This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

Listen to story:https://dn721503.ca.archive.org/0/items/2025-10-07-RUWS/2025_10_07_ArtofDefiance.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 22:53) Upgrade your subscription to read the full transcript of this interview and watch the video! Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) FEATURING S. A. BACHMAN AND BASMAN ALDIRAWI - On this second anniversary of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, we’ll take a look at the cultural resistance, Palestinian and American. In a new book, Art of Defiance: Protest Graphics and Poetry for Palestine, editor S. A. Bachman brings together verse in English and Arabic from the likes of Susan Abulhawa, Refaat Alareer, and Saul Williams. The book, whose proceeds benefit the families of those poets who have been killed, as well as Palestinian aid and justice organizations, is a physical work and also an e-book. Its art is designed to be printed up as protest posters. Sonali Kolhatkar spoke with S.A. Bachman, editor of Art of Defiance, and an artist, activist, and educator, and Basman Aldirawi, speaking from Cairo, Egypt. Aldirawi is a Palestinian physiotherapist, writer and poet from Gaza whose work is featured in Art of Defiance. He has contributed dozens of stories and poems to the online platform We Are Not Numbers and other outlets including ArabLit, Mondoweiss and Vivamost. He is also co-author of the book, Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, and the Arabic poetry anthology; Gaza, the land of poetry. ROUGH TRANSCRIPT: Sonali Kolhatkar: Let me start with you, S. A. This very, very grim two-year anniversary is an opportunity for us to talk about not only what's happening in Gaza, but about the cultural resistance, artistic resistance to it. S. A., start with the description of your book, the Art of Resistance, how did you put this together? Who is involved? You have a collection of basically poetry and visuals, right? S. A. Bachman: Correct. And the book was initially inspired by two directors from the Freedom Theater, which is in the West Bank. And they once said that the third Intifada would be fought not just in the streets, but through theater, through music, through visual art and through poetry. So, I felt like I had to use the skills that I have to do something, to push back, and I didn't feel that dissent was optional, it was compulsory. So, I began to reach out and start to talk to some poets, and one thing led to another, and each poet led me to another poet. And I ended up with an incredible collection of both young poets from Gaza and then a handful of very well-known poets. And then that poetry is juxtaposed with protest posters that I've done since October 2023, as well as other kinds of documentation that are specific to this genocide.  This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

Listen to story:https://dn721503.ca.archive.org/0/items/2025-10-07-RUWS/2025_10_07_Ilan_Pappe.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 22:54) Upgrade your subscription to access the full video and full transcript of this powerful conversation. Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) FEATURING ILAN PAPPE - Two years into Israel’s worst chapter of genocide in Gaza, the question arises, can the state of Israel simply continue acting in impunity unchallenged? Under the extremist leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, what can Israel’s future be, and, by extension, the future of the Palestinian people? In a powerful new book, historian Ilan Pappe imagines a more hopeful future, one that he hopes will come about via 8 “mini revolutions” that includes “Relocating the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees to the center of the future vision.”Ilan Pappe is a professor of history at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK and the director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies. His books include The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ten Myths About Israel, and A History of Modern Palestine. He writes for the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and elsewhere. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar from Italy to discuss his latest book, Israel on the Brink, And the Eight Revolutions that Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence.ROUGH TRANSCRIPT: Sonali Kolhatkar: Two years into this genocide, and there seems no end in sight. Is this the breaking point for Israelis and Palestinians? Ilan Pappe: I hope it is. I think unfortunately, we are not yet there at the breaking point. I think we should be talking about two different stages. One that maybe is in the making, which is the establishment of a longer ceasefire that will bring some sort of end to the bombing, maybe to exchange of prisoners. That could happen within a few months, I hope, sooner rather than later, of course, especially for the sake of the people of Gaza, and which will distinguish this from a more significant change in the reality, which I'm afraid is not due very, very soon. And, definitely the current efforts of the so-called peace mediation, including the, the Trump 21-point program are not really getting us there. So, there is a difference between a wish for a tactical rest, if you want, in the genocide or break, and a more fundamental change that would prevent a different kind of genocide, an incremental one, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and the continued aggressive Israeli policies, not only towards the Palestinians, but also towards its neighboring Arab countries. This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

Listen to story:https://dn721503.ca.archive.org/0/items/2025-10-07-RUWS/2025_10_07_Plestia_Alaqad.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 17:17) Upgrade your subscription to watch the full video and read the full transcript of this conversation. Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) FEATURING PLESTIA ALAQAD - It's been two years since Israel began its latest and worst genocidal chapter in Gaza. On October 7, 2023, after a Hamas attack that left more than a thousand Israelis dead and hundreds captured, Israel launched a relentless, 2-year long attack that killed on the order of 70,000 Palestinians. That number, when accounting for lack of food and medical aid, is likely far higher. Among those Israel has targeted and killed have been countless journalists. In a new book by young Palestinian journalist Plestia Alaqad, we learn what it was like to see Gaza through her eyes. Alaqad covered the beginning of the genocide and watched her colleagues and fellow Palestinians being massacred before fleeing to Australia. “Plestia Alaqad became our eyes in Gaza and has forever taken a huge piece of our hearts. In this series of diary entries, she welcomes us to live through the Genocide again but, this time, with greater intimacy,” writes Palestinian American attorney and academic Noura Erekat. Plestia Alaqad has won international awards for her coverage of the genocide and spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar from Lebanon about her new book, The Eyes of Gaza: A Diary of Resilience.ROUGH TRANSCRIPT: Sonali Kolhatkar: So your coverage of the first few months, a few weeks maybe of the genocide was so harrowing that I'm wondering if you can tell us, not necessarily what it was like there—people can read that—but what it felt like for you as a young person growing up in Gaza, having dreams of becoming all sorts of different things, and what led to you becoming this person through whose eyes we were able to see what was happening in Gaza. What was that transition like? Plestia Alaqad: I actually reported in Gaza for 45 days, but people think I was there for months. And I sometimes feel like that I was there reporting for years because even though it's only 45 days, but it was so extreme and I saw things that I never expected to see. I never expected that we live in a world where a genocide is allowed. And what I can't even understand or imagine is that it's been two years of the genocide and it's still going on the.Unfortunately Israel succeeded in isolating Gaza from the rest of the world. So, the hard part really is, is like as a person being born and raised Gaza my whole life, when you're outside of Gaza, you realize that things have different meanings than they do in Gaza. Meaning in Gaza, when you see a tent, it's always like a negative thing. It means displacement. Outside of Gaza, it means camping. How in Gaza you're always afraid of looking at the sky of like, oh my God, is this bomb? Is this smoke? But outside of Gaza it's different. So that really is the hard part after surviving a genocide, just understanding and processing everything you went through and how your experience is basically different from the experience of the rest of the world and how your life in Gaza isn't normal.  This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

Listen to story:https://ia801005.us.archive.org/21/items/rufj-2025-10-06-RUFJ_YlianaJohansenMendez/RUFJ_2025_10_06_Yliana_Johansen_Mendez.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 32:26) Upgrade your subscription now to access the EXTENDED CUT of this interview, not available to anyone except Rising Up paid subscribers. Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) 🤩ENJOY THE LATEST EPISODE OF OUR NEW SERIES, RISING UP FOR JUSTICE. Every Tuesday, Rising Up subscribers get the EXTENDED UNCUT version of the interview airing Mondays on Free Speech TV.FEATURING YLIANA JOHANSEN-MENDEZ - Our nation and our world is overrun with billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. This week, Yliana Johansen-Méndez, Chief Program Officer of Immigrant Defenders Law Center  joins us.ROUGH TRANSCRIPT: Sonali Kolhatkar: So, Immigrant Defenders [Law Center] suggests you defend immigrants, but that's vague. Let's get deeper into the details of what it is that your organization does. You work on immigration, but how? What specifically are you doing? Yliana Johansen-Mendez: So, Immigrant Defenders Law Center we're commonly known as ImmDef. We're a law firm. We're a nonprofit law firm. We provide free legal services. and we're really founded on the principle that no immigrant should be alone in the immigration system. That everyone should have a qualified, competent immigration specialized attorney at their side in their deportation process. And so that's, that's kind of the foundation of our work, is that direct representation and removal defense. But our work is really a lot more expansive than that, now. We have to be, we've had to change to adapt to a constantly changing field and really focus on making the whole immigration system more just not just, through immigration deportation defense, but also through community education and through really strategic litigation.  This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

Listen to story:https://ia600208.us.archive.org/33/items/2025-09-30-RUWS/2025_09_30_Jonathan_Rosenblum.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 24:40) Please upgrade your subscription from FREE to $4 a month (which is practically FREE, no?) to watch this video and read its transcript. Subscribe NOW (5-day free trial) FEATURING JONATHAN ROSENBLUM - There was a time when socialists were so rare in elected office, most people could cite only Bernie Sanders and Eugene Debs as having power. Today, more people are proudly wearing the mantle of “socialist” as capitalism’s failures become ever-apparent. For that, we can thank not just the likes of Sanders,  but Kshama Sawant who is arguably far bolder than the Vermont Senator. When Sawant, an Indian immigrant, burst into the local political scene in Seattle, running for a City Council on an overtly anticapitalist agenda, many people, including Jonathan Rosenblum, were skeptical. Jonathan has helped workers throughout North America organize, bargain, and strike in a wide range of industries—warehousing and logistics, higher education, healthcare, and public service. During Kshama Sawant’s decade on the Seattle City Council, he worked on her council staff and as an election campaigner. He is the author of We're Coming for You and Your Rotten System: How Socialists Beat Amazon and Upended Big-City Politics and spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the new book.ROUGH TRANSCRIPT: Sonali Kolhatkar: So, I said that you were initially skeptical, and that's how you start your book. You were skeptical of Sawant because she showed up to an event, a rally for SeaTac airport workers, who, more than a decade ago were lobbying for pushing for a $15 an hour minimum wage. Lay out that scene for us where you first encountered Kshama Sawant and how she struck you, how her brand of politics struck you initially with a little fear, and then you came around. Jonathan Rosenblum: Yeah, This was my first encounter with, with Kshama and the organization that she had belonged to at the time, socialist Alternative. And they came down to SeaTac Washington, miles south of Seattle in 2013, where airport workers were fighting to get an initiative on the ballot there for a $15 minimum wage, which they were successful at doing, and they were successful in winning a few months later. And, Kshama spoke at this public hearing, and you know, compared to the other speakers who are very modest and moderate in their tone, seeking to persuade a fairly conservative electorate in SeaTac to vote for this transformative wage increase for airport workers, Kshama held nothing back and talked about the maladies of capitalism and why we needed to fight not just the corporations, but the mainstream political parties, both the Republicans and the Democrats, who were holding workers back. And I was really, frankly, a little bit askance at the sharpness of her tone. But then after the meeting, just talking to the airport workers who were there about who they liked hearing from at the hearing everyone said to a person we liked that Indian lady from Seattle. And I realized that Kshama had had tapped a core emotion, energy that workers had, that they'd been screwed, time and again by the system.  This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

Listen to story:https://ia600208.us.archive.org/33/items/2025-09-30-RUWS/2025_09_30_Alex_Ferrer.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 16:13) Subscribe now for $4 a month to watch the video and read the transcript of this interview! (Don't worry, I won't go on strike... yet 😅) Explore membership options (5-day free trial) FEATURING ALEX FERRER - As the cost of housing continues to be out of reach of many Americans, millions are burdened with rent and eviction-related debt that they cannot pay. Now, the Debt Collective has organized a rent debt strike against Equity Residential, the fifth largest landlord in the nation and the largest in the city of Los Angeles, where tenants recently successfully pushed back against deceptive utility bills.Alex Ferrer, an organizer with the Debt Collective, working with tenants towards the abolition of their post eviction rental debt, spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the renters strike.ROUGH TRANSCRIPT: Sonali Kolhatkar: The Debt Collective often, for folks who are familiar with the organization, has been associated with college debt, with student debt. Tell me what the issue for “rent debt” is and why the organization has included or expanded its work to include rent-related debt. Alex Ferrer: Totally. I think that's, that's our historic focus on student debt and medical debt and all other forms of burdensome debt, I think is actually really congruous with this issue of rental debt because it's another area in which a basic human necessity, that is housing, is being a place in which people are becoming deeply indebted because we're being denied the means to live without debt. So, the high cost of housing and the, the post eviction rent debt arrears are, I think, very similar to other arrears of focus for the Debt Collective. and we see these issues as totally congruous.  This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

Listen to story:https://ia600208.us.archive.org/33/items/2025-09-30-RUWS/2025_09_30_Simone_Price.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 16:11) Subscribe now for only $4 a month so that journalists too can earn a living wage. Explore membership options - 5-day free trial FEATURING SIMONE PRICE - California’s incarcerated firefighters may win a huge pay bump if Gov. Gavin Newsom signs a bill that’s just reached his desk. AB 247 would raise the minimum wage for this group of workers from below-minimum wage to $7.25 an hour. As global warming triggers fire seasons that are longer and deadlier than normal, California’s reliance on incarcerated firefighters grows. But they are often treated as dispensable. Simone Price is the Director of Organizing at the Center for Employment Opportunities, where she oversees a program designed to center the voices of formerly incarcerated people at the local and federal level. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about AB 247.NOTE: In an earlier version of this interview, Sonali erroneously cited the original proposed pay increase of $19 an hour. That amount was adjusted down to $7.25. ROUGH TRANSCRIPT: Sonali Kolhatkar: I think those people who may not live in fire zones or outside California may not really be aware to the extent that we as a state rely on incarcerated firefighters. I'm near Altadena. It was a big story in January of this year about how incarcerated firefighters made a huge difference to the ability to save property and lives. Tell us how much the state is relying on, and increasingly so, on incarcerated firefighters. Simone Price: Yeah of course, I mean this past January as Los Angeles experienced one of the most destructive wildfires, I think it came to the world's attention just how often the state is relying upon currently incarcerated people who are working on these fire crews. But it's actually been a trend that's evolved and increased over time. And for the past several wildfire seasons, about a third of the emergency responses that were deployed to fires were currently incarcerated people. And this past January, those numbers were 40%. So, it's very often incarcerated folks who are working side by side with their Calfire counterparts, but who are currently serving a sentence and receiving not only far below minimum wage, but about $5 to $10 per day and as much as a dollar per hour in an emergency situation. So far, far below minimum wage.  This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

Listen to story:https://dn721609.ca.archive.org/0/items/rufj-chip-gibbons/RUFJ_Chip_Gibbons.mp3Download: mp3 (Duration: 30:42) Upgrade your subscription now to access the EXTENDED CUT of this interview, not available to anyone except Rising Up paid subscribers. Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial) 🤩ENJOY THE LATEST EPISODE OF OUR NEW SERIES, RISING UP FOR JUSTICE. Every Tuesday, Rising Up subscribers get the EXTENDED UNCUT version of the interview airing Mondays on Free Speech TV.FEATURING CHIP GIBBONS - Our nation and our world is overrun with billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. This week, Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent  joins us. Defending Rights and Dissent is a national civil liberties organization that defends the American people’s right to know and freedom to act through grassroots mobilization, public education, policy expertise, and advocacy journalism. ROUGH TRANSCRIPT: Sonali Kolhatkar: So, I gave a brief summary of what Defending Rights & Dissent does, but give us more background in terms of the kind of work that you're engaged in that gets more specific. What are the issues that are important to you and what is the main goal of the organization? Chip Gibbons: Well, I think the issue that's probably the most important to us is the right of the people to engage in political expression. Our organization has existed for six decades. It's actually the product over time of the merger of a number of smaller organizations. I will not bore people with an organization chart of this group merging to this group, but I will go back six decades ago briefly to note that we were founded as the National Committee against the House Un-American Activities Committee to take on the McCarthy era repression at a time when many people were afraid of speaking out because those who did, had their livelihoods destroyed, they were smeared, they were targeted. In the process of taking on McCarthyism, we angered another gentleman by the name of J Edgar Hoover. Hoover’s FBI, subjected us to ruthless surveillance. This came out in the mid-seventies, and, you know, with the demise of HUAC, we became very interested in defending political expression from government surveillance, both the FBI at the federal level, and what they used to call Red Squads, the police intelligence squads at the local level.  This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in