Rising Up With Sonali

FEATURING LUIS FELIZ LEON – Amazon’s Prime day events of June 21 and 22 have been heavily promoted as a major shopping event invented by the retail giant to boost sales at the start of summer. The company is gleefully advertising deals on all sorts of products but, the cost of the sale is borne...

FEATURING VARSHA GANDIKOTA-NELLUTLA – As representatives from the 7 wealthiest nations on the planet failed during their recent meeting to waive vaccine patents during a deadly global pandemic, leaders from the Global South met online recently to push back. The Summit for Vaccine Internationalism, convened by the group Progressive International, drew spokespeople from nations like Venezuela,...

FEATURING FRANCESCA EMANUELE – Peru is facing an election crisis that appears to be devolving quickly into political instability. After a left-leaning Andean-born candidate Pedro Castillo eked out a narrow 44,000 vote win against his rightwing opponent, Ms. Keiko Fujimori denounced the result as a fraud. Taking a page straight out of Donald Trump’s play book,...

FEATURING TASNEEM ESSOP – The Group of 7, or G7 summit in Cornwall, England wrapped up on Sunday with Western leaders making effervescent pronouncements about global cooperation, sending warning signals to Russia and China, claiming a crackdown on global tax havens, and patting themselves on the back for taking bold action on climate change.  But climate...

FEATURING KHURY PETERSEN-SMITH – Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is in trouble once more for calling out American imperialism and daring to say out loud what most lawmakers refuse to say. In a recent tweet showcasing her questioning of State Secretary Antony Blinken during a House Foreign Affairs Committee, Omar said, “We must have the same...

FEATURING SUYAPA PORTILLO – When Vice President Kamala Harris recently traveled to Central America, she delivered a strongly worded statement to the people of Guatemala telling the not to travel to the United States. Harris came under strong criticism for refusing to acknowledge why people flee their home countries in the first place. My next...

FEATURING MARCY WINOGRAD – There are exceedingly few pieces of legislation that Senate Democrats and Republicans can agree on these days and actually pass into law. Not the voting rights bill, or infrastructure spending, but often military spending, and, most recently, a lengthy bill to counteract the influence of China on the world stage. A massive...

FEATURING LIZA FEATHERSTONE – In just a few weeks, New York City residents will vote for a new mayor, picking their top five candidates out of a field of 13 Democrats and 2 Republicans. Using ranked-choice voting for the very first time, New Yorkers are being asked to choose from a spectrum of candidates who are...

FEATURING DAIZY HERNANDEZ – As Americans cautiously emerge from a global pandemic, many of us are wondering what’s the next front in the war to protect public health? My next guest writes about a disease most of us have never heard of but that devastated her family and impacts hundreds of thousands of people in the...

FEATURING DR. KARLOS K. HILL – It was on May 31, 1921 that a white mob in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, went on a racist rampage murdering hundreds of Black residents and setting fire to dozens of Black-owned businesses devastating what came to be known as “Black Wall Street.” For decades the story...