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FEATURING JAY PONTI - One of the most exciting politicians in recent months has been New York Mayoral Democratic Party candidate Zohran Mamdani, who brings an unapologetically democratic socialist set of solutions to the predatory capitalist gutting of the economy. 

Mamdani has inspired so much new energy, particularly among young people, all over the country, that it is shocking how many of his party colleagues still refuse to endorse him. New York state’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, New Jersey Democrat Corey Booker, and others. 

Now, it has emerged that former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who Mamdani beat in the primary race and who has declared an independent candidacy against him in November, is in direct contact with President Donald Trump. 

Trump has considered intervening in the Mayoral election, labeled Mamdani a “communist lunatic” and even threatened to arrest him. 

In an interview from Netroots Nation 2025 in New Orleans, Jay Ponti, a grassroots political organizer, trainer, and consultant discussed how to counter the Democratic Party's political machine.

Ponti has participated in some of the most important social movements of the last decade, including Occupy Wall Street, Standing Rock, and Bernie Sanders’s two presidential campaigns. He is the co-creator of the #BankExit fossil fuel divestment campaign and has organized campaigns and direct actions across the country. And, he’s author of Be The Revolution: How Occupy Wall Street and the Bernie Sanders Movement Reshaped American Politics.

Special thanks to Free Speech TV for sponsoring my travel.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome To the program Jay Ponti. 

Jay Ponti: Hi, it's great to be here. 

Kolhatkar: So let's talk a little bit about what New York city mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani can expect between now and the general election for mayor. He's facing off against two corrupt Democrats, who basically knew they couldn't beat him, and one he certainly did beat in the Democratic primary. And you are concerned about what Zohran Mamdani is gonna be facing because they've all, basically, all the opposition has lined up and joined forces against him. What should he expect? 

Ponti: Well, first off, what really boggles my mind is who are these Democrats who see a credibly accused sexual predator and someone who has been convicted of corruption and went to the Trump administration, you know, to get exonerated and says, ‘that's my guy.’ Like, how are either of these people even polling that is, that is a question that I have. 

But what can Mamdani expect? One thing that we have seen over and over again is that neoliberals hate socialists more than fascists. Okay? So what we can expect is largely what we saw the alignment against Bernie Sanders in both 2016 and 2020. 

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FEATURING DAVID HUERTA - When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began terrorizing Los Angeles, among their first casualties was SEIU California president David Huerta who was violently arrested for defending immigrant workers. 

Huerta was held for three days in a dramatic early turn of events that galvanized Southern California’s labor movement and brought tens of thousands of people out into the streets of downtown LA. He now faces a felony charge of impeding a federal officer. 

At the Netroots Nation 2025 conference in New Orleans where Huerta gave a speech, I had the chance to speak with the labor leader, who had just been cleared for interviews for the first time since his arrest.

Special thanks to Free Speech TV for sponsoring my travel.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome to the program, David Huerta. 

David Huerta: Yes, thank you. 

Kolhatkar: I was standing outside the Federal detention center when you were inside in mid-June after you had been arrested. And I was with thousands and thousands of people holding “Free David Huerta” signs. And I wanna begin by asking you, how ICE agents seem to have tried to make an example of you when they arrested you, but it seems as though it had the opposite effect, that it galvanized LA and LA organizers, especially labor in a way that has actually borne fruit and shown mass resistance. Would you agree that that's kind of how things played out in big terms? 

Huerta: Uh, yes. I, I do agree. I mean, it was you know, I didn't quite understand it like that when I was inside for those three days. And you know, at the time, you know, I was really, I don't wanna say, conflicted is the wrong word, it was more just like concerned what was happening or what was, you know…

But when I came out and it took me time, it was kinda like drinking water out of a fire hydrant as quickly as things came at me, going in, coming out was the same kind of energy as like, trying to catch up to what had actually happened. 

And seeing that and just coming out and realizing it. And realizing it now, how galvanizing that was. 

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FEATURING ROB BONTA - Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have continued to conduct indiscriminate and violent sweeps of immigrant spaces in Los Angeles, violating court orders barring the federal government from making arrests based on race, language, or vocation. 

Most recently, ICE Agents hid in the back of a truck rented from the private company Penske to swarm a Home Depot in Van Nuys, Southern California and snatched several people. The Department of Homeland Security has claimed, without any evidence, that the area is under control of a Salvadorian gang MS-13. 

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has sued the Trump administration dozens of times, almost at the rate of once a week, including over the federal government’s deployment of National Guard troops in LA.

I met Bonta at last week’s Netroots Nation conference in New Orleans and asked him about the lawsuits.

Special thanks to Free Speech TV for sponsoring my travel.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome to the program. 

Rob Bonta: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. 

Kolhatkar:I wanna talk about California taking on Trumpism. Your office has spent effort, money, and time and resources in challenging the Trump administration legally. How effective has that been for an administration that has openly defied rulings, judicial decisions, that doesn't respect legal rulings?

Bonta: Our lawsuits have been incredibly effective and in our lawsuits where we secure orders, the Trump administration has broadly been following them, um, we have brought lawsuits in weeks, more than one a week. Our North Star is the rule of law. If Trump breaks the law, we sue him. If he doesn't break the law, we don't sue him. 

If all we have is political grievance or ideological or policy difference, we don't go to court. We won't go to court. We can't go to court. The court will throw out our case. So, we only sue him when he breaks the law. In the 20 cases where a court has issued an order on a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order, we've won 18 of the times. So we have a 90% success rate. We've spent $5 million of funding that the legislature and the governor gave us in the special session. And we have secured $168 billion of federal funding that Trump was trying to withhold. 

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FEATURING DORTELL WILLIAMS - The United States prison system is one of the harshest and most punitive in the world, locking up nearly 2 million people. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, “The U.S. locks up more people per capita than any other independent democracy, at the staggering rate of 580 per 100,000 residents.” What is the point of such a high rate of incarceration? 

Rehabilitation, we are told, is the goal, and that imprisoning people who are convicted of crimes, will help them and help society. But does this work? Are there even mechanisms in place to measure if it’s working? Or are we merely locking people up and throwing away the keys?

And, what about those people who are sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole?

The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that, “inmates who participate in correctional education programs have 43 percent lower odds of returning to prison than those who do not, and that every dollar spent on prison education saves four to five dollars on the costs of re-incarceration.” But prisons are constantly starving for funds.

Dortell Williams is serving a life sentence without parole at Mule Creek State Prison in California and is a regular correspondent with Rising Up With Sonali. He is an essayist and the founder of Taming Trauma.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome back to the program Dortell Williams. 

Dortell Williams: Yeah, good morning. Good morning to you and your audience. I'm glad to be with you. 

Kolhatkar: So, you and I have talked so much about prisons and what they do, what they don't do. We are going to be talking today about rehabilitation, which often is in the words that are used to describe prisons. They're labeled institutions that rehabilitate, in other words, help reform individuals who have been convicted of crimes. 

What does rehabilitation mean in the context of prisons? Like how do prisons actually say they rehabilitate people? 

Williams: Well, you know, it's an elusive word, and I would say for people with life sentences, me included, the board is probably the best measurement of rehabilitation as far as the state's definition of it. And that is to show that you're not a, a present danger to society when they release you. 

And then further than that, just in general, if a person were to get out and stay out for three years without going back to prison, they would consider that rehabilitated. 

Kolhatkar: So for people who don't have access to parole or being able to go before a parole board, what does that mean? I mean, you have a life sentence without the possibility of parole. So how do you, how does someone in your position get treated by the system? 

Williams: Well to be, to be blunt we don't exist. We just, we just don't exist. There's no measurement for us. There's no mechanism for us to be measured to, to go to the board. We're just labeled incorrigible from the moment we're sentenced. And most of us are sentenced as emerging adults. So that means that we're between the ages of 18 and 25, which is generally the ages that people go to prison. But we are we're deemed incorrigible from the beginning, and that's it. So yeah, that's, that's how they would measure that. 

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FEATURING ANOA CHANGA - President Donald Trump weighed in on the controversial ads by American Eagle featuring the young white actor Sydney Sweeney and its not-so-subtle nod to eugenics. “ If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic,” said Trump. 

The new ad campaign features the actor in various sultry and sexually suggestive poses, with a raspy voice over discussing her genetic traits before claiming she has “great jeans." This reference to white racial purity echoes claims that Trump and his backers have often made about immigrants as criminals with “bad genes.”

Anoa Changa is a southern-based movement journalist, narrative strategist, podcast producer, and retired attorney. She is a contributor to NewsOne and has bylines in Truthout, DAME Magazine, Scalawag, Rewire News Group, and Essence. She just published a story at NewsOne called “Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle Ad Appeals To Racist ‘Good Genes’ Ideology” 

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So first, let's talk about the ad itself before we get to the bigger story and the history of eugenics in this country. You know, there's claims that, oh, it's all in good fun. It's innocent. She's supposed to be this telegenic actress, and it's a reference to her being “hot.” But you don't buy that? 

Anoa Changa: I mean, it's not, right? When you actually go back and look at various aspects of the ad campaign that American Eagle itself put out on its Instagram page, its Facebook—I think it took down one of the clips from its YouTube page. But the one clip that I think really got everyone going was a clip that literally is Sydney Sweeney, describing her own physical characteristics, right? Like her own genes and the fact that we get good genes, like genes come from our parents, right? And then she talks about her blue eyes and the camera pans to her blue eyes. 

So it's not just this little quip about like genes, like having good genes. Because I got good genes, so I fit in these jeans so well, and I know that's like a tongue twister for some of us, but like, really it was appealing to this ideology that somehow with being apparently appealing, appearing blonde hair, being blue eye, made her have good jeans. But then in fact, it's also talking about the jeans that she's wearing. 

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FEATURING KOBIE CHRISTIAN - President Donald Trump has fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for using data-driven analysis to point out a weak jobs market. The commissioner announced fewer than expected jobs for the month of July and revised down numbers from the previous two months - such revision is standard when more data becomes available.

Still, Trump, furious that reality contradicted his claims of great economic growth, decided to fire the person who was appointed by a bipartisan consensus.

In addition to the job market weakening, inflation continues to increase, reflected particularly in the rising cost of groceries, which Trump promised to bring down. Now, there’s an easy-to-use online tool called Don't Inflate Our Plates allowing people to calculate inflation in their own state.

Kobie Christian, a spokesperson for Unrig Our Economy, a campaign to fix the rules of the US economy in favor of working people, explains what the online tool is and how it works.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome to the program, Kobie. 

Kobie Christian: Hi. Thank you for having me, Sonali.

Kolhatkar: Let's first talk, before we discuss the tool itself, about what the firing of Erika McEntarfer means. This is a person whose job it is to simply have reliable statistics. It's not a political position. And just for merely reporting the truth, she got fired. What is that symbolic of indicative of when we think about Trump and his promises about the economy? 

Christian: Yeah, as you mentioned last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a meager 73,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.2%. It's also worth noting again, as you said, that there were 258,000 fewer jobs in the months of June and May than were initially reported. 

I can't say much about what this means for future reports, but I think we see the effects of what the report indicates, already.

Republicans and in Congress are already admitting that their constituents are living in what they call “recession economies.” And all of this comes after those same Republicans in Congress voted to rubberstamp President Trump's tariffs, which are nothing more than tax on working people and small businesses in America in order to pay for more tax breaks for billionaires. 

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FEATURING JAGPREET SINGH - Zohran Mamdani’s stunning win as the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor was a massive political earthquake, one that establishment forces have been analyzing since the primary election in June.

Was it his “easy charisma, youthful good looks and exuberant style” as the New York Times wondered? Or was it that his message galvanized the often-overlooked residents of a city that is increasingly out of reach of working class people? 

Jagpreet Singh is the Political Director for DRUM Beats and in an in-depth interview, he examines how and why South Asian voters in New York City mobilized for Mamdani and what lessons the election holds for the rest of the nation.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome to the program Jagpreet. 

Jagpreet Singh: Hi Sonali. Thank you so much for having me on. It's a pleasure to be on your show. 

Kolhatkar: So, to explain the beginning of the connection between Zohran, Mamdani and DRUM Beats and the South Asian organizers in New York City… Obviously he comes from, you know, South Asian royalty, if you will, in that he's the son of Mira Nair, the celebrated filmmaker, and Mahmood Mamdani, the celebrated academic. But was this a match right from the beginning or did one woo the other? 

Singh: Yeah, so we've had a relationship at DRUM and our organization DRUM Beats with Zohran Mamdani for quite some time since he's been an assembly member in Astoria. Initially one of the first actions that he took on as an Assembly Member was a hunger strike for taxi drivers here in New York City, and a large portion of these working class taxi drivers come from South Asian Indo Caribbean backgrounds, had approached Zohran about the crushing debt many of these drivers were facing. 

And throughout the campaign, Zohran worked with the taxi drivers, our organization got involved. So many of our members are also taxi drivers, and together they had come up with a plan to challenge the mayor to make sure that there was debt relief. And Zohran actually took on a 14-day hunger strike at that point, alongside some of our members and members of Taxi Workers Alliance, a campaign that we ultimately had won. 

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FEATURING VIET THANH NGUYEN - There is a profound irony in the fact that many of the US’s greatest contributors to art, culture, and innovation, are nonwhite immigrants and refugees. In Donald Trump’s bid to “Make America Great,” he pushes those very people to make better art, to enrich the nation’s culture with their resistance.

Among them is a writer whose work many have admired, Viet Thanh Nguyen is a professor of English, American studies and ethnicity, and comparative literature at the University of Southern California. His novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome to the program Prof. Nguyen. 

Viet Thanh Nguyen: Hi Sonali, glad to be here with you. 

Kolhatkar: So Let's talk about the story that you wrote for The Nation. It's about a country that you're not from, but the country that you visited earlier this year, that ended up being very much in the news, and that has a really sordid history, if you will, with American politics. And that's El Salvador, almost as sordid, perhaps just as sordid as the history of the US' involvement with the country of your origin. Vietnam. You went to El Salvador at the same time as Marco Rubio was there. And what did you come back with when you returned to the US and wrote this piece and El Salvador was suddenly in the news for its concentration camps? 

Nguyen: My timing could not have been better. So there's that bright side of things. But yes, I showed up on the same day that Marco Rubio was in San Salvador, and he was there to sign the prison deportation agreement with President Bukele. And I was there to look at the history of US-sponsored massacre during El Salvador's civil War. And those two things actually completely converged. They're part of the same historical timeline and part of the same historical timeline that brought me as a refugee from Vietnam to the United States in 1975. 

I was brought to the United States because of the history of the war in Vietnam that the United States had a major role in. And when I came to the United States, I grew up as an American, was very precocious, read newspapers at a young age. And I was reading about El Salvador's civil war in the late seventies and early eighties, including the infamous El Mozote massacre and other kinds of atrocities that the US trained military was committing. 

And so, El Salvador had always been in my mind as a place that I wanted to know more about given that kind of history. And I took the first opportunity I could, very late in my life, to go to El Salvador. 

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FEATURING CHRISTIAN SMALLS - Israeli occupation forces intercepted the Handala, the latest Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship sailing to break the illegal siege of Gaza amid mass starvation. A United Nations-backed organization has just issued an urgent report warning of a “worst-case scenario of famine” in Gaza. The Handala carried a stash of baby formula, food, and medical aid as well as 21 activists from 12 different countries, including well known labor activist Christian Smalls, the founder of the Amazon Labor Union.

When the Israelis boarded the ship, seven uniformed forces assaulted Chris Smalls. According to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, “they choked him and kicked him in the legs, leaving visible signs of violence on his neck and back… This level of force was not used against other abducted activists.” Smalls was the only Black activist on board the Handala. 

On Thursday July 24th, while the ship was closing in on Gaza, Rising Up host Sonali Kolhatkar reached Chris Smalls on the Handala and spoke with him about why he joined 20 others to risk his life to bring aid to Palestinians. 

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome to the program Chris Smalls. 

Christian Smalls: How you doing? Thank you for having me. 

Kolhatkar: So, you are speaking to us from on board the Handala and this ship is just, I understand as of Thursday, a couple of days out from Gaza. 

First of all, tell me, let's talk about why you are on this ship. You are a labor organizer, especially known for your activism against Amazon, and its attempt to undermine workers' rights. How is Amazon specifically complicit in the genocide in Gaza, and how are unions, who should be the natural allies of the Palestinian people, also, in many ways not doing enough? 

Smalls: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as you mentioned yeah, [I’m] the founder of the Amazon Labor Union, the first union in American history for Amazon workers, and, Amazon is not just complicit. They are actively participating and actively a part of the military industrial complex that Israel uses to target, surveil, and even kill these innocent Palestinians every day. 

The AWS web Services, Amazon, and other corporation has pledged what they call the Nimbus Project, $7.2 billion into Israel's Iron Dome. So when you're talking about the connecting of the dots me being here on the Handala is taking a stance as a labor leader from the US saying that enough is enough. This is across, this is across the picket line for the working class, and that doesn't exclude Palestinians and the people of Gaza. 

And I hope to apply pressure to the US Labor movement, who has been shipping arms for the last 21 months, every 15 hours to Israel. 

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FEATURING JOSEFINA LOPEZ - More than two decades ago, full-figured women all over the US and world felt seen and celebrated when the film Real Women Have Curves debuted to great acclaim and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. That film put its writer and producer, Josefina Lopez firmly on the map even as it gave visibility to women who are invisibilized, women who work in LA’s garment factories not unlike the ones that federal immigration agents have recently been raiding, snatching and disappearing mothers and daughters.  

This paywall is here because Real Women need a Living Wage so please consider signing up for access to the video and full transcript of my conversation with the great Josefina Lopez!

Lopez is a screenwriter and playwright, film producer and performer, born in Mexico and undocumented for more than a dozen years before receiving amnesty. She is also the founding Artistic Director of Casa 0101 Theater in Boyle Heights, LA, and has produced over 200 plays celebrating Latinos, immigrants, and the LGBT and BIPOC communities.

The Real Women Have Curves musical opened on Broadway April 27, 2025. Lopez's latest project, 20 lbs to Happiness, considered a quasi-sequel to Real Women Have Curves, premiered at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival this year.  I spoke with the acclaimed filmmaker recently about her work and the importance of immigrant stories.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome to the program Josefina. Such an honor, and thrilled to have you. 

Josefina Lopez: Thank you so much, Sonali. I always love talking to you and I love the fact that you're an immigrant as well, and that we share this in common. We tell the truth about our community because there aren't enough voices speaking up, and it's important that our voices be heard, especially right now. 

Kolhatkar: Exactly right now. And you know, I have to tell you, Josefina, when I saw your film all those years ago, and I've watched it several times since, because it's one of those films that you like to rewatch over and over. Um, I didn't feel, you know, at first that, 'oh, what would I have in common with garment workers in LA?' But I felt so connected to those women that you profiled in a film whose screenplay was based on your own background, your own life as well. 

And I am wondering if we can start by talking about the universality of experiences at a time when empathy is unfortunately in low supply, given that we have a big segment of our population encouraging and celebrating. Donald Trump's very, very disgusting deportation, detainment and you know, Gestapo-like tactics against this very community. How important is the universality of these stories, like the ones you write? 

Lopez: You know, I had to write the story because I worked in this factory and the work was tough, but we laughed all the time and we, and we shared incredible stories that made every day a beautiful day. And I just remember thinking, I know people may feel sorry for us, but the kind of joy and connection that we have as Latinos, as women, as workers I just was like, ‘Oh my God, people need to know how much joy you can still have.’ 

And, and that's the power we have, is that we can choose to stand in joy and dignity. And, you know, that's what it really was, is that these women were so dignified because they were third world feminists and they were there working and we, we didn't have time to feel sorry for ourselves. 

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