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FEATURING CHRISTINE NEUMANN-ORTIZ - Our nation and our world is overrun by 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, Christine Neumann-Ortiz, founding Executive Director of Voces de la Frontera and Voces de la Frontera Action joins us. She serves on the board of a national coalition of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement and is a national leader in the immigrant rights movement.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: I've spoken to you so many times before on my other show, Rising Up With Sonali. This time we're focusing on your organization rather than all of the scary issues that we usually talk about. Let's talk about Voces itself. 

As I mentioned, it's based in Wisconsin, but you have such a national profile now, you've really made the organization one that is a national contender. we think of the big cities like LA and New York and Chicago as being centers of immigrant rights, organizing, but you've really made Wisconsin stand out. How do you summarize the work that Voces de la Frontera does for our audience, including the main issue and your organizational goals?

Christine Neumann-Ortiz: Well yeah, the reference in Spanish is “Voices from the Border” because even though I live in Wisconsin, I had spent time in Texas at the border there and had an opportunity to travel the border for a year and meet workers from the maquiladora industry that were organizing and a tri national coalition that was, building alliances between Canadian, US and Mexican workers, especially at the time of the Free trade agreement when it was being signed in 1994. 

And, and even then, at that very beginning stage, you could already see, the kinds of abuses that were taking place in terms of exposure to like the environment with and chemical exposure to workers who went unprotected and just, poverty despite people working and working really hard. And so that became, how people were organizing under those conditions. It really became the inspiration when it came back to Wisconsin to form, kind of a worker center model.

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Unwrap the best gift this holiday season: truly independent media that informs and activates us to build a just world.

FEATURING JUDITH ENCK - We are awash in plastics, from the polyester clothing on our backs, to the glasses on our face, the polish on our nails, the packaging of our food, and even the microplastics flowing through our blood. In less than a century, plastic has revolutionized our lives and leaves a legacy that is slowly poisoning us. 

Now, as we enter the thick of holiday season, the plastic consumption is ramping up, from plastic toys and gifts and giftwrap, to plastic-packaged foods and dinner ware and more. 

 Can we free ourselves of plastic? Yes we can, says Judith Enck, founder and president of Beyond Plastics, an organization whose goal is eliminating plastic pollution everywhere. Enck was appointed by President Obama to serve as regional administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2009 and served as deputy secretary for the environment in the New York Governor’s Office.

Enck is currently a professor at Bennington College and the author of the new book The Problem With Plastic: How We Can Save Ourselves and Our Planet Before It’s Too Late. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about how people can take political action, and how you can have a plastic-free holiday this year.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: I think a lot of people understand now that plastic is a problem, but maybe they're not as aware just how deeply embedded it is in our lives and actually, in our bodies itself. I remember the first time I read about microplastics polluting the ocean, you know, from those little tiny beads that some manufacturers decided it would be good to put in things like lotion and soap, to finding out that plastic filaments are in our bloodstream. And it was quite shocking. So how do you explain how that even happens? How does, how does plastic get into our bodies? We just surround ourselves with so much plastic, it's just everywhere now?

Judith Enck: Well, none of us voted for more plastic. the reason we have so much plastic is because there is a glut of fracked gas on the market. Historically, plastics were made from oil and chemicals. Today it's made from 16,000 different chemicals and ethane, which is a byproduct of fracking 'cause there's a glut of frack gas. Fossil fuel companies are using that waste product to produce new plastic products. 

The way plastics get into our bodies is we're either breathing it in or we're swallowing, particularly from food and beverage packaging. And the health consequences are quite significant. 

So, scientific researchers have found the presence of microplastics in our blood, our lungs, our kidney, our heart arteries, where they've seen microplastics attached to plaque. If you've got microplastics on plaque, you have a much greater risk of developing heart disease, stroke, premature death. 

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FEATURING NORMAN SOLOMON - Corporate Democrats pushed progressive alternatives out of the way to promote themselves as alternatives to Trump–and lost–in 2016 and 2024. That’s the assertion central to a new book by Norman Solomon called The Blue Road to Trump Hell: How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy.

With three long years of Trump’s second term stretching before us, Solomon urges a critical analysis of just how destructive figures like Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and even Barack Obama have been, and why it’s essential to defeat them in order to defeat Trumpism. 

Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include War Made Invisible. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about his newlatestbook, The Blue Road to Trump Hell: How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, this book is a very detailed and yet extremely straightforward analysis of how it was that Democrats, particularly the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, paved the way for Trump. Now, that's not something we hear very much, if at all, in the mainstream media, that we blame Democrats for the rise of the top Republican, the most dangerous Republican that we've seen in our lifetime, if not ever. So why, let's talk about… you start the book in the year 2016, and actually you kind of talk about Obama in 2009. Where's the good starting point for that analysis that corporate Democrats are to blame for Trump's rise? 

Norman Solomon: Well, I suppose if we go way back bill Clinton, who sided with big corporations who pushed in NAFTA, who did the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, which opened the floodgates for monopolization of media, increasingly right-wing. 

In terms of the book I do refer to Barack Obama, a hero of many democratic liberals and so-called moderates, where he came into office. There were millions and millions of people with their mortgages underwater with toxic mortgages, and he let them sink and he bailed out Wall Street and the big banks. And so even while Obama sailed into reelection as Bill Clinton had, he left the party leaders and especially elected Democrats to drown. 

And so, if we trace where we are now, I think we can go back to, in many ways, the eight years of Obama, both, abandoning middle class and low-income people, at the same time that he let other Democrats sink or swim, often sink, in terms of the rising inequality anger that people justifiably felt. 

And so, what happened during the decade where Obama was in office, basically, 1,000 Democrats lost their seats in state legislatures around the country. So, the Republicans came in, ran more and more state governments and the legislatures there, and they were able to reapportion and gerrymander. 

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FEATURING DR. JEN JONES - Our nation and our world is overrun by 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, Dr. Jen Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) joins us. She leads the center’s research, policy, and outreach efforts around science policy, scientific integrity, science of elections, and disinformation.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, I really was excited to have Union of Concerned Scientists on, in part because my background is in science and I transitioned to social justice, and also in part because we don't often think, I think of scientific organizations as being deeply interested matters of social justice and matters of humanity. So, for those people who've never heard of what UCS is or does, how do you explain its main goal? 

Dr. Jen Jones: You know, our main goal is to use science for solutions, and those solutions should create a more healthy and just world. So, justice and equity are centered in everything we do. You know, we believe that science should work for the public and it should inform the policies that really protect, the health of people, the health of the planet, you know, from clean air to safe food, to equitable transportation, science should work for people. And as you said in your intro, not just for billionaires. 

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This story was originally published on August 5, 2025.

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?

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

Write to California Governor Gavin Newsom to commute Dortell's sentence.

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. An urgent effort to free him is underway. Find out more at www.FreeDortellWilliams.com.

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 DINA GILIO-WHITAKER - In August 2022, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences  apologized to Sacheen Littlefeather for her mistreatment after her 1973 protest speech at the Oscars. Littlefeather shot to fame when Academy Award winner Marlon Brando asked her to decline the award on his behalf. She read a speech about Hollywood’s discrimination against Indigenous people and was booed off stage and blacklisted ever since.

But just days after receiving the Academy’s long-overdue apology, a shocking revelation about Littlefeather raised the fraught question of Indigenous American identity–she was outed as an ethnic fraudster and was revealed to not be who she said she was. The case sparked a new book by Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes). Gilio-Whitaker is a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos, and an independent consultant and educator in environmental justice policy planning. 

An award-winning journalist as well, she contributes to numerous online outlets including Indian Country Today and the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of multiple books, including As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about her new book, Who Gets to Be Indian? Ethnic Fraud and Other Difficult Conversations about Native American Identity. 

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: I remember being horribly shocked as well when the revelations about Sacheen Littlefeather came out. I was at that time writing a book about narratives and had actually written a whole section in my book about her putting forward a narrative about racial identity, ethnic identity, and native Americanness, and, had to quickly go back and kind of rewrite some aspects of it. 

And I also remember you on Facebook—we’re Facebook friends—talking about it, you had a little bit of insight before the rest of the world knew what had really happened with Sacheen Littlefeather. Take us through that. You knew before most people did, that she actually wasn't who she said she was. And that was because you yourself had been fascinated by her story. So, tell us about that. 

Dina Gilio-Whitaker: Right. Well, this is really the, the point of origin for this book. I mean, it's something I've been thinking about all my life because of my own com complex identity issues. But, the book started as a result of my relationship with Sacheen Littlefeather, which began in 2012 when I was writing for Indian Country today. 

And, I had gotten to know her. I was asked to write a story about her. It was had to do with a Dennis Miller comment about her, a racial slur. And so, it led to my writing this article about that and meeting her. 

After I wrote that article, she asked me if I would be willing to ghostwrite her memoir. She wanted to write this memoir, and this is about a couple years later. And I said, sure, you know, let's explore that. So, it led to this whole experience that I had with her, where we began the process of writing this book together. 

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FEATURING COLLIN REES - 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, my guest is Collin Rees, the U.S. Program Manager at Oil Change International. Oil Change is working to stop the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, support grassroots resistance against dirty infrastructure, end public support for oil, gas, and coal, and wind down fossil fuel production with a just and equitable transition.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, let's first talk about the main goal of ending fossil fuels and our reliance on it. This is a huge, huge goal, right? It's as huge as, or perhaps huger than most things that we're talking about, you know, on the scale of fixing democracy, et cetera. And it's also one on which we have so much at stake, the existence of our species. So how do you go about achieving this goal? Give us a sense of your approaches to ending our reliance on oil. 

Collin Rees: Yeah. it is not a small goal, and I think we're aware of that but we think it's a really critical one. And I think the flip side, I think we'll talk more about that, the fact that this is so much work needed to make a transition happen, that the way that energy and oil and gas in particular touch our lives happens in so many ways. It's such a sprawling problem to confront, means that we have so many allies and that we can work alongside other movements for justice alongside so many people working to build a better world. 

Because at the core, that's what we're working to do. We are working to stop this existential threat to communities and to humanity. But we are doing that in order to build a world where everyone can thrive. And so I think about the work that we do in a couple different spheres. 

Specifically, we're a nonprofit. We have some expertise, and in particular, we have a lot of research and data and analysis expertise. So, research and data is one component of what we do. 

I wanna be very clear that we do not think research and data alone can defeat the fossil fuel industry. and so we are very clear that that research and data has to be combined with people's movements, with working directly with people's movements to create change. 

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FEATURING ANYA ROSE - The November 2025 elections showed Americans are in a mood to tax the rich to fund the things we all need. That sentiment wasn’t just on display in New York City where voters picked a mayor who promises free childcare paid for by taxing the rich, but the state of Colorado where a pair of propositions in a similar vein passed. 

Propositions LL and MM passed by wide margins and levy taxes on the wealthiest Coloradans to ensure school kids are fed at no cost to families and that cafeteria workers would be better paid. The ballot measures come in the wake of a massive political battle that saw interruptions to the federal food stamp program.

Anya Rose is the Director of Public Policy at Hunger Free Colorado, a statewide nonprofit that connects people to food resources and drives policy and systems change to end hunger. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about how the ballot measures passed and what they mean for Coloradans.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, let's talk about what these two propositions are. Why were they in two separate propositions to begin with? There's LL and then MM. And since, since you are really in the trenches with this, give us a brief overview of what each of these ballot measures asked of voters. 

Anya Rose: Yeah. So, these ballot measures one, there are two of them because of some very particular Colorado laws. But essentially, they are about continuing the Healthy School Meals for All program in Colorado, which was created back in 2022 when voters first agreed to create and fund this program, and has since been wildly popular and, and proven to need some more revenue. 

And so, proposition LL is about asking to keep money that has already been raised for this program. That's something we have to do in Colorado because of provisions in our state constitution called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights that are pretty restrictive about how revenue can be raised and used in our state and also determine election provisions. 

And then proposition MM, was about raising additional revenue to make sure that the program has long term sustainability and can be fully implemented since some pieces that were really important to community have been on hold. 

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FEATURING DIEGO FRANCO - Thousands of Starbucks baristas began an indefinite strike on November 13, the so-called “Red Cup day,” a major holiday-season marketing gimmick by the corporate coffee chain. The workers, who are part of the relatively new Starbucks Workers United union, are saying “No Contract, No Coffee,” and are asking members of the public to not cross the picket lines at hundreds of Starbucks cafes around the country until their demands are met.

Diego Franco is a six-year Starbucks barista, based in Chicago. He is a member of Starbucks Workers United, where he serves as an elected strike captain and bargaining delegate. He recently wrote an op-ed in USA Today titled “I'm a Starbucks barista. I'm striking because I want 'the best job in retail.”

Franco spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about why Starbucks workers are striking.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: I've been following the Starbucks organizing effort for the last few years, relatively speaking. It is a new union when it first burst onto the scene and cafes started organizing one cafe at a time. It drew a lot of attention. I think primarily because Starbucks is such an iconic American brand, is this indefinite strike, meaning it's not just a one-day strike, strike until demands are met, an unfair labor practice strike, is this the first major nationwide strike of this nature that the union has taken on? 

Diego Franco: This is not the first nationwide strike, however, this will be the largest strike in the company's history. 

Kolhatkar: And so why are people striking? And, and I also should emphasize that this is not the case that all Starbucks cafes are unionized, right? There's a fraction of Starbucks cafes that have unionized, albeit very fast. So, it's just those cafes that have union staff that are on strike and, why are they on strike? 

Franco: We are on strike wanting to fight the unfair labor practices and wanting to finish out our contract. Starbucks has been stonewalling us for the past year and don't believe we are deserving of more in our economic package. 

And, notoriously, they have invested a lot of money in union busting campaigns, either across the whole country or on a store-by-store basis. And we're simply doing everything we can to fight that. 

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FEATURING ANGELA MOONEY D'ARCY - 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 Angela Mooney Darcy, Executive Director and Founder of the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples joins us. Angela is from the Acjachemen Nation, the Native Nation whose traditional territories include the area also known as Orange County, California. She has worked with Native Nations, Indigenous peoples, grassroots and nonprofit organizations, artists, educators, and institutions on environmental and cultural justice issues for over twenty-five years.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Angela Mooney D’Arcy: Thank you so much for having me. I started listening to your show when I was in law school years ago, so was very…

Sonali Kolhatkar: Oh my goodness!

D’Arcy: …very, very excited to get your message. 

Kolhatkar: Well, we've both been at it for a long time, and I'm glad our paths have intersected. Tell me about the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples. How do you summarize the work that your organization does? What is your main organizational goal? 

D’Arcy: Well, our mission is to build the capacity of native nations and Indigenous peoples to protect sacred lands, waters, and cultures. And our goal is to achieve paradigm shifts, to protect Indigenous people so that our peoples and cultures can exist for all time. 

And for us, that very much is about protecting all of our human and non-human relatives and the earth herself, because Indigenous people's life ways and relationships with the earth and with all of our relatives around the world is what keeps the world in balance. 

And as you indicate in your introduction, right now, we are a world very much out of balance. So, from our perspective, supporting Indigenous peoples in this way, and that paradigm shift actually protects the world for everyone.

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