Sonali Kolhatkar

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Sonali Kolhatkar

joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.


Articles By This Author
Love Is Good Medicine
It’s never too late for love, goes the adage. But is it harder to find intimacy as you age? And is it worth the trouble?
Ink Outside the Lines
Although tattoo art has origins in communities of color, today it is largely a white-dominated field in the U.S. Three tattoo artists of color share their views of the changing field.
An illustration shows four Indian faces wearing headscarves of red, orange, pink, and yellow. The faces are set against a green pyramid that goes from light to dark, mirroring the caste pyramid infographic displayed in the article.
Confronting Caste
A Dalit American leader offers a profound meditation on the violence of caste apartheid, pathways to abolition, and collective healing.
Contextualizing the Jan. 6 Hearings
According to political analyst John Nichols, the House Select Committee hearings remind us that Trump was at the center of an attempted coup and, at the very least, that ought to make him ineligible for future elections.