Post-Election Organizing to End the Gaza Genocide
The genocide in Gaza has been front and center in the United States’ political landscape since October 2023. Leading up to the 2024 general election, a movement of “uncommitted” voters vowed to use their power to force the hand of the Biden–Harris administration into issuing an embargo on U.S. weapons to Israel.
By Nov. 5, 2024, Michigan—a swing state home to many Arab Americans—had yet to turn toward Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, jeopardizing her path to the White House. In an interview recorded on Election Day, before results were known, Khury Petersen-Smith, Middle East Fellow and the co-director of the New Internationalism Project at Institute for Policy Studies spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about the role Palestine has played in the election and how a future administration can be held accountable for arming Israel.
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.
|