Toward a Multiracial Immigrants’ Rights Movement
The issue of immigration tends to reach a fever pitch during election years. But organizers work continuously between election cycles for immigrants’ rights. In a new op-ed for YES!, writer Ingrid Cruz makes an honest assessment of the movement and the internal challenges it faces, especially given the increasing racial, ethnic, and national diversity within its ranks.
Cruz’s writing has appeared in Mashable, The Los Angeles Times, Refinery29, and Latina Media Co., and she previously worked in immigrants’ rights organizing. She spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about how the immigrants’ rights movement can become stronger by addressing internalized white supremacist thinking.
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.
|