How Young Climate Activists Are Confronting Power

Oct 5, 2023

With little question that Earth is experiencing dangerous climate chaos, the business-as-usual ethos of elected officials and corporate executives is hard to fathom—especially for young people whose future is in jeopardy. Now, a youth-led group called Climate Defiance has vowed to forcefully confront those responsible, saying, “If people in power will not save us, we will save ourselves.”

Organizers with Climate Defiance have publicly confronted officials such as Carla Frisch, a top aide to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm; Tommy Beaudreau, deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior; and White House Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi. One of Climate Defiance’s organizers, who goes by the name “Yew,” spoke with YES! Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about how her organization approaches activism and what moves her to participate.

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.