Rising Up With Sonali Rising Up With Sonali

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FEATURING DÉBORA SOUZA SILVA AND REV. WANDA JOHNSON - A new documentary, released by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY ahead of the 4th anniversary of the police murder of George Floyd, highlights how Black mothers cope with the most unimaginable loss of their lives. 
The film For Our Children, by award winning Brazilian documentarian Débora Souza Silva, centers Rev. Wanda Johnson, the mother of Oscar Grant. Johnson acts as a mentor to other women like her whose sons and daughters have been beaten, brutalized, and murdered by police and explores a movement of mothers determined to prevent others’ children from being victimized by the same system. 



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FEATURING LAJWARD ZAHRA - The campus protests that swept the nation in recent weeks are as clear a sign as any that young people are politically aware, active, and willing to put their bodies on the line for their beliefs. But, as we hurtle toward another make-or-break election in November, many are asking, will this political engagement in the streets translate into action at the polls? 
In a new story for YES!, a young journalist and Rice University freshman, Lajward Zahra, explored “Gen Z’s Political Paradox.”



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The same day that UCLA student activists were reeling from their Free Gaza encampment being attacked by pro-Israel supporters and police officers, students at California State University of Los Angeles (Cal State LA) were busy setting up their brand new campus protest. Dozens of tents were erected just across from the campus student union on May 1st and the area barricaded by benches and tables. Young people wearing masks and keffiyahs sat and prayed, studied, quietly conversed, participated in group activities or staffed tents dedicated to food and medical aid. Members of the community who were not enrolled at the school also showed up to support.
Special thanks to Anna Buss for production assistance. 



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FEATURING ROBIN D G KELLEY - Students at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are returning to their campus after a week of violent attacks aimed at a student encampment set up to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The University has moved to create a safety officer role to oversee a new Office of Campus Safety. Late in the evening on April 30th, into the early morning hours of May 1st, a group of pro-Israel supporters destroyed parts of the encampment on campus and injured students, while police took no action for hours. Then, on May 2nd, police dismantled the camp. Students are facing serious repression in the face of their activism and there is widespread outrage over UCLA’s treatment of its young activists. 



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FEATURING DORTELL WILLIAMS - California imprisons nearly 200,000 people in various types of detention centers, including prisons and jails. If California was a country, it would have one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world. Of this number, thousands are serving sentences of “life in prison without the possibility of parole” (LWOP), meaning they will live and die behind bars. 
According to Human Rights Watch, “More than 5,000 of the nearly 56,000 men and women sentenced to LWOP in the United States are in California, the third largest number of any US jurisdiction.” Now, states such as Pennsylvania are considering overturning LWOP as unconstitutional. 
For the last 20 years Rising Up host Sonali Kolhatkar has been communicating via letters with Dortell Williams, who has been imprisoned in California under an LWOP sentence. 
Williams has filed commentaries for Prison Radio, written books and earned multiple academic degrees during a life that has mostly been behind bars. For the first time in their decades-long correspondence, thanks to newly enacted reforms in prison communication, Williams was able to speak face-to-face with Kolhatkar and appeared as a guest on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali. He shared what it has been like for him to be incarcerated for decades with no prospects of freedom. 



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FEATURING ELEZ BERESIN-SCHER - As university students continue to hold their ground at Free Gaza encampments on campuses around the nation, Jewish students remain central to the movement. 
In January 2024, a Bryn Mawr College sociology major Elez Beresin-Scher spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar about the Shabbat for Ceasefire campus actions she was organizing. 
Beresin-Scher, a junior who has been active with Jewish Voice for Peace since her freshman year, has now joined a newly set-up Free Gaza encampment on her college campus. She returned to YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali from the Bryn Mawr encampment to explain why she was protesting.



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