Published by Truthdig.com on October 23, 2013

By Sonali Kolhatkar

Each time a horrific shooting takes place, the nation pauses, politicians pay lip service and the country’s biggest gun lobby—the National Rifle Association—remains silent. After a suitable period has passed and public rage has receded, the NRA makes cynical pronouncements about activists abusing the memory of victims of the violence by calling for gun control. Americans, replete with lethal weaponry, move on without making any connections …

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Published by Truthdig.com on October 23, 2013

By Sonali Kolhatkar

There was a time when Halloween costumes were supposed to resemble the character you were actually attempting to imitate. But these days, if you’re a woman, you’re expected to don a lacy, cleavage-revealing bodice and a short skirt with only the most minimal accessories to invoke an actual costume. Worse, costumes for little girls are now firmly part of the trend toward an overly sexualized Halloween …

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Published by Truthdig.com on October 23, 2013

By Sonali Kolhatkar

If the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling was not devastating enough for American democracy, a new case could wipe away any remaining vestige of election integrity. The nation’s highest court heard oral arguments in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission this month. If the court rules in favor of Alabama mining CEO Shaun McCutcheon, rich Americans could make unlimited amounts of campaign contributions directly to political …

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Published by Truthdig.com on October 18, 2013

By Sonali Kolhatkar

“It was a surreal moment,” said Bill Ayers of the experience of hearing his name first mentioned on live television during the 2008 primary election debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

When I met Ayers in person recently for an interview about his new book, “Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident,” he seemed like anything but the terrorist he is often cast as by right-wing …

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By Sonali Kolhatkar

Originally published on Truthdig.com.

Contrary to her small stature, Afghan activist Malalai Joya is a towering figure among ordinary Afghans. At the tender age of 25, she openly challenged her country’s notorious U.S.-backed criminal warlords at the 2003 Constitutional Loya Jirga (popular assembly) in Kabul.

She thundered, “It is a mistake to test those already being tested. They should be taken to national and international court. Even if they are forgiven by our …

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By Sonali Kolhatkar

Originally published on Truthdig.com

Thirty-four undocumented immigrants were detained at the Texas-Mexico border on Sept. 30. That fact by itself is unremarkable—thousands of immigrants are held in detention in the U.S. at any given time. What set this particular group of immigrants apart is that they showed up on the Mexico side of the border and openly proclaimed their desire to re-enter a country they consider home, without papers. By attempting to cross …

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by Sonali Kolhatkar

Originally published on Truthdig.com.

Florida has one more chance to deliver justice to the parents of a slain black boy. The state that faced calls for boycott over the acquittal of George Zimmerman is currently holding pretrial hearings in a similar case.

Nearly a year ago in Jacksonville, Michael Dunn, a 45-year-old white gun collector and software engineer, fired at least eight shots into a carful of teenagers after admonishing them about the volume of their music. Two of those shots hit and killed 17-year-old Jordan Davis, an African-American boy.

Dunn, who has two more pretrial hearings next month, is using the Stand Your Ground law in his defense; it’s the same one that Zimmerman, who shot and killed teenager Trayvon Martin, initially invoked before his trial and subsequent acquittal.

Uprising host Sonali Kolhatkar has just started writing a new weekly column at Truthdig.com where you can read her articles every Friday.

Originally published on Truthdig.com on September 19, 2013

While economists are celebrating a tenuous recovery five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, this week’s U.S. Census Bureau report on poverty provided a sobering statistic: 15 percent of Americans are poor, a number that has remained the same since last year. It seems …

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Following collapse at Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, labor activist Kalpona Akter speaks out for new way forward

By Sonali Kolhatkar
Published in Commondreams.org.

The soft-spoken, 5 foot tall, brown-skinned woman I met this week did not in any way appear to be a dangerous criminal. Yet, Kalpona Akter, the now-famous Bangladeshi labor activist, spent a month in prison last year, facing criminal charges brought by a subcontractor for Walmart. While serving her sentence, she was interrogated for hours on end, while her colleagues were beaten. Her crime: organizing garment workers.

The desperation of ordinary Syrians for an end to the civil war has even progressive-minded secularists reluctantly backing war. But history is not on their side.

By Sonali Kolhatkar

Jay Jihad Abdo is a familiar face to Syrians but most Americans have never heard of him. He is a well known actor, who, in Syria, was pressured by the Bashar Al Assad regime to denounce the rebellion. He refused, faced threats, and fled to the US with his wife Fadia Afashe. Fadia, an articulate and passionate women’s rights activist is an artist in her own right, creating paintings that depict the grim situation in her nation.

Both Jay and Fadia are a microcosm of an educated, secular Syrian population who vehemently opposed the Assad regime in their collective call for democracy and participated in their own way, in Syria’s Arab Spring movement. Fadia told me “I was very optimistic, to be honest with you.” She thought the same thing that happened in Egypt and in Tunisia with the fall of their dictatorships would happen in Syria initially.

But that didn’t happen. And now, Syrian activists like these two, at one time championed by left and progressive movements worldwide, find themselves at a difficult crossroads. Even if they understand US bombs will not liberate them, desperation for any sort of international attention sometimes veers unwittingly into support for military action.

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