Youth Take J.D. Vance to Task on Climate
Eight activists affiliated with the youth-led were on July 29 in Washington, D.C., while protesting outside the offices of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. The youth activists were targeting Vance, Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, over his close ties to the fossil fuel industry. The actions came a week after Earth’s ever recorded, a stark indicator of catastrophic climate change.
Two of those arrested, Stacy Melo and Takeira Bell, along with another activist who was present at the protest named Rogelio Meixueiro, spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about the action. All three are youth community organizers with the Sunrise Movement.
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 Ƶ 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 of the same name.
|