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FEATURING RAMZY BAROUD - Palestinians and their allies around the world are celebrating a ceasefire deal with Israel, brokered 15 months into a brutal genocide. The first part of the agreement is already being enacted, with Palestinian prisoners being exchanged for Israeli hostages. Israel is expected to pull out of all areas in Gaza, allowing survivors of the genocide to return to the rubble of their homes. 

The ceasefire was one of U.S. President Joe Biden’s last acts in office and critics point out he could have pushed for such a deal a year ago but refused to act allowing Israel to slaughter tens of thousands of Palestinians. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is claiming credit for the deal, fueling Arab American anger with Biden. A new poll suggests, Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Trump in the November 2024 election because of the Biden Administration’s stubbornly pro-genocide position. 

On Tuesday January 7, 2025, Rising Up With Sonali host, Sonali Kolhatkar, evacuated her family as the Eaton Fire blazed through her neighboring town of Altadena and headed toward North Pasadena where she lives. In the wake of one of the worst wildfires in California history, Democracy Now! interviewed Kolhatkar from the hotel where she was temporarily evacuated to on January 9.

On January 13, Kolhatkar was invited to return to Democracy Now! to reflect on a massive destruction of the Eaton Fires and the political issues at play.

Sonali Kolhatkar also appeared on Mitch Jeserich's Letters and Politics on KPFA Radio in Berkeley on January 8 and January 13.

And, she was interviewed by Kshama Sawant's On Strike! in an episode that published on January 15.

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Thousands of people are reeling from one of the deadliest wildfires in California history, including YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar who is based in North Pasadena, close to where the Eaton Fire blazed. Members of the tight-knit communities of Altadena and North Pasadena as well as others from the greater Los Angeles region are helping people pick up the pieces. 

In a series of in-person interviews, Kolhatkar spoke with several community members involved in mutual aid efforts. They include four young Black women who set up a donation site on the front lawn of a home, and two young Latinx men who drove to Pasadena from Santa Monica to volunteer to clean debris and fallen branches from streets and people’s homes in an effort by the immigrant-led Pasadena Community Job Center. 

Independent book store owners Desiree Sayarath of Dym Books and Boba, and Nikki High of Octavia Bookshelf have turned their stores into mutual aid centers in the wake of the disaster. And Perry Bennett, the proprietor of Perry’s Joint, a local beloved Black-owned institution in North Pasadena is also leading community aid efforts. 

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FEATURING DAISY TREJO, PAUL LIVINGSTONE - It’s a miracle that Sonali Kolhatkar is broadcasting this week’s show. Her home, where her studio is located, is based in north Pasadena, just two blocks from the border with Altadena where the ferocious Eaton Fire burned through 14,000 acres, killing more than a dozen people and destroying thousands of homes. 

The fires came within three blocks of Kolhatkar’s home and studio. Along with thousands of other residents of this Southern California region, she evacuated with her family on January 7–just hours after recording that week’s show. Her elderly parents, two children, husband and cat, fled the hurricane force winds that night to squeeze into a room at a local hotel. The next day they didn’t know if their home of 26 years had been destroyed or not. 

Kolhatkar has been reporting from the front lines of this major disaster, considered one of the deadliest wildfires in California history. She personally knows more than two dozen families who lost their homes in the fires. Her children’s former school has also burned down. 

There are National Guard soldiers deployed two blocks from her home, barring entry into Altadena. Community members have organized donation centers to help the thousands of people who have suddenly become homeless. 

Here are the stories of two people who lost their homes. First we’ll hear from Daisy Trejo, a Mexican American resident of north Pasadena who lost her multigenerational family home where she ran her small business from. Then, we’ll hear from Paul Livingstone, a life-long resident of Altadena, a musician and community activist, who also lost his home and recording studio but helped save his neighbor’s home.

Abolitionist thinkers have been envisioning police-free communities for decades, but only in the aftershock of the racial justice uprisings of 2020 have their radical ideas entered into mainstream discourse. 

In Talking About Abolition, award-winning journalist Sonali Kolhatkar presents an inspiring collection of her conversations with scholars, movement figures, and activists who are leading the movement to end policing and prisons. 

From articulating the best counter-arguments to pervasive “copaganda,” to exposing the moral bankruptcy of reformism, each conversation connects the dots between past and present while imagining a collective future rooted in liberation, freedom, and justice.

TALKING ABOUT ABOLITION is available at sevenstories.com and wherever fine books are sold.

Interviews:

Defunding the Police and Abolition as Forms of Democracy

Interview with Chuck Mertz, January 14, 2025.

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Professor Melina Abdullah is a fixture among racial justice activists in Los Angeles, leading Black Lives Matter LA (BLMLA)’s protests and actions from the campus of California State University, Los Angeles. In 2024, she became Cornel West’s choice of vice president for his independent presidential run.

As an outspoken abolitionist of policing and prisons, Abdullah has championed defunding the police using a concrete, practical, and deeply democratic method of participatory budgeting where city residents decide how their tax dollars should be spent.

In a conversation with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali Prof. Abdullah points out how BLMLA is poised to prove that defunding and abolishing police is not impossible. The interview is one of twelve conversations about abolition featured in a new book by Kolhatkar called Talking About Abolition: A Police-Free World is Possible (Seven Stories, 2025).

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FEATURING EAGAN KEMP - Incoming President Donald Trump has picked TV celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The Center for Science in the Public Interest has denounced him for being “famous for promoting medicines and supplements that do not do what Oz says they do.” And, Public Citizen has pointed out his direct conflict of interest in overseeing CMS as an advocate of expanding Medicare Advantage. Dr. Oz owns significant shares in UnitedHealth Group, a private insurance company notorious for denying claims and making money off Medicare Advantage. 

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FEATURING INDIVAR DUTTA-GUPTA - Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan’s tenure under Joe Biden has had a powerful victory with the recent failed merger between two mega grocery chains, Kroger and Albertsons. A U.S. district court in December 2024 granted the FTC’s request for an injunction to stop what would have been the largest grocery merger in the nation’s history. 

Ms. Khan emerged as one of the most pro-public-interest FTC chairs in recent memory. Although she has not yet resigned, incoming President Donald Trump has already picked her replacement, FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson, who is likely to go easy on businesses and focus on what he calls “free speech” issues.

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FEATURING PROFESSOR JOE TROTTER - In his new book Building the Black City: The Transformation of American Life, academic Joe Trotter Jr., explores the role of Black Americans in creating, sustaining, and expanding American cities all over the nation. 

Professor Trotter delves into how African Americans launched cities from the ground up, often having to rebuild them after white mobs and capitalist forces destroyed them, how majority Black cities have existed within white-dominated cities, and how Black communities influenced the arts, economy, and politics of urban centers.

And, he chronicles 20 cities across 18 states, from the colonial period to the Great Migration through to today. It is a story of history, racial capitalism, and reparations owed. 

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FEATURING JENNA RUDDOCK - The U.S. House of Representatives in late November 2024 passed a dangerous piece of legislation that many are calling the “nonprofit killer” bill. In Spring 2024, when the bill was discussed as a means to silence pro-Palestinian activism, dozens of House Democrats supported it. 

But, after Donald Trump’s White House win, some Democrats initially blocked HR 9495 on a technicality amid fears that the incoming president would use it as a tool to bludgeon his perceived enemies. It was then reintroduced, voted on with significantly less Democratic support,  but passed. 

Many contend it should never have been introduced to begin with, no matter the political winds of the time, and that what’s needed to preserve the health of U.S. democracy is the PRESS Act.

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FEATURING DORTELL WILLIAMS - ‘Tis the season and while many of us might be putting up trees and decorations, planning family dinners and holiday parties, and buying gifts for loved ones, there’s one population in the U.S. for whom the holidays may not be filled with joy: The millions of people impacted by family separation because their loved ones are incarcerated.