Independent since 2002 Issue No. 1102 Week of November 7, 2026 Get the free email dispatch →

Guest Commentator

Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Sonali Kolhatkar is the host and producer of Uprising, a popular, daily, drive-time program on KPFK, Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles and co- director of the Afghan Women's Mission, a US-based non-profit organization that works with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).

100 pieces

Guest Commentary

Policing Causes Violence, Not the Other Way Around

By Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute Guest Commentator

Studies have shown that when there are ample resources for community services such as mental health care, crime goes down.

The New York City subway shooting in Brooklyn on April 12 miraculously resulted in no deaths, although about 30 people suffered injuries, including 10 from gunshot…

Continue reading 7 min

Guest Commentary

Anti-Abortionists Played the Long Game, and They Are Winning

By Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute Guest Commentator

it’s only a matter of time before the anti-abortionists’ wildest dream of overturning the Roe v. Wade precedent at the Supreme Court will come true.

The U.S. is sliding toward a grim future where abortion is criminalized with little support for families. This “new normal” is disproportionately impacting low-income people of…

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Guest Commentary

Corporations Are Suppressing Wages…There’s an Easy Fix for That

By Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute Guest Commentator

In the United States, the value we attribute to shareholders is somehow greater than the value we attribute to the workers who make our society function,”

Amidall the good news about succesful labor organizing and job growth in the United States is the stark reality that wages continue to remain inexcusably loweven…

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Guest Commentary

Let’s Treat All Refugees As Though They Were Ukrainian

By Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute Guest Commentator

Masses of refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and elsewhere have faced racially motivated hostility in Europe. Now, Ukraine’s refugee crisis is revealing Western double standards.

It was inevitable that when brown-skinned Afghan refugees fleeing war were turned away from European borders over the past few years, the callous actions of these…

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Guest Commentary

You Can’t Sugarcoat Hershey’s Union-Busting Tactics

By Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute Guest Commentator

Hershey factory workers in Virginia are sick of company abuses and are voting to join a union. But their union-busting employer has other plans.

There is a bittersweet battle taking place in Stuarts Draft, Virginia. Workers at the Hershey Company’s second-largest factory, located in the small town of about 12,000,…

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Guest Commentary

Is Spotify’s Business Model Killing Music?

By Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute Guest Commentator

The company’s business model, to put it simply, is built on the severely underpaid labor of millions of creators.

Why? “What they’re doing always comes down to profits,” says Zack Nestel-Patt, an organizer with the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW). And Spotify sees…

Continue reading 4 min

Guest Commentary

How Scholars Are Countering Well-Funded Attacks on Critical Race Theory

By Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute Guest Commentator

Right-wing narratives have cast the backlash against CRT as a grassroots effort led by parents concerned about bias in their children’s education. But secretive and powerful moneyed interests are at work behind the scenes.

Invoking Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in mid-December, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced new legislation that allows parents to sue schools for teaching critical race theory.…

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Guest Commentary

Could Xiomara Castro’s Win Address Honduras’s Endemic Corruption?

By Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute Guest Commentator

The coalition that brought Castro to power includes a nascent feminist movement as well as a new queer and transgender movement working alongside traditional activist groups like unions, as well as Black and Indigenous communities.

After more than a decade of violent repression and undemocratic rule that emerged after the 2009 ouster of Manuel Zelaya, a new leader takes the reins…

Continue reading 5 min

Guest Commentary

Wealthiest Countries Scheme To Avoid Economic Commitments at COP26

By Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute Guest Commentator

Proudly proclaiming that G20 nations “account for more than 80 percent of world GDP” and “75 percent of global trade,” the club sets the rules of global finance.

Heads of state from the world’s wealthiest nations gathered for the first time in person since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic at the recent G20…

Continue reading 6 min

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