Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her books include Talking About Abolition: A Police-Free World Is Possible (Seven Stories Press, 2025) and Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is also the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine, co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission, and co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (Seven Stories Press, 2005). She sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Salon, Truthdig, CounterPunch, AlterNet, and numerous anthologies. She has a master’s degree in astrophysics and detailed her transition from science to journalism in a 2014 TEDx talk.

Thom Hartmann is America’s number one progressive talk-show host and the New York Times bestselling author of The Hidden History of American Oligarchy and more than 30 other books in print. His online writings are compiled at HartmannReport.com.

Alexander Zaitchik is a freelance journalist based in New Orleans. His writing has appeared in the Nation, the New Republic, the Intercept, the Guardian, Rolling Stone, Foreign Policy, Vice, and more. He is the author of several books, including Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 (Counterpoint Press, 2022).