Educating Americans on Reparations
Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta in June 2023 at , an invitation-only conference on reparations organized by the . As the conferences media partner, YES! Media spoke with more than a dozen prominent organizers, activists, and leadersamong them Nkechi Taifa, a longtime leader in the movement for reparations.
Nkechi Taifa is an attorney and the founder, principal, and CEO of . She is also the director of the , and the founder and convener emeritus of the . Her best-selling memoir is titled . Taifa spoke with YES! Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar in Atlanta about her role in the movement for reparations.
This video is part of Realizing Reparations, an exclusive digital series exploring the leading edges of the reparations ecosystemand revealing a path toward healing and reconciliation.
This series was funded by a grant from Liberated Capital, a fund of the , which is led by Edgar Villanueva, of the Lumbee tribe, and works globally to disrupt the existing systems of moving and controlling capital using education and healing programs, radical reparative giving, and storytelling. Reporting and production of the series was funded by this grant, but YES! maintained full editorial control of the content published herein. Read our editorial independence policy.
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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 ofYES! 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 Media Institutes Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author ofRising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice(2023) andBleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence(2005). Her forthcoming book is calledTalking About Abolition(Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Womens Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Masters in Astronomy from the University of Hawaii, 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 2014of the same name.
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