Between The Lines - Darryl Malek-Wiley: The Gulf Oil Spill Disaster One Year Later (Week Ending May 6, 2011)

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

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The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

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THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

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One Year After BP Oil Spill Disaster, Environmental and Economic Destruction Difficult to Calculate

RealAudio MP3

Posted April 27, 2011

Interview with Darryl Malek-Wiley, environmental justice organizer with the Sierra Club, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

April 20 marked the one-year anniversary of the blow-out of British Petroleum’s Macondo deepwater oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 oil rig workers and spilled 190 million gallons of crude oil into Gulf waters and the adjoining coastline before being capped three months later. Since then, estimates of damage have varied, with the Obama administration claiming that most of the oil has now disappeared -- through recovery, evaporation or dissipated by microbes. But others assert the damage is more pervasive and ongoing.

Since the BP spill, there's been a serious debate about the use of millions of gallons of chemical dispersants deployed in the ocean to break up the oil before it reached the shoreline, and its impact on the Gulf ecosystem, as well as on those who worked on recovery vessels and residents who live in the region.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Darryl Malek-Wiley, the Sierra Club's environmental justice organizer based in Louisiana. He talks about how he spent the grim one-year anniversary of the BP oil spill, the continuing disruption to the lives of the area's residents, and the formation of a new grassroots organization, Go Fish: Gulf Organized Fisheries in Solidarity and Hope, fighting to receive fair compensation from BP.

DARRYL MALEK-WILEY: The Sierra Club and other groups did a number of events. We did a sunrise service in New Orleans near Jackson Square on the 20th. We had a number of religious leaders and environmental leaders talking about the loss of life of the 11 men. Unfortunately, that part of the story sometimes gets left out. So we had a moment of silence and then a reading of the names of the 11 men who died when the BP Deepwater Horizon exploded.

I went from there to a meeting down in Plaquemines Parish, which is about an hour-and-a-half southwest of New Orleans on the east side of the Mississippi river to Pointe a la Hache, which is an area with a small African-American fishermen community, mainly oyster fishermen. So they had a press conference and educational event -- over 80 people of a number of different fisher folk communities -- African American, native Americans from different tribes were at the event -- and set up a new organization called, GO FISH -- Gulf-Organized Fisheries in Solidarity and Hope. And what they're trying to do is organize and work with fishermen and fisher families all the way from Alabama to Texas and talk about the unique history, culture of the fishermen and how seriously impacted the community was by the BP explosion -- how it's still being impacted, with some people not being back to work yet or some of the fishermen who worked in the Vessels of Opportunity, sick.

And then ended the day with what they call a black carpet fundraising event to help set up free health clinics across the Gulf Coast. So that was my day, sun-up til way past sunset.

BETWEEN THE LINES: And the Vessels of Opportunity, that was what BP set up to hire local fisher folks to clean up the spill, right?

DARRYL MALEK-WILEY: Right, that was funded by BP to hire people to go out and do clean-up work. A number of problems with that...No. 1, the Louisiana Environmental Action Network actually purchased safety gear and gave it to a number of fishermen to wear -- respirators and things like that -- because the environmental community knew about the dangers of the health impacts. And BP basically told fishermen and Vessels of Opportunity that if they wore the protective gear, they would no longer be working for BP.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Well, Darryl Malek-Wiley, you know there's been a lot of different information coming out about the impact of the oil disaster. The federal government has said it's mostly disappeared, and I know they're doing a long-term study...but the people in Go FISH are on the frontlines. What do they say about the impact?

DARRYL MALEK-WILEY: Yeah, what they say is that the oil is still here. We see it daily...tar balls are washing up all along the Gulf Coast. Just the way the winds blow...in the wintertime, the wind blows offshore so it's blowing out into the Gulf; in the summertime we start getting southern winds blowing stuff back on shore. So we're starting seeing tar balls come in; some of the oil come in. Because all the dispersant did was put it on the bottom of the Gulf, and so we're starting to see some of that oil and dispersant coming back up and impacting a number of different coastal areas.

BETWEEN THE LINES: And the dispersant, there's a huge controversy about that, and not just between the government and BP on one side, who supported it, but there are some respected experts who say it was good to use it because it kept a lot more oil from washing ashore into the sensitive wetlands. And then others are saying no one had any idea what the impact would be because it hadn't been done on such a scale before. What do folks on the ground think?

DARRYL MALEK-WILEY: There is still a wide range of opinion. You know, the environmental community and fishermen basically agree that the use of dispersants without the needed scientific data on the long-term impacts of the stuff was not a smart thing. One point eight million gallons of dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico -- nobody's ever put that amount of dispersant anywhere in the world, so we don't know what the impact of that is going to be. Some of the people who are sick, they're taking samples of their blood and they're finding the chemicals that make up the dispersants in their blood, as well as Louisiana sweet crude, and having serious health impacts.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Like what?

DARRYL MALEK-WILEY: Loss of memory, rashes, sinus. Some folks we've talked with, they forget where they're going. They forget who you are. And these are men, all of them were fishermen in relatively good physical shape. And we don't know about long-term health impacts, but there's no immediate health care for folks who need it right now. And that's a big concern -- people have been losing their health insurance because they're not able to work, and they don't have money to pay for independent health care... a whole range of things are happening. A number of them have lost their homes because they weren't able to work and they didn't get paid by BP like they said they were gonna be, and so, it's a serious impact on people's lives.

Learn more about the work of the Sierra Club in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico at louisianasierraclub.org.