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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



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



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




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




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






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



SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017




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



SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017



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



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




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




SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven



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.


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Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

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"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.

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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.)

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Farm Workers Union Co-Founder: Together Progressive Activists can Advance Social Justice in America

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Posted April 25, 2012

Excerpt of speech by Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, recorded and produced by Melinda Tuhus

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Dolores Huerta, co-founder with Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers Union and a lifelong social justice activist, was the keynote speaker at the 20th annual conference of Southern Connecticut State University’s Women's Studies Program on April 21.

Huerta began her career as a community organizer in 1955. In 1965, she directed the United Farm Workers' national boycott of table grapes, which resulted in winning union contracts with the grape industry. She was a strong supporter of Robert F. Kennedy's run for president in 1968, and was standing next to him on June 5 as he delivered a victory speech shortly after winning the California Democratic presidential primary. He was assassinated 15 minutes later. In 2002, she founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which provides grants for community organizing. In 1988, Huerta was severely beaten by a San Francisco police officer and after suing the department, won a monthly $2,000 payment for life.

Huerta, who's now 82 years old, stood at the podium at the Women’s Studies conference for 45 minutes and spoke forcefully about the need for everyone seeking social change to become an activist, as she called for "breaking down the silos" dividing the progressive movement. She began her comments by announcing that she had 11 children and she didn't need the Catholic Church to tell her how to live her life. The following is an excerpt from her talk.

Dolores Huerta is the author of A Dolores Huerta Reader, which features articles about the impact her lifelong activism has had on the labor, women's and immigrant rights movements. This segment was recorded and produced by Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus. Find links to more information about Dolores Huerta’s activist career at DoloresHuerta.org.

DOLORES HUERTA: I really do believe that we're not going to be able to win unless all of our movements come together. Right now, we've got everybody working in their own little silo, right? We got the women's movement over here; the labor movement over here; the immigrant rights movement here; the civil rights movement here; the LGBT movement way over here. So, if we can all come together I think that's the only way, ultimately, we're going to be able to win. I think we have a window of opportunity come November in this election. And I know some people are disappointed with Obama. I think he did as much as he could...we've got the military industrial complex, right? We've got the hospital-industrial complex, the educational-industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, and the president got into the middle of all those people that have the power in our country, and I think he's done as much as he could. But I believe that if we can get him re-elected in November, that he'll have more of an opportunity to do more. But the other thing is, we can't expect him to do it alone.

One thing we can say about those Tea Party people, we can say, okay, they're a little looney (laughter), but they're organized, right? They're organized, and they send those letters, those emails, and they're in people's faces, and we've got to do the same thing.

We are the majority. Back in 2006, there were two million immigrants marching – not only immigrants, I'm sure some of you were in those marches in the streets, too – that was the largest march ever in the USA on one issue, the largest march ever. When we had the Women's March on Washington – how many of you were on that march? I see some hands here. That was the largest march on Washington ever. We had 1,400,000 women at that march, and people don't know that. So if we can get all of our groups together – the labor groups, the human rights groups – then we actually can make the difference in our country. We don't have too much of an opportunity to change that. I think this is our big opportunity because if we don't, I think we're going to have the forces of evil – can we call it that? (laughs) – are going to come back in there even stronger than before, and they're going to continue the corporatization of our country and that kind of control that we've seen that's brought so much damage to our USA. And we know we can change it, it's in our hands.

I always tell people the story of when Cesar and I started organizing farm workers, and people would say to us, How are you gonna organize farm workers? They're poor; they don't speak English; they're not citizens; they don't have any assets. How can you possibly get those people to organize? Well, the way we did it, we met with farm workers in their homes, almost family by family, and what we said to them is, "You have power." And they'd say, "Where's our power?"

Well, the power is in your person, right? The power is in your person. But you can't do anything unless you come together with other farm workers, and you have to take direct action. And you've got to take responsibility, because the one thing we have to understand is that nobody will change anything for us – we are the only ones that can change it. We have to take that responsibility. Once the farm workers understood that, then they would go on strike, they would go on marches, they'd register people to vote and get people out to vote, go to Sacramento, go to Washington, go to New York, do the boycott.

I remember one story when I was in New York on the boycott and this farm worker called me, and we were asking people not to eat grapes, don't shop at the stores that have grapes. And this one farm worker called me and said, Senora Dolores, "Ya quitaron la uva." He said, talking about the store, "Senora Huerta, they took the grapes off the store." And I said, "What's the name of the store?" This is downtown Manhattan, right. He said, "I don't know." I said, "Well, look at the sign." He said, "Senora, I don't know how to read."

When he said that, it brought tears to my eyes, because here this farm worker had gone all the way from Delano, Calif. to New York City, asking people not to go into the store and not to buy the grapes. And he got the store to take the grapes off – the power of one person, right? And I remember that all the time, because that's what they were. They were farm workers, and they went out and did that kind of work.

So here we are; most of us have a formal education, right, so we could do so much more. And we've got to make that commitment, that we've got to be activists, we've got to go out and make those changes, again, because we know if we don't do it, nobody else is going to do it for us.

We used to tell the farm workers a little story that I want to share with you. This is a story that Cesar came up with and the story was there was this horseman; we call him in Spanish a jinete – like a cowboy, right? He's a pretty macho guy, he's riding his horse, he's got a big old whip. He sees a little dog and he hits the dog with his whip. The dog goes barking, running away. And so he feels pretty macho, and then he's going down and he sees a cow. He hits the cow with his whip, and the cow goes moo-moo-mooing, running away. So he keeps riding, riding, and then he sees this tree, and he raises his whip, he twirls his whip, and he looks up and sees a nest of bees up there, a beehive, and then he says, "I better not; they're organized." (laughter and applause).

That has got to be us. We've got to become so organized that they will not dare hit us with those lashes, with those whips, and try to wrap those whips around our necks and drag us back into the last centuries.

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