Between The Lines - Matthew Rothschild: Could historic protests in Wisconsin be a re-energizing of labor and progressive movement? (Week Ending 3/11/11)

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.

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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.

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Can Historic Wisconsin Pro-Union Protests Re-Energize U.S. Labor, Progressive Movements?

Posted March 2, 2011

Real Audio MP3

Interview with Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive Magazine, conducted by Scott Harris

union For more than two weeks, large numbers of Wisconsin union members and their supporters from across the U.S. have converged on the state capital in Madison to protest Republican Gov. Scott Walker's effort to slash state workers' rights. On Saturday, Feb. 26, an estimated 100,000 pro-union demonstrators swarmed the State Capitol making clear that the outcome of the fight over union collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin will have consequences far beyond the state's borders. Similar efforts by Republican governors to diminish union rights are underway in Ohio, Indiana, Florida and Tennessee.

Even though Wisconsin unions had agreed to all of Gov. Walker's proposed salary, health insurance and pension cuts to address the state's $137 million budget gap, Walker has refused to back down on his demand to take away most state employees' collective bargaining rights. Fourteen Democratic state senators who left Wisconsin in mid-February to deny the GOP-controlled Senate a quorum and a vote on the governor's anti-union legislation, remain out of state in Illinois. Several recent national public opinion polls have found that a majority of Americans oppose the Republican governors' campaign to take away collective bargaining rights from labor unions. Between the Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Matthew Rothschild, editor of the Progressive Magazine which is based in Madison. He assesses how local and national unions have responded to Gov. Walker's challenge -- and the capacity of these historic protests to re-energize the labor and progressive movements nationwide.

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Actually, the amazing thing is that there's been a sit-in, and a sleep-in and an occupation of the State Capitol building for 12 nights now. That's gone under-reported. And also, under-reported is just the sustained magnitude of these protests. Ten to 12 days ago, on Tuesday, there were 10,000 people and it's just gradually built up from there until a Saturday ago, there were 75,000 and this Saturday (Feb. 26), there were 100,000. (Moveon.org also organized 50-state rallies on Feb. 26.) These are sustained, mass protests for union rights, the likes of which we haven't seen in this country since the 1930s. And, yet, the corporate media has not given its due.

BETWEEN THE LINES: From your perspective, Matthew Rothschild, what is the bottom line and what this fight is about? Republican Gov. Scott Walker says his objectives are for long-term sustainability with the state budget, says the state of Wisconsin is broke, but of course, it's a lot more about unions, their power to negotiate, and his effort to really eviscerate public employees unions' ability to engage in collective bargaining.

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Yeah, it's not a budget bill at all, it's a union-busting bill. In fact, all the concessions he's asked from the unions for budget cuts, they've already agreed to. They agreed to take cuts in their health care benefits. They've agreed to put more into their pensions than they had been before. Actually, they agreed to the amount that he was proposing just to call his bluff. And it became clear when he didn't accept their concessions that what he's after isn't solving a budget problem -- which isn't that great anyway, and he's made greater by giving tax breaks to his buddies and sending back $800 million in high-speed rail money that the federal government wanted to give him, but he doesn't care about that.

What he wants to do is get rid of unions. (Listen to Walker's own words in this prank, recorded phone call from a fake multibillionaire backer, David Koch.) And he's trying to get rid of the unions in a couple of specific ways. First, he's getting rid of some people who would be eligible for the public sector unions, like limited term employees at the university.

But the two primary ways he's assaulting the unions in this bill have nothing to do with saving the state a dime. One would require annual recertification votes for every public sector union and that never happens. I mean, when you join a union, you get the majority of people to sign a union card, and you're a union and you don't need another election until a majority of union members we want to decertify. But he would require a new election every single year, which would tie the union up in knots.

And secondly, he would defund the unions by making it illegal for any public sector employer, not just the governor, but any county exec or mayor, from deducting union dues from people's paychecks. And that's the primary way that unions get their money, they deduct their dues out of people's paychecks. So this is just a very Machiavellian way to strangle unions, the mainstream corporate media haven't really spelled out these specific ways that they're trying to do it, so it all seems kind of fuzzy. But once you lay it out that like that, it's obvious, this isn't about budget cuts or saving money, this is about destroying unions.

Now, why do they want to destroy the union? They want to destroy unions for political reasons, because unions typically are supportive of the Democratic party and this is a Republican governor. But it's much deeper than that. It's the primary economic motive of corporations and the Republican party to get rid of unions so that people would be forced into a race to bottom and have to go hire themselves to the most abusive employer who pays the worst wages and doesn't offer any benefits. That's paradise as far as corporate America goes.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Matthew, when you look at President Obama's -- what I think many would characterize as a "tepid response" in terms of saying only a few words about these massive protests in the big fight for labor union rights -- what's the feeling on the ground in Madison about Obama and what he pledged to do when he ran for president, which was to stand by working people.

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Yeah, there's a lot of disappointment that the president hasn't shown more vocal support. I mean, we've all seen the clip of him saying the year before he got elected, while he was on the campaign trail talking to a union group, that if there's a picket line somewhere in America when he's president, he's going to get his walking shoes on and join the picket line. Well, he's 2,000 miles from the picket line here. You know, he could stand up and be more forceful in his speech -- he could come out here. He could send Joe Biden out here, certainly, I mean, that wouldn't cost him a thing, and yet, we're not seeing a lot of national figures out here, other than Jesse Jackson. And the people who have been out on the line here for 10 days, 12 days, now almost two weeks, need that kind of reinforcment. And so, when Jesse Jackson was here inside the Capitol, that was tremendous. Or when Ed Schultz and MSNBC was broadcasting from here that was tremendous.

But certainly, getting the full force of the president of the United States who was put in power by progressives, put in power by union people, certainly would be something that would be welcome here, to say the least.

BETWEEN THE LINES: A lot of people looking at the enormous outpouring of solidarity and militant protest in Wisconsin are seeing a spark that could be fanned into a fire, noting that working families in this country have suffered a loss of income, stagnation over a whole bunch of decades since the Reagan tax cuts for the rich. The tax cuts seem to be continuing on under President Obama. Do you think what's happened in Wisconsin could be that spark to move progressives and labor unions away from a defensive position to go on the offense against policies which are redistributing wealth upwards from the poor and middle-class to the wealthiest sector?

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: I do think this is a huge watershed event because up until now, people were just taking it lying down. There are 15 million, 16 million people officially unemployed and have been for a couple of years now and they haven't been in the streets. There are five million or six million people who have been thrown out of their houses because of the Wall Street bankers and they haven't been out in the streets. The middle class has gained no income, really, in real terms over the last two or three decades while the top one percent has made out like bandits, and still people haven't been in the streets, still taking it lying down.

But finally here in Wisconsin, people aren't taking it lying down. Then around the country we saw all these solidarity rallies this weekend which shows people really are waking up.

And that's why I think ultimately, Gov. Walker will go down as someone who terribly misplayed his hand for corporate America. Because corporate America would rather rip people off while they're sleeping than wake people up and fight them over it. And now they've got a fight on their hands.

Read The Progressive magazine's coverage of the pro-labor protests in Wisconsin at www.progressive.org