Between The Lines - Junior Walk: Tree Sitting Protest at Coal River Mountain, WV to Stop Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining (Week Ending Aug. 5, 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.

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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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Activists Engage in Tree-Sit Protest in West Virginia to Stop Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

RealAudio MP3

Posted July 27, 2011

Interview with Junior Walk, member of the Protest Support Network , conducted by Melinda Tuhus

On July 20, two activists climbed 80 feet up into two trees adjacent to an active mountaintop removal coal mining site at Coal River Mountain in southern West Virginia. The site was owned by Massey Energy, the largest mountaintop removal coal operator in Appalachia, which also owns the underground Upper Big Branch mine where 29 miners were killed last year. The company was sold this spring to Alpha Natural Resources, which is continuing the same operations.

Junior Walk is a 21-year-old native of southern West Virginia who provided support to Catherine-Ann MacDougal, one of the tree-sitters, along with Eli Schewel, who served as the support person for the second tree-sitter, Becks Kolins. The two supporters were arrested by state police on the first day of the tree-sit protest and charged with trespassing. The tree-sit continues as of production time.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Walk about his decision to participate in this nonviolent civil disobedience action, which is one of a growing number of similar protests organized to stop mountaintop memoval coal mining. He also discusses the goals of the sponsoring organization, Radical Action for Mountain People's Survival, or RAMPS Campaign. The group’s acronym, “RAMPS,” references the wild onion that local residents used to harvest on the Appalachian mountains, now threatened or destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining.

JUNIOR WALK: After I graduated high school, I tried to go to college, but I was the first person in my family to graduate high school, let alone want to go to college, so I was stuck here, because I didn't really have the means to go. And I did what everybody else does when they're stuck here – I went to work for Massey, at the Elk Run prep plant, alongside my dad. He still works there today. And that was a terrible experience. I only worked there for about six months. Some days they just had me cutting the grass or what have you. Some days I'd be walking the belt line, things like that. But I always felt that lump of coal was worth more than my life was worth, and I should prioritize the production over anything else, and I just couldn't live like that. So after that I went around from job to job for awhile until a friend of the family offered me a job as a security guard on a strip mine. And I took it – oh, I get to sit around for 12 hours and make money. But when I got up there and I seen that and I was in the middle of that and I seen what they were doing, destroying that mountain, and I knew the people below that mountain were going through the same things I was going through when I was a kid – poison water, poison air, you can't even go up on the mountain anymore, mostly because it don't exist, but also because there's gates up everywhere and people don't have access to the places where their parents and grandparents hunted or gathered herbs and things like that.

So I came to Coal River Mountain Watch, because I'd known Judy Bonds ever since I was a kid – she used to work at the store with my grandma – and I asked her how I could help, how I could plug in, how I could do something to alleviate my conscience, because I felt like the most terrible human being, making money off what was going on and what was happening to those people below the mountain. So I started writing anonymously for the newsletter, things where I didn't have to put my name or face out there. Judy Bonds passed away this past January, of lung cancer. Ever since then I've been here doing this sort of work, and it's frustrating, going up against the Goliath that's the coal industry; it controls this state completely. Our regulatory agencies won't help us because they're funded by the state, which is funded by the coal industry. Every place you can think of to turn to in the state government here, they won't listen to you if you say one ill word about coal or natural resource extraction. So I decided on my own that legal channels weren't enough to put a stop to what's going on here. That's why I decided to take this stand and try and do whatever I could to protect the community I come from.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Exactly where are the two tree sitters?

JUNIOR WALK: They are in Bee Tree Holler, which is right next to the Bee Tree surface mine permit, where active blasting has been going on, and by sitting there, as close as they are to the Bee Tree permit, they cannot blast on a certain section of the permit that they were working on before, and they can't get the coal that's there.

BETWEEN THE LINES: And, Junior Walk, what was your role, and why were you arrested?

JUNIOR WALK: I was direct support, which means I helped get the tree sit up in the trees, haul the water and things, and the platform up. Then we waited around for four or five hours, because they couldn't find us. They had the entire site shut down for five hours, because they didn't know where we were. And we eventually seen a helicopter buzzing us overhead, so we figured that was the police, so we came out, me and Eli did, and it actually turns out it was Alpha executives that were actually flying dangerously close to the tree sitters.

BETWEEN THE LINES: I guess how long they stay up there depends on how long those supplies last and especially on how aggressive the police are in getting them down. what is RAMPS Campaign's goal in doing these kinds of actions?

JUNIOR WALK: There are quite a few goals, actually. The first one we're accomplishing right now – they're not blasting where they were blasting before. That's really the main goal. The other goal is to raise awareness about this issue on a national scale, and I think we're doing that quite well. And the other goal is to inspire the people who live around here and make them remember that they have a choice. They don't have to be afraid of the coal industry. They can stand up and tell the industry that they're not going to take the abuse anymore. And I've had numerous phone calls from people that knew me when I was growing up, older people who told me if they were able-bodied or they didn't have to live in fear about losing their only means of income, then they would've been right there with us.

Learn more about the opponents of mountaintop removal coal mining at www.rampscampaign.org.