Between The Lines - Lisa Graves: The NRA's and ALEC's Disturbing Alliance (Week Ending Jan. 4, 2013)

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.)

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Unholy Alliance: The Disturbing Relationship Between the NRA and ALEC

RealAudio MP3

Posted Dec. 26, 2012

Interview with Lisa Graves, executive director, Center for Media and Democracy, conducted by Scott Harris

A week after the Dec. 14 shooting rampage that ended the lives of 20 children and 6 adults in Newtown, Conn., the National Rifle Association broke its self-imposed silence with a public statement issued by NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre. The press conference was twice disrupted by anti-NRA activists from Code Pink Women for Peace, whose members held up signs which read, “NRA: Blood On Its Hands," and "NRA: Killing Our Kids." During the media event, the NRA reiterated its opposition to new gun control laws and blamed mass shooting incidents on America's entertainment industry, violent movies and video games.

LaPierre stated that the massacre at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School committed by Adam Lanza, using an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle, could have been prevented or stopped if there had been armed, trained security personnel on site. LaPierre went on to say that, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” There was widespread pushback against the NRA position and advocacy of new laws to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as 100 percent background checks for everyone who purchases a gun.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, who formerly served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice where she worked on national gun policy. Here, she examines the relationship between the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the firearms public policy agenda of both organizations.

LISA GRAVES: Well, I found Wayne LaPierre's press conference on Friday (Dec. 21, 2012) to be bizarre and really tone deaf. I think the notion that we can prevent these awful tragedies by having more guns in our schools is really wrong-headed, and quite frankly, he's ignoring history and the terrible tragedy in Columbine in Colo. There was an armed guard at that school, and he took at shot at the shooters. But that didn't stop the shooters. The shooters were still able to get into the school and murder those children. And I think that if you think about it just logically, you can't have a gunman, in essence - a volunteer or a paid guard in every single classroom, in every single school in every single town and city in the country. It's an absurd suggestion and quite frankly, it's not the only absurd thing he said. This is a man who stood there before the American people and basically said, guns kill people, video games do.

You know, a video game has never pierced a person's heart, a gun has. And in this instance, as everyone knows all too well, a young man was able to murder 20 children in a matter of seconds, if not minutes. And so, I think that Wayne LaPierre has signaled that his alliance is with the most extreme elements of the gun society in this country. And he's certainly doing the bidding of his real masters, which are one of the primary funders of the National Rifle Association, which are corporations. The NRA is a membership organization of some gun owners in the United States, as well as a nonprofit corporation that represents some of the biggest gun manufacturers in the world, like a trade group. When you look at the amount of money that the NRA has, it spends well over $100 million a year. It has well over $100 million in assets beyond what it spends a year. And it pays a corporate-style salary. Wayne LaPierre's get paid nearly a million dollars a year, including salary and benefits to be a front man for the weapons industry, quite frankly, in my opinion.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Lisa, your organization, The Center for Media and Democracy, has done extensive research and investigation of the American Legislative Exchange Council, otherwise known as ALEC. Tell us a little bit about the role ALEC has played in extending the influence of the NRA on gun policy in this country. And it would be important to also explain the NRA's relationship with ALEC.

LISA GRAVES: This is a group that exists in large part, I would say primarily to push legislation into law. And what it does is it creates an equal partnership where, under its own literature, corporations get a voice and a vote on these bills. Then these bills are brought back to the state houses in capitals across the country and these ALEC legislators introduce these bills, cleansed of any reference of the fact that they were pre-voted on by corporations, some of the biggest corporations and special interests in the world like the NRA.

The NRA has been a long-time member of ALEC. It was the chair of ALEC's crime task force. It was even the chair of ALEC's public safety and elections task force. A few years ago, ALEC decided that it was going to make it harder for Americans to vote through restrictive voting measures, through restrictive voter ID rules. So the NRA and ALEC go way back. That legacy is quite startling.

BETWEEN THE LINES: To put the question bluntly, Lisa, specifically, who benefits financially from the NRA's opposition to almost all gun control legislation? And this, despite the fact that there's been polling of the membership of the NRA, which generally supports some of the common sense gun control laws that have been proposed both before and after the Newtown tragedy.

LISA GRAVES: Who profits from these NRA-ALEC laws? The gun manufacturers and the gun dealers and the gun sellers. They're the ones who profit from these types of measures. And who profits from the NRA's efforts to thwart reasonable protections, reasonable public safety measures about hand guns? It's the gun industry. And that gun industry is a global industry. Some of these companies are foreign companies, foreign-held holding companies and other companies. They sell a number of weapons to the U.S. military and then they sell civilian-grade weapons that are similar to military-grade weapons, and weapons like the Bushmaster with a 30-bullet clip. It's not a hunting weapon. It's a weapon for war; it's a weapon for killing people and for killing them as quickly as you can.

And so, those are the types of weapons, and those types of clips, access to those weapons and clips are one of the chief objectives that the NRA has pushed over the years in its efforts to thwart the original assault weapons ban and to ensure that it expired. And that goes for both the regular Bushmaster and other semi-automatic types of weapons with these large clips of ammunition.

For more information about the Center for Media and Democracy, visit PRWatch.org.