Between The Lines - Steve Norris: 2013 Walk for Our Grandchildren (Week Ending Aug. 9, 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.

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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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2013 Walk for Our Grandchildren on Climate Change Sends Urgent Message: "Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground"

RealAudio MP3

Posted July 31, 2013

Interview with Steve Norris, initiator of Walk for Our Grandchildren, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

In late July, during what is statistically the hottest two weeks of the year in the U.S., the group 350.org's “Summer Heat” series of protest actions drew attention to climate change and the growing demand for government and industry to implement regulations to combat it. One of the affiliated actions was the “2013 Walk for Our Grandchildren,” in which dozens of elders as well as teens and some middle-aged activists walked up to 100 miles from Camp David, Md. – the presidential retreat named for President Eisenhower's grandson – to Washington D.C. Other marchers joined 35 miles down the road at Harper's Ferry, W. Va., to highlight their fight for liberation from fossil fuels, just as abolitionist John Brown's attack on the federal arsenal there highlighted the fight against slavery.

Once in Washington, 54 marchers were arrested on July 26 in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience inside the building that houses the offices of Environmental Resources Management or ERM, a consulting company that wrote the draft environmental impact statement for the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. ERM concluded in their report that construction of the Keystone pipeline would not exacerbate climate change – a conclusion with which the protesters passionately disagreed.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus, who participated in the protest and was one of those arrested, interviewed Steve Norris, the initiator of the 2013 Walk for Our Grandchildren, who was also among those arrested at ERM. Here he explains the origin of name of the protest walk, why the group targeted ERM and what the future may hold for climate change action.

STEVE NORRIS: I actually think it was a very good idea, even though there was some controversy at the beginning. I think we named it that because those of us who actually came together to create an organization to make this happen, we were all elders or grandparents, and so we had that energy. Some other people questioned whether that was appropriate because we always wanted to include younger people, and it was kind of hard just in that messaging to know whether people would feel welcome or not. So there was quite a bit of discussion with different organizations whether that was appropriate language. It turned out, I think, that it was, and young people have felt very included. And one young woman, who's 19, walked because she's got a 10-year-old brother she's concerned about, so all these ages kind of play into this. And my sense – and this is pure intuition, nobody said it quite this way, but my sense is that they feel an extra dose of love that we – the elders, at our age and so – are as committed to trying to deal with this crisis as we are and willing to put ourselves out as we did on this walk, where we were walking at times in 100-degree heat. I think that communicates something to them that presents or typical grandparenty kinds of actions don't communicate.

BETWEEN THE LINES: So, just describe a little bit the target of the civil disobedience protest at the end of the walk, and how you picked that target.

STEVE NORRIS: Well, yesterday, as you know, about 60 of us went into the office building which a group called ERM – Environmental Resources Management, which is at the corner of 18th and I Street in Washington. We went there because ERM is the company that the Department of State hired to do an environmental impact report about the environmental impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline. ERM wrote this report and made the argument that the tar sands extraction in Alberta and the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport that oil to Texas, that it would not make any difference in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, which is patently absurd. You know, you can't take lots and lots of tar sands oil out of the ground and not contribute to global warming. They made the argument on the basis of the analysis that carrying the tar sands oil by rail would be no more expensive than doing it by pipeline, and therefore the oil is going to get to Houston one way or the other, so the pipeline makes no difference. It turns out that that's wrong, that the numbers they used to do that were completely fudged, that it's actually four times more expensive than what the environmental impact report said, and it's also documented in the Washington Post and Bloomberg News – both have reported that the ERM certified in its environmental impact report that it had no conflicts of interest, in other words, had done no business with TransCanada, the organization that's building the pipeline, or with some of the fossil fuel companies that are operating in Alberta – they said, "We don't do business with these people." And it turns out if you go to their website, they advertise that they have done it. And why they got away with this – why the State Department didn't do very basic research to find out that, we don't know, except that there's equal corruption in the State Department around some of this stuff.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Obama might nix the pipeline, but even if he does, that's not the end of the struggle. The front of your t-shirt says, Walk for Our Grandchildren, and the back says, Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground, so what's the next step for you, or for – I don't know if it's really an organization – this group of people who are very committed to attacking climate change?

STEVE NORRIS: You know, I don't know, and as this walk is coming towards its end, I've been asking myself that question, and I don't know the answer to that yet. My best guess – and I've been an activist for many years – is that you figure things out in a creative fashion as you go along. Every stage is different. You know, we've done this walk; this walk has been very important to us personally, and it may have some impact on public policy – we will see that in the future. But the next action will be different. What that is at this stage, I don't know. I need to go home and rest a little bit, and have conversations with people. Clearly, the idea of involving elders and grandparents and children in the way we have is clearly inspiring, and clearly has caught people's attention, and even President Obama now is talking about – he made a speech in Berlin in early June in which he said, "My job is to protect future generations from climate change." So even he's getting the message. That message is really important. So we need to figure out other ways of communicating that message to the public. We will win this, we don't know when, but I really like the idea of a tipping point, where this whole fossil fuel regime that's running the world to some extent – we're going to turn it over.

Protesters arrested were charged with illegal entry, a misdemeanor, and must appear in court in Washington, D.C. in August. Learn more about the climate change protest network by visiting 2013walkforourgrandchildren.org.