Announcements 




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.



Thank you for donating

If you've made a donation and wish to receive thank you gifts for your donation, be sure to send us your mailing address via our Contact form.

See our thank you gifts for your donation.




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.



Subscribe to our Weekly Summary & receive our FREE Resist Trump window cling


resist (Car window cling)

Email us with your mailing address at contact@btlonline.org to receive our "Resist Trump/Resist Hate" car window cling!


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

stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

inequality
"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.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.


Between The Lines Blog  BTL Blog

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Special Programming Special Programming

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Between The Lines Progressive Resources

A compilation of activist and news sites with a progressive point of view

Share this content:

|


Podcasts Subscribe to BTL

Podcasts:  direct  or  via iTunes

Subscribe to Program Summaries, Interview Transcripts or Counterpoint via email or RSS feed

If you have other questions regarding subscriptions, feeds or podcasts/mp3s go to our Audio Help page.

Between The Lines Blog


Stay connected to BTL

RSS feed  twitter  facebook

donate  Learn how to support our efforts!


Pennsylvania Groups Mobilize to Stop Fracking Near Schools

Posted Sept. 24, 2014

MP3 Interview with Michael Bagdes-Canning, a member of Marcellus Outreach Butler, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

fracking

Pennsylvania is “Ground Zero” for the fracking boom in the Marcellus Shale region, which extends from parts of New York state through the Appalachian mountains into Virginia. In western Pennsylvania, drillers are especially interested in what's called "wet" gas, which can be broken down into its component parts of mainly methane, but also produces other petroleum products which can be sold separately.

A group called Marcellus Outreach Butler is opposed to any fracking in Butler County, an area of Pennsylvania's green rolling hills and bucolic countryside two hours from Pittsburgh that is now criss-crossed with fracking infrastructure. They have provided organizing support to a group called Protect Our Children, which includes parent organizations in Pennsylvania and several other states that is calling for a one-mile buffer between school properties and all drilling operations. The Mars Parent Group, a member of Protect Our Children, is demanding a two-mile buffer zone and has succeeded thus far in preventing drilling operations at schools in their district. However several school districts in other parts of Pennsylvania have already leased their property to gas companies that are doing subsurface drilling and considering building pipelines across school property.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus visited Butler County in early September and spoke with parents and members of Marcellus Outreach Butler, including Michael Bagdes-Canning. Here he describes the work being done by Protect Our Children and the danger of fracking near schools.

MICHAEL BAGDES-CANNING: Protect Our Children is a coalition of many, many groups working to keep drilling away from schools. It's something I think that a lot of people can agree on. Some people may think drilling is all right in certain places, but not next to schools. The reason MOB is involved is we think that once people see that drilling near schools is not good for their children, they might start thinking that drilling near anybody's children isn't a good thing, and may come to the realization that we need to stop this thing before it hurts anyone, not just their own children.

BETWEEN THE LINES: You know, the industry says it's safe and it's been declared safe, I guess, by the state authorities who are in charge of these things. So what do you think could happen if children were exposed to drilling operations close to their schools?

MICHAEL BAGDES-CANNING: It's not what we think could happen, it's what we know happens. I mean, there's particulate matter, there's all kinds of stuff that's released at the sites of some of this drilling infrastructure – at the well pads, the compressor stations, at processing plants. These things are released, and those kind of things make breathing difficult for them. We don't have any actual cases where it actually happened, but we know, for example, in Greene County, Pennsylvania, last spring I think it was, there was a well pad there was an explosion on. They evacuated one mile from that well pad. What if there was a school there instead of farmland? What would have happened to those children? There was a pipeline in West Virginia that exploded and it ruined a large stretch of one of the interstates. What if that pipeline was on the property of a school? We just don't think that's something that makes any sense at all. Why the heck would you put something that dangerous next to places where lots of vulnerable people are? And I'm not just talking about kids here. I'm talking about anybody who has health issues shouldn't be around it – anybody's that's healthy shouldn't be around this stuff – but especially people that have health issues, they shouldn't be around this stuff.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Protect Our Children is asking for no drilling operations of any kind within a mile of any school?

MICHAEL BAGDES-CANNING: No gas infrastructure within a mile. I guess that's the compromise position that the coalition partners came up with. I guess the least daring members of the coalition thought one mile was supported by the science, so yeah, that was it. And it's not just from the school, either; it's actually from the school property, so playgrounds are included too. We don't want kids' playgrounds to be within a mile, either.

BETWEEN THE LINES: The Mars Parent Group, they want a two-mile radius. I guess they're maybe less sanguine about the impacts. And they're actually taking some legal steps to enforce that, right?

MICHAEL BAGDES-CANNING: Correct. And the Mars Parent Group came into existence after Protect Our Children. They work with us, but they found some research – again, erring on the side of caution – they found some research that suggested that two miles was in fact a better number than one mile. They've gotten letters from national medical groups confirming that it's not a good idea.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Who can set that up? Is this something that the DEP needs to do? Or who are you focusing your demands on?

MICHAEL BAGDES-CANNING: We're focusing on everybody. For instance, the Mars Parent Group, they first targeted their local school board, and they got some satisfaction there, and then they targeted their township supervisors. But Protect Our Children, we are targeting all the stakeholders: we're targeting parents, to get them activated so they have information so they can approach their decision-makers. We're working with school nurses; we're working with local government; we're working with state government; we're working with green groups. We're trying to educate people so that they can make informed decisions. Legislators, we want them to be informed; we want them to hear more than the crap that comes from the industry and the industry apologists.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Are there any successes you can claim at this point?

MICHAEL BAGDES-CANNING: I guess it depends on how you define success. If you define it as stopping infrastructure, I'd say the Mars School District is probably our best and maybe the only real success we have with Protect Our Children. But if you define success a little more broadly, and what I mean by success there is you have people activated – they attempted to make something happen and the government body – whichever government body it was – ignored them, and now they are realizing that the government is set up in such a way that they are ... that it's not their government; that the government is not working for them, the government is working for these big corporations. If you measure success that way, right now we have a lot of good things happening in Butler County.

For more information on groups concerned about health and safety issues related to natural gas fracking, visit MarcellusOutreachButler.org.

Related Links: