David Holtz: Abusive Government & Environmental Racism at Heart of Flint Water Crisis

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.)

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.

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Abusive Government and Environmental Racism at Heart of Flint Water Crisis

Posted Jan. 27, 2016

Interview with David Holtz, executive committee chair of the Michigan chapter of the Sierra Club, conducted by Scott Harris

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan has in recent weeks attracted widespread media attention with a focus on the reckless actions of Michigan Republican governor Rick Snyder's administration. The Governor's appointment of an emergency manager in Flint, nullifying the city's democratic governance, began a chain of events that led to the municipality switching water source from Detroit's water system to the Flint River in April 2014. The water from the river corroded the city's pipes and contaminated the water supply with dangerous levels of lead impacting Flint's mostly poor and black population of 100,000. Lead poisoning can produce lifelong health effects, especially in children, that includes brain damage, learning disabilities and behavioral problems.

Although Governor Snyder recently apologized for his administration's mistakes that resulted in Flint's water disaster, his attorney general's appointment of a special counsel to determine if state laws were broken, was later revealed to be a donor to both the Governor and attorney general's 2010 & 2014 election campaigns, did not instill confidence in the credibility of the investigation.

Local and state government were not alone in their culpability in Flint's water crisis. Susan Hedman, administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency region responsible for Michigan has resigned effective February 1st, due to charges that she hadn't done enough to prevent the Flint water crisis. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with David Holtz, executive committee chair of the Michigan chapter of the Sierra Club, who examines the causes and solutions to the ongoing water crisis in Flint, as well as the role of environmental racism in the disaster.

DAVID HOLTZ: People almost immediately, after the switch to the Flint River, noticed that there was something wrong with their water. They weren't scientists, but it tasted funny, it looked funny, it was brown, discolored and they would take these complaints to – like you would expect in any other community – their local public officials, but unlike in any other community, the local public officials had no power to do anything to do about it.

So, it was this sort of echo chamber of people complaining. The state, through their public relations people at the state agency in charge of drinking water dismissed them as kind of being troublemakers and really downplayed the whole thing. And, meanwhile, within the government process, we had this very interesting and tragic tension going on where drinking water experts inside the state government who were the regulators were not treating the water according to law, legal requirements, they were testing and monitoring outside the protocols that are required under the federal safe drinking water act.

And all of this came to the attention of a few people, kind of at the same time. Mark Edwards, who was a drinking water expert from Virginia Tech, he basically got a call from Flint who said, "My water is … there's something wrong with my water." And he took her through the process of testing the water; found lead levels that, he said were in 25 years of his experience as an expert on drinking water, had never seen anything close to the lead levels that were coming out of the faucet in this woman's home.So he immediately began using his own money to recruit people to do testing in Flint, and they came up with a series of samples and using the EPA protocols, it clearly showed that there was a lead contamination problem. And still inside the drinking water state agency, they were discounting, downplaying , dismissing and reassuring people publicly that there was nothing wrong with their water.

BETWEEN THE LINES: David, tell us what role you think environmental racism may have played in the various missteps that were made here by local and state government?

DAVID HOLTZ: I cannot imagine that if a community – say, Grosse Pointe ¬¬ – which is a wealthy suburban Detroit community, or Bloomfield Hills, which is in one of the wealthier counties in America in Michigan, if there was lead contamination or if they were switching their water source, and needed and need corrosion controls, that someone in state government would have said, "Well, we're going to save $150 a day, by not treating the water, so let's not treat the water."

You know, it's really unimaginable that would have happened in a white, wealthy community in America. Communities like Flint, there's a pattern and practice in the last six, seven, eight years, where whenever there is a choice between protecting public health – whether it's water or air, saving money or delivering a benefit for a wealthy corporation – the choice seems often, if not always, to err on the side you know, not protecting the public when it comes to a community of color.

BETWEEN THE LINES: David, as we conclude here, what are the steps you think it will take to have a safe resolution to the water crisis in Flint. How much money is going to be needed, how much reconstruction of the infrastructure in Flint has to be done?

DAVID HOLTZ: You know, the best answer to that question really is that the EPA has issued an emergency order where it's beginning to assume control over the Flint water monitoring and is attempting to hold the state to the requirements of the law. And the requirements of the law – the lead and copper rule has very specific rules about what you do in situations like that, and the rules first of all, require a level of monitoring that hasn't gone on, so you know the scope of the problem.

When you understand that the problem has triggered more than 10 percent contamination or more of the drinking water supply and it's related to lead and lead pipes, you are then required to begin replacing those pipes. That, I think, is sort of the path toward address the situation in Flint. And the costs, the estimates have ranged from $80 million to $1.2 billion to replace the entire lead infrastructure in Flint of water pipes. This is something in my view, requires the equivalent of a Marshall Plan for this community that we need to set aside the ideology that caused this problem and go out and bond to the amount of money that it's going to take to solve the problem, and get it moving.

This is the problem with the Snyder administration and in Michigan we have not seen the urgency meet the demands of this crisis yet.

For more information, visit the Sierra Club article at sierraclub.org/michigan/flint-water-debacle.