John Harrity: Machinists Union Adopts Resolution Making the Fight Against Climate Change a Top Priority

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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Machinists Union Adopts Resolution Making the Fight Against Climate Change a Priority

Posted Sept. 28, 2016

Interview with John Harrity, president of the Connecticut State Council of Machinists, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

The AFL-CIO recently announced its support of the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, which is opposed by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, through whose ancestral land it passes. The labor federation says the pipeline will create jobs for their members, while ignoring the fact that moving half a million barrels of crude oil a day will have a devastating impact on the climate.

Meanwhile, 1,200 delegates of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, who gathered in Chicago for their convention in early September, voted in favor of a resolution to make the fight against climate change a priority for the foreseeable future. John Harrity, president of the Connecticut State Council of Machinists since 2011, initiated the resolution. Harrity, who has been a member of the union for 37 years and works at Pratt & Whitney, first won support for his resolution from members of his Connecticut local.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with John Harrity, who says he was inspired to become active on climate change issues after reading a 2012 article in Rolling Stone magazine written by environmentalist Bill McKibben. The article titled, "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math" explained that we must leave 80 percent of fossil fuels in the ground if humans hope to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius, which was until recently considered the tipping point for runaway climate chaos. However, more up-to-date research shows that the tipping point is more likely 1.5 degrees. Here, Harrity tells the story of how delegates were moved to support his resolution, and how the Machinists' union adoption of an activist position on global warming could influence the U.S. labor movement.

JOHN HARRITY: The issue was that we have thousands of members who work in fossil fuel-related industries, and in particular on the railroads, hauling coal that goes from Appalachia to the West Coast in order to be put on ships and sent to China. And those workers are understandably concerned about their future and about their jobs, and they are more likely to be against anything that talks about climate change than they are to be supportive of it. And I can totally appreciate their dilemma, but climate change is a crisis for the world, and certainly for working people. I tell every group that I address that climate change is the most critical issue facing all of us for the rest of our lives, and I think people are slowly beginning to realize that.

When the resolution came up, the committee that reviews resolutions recommended that the convention not pass the resolution because of the fears from the fossil fuel folks, and under discussion delegates get up and speak pro or con on what’s before them, and there were six mics and people at all six said that they were opposed to the resolution and hoped it would be voted down. But before debate is closed, the president of the union, who is chairing the meeting, always asks if anyone was speaking in opposition. And so, I was. My opposition was that they should pass the resolution. So I spoke to the delegates and I basically told them that our kids and our grandkids were counting on us to deal with this issue, and that it was coming regardless of whether we did a resolution or not, but it needed our leadership, it needed our involvement, and especially if things involve our members. As I said to the delegates, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu, and so we need to be involved in this struggle going forward.

I spoke for about six minutes. I actually had to get permission from the chair because I had exceeded my time, and the delegates approved that. And then I finished up and there was a voice vote. And the chair was uncertain which way the voice vote went, so there was a standing vote of the delegates – the only standing vote that happened at this year’s convention.

I asked them if they would, before they voted, to take out their cell phones and look at a picture of their kids or their grandkids, because those were the people they were affecting by their vote on the resolution. I think that that’s what people need to think about, and what I’m told is that that was effective in getting people to think about it. And the vote was 503 against the resolution and 607 for the resolution, so the resolution passed. It was a great moment, I think, for the union, because it put us in the position of moving forward and being in the leadership of this issue, which is where we need to be. There’s a lot that has to be done; we cannot begin doing it without having the approval of the body, and this certainly clarified that, and it was absolutely clear that the majority of people there – not an overwhelming majority but a majority in our democratic organization – wanted to take a position that our union should be involved in the fight against climate change. So I think it was a great step for our union and hopefully will get a number of U.S. unions following suit and we can address this more aggressively than we have.

BETWEEN THE LINES: John Harrity, is there a labor group working nationally on this issue?

JOHN HARRITY: The group I’m most aware of, which is also an excellent organization, is the Labor Network for Sustainability. And that brings together people that are interested in this issue across unions and gets people together. They put out different studies that assess…as much as climate change is a crisis we think it’s also an opportunity to rebuild the U.S. economy on the basis of a renewable energy economy, which is a huge undertaking and should provide literally millions of jobs in taking that on, and it’s a necessary task. So, anyway, the Labor Network for Sustainability has been great in getting the data together, which indicates the effect of these policies and also of encouraging folks like me to try and bring their unions around to understanding that climate change is something that the labor movement needs to be involved in.

Learn more about Connecticut State Council of Machinists by visiting ctstatecouncil.goiam.org/.