Robert Borosage: As Trump Moves into the White House, Democrats Need a Bold New Vision

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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As Trump Moves into the White House, Democrats Need a Bold New Vision

Posted Jan. 11, 2017

Interview with Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, conducted by Scott Harris

When billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump takes the oath of office on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, he’ll be taking up residence at the White House as one of the most unpopular presidents in modern U.S. history. In addition to losing the popular vote to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million votes, Trump’s Electoral College victory of 306 votes ranks near the bottom, belonging somewhere between the lowest one-fourth and the lowest one-fifth of all Electoral College wins in the history of U.S. presidential elections.

A new poll from Quinnipiac University finds that Trump will enter the presidency with a 37 percent favorable rating, vs. a majority of 51 percent of those polled who view the Republican unfavorably. When pollsters asked those surveyed whether they thought Trump's behavior since the election made them feel better or worse about him, 28 percent said they feel worse – with just 23 percent stating they feel better.

As Inauguration Day approaches, the media and much of the nation will be focused on the U.S. Senate confirmation hearing for Trump’s nominees to fill his new administration’s Cabinet. Major controversies have erupted over nominee’s history of racist views, conflicts of interest, climate change denial, support for the privatization of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and public education– as well as multiple Trump appointees who have worked for Goldman Sachs’ and who advocate for corporate and Wall Street deregulation. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future. Here, he examines the task of organizing effective opposition against the Trump-GOP agenda – and the Democratic Party's urgent need for new leadership and energy. [Rush transcript]

ROBERT BOROSAGE: Well, of course, the confirmation hearings – if Sen. Mitch McConnell, the leader of Republicans in Senate – has his way, they will come and go in a blink of eye. And his hope is to drive them through the hearings very quickly, without anybody noticing. While Democrats, I think, have to find ways to slow this down and to demand that people – the Americans – have a chance to get a good look at who these nominees are and the conflicts they bring with them. I think that's going to happen much more quickly than one would like.

Then we go into, right away, the reconciliation bill – the first bill, the first order of business, as Mike Pence puts it – will be the repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act, Obamacare. And here, Republicans I think, begin to unravel, because their promise is to repeal and replace the law, but they don't have anything to replace it with. And so they're now saying they're going to repeal it without replacing it, and wait two years, four years, to come up with a replacement, which will undoubtedly lead states and insurance companies and hospitals and doctors to begin to unravel the Act. People are going to start getting hurt immediately by this decision. And Democrats have to be stalwarts in opposing that and pointing out the folly – the utter kind of irresponsible and immoral folly involved in that.

But I think that bigger and harder task is to not just oppose the stupidity and the really criminal policies that we're going to face – whether it's tax cuts on the rich, or kind of total retreat from addressing climate change or the horrors that could well be visited on people of color and particularly on undocumented workers and Muslims. In addition to opposing this, and raising a different voice, it's really important it seems to me for Democrats, particularly progressives, to lay out big ideas that offer an alternative. It's important for people to understand it is a choice between truly reactionary and profoundly wrong policies, and big ideas that could provide basic rights for Americans – from health care, affordable health care, to affordable college, to full employment and to empowering workers to organize and win a fair share of the profits and productivity they're producing. All of those policies are possible, but they have to be argued out even as we oppose what's coming down the pike from Trump and company.

BETWEEN THE LINES: When you look at the Democratic party and the upcoming leadership contest – the main contenders being Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, and Labor Secretary Tom Perez to become the next Democratic National Committee chairman – do you see the Democrats going in the right direction? Both in terms of a strategy of grassroots organizing and coming up with the "vision thing" of not only opposing the Trump agenda, but as you said, really putting forth some bold new ideas that the country seems quite ready for, given the popularity of both Bernie Sanders and the fake populism of Donald Trump?

ROBERT BOROSAGE: Well, I think the election is a big choice for Democrat. Keith Ellison is an extraordinary candidate and he's made an extraordinary sacrifice by saying he would leave his congressional seat if he's elected to lead the party. And Ellison is remarkable because he has perfected in his own district the kind of grassroots organizing that keeps the party alive between elections and builds its strength and creates volunteers and creates energy so that it is not reliant on very big money and it's not compromised in the way that it has been.

And that's the model that he wants to take through the DNC and across the country and build in 50 states. He would be, I think, a consensus choice for the position except for two thing. One is, he supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries and while he worked very hard for Hillary once she won the nomination, he was a forceful advocate for Sanders and there are a lot of what you would call machine Democrats in the DNC who are resentful about the Sanders challenge and who, therefore, are skeptical about Keith's candidacy. And then I think President Obama wants to maintain his finger on the party even though he has - it has been disemboweled under his leadership. He was key to getting Perez to put his hat in the ring. Now Perez is a terrific Labor secretary and a remarkable man and leader. But he literally no political experience and no organizing in politics, unlike Ellison. And so he's really a placeholder for people who want the party to be what it has been, which is this mix of very big money on the one hand, and identity politics on the other without a real emphasis on populist economics and on building a grassroots base. So I think it's a big choice for Democrats when they come down to this election.

For more information, visit Campaign for America’s Future at ourfuture.org.