2017 Women's March organizer Linda Sarsour: Effective Resistance in the Age of Trump

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

"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.

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

(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

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.

BTL Blog

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Special Programming

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Progressive Resources

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

Share this content:

|

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

Learn how to support our efforts!

Tweets by @BTLRadioNews

Women’s March Organizer on Effective Resistance in the Age of Trump

Posted Aug. 16, 2017

Excerpt of speech by Linda Sarsour, Women's March organizer, at the 2017 Left Forum

After more than 200 days in office, multiple public opinion polls find that Donald Trump is the most unpopular president at the six-month mark of his term in office in U.S. history. According to a poll conducted by Gallup on Aug. 13, the president's approval rating is down to just 34 percent, while 61 percent of those surveyed disapprove of Trump’s performance. The poll was conducted following the violence perpetrated by white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, Virginia that resulted in one death and more than a dozen injuries. Trump’s failure to specifically condemn the neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan groups that gathered in Charlottesville for three days has contributed to his growing unpopularity.

The Women’s March on Washington, organized in opposition to the agenda of the incoming Trump presidency on Jan. 21, became the largest national political protest in American history. Rallies and demonstrations held in 673 cities and small towns in all 50 states across the U.S., as well as cities abroad, attracted more than 4 million participants. The Women’s March set the tone for the national resistance movement that has effectively challenged many of the Trump administration’s priority initiatives since the inauguration. Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American political activist, was one of the key organizers of the Women’s March. The former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York has been active on a number of issues including advocating for Muslim rights, Black Lives Matter and feminism. What follows are excerpts of an address delivered by Sarsour on the topic of "Challenging State Repression," which was recorded at a plenary session of the 2017 Left Forum conference in New York City on June 2, 2017. [Rush transcript.]

LINDA SARSOUR: First, people were talking about we're going down the line – our president might be going down the line to fascism. I mean, I don't about everybody else, but I'd like to get on the same page. I think we're already living under fascism. That's just my personal opinion. And for those that may not be there, early warning signs of fascism – I hope everybody knows them, or you should by now. Very basic. Disdain for human rights. Controlled mass media. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts – as we defunded the National Endowment of the Arts. Powerful and continuing nationalism. Identification of enemies as a unifying cause. Rampant sexism. Corporate power protected. Labor power suppressed. Obsession with crime and punishment. Obsession with national security. Rampant cronyism and corruption. And fraudulent elections. I mean, we're at fascism, people. That's it. Let's move on.

And also for me and I know for many of you in this room, Trump did not introduce racism to me, he didn't introduce sexism to me, he did not introduce mass deportations to me. He did not introduce Islamophobia or homophobia to me. He didn't introduce anti-semitism. Trump is just an accumulation of all the diseases that many of us have been fighting in this room. Some for decades and some for centuries in this country. So let's move on from this Trump conversation because what it does is it undermines and underestimates and forgets the horrors and years of sacrifices and communities that have been devastated by policies from the days of the founding of this nation.

So, we talk a lot about kind of movements we need and what kinds of movements we need to bring back. But really, the kind of movement that we need is an intersectional movement. We can't have a anti-war movement that's not talking about racial justice. You can't have a racial justice movement that's not talking about healthcare or talking about immigration reform. So, I also want to give credit where it's due, because oftentimes we steal the intellectual property of black women – that we use this word "intersectionality" that was coined by Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw, a black woman who said that we have to bring those different types of discriminations together and tell a whole story together. So I am asking us in the left that we understand – that we have to organize together. And what we have been doing for a really long time is that we have been sitting in different corners of the room, the environmental justice people doing what they want to do, the ending police brutality people over here. Then we got the people talking about "healthcare is a human right." And we're talking trans rights and LGBT crisis - we're sitting in all different corners of the room.

But what we need to do is build a movement that brings us all to the table. Don't ask me to leave out any part of my identity. Don't tell me, don't come to a room and I can't be a woman, I can't be a mother, I can't be Palestinian, I can't be this, I can't be that. I want to show up in all of me. And Audre Lorde said that we can't have single-issue struggles because we don't live single-issue lives. So the left needs to start understanding that the only way to organize is intersectionally and if we're not building an intersectional movement, then we're going to be continue to lose like we've losing for a long time.

Now, people will say, but, you know what Linda, "We've won in some places. You've won some battles. But oftentimes when we win in the left those small battles, you are winning them on the backs of other communities or by throwing other people under the bus. I want to be part of a movement that loses with dignity and principles – because winning is inevitable. And when we win, I want to win together. I want to win united and in solidarity, and I do not want to win in a way that leaves any communities behind. The time for raising awareness is over. It's very clear to me what the problems are. The time for now is mass mobilization. The time for now is mass organizing, door-knocking, making sure that we are going to most down-trodden who are not actually at the frontlines of these movements in the way that they need to because they don't have the accessibility to be here.

And that if we're going to Washington, D.C. that there are buses that are taking from the corners of Brownsville to the corners of south Brooklyn, to the corners of the Bronx – that they too, get access to the very movement spaces that oftentimes been movement spaces of elitists who know big words and have big degrees and know how to talk abour important things. Let's remember that the most important people are poor people. Working class people. People of color, who need to be centered in the movement that we claim to be a part of.

Find links to Linda Sarsour’s views and other audio recordings from this year’s Left Forum by visiting http://btlonline.org/2017/spec/leftforum2017.html.