Chickasaw Nation sustainability scientist April Taylor: U.S. Indigenous Communities Building Capacity to Confront the Impact Climate Change

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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U.S. Indigenous Communities Building Capacity to Confront Climate Change

Posted Dec. 13, 2017

Interview with April Taylor, sustainability scientist with the Chickasaw Nation, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

"Climate Change and Health" was the theme of this year’s annual American Public Health Association conference, held in Atlanta last month from Nov. 4-8. The keynote speaker was an indigenous woman from northern Alberta, Canada who is helping to lead the fight against tar sands extraction. Several of the panel discussions dealt with indigenous community concerns regarding the changing climate and actions they are taking to confront these changes.

For centuries, Native Americans have relied on natural resources to sustain their families, communities, traditional ways of life, and cultural identities. This relationship with both land and water makes indigenous people and cultures particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus attended the American Public Health Association conference and spoke with April Taylor, a sustainability scientist with the Chickasaw nation, who works at the South Central Climate Science Center in Norman, Oklahoma. In the following interview, Taylor describes her job assisting 68 tribes across New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana manage and plan for the many environmental impacts of climate change, including issues such as tribal water rights, sea level rise, flooding, droughts and wildfires.

APRIL TAYLOR: The way I explain my job is I do three things. One, I’m a matchmaker. So I'm out engaged with tribal staff of various types and matchmake them with climate scientists and researchers to work together on projects and go after funding to plan for the impacts they’re seeing in their communities already for climate change and what they might see in the future.

The second aspect is we do trainings. We build tribal capacity. We’ve done 32 trainings in the past 4-1/2 years, and they’re on all sorts of things, including grant writing, data and tools and how to find the right information to develop new plans for their communities.

And then the third aspect we do is youth outreach, so promoting native students in STEM fields, creating our next generation of tribal staff, so we can do these things ourselves. So I’m out at festivals and after-school programs, camps and things like that. I’ve also had 24 native students – undergraduates and grad students – who have worked for me in the past four years, so I mentor them on projects as well. So, lots of different things.

BETWEEN THE LINES: That sounds really important and interesting. You mentioned four states that you cover. I know some of them have had huge climate impacts, including what’s being described as the first climate refugees – a small tribe in Louisiana.

APRIL TAYLOR: I just wrote a piece for the National Climate Assessment on the Louisiana tribes. We’ve done quite a bit of trainings and networking down in Louisiana. It’s really interesting to see them; they’re doing this relocation in their own way; they’re moving their entire community. It’s really cool to see that, that they want to do that; it’s sort of bringing them closer together in that way. So it’s a lot of those communities, they’ve lived on the coast for a very long time; they were forced out to those areas.

BETWEEN THE LINES: This is Ile de St. Jean Charles, right?

APRIL TAYLOR: Right, St. Charles, yeah, but there are other communities out there as well. There’s Pointe XXX, which is hosting a Cultures Under Water conference in Phoenix in a few weeks, which is the first conference on the tribes that are being impacted by sea level rise and flooding, and so that’s really cool to see them take the lead on that and get funding for that. Chitimacha is out there as well. Chitimacha is really leading the way in the scientific aspect, of mapping out sea level rise and making their plans, so they’re really interesting to work with. Houma tribe is out there as well, Houma Nation, and they’re very active and aware of climate change. And we have the kishata tribe, they’re going to be impacted as well, even though they’re very far up the mainland right now, but they’re already seeing a lot of the flooding. They’re seeing plants that are migrating north, and so plants they’ve never seen that are salt water are already showing up in their communities, so it’s really interesting that they’re already seeing those things.

I work with more of the scientist or planner type of people. It’s not uncommon that we get, especially in those communities that are being impacted now, that you get leadership involved. Our last training was in May, and it’s really interesting who all – I mean you get community members, you get native church members who come in for these training because they’re interested. They want to know what’s happening and what are they dealing with.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Is it mostly sea level rise and flooding? Are there other issues related to climate change that you’re seeing in the tribes you work with?

APRIL TAYLOR: Yeah. So, drought. Several of the tribes are doing drought planning. Wind River just finished theirs. Chickasaw Nation is waiting for the final approval to finish ours. And they’re really leading the way, and taking the leads before the states and before what’s required. They’re not required to do drought planning, but they’re doing these things. Wildfires is another huge one. So water resources and tribal water rights is a big one. So we’re not seeing the stream flows or the snow melt (of past years). These communities are seeing these changes. We’re seeing changes in species and cultural significant species and how they’re changing already. And so some of these species that they rely on. There’s an indigenous phenology network, and phenology is basically the timing of the seasons and when things change, and so they’re seeing some of those changes happening months earlier, so they’re trying to figure out what that means for their culture, for their communities; do we change the ceremony? And things like that. For my tribe we have a butterfly restoration as well. So there are seven tribes doing butterfly restoration, trying to help the species adapt and have habitat for pollination.

Learn more about how indigenous communities are building capacity to confront climate change issues by visiting South Central Climate Science Center at the University of Oklahoma at southcentralclimate.org and April Taylor's staff page at the Central Climate Science Center southcentralclimate.org/index.php/pages/person/taylor_april.