Between The Lines - Gar Alperovitz: Imagining a New Economic System (Week Ending Jan. 13, 2012)

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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Rising Economic Inequality Provokes Search for Practical, Democratic Alternatives

RealAudio MP3

Posted Jan. 4, 2012

Interview with Gar Alperovitz, Lionel R. Bauman professor of political economy at the University of Maryland, conducted by Scott Harris

As Republican Party presidential candidates campaigned across Iowa – the state holding the first meaningful contest for the GOP nomination, Occupy Wall Street activists in the state organized actions to focus public attention on one of priority concerns, the corrupting influence of big money in U.S. politics. Direct action disruptions at candidate speeches and protests at headquarters, including Democratic party offices, resulted in more than 60 arrests. The message these activists were sending was that both the Republican and Democratic parties largely represent the interests of major corporations and the top one percent wealthiest Americans.

As the new year begins, many observers are pondering the future of the Occupy Wall Street movement after police evicted thousands of activists from encampments in dozens of cities nationwide. Since the emergence of Occupy activism in New York City on Sept. 17, one question frequently asked of the movement is, "Where is your agenda and what are your specific demands?"

While the decentralized movement that operates by modified consensus is working through these important questions, Gar Alperovitz, author of a newly revised edition of his 2005 book, "America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty and Our Democracy," offers some well thought-out answers. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Alperovitz, the Lionel R. Bauman professor of political economy at the University of Maryland, who examines the problem of rising economic inequality in the U.S. and the practical, democratic solutions, many of which have already been put into practice in communities nationwide.

GAR ALPEROVITZ: Systems are defined by who really has the property interests. In the feudal eras it was the lords, manors, and aristocracy who held the landed property and that gave them the power. In traditional capitalism, that’s small individual entrepreneurial capitalism. There was a free market and small businessmen and farmers had the capital and that was competitive capitalism.

Well, that’s long since passed. Less than two percent of the society are farmers and less than seven or eight percent are entrepreneurs. The big money is in corporate capitalism and that’s a different animal all together. It’s more like feudalism than it is like competitive capitalism.

By the way, the people who knew that most are the theorists of free market capitalism, the great traditional Chicago school of economics believed in free market capitalism, not corporate-dominated capitalism, which is a very anti-democratic form. Under the state socialist system, it was the state that had the property and had the political power. Well, if you begin with that premise, obviously a democratic society really has to decentralize and democratize, in ways that are really democratic, the ownership of capital.

"My book, America Beyond Capitalism," is a lot about the many, many examples that are building up in American society that we, in fact, are doing that and haven’t quite realized it or talked about it or actually projected the implications. Let me just give you a few examples: the press doesn’t cover much of this, but it doesn’t take much digging to find out that there are a 130 million Americans who are members of co-ops or credit unions, which are another form of co-op. That’s 40 percent of the society involved in ownership or some sort of institution involved with ownership of wealth that is "one person, one vote" and that’s very different from the giant corporations. There are something like 13 million Americans that are involved in worker-owned companies, another form of democratic ownership or democratized ownership. There are something like 4,000 or 5,000 neighborhood corporations that exist that are designed to own property to benefit neighborhoods and communities. There are many, many examples like this. I could go on.

There are 2,000 municipal-owned utilities. That’s a city, democratic kind of constitutional structure that owns wealth in a very decentralized way. By the way, 25 percent of American electricity is produced by municipal utilities (publicly owned) and co-ops taken together. A society obviously isn’t going to be run only by co-ops and neighborhood corporations, but many of the principles that became the basis of national programs in the New Deal and in the Progressive Era, they were built up slowly, step by step, by the developments you see on the ground in which principles and ideals were established and when the moment came, they moved into larger economic enterprise and larger policies when the New Deal came in. Drawing on this experience, Justice Brandeis talked about this sort of thing as the states being the laboratories of democracy where the new ideas began to develop in smaller form that would later take on larger form.

BETWEEN THE LINES: The Occupy Wall Street movement certainly has pointed out growing income inequality and discussing and debating and dialoguing about possible solutions, many of which I’m sure would be right along the lines of things you’ve been dedicating your career to and in exploring in this book, "America Beyond Capitalism," and prior to, but what would be your advice to the Occupy Wall Street movement as they discuss alternatives, but many even more critically are trying to think of effective ways to reign in corporate power that really blocks the implementation of progressive change that you and many other people envision?

GAR ALPEROVITZ: Well, I think two things: one, you have to challenge corporate power wherever it inhibits real politics and real action. That’s at the state level, very often at the national level, and I think there’s, oddly enough, the Tea Party and the Occupation movement and the liberals and conservatives. Many are beginning to get fed up with Wall Street bankers on both sides and so there’s going to be a reining in, or, I think, ultimately a takeover of some of these banks because you really can’t regulate them. They’re just too big and powerful and if you break them up, they get back together again. That’s one direction, but I would really encourage people to get involved in their own local community and look around. Read my book "America Beyond Capitalism" or just check out community-wealth website Community-Wealth.org where they survey different things. Roll up your sleeves and see if you can begin to develop some of these things that are being done in other communities to change the patterns of ownership and democratize co-ops and worker-owned companies and land trusts and neighborhood corporations. There’s a lot that can be done. The third thing is study. That is so say, learn about this stuff and learn what are the implications and start doing what the founding fathers did; start thinking about the theory or where we’re going and what makes sense. Those three things together I think give people enough power challenging, building, but also rethinking things and not getting caught in the silly ideas that are really slogans, rather than thought-through developmental ideas of what to do.

Visit www.garalperovitz.com. For more resources on practical alternatives to America’s political and economic status quo, see our Occupy Wall Street resource page at www.btlonline.org/occupy.