Between The Lines - Chelsea Watson, Maya Jenkins and Phoebe Chatfield: Yale Climate Activists Launch Direct Action Protests to Press Fossil Fuel Divestment (Week Ending April 24, 2015)

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.)

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.

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Yale Climate Activists Launch Direct Action Protests to Press for Fossil Fuel Divestment

Posted April 15, 2015

Interview with Chelsea Watson, Maya Jenkins and Phoebe Chatfield, Yale Student Leaders, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

Forty-eight Yale University undergraduate students with the group Fossil Free Yale conducted a sit-in on April 9 outside Yale’s president's office the action was organized to pressure the university to reconsider its decision not to divest fossil fuel stocks from its $24 billion endowment portfolio.

At the end of the day, 19 of the students were arrested for refusing to leave the building. Yale joins Swarthmore College students, who have conducted a sit-in since March 19, Harvard, which launched what it calls Heat Week civil disobedience actions beginning April 12, and other universities and colleges across the U.S. which are stepping up protests to press for divestment this spring.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with several of the Yale student activists before they began their occupation of the building.

BETWEEN THE LINES: First is Chelsea Watson, a sophomore.

CHELSEA WATSON: The way we started this campaign was we solely worked through administrative channels; we didn't do much movement building; we were really focused on research proposals, meeting with the administration. After doing that for two years and getting a no, then getting a no this August it became clear that any work we're doing, the administration is not paying attention. The administration has closed the conversation. Every time we elicit a response -- we've gotten a few responses -- we're only given sustainability initiatives. I love sustainability; I work in the Sustainability Office, but the thing is that's a separate thing from divestment. Sustainability focuses on Yale campus's individual carbon footprint; it focuses on Yale students' climate footprint, but it doesn't focus on the scope and scale of climate change.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Next, freshman Maya Jenkins responds to the criticism that divestment is not an effective strategy.

MAYA JENKINS: Divestment, a lot of the arguments are that it won't financially injure any companies. it's critical to understand that divestment does not seek to financially injure any companies. We know that our school divesting is not going to crash the market. But what it does seek to do is change the conversation and stigmatize these industries. And so it's a political statement more than anything, and I think especially at a place like Yale with a lot of clout -- and Yale's been a leader in numerous things -- divesting would help to shift and change that conversation. So, even sitting in today, we are in solidarity with a lot of other campaigns around the world that are taking direct action this spring. So that always feels incredible, and it feels like you are a part of something bigger, which is really awesome.

NATHAN LOBEL: Well, Yale is fairly unusual in that we actually have a document called the Ethical Investor that governs how the university is supposed to behave in this situation. So last year we designed a divestment proposal that was purposefully exactly within the lines of divestment through that document, and even with all that compromise, the Yale Corporation decided in August that they were not going to divest. And not even to do the most basic part of that proposal, which was to ask companies how much carbon the burning of their fuels was producing. After that time we decided that if the Corporation wasn't going to work collaboratively with us, we should be advocating for everything we want when it comes to divestment. So that proposal focused very heavily on the social injury of climate change, where really, the social injury that fossil fuel companies inflict is definitely largely environmental but also includes various social injustices which include the fact that the first victims of climate change are always going to be marginalized communities, people of color, citizens of developing nations, indigenous communities. But also even in their extraction and refinement processes, the fossil fuel industry inflicts a social injury on these groups. When you see water that's contaminated from fracking, when you see people displaced by mountaintop removal coal, again, those are always the same types of marginalized groups, and the people who are the victims of those social injuries are never really the people who look like the decision makers at Yale or in the board room of a fossil fuel company.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Here's freshman Phoebe Chatfield reading Fossil Fuel Yale's statement to President Peter Salovey.

PHOEBE CHATFIELD: FFY has worked collaboratively with the Yale administration over the past 2.5 years, but the Yale Corporation has not acknowledged the premise of our request, making clear to us that decision-makers have stopped listening to student voices on this issue. We are here because, though we welcome dialogue with administrators, we feel the need to ensure that future conversations continue to be productive. We are here because the fossil fuel industry depends on its ability to keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and our survival depends on our ability to stop them, and right now they are winning. We are here because climate change deniers in Congress receive four times as much money from the fossil fuel industry as those who accept climate change's reality. We are here because fossil fuel companies flagrantly disregard the well-being of marginalized communities neighboring extraction and refinement sites. We are here, sitting with the divestment movements around the world who engage in civil disobedience this spring to show that we will not give up this fight. We are here in solidarity with those on the front lines of climate injustice. We are here because we understand that for Yale to divest would be a powerful act, and we want to show that we, too, are willing to take powerful action. We are here because the challenges of our day require bold leadership, and we believe that Yale can, and must be, that leader. We are here because we believe fossil fuel divestment is in line with the values of the Yale community. We are here today to ask that the Yale Corporation publicly commit to reconsider fossil fuel divestment and explain why the conversation on divestment must be reopened.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Salovey suggested the students go through the existing channels they've already pursued with no results over the last few years. Chatfield said she and many other students were inspired to action after participating in the People's Climate March in New York City last September, shortly after arriving on campus.

Find more news on the fossil fuel divestment campaign by visiting Fossil Free Yale's website at fossilfreeyale.org.