George Lakey: Bernie Sanders Supporters Should Have a Plan B: Build a Movement

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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Bernie Sanders' Supporters Should Have a Plan B: Build a Movement

Posted Feb. 3, 2016

Interview with George Lakey, author, activist and co-founder of Earth Quaker Action Group, conducted by Scott Harris

After months of daily polling, endless live TV coverage of Donald Trump rallies and commentators holding forth on the top candidates' every word, Iowans cast ballots in the state's caucuses on Feb. 1, the nation's first real test of voter sentiment. While Ted Cruz defied polls to win the Republican caucuses, beating Trump by less than four percentage points, the candidates in the Democratic race fought the election out to a virtual tie. After almost an entire day waiting for a final tally, Hillary Clinton emerged the victor by the narrowest of margins, beating independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont by less than four Iowa delegates out of a total of slightly more than 1,397.

Clinton's razor-thin victory, came after Sanders defied expectations. Last spring, Sanders was behind Clinton in the polls by more than 42 points, had little name recognition and almost no funds. But the self-declared democratic socialist's message that the U.S. economic system is rigged in favor the richest one percent, and that Big Money calls the shots in electoral politics, resonated with a wide swath of Iowa voters. His call to challenge the status quo with a political revolution particularly appealed to the young, where 84 percent of voters between the ages of 17 and 29 supported Bernie, and only 14 percent backing Clinton.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with George Lakey, author, activist and co-founder of Earth Quaker Action Group, who discusses his recent article, "What Happens to Bernie Sanders Movement if He Loses?" and the need he sees for Sanders' supporters to have a Plan B to build a broad progressive coalition outside the electoral arena.

GEORGE LAKEY: This country has been remarkably vision-averse in its political discourse. Very, very different from the 1960s – the Kennedy era – the times when Americans dared to dream dreams of how great we could be. And now, the political class doesn't want us to dream dreams. And there's Bernie Sanders, dreaming dreams of how we can be, and his way of doing that is quite subtle and very smart. He's pointing to actual lived experience. He points over and over to the Nordic countries – Denmark, Norway, Sweden – as examples of countries that have the kind of decent social order degree of equality, the degree of benefits for people, for working class people that we can only wish we could achieve.

So, he's resurrecting the idea of us setting goals, because it implies that we might be powerful enough to achieve them. And I'm so appreciating that about Bernie.

BETWEEN THE LINES: George, when it comes to electoral politics, it's certain that Bernie Sanders understands that the enthusiasm and followers he's generated with his message that the American political and economic system are broken may actually hit a deadend if he loses his bid for the Democratic party nomination. Do you see any evidence that he's made plans to preserve that energy in a way where's put some time and thinking building an infrastructure for a lasting political movement that could carry on regardless of the results of the 2016 election campaign?

GEORGE LAKEY: I don't see the evidence, but I'm not close enough to the campaign be the one who see the evidence. I'm hoping that those of your listeners who get involved in the campaign will ask over and over, "And by the way, what's our 'Plan B'?" Because it's only sensible. Most people do put fire insurance on their house because they want the Plan B in case the terrible thing would happen of them having a fire in their house. And we also need a Plan B and Bernie Sanders' campaign definitely needs that. So I think it's very reasonable for people who are working for Bernie to ask, "What's the Plan B? What do we do if he loses?" It's not a threatening question to me. It's simply a good, solid, American pragmatic question, because there needs to be a Plan B.

The point is, from my experience, there's tremendous reservoir of American experience of working outside the electoral system and getting things done that we've been unsuccessful in getting done through the electoral system. I think for example, the civil rights movements, which was all about that. It was all about the federal government and a bunch of state governments to come through with anti-discrimination measures and the Voting Rights Act and so on, which the political class in Washington and in state houses had absolutely no intention of doing.

Another example are the LGBT people. I'm a gay man. I'm very proud of participating in that struggle, in which again, although there was interest among us in electoral politics, no way were we counting on that to deliver the victories. And over, and over and over, we forced legislators and finally on the federal level, forced legislators to do the right thing with regard to human rights. The U.S. story is a long story. Women's suffrage forcing the federal government to grant the right to vote when President Woodrow Wilson – no way did he want to go along with that, and he was forced to do it by Alice Paul, and amazing, amazing woman and her militant, rebellious suffragettes. So there's tremendous history we've got. All we need to do is reach into that legacy, pull out this thing called "People Power," and just go ahead and force the political class to move aside.

One reason, why, Scott, I've written a book which is coming out this summer on the Nordic model – I'm writing, actually, it's now at the publisher's. Melville House is publishing it. This book that describes how in Norway and Sweden; they did shove their political class aside and used nonviolent direct action to force their countries to change. So, I appreciate Bernie saying, well they have it so much better than we do; they have free higher education; they have decent housing for all and so on. I'm so glad he's that. What I describe in the book is how they got there. And while it's true that in each country that made those achievements, there was a Labor Party, there was a Social Democratic Party, there was a party that was fighting on the inside. What really gave it the power to prevail was the tremendous lot of action in the streets. And Americans know how to do that. All we need is to choose to.

To read Lakey's article, see "What happens to the Bernie Sanders movement if he loses?"