Squeaky Wheel Productions
A message from Between The Lines' executive producer, Scott Harris
To Our Between The Lines Friends:
After the 2024 election catastrophe, we are sorrowfully reliving the anger and fear millions of us felt after Donald Trump's first election victory in 2016.
We're also reminded of the failure of corporate media throughout the 2024 election campaign to truthfully report on Trump's explicitly white supremacist and fascist agenda. Major newspapers and TV news all too often soft-pedaled, sanitized and "sanewashed" Trump's shameless and depraved rhetoric designed to stoke hate and fear of immigrants, transgender kids and anyone who opposed his vile agenda regularly spewed during his coast-to-coast MAGA rallies.
At Between The Lines, we refused to use the watered-down euphemisms other news outlets often employed to describe Trump's amoral mindset and embrace of political violence.
If nothing else, this election also demonstrated the power of right-wing extremist social media and podcasts, and the concurrent decline of legacy media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post and cable news outlets, including CNN and MSNBC. While Trump and his team flooded younger voters with corporate friendly disinformation through Tik Tok and dozens of popular podcasts like Joe Rogan, Theo Van, Bussin' with the Boys with tens of millions of subscribers, underfunded progressive independent media are unable to compete.
One obvious reason is that progressive messengers advocate policies that are anathema to corporate America and Wall Street — so radio shows and podcasts like ours are at a severe disadvantage when it comes to raising the funding necessary to reach large swaths of the population that desperately need to hear a counter-message that champions social and racial justice policies that prioritize the interests of the working class and oppose America's hegemonic and militaristic foreign policy.
Unfortunately, the segment of corporate America that supports the Democratic party's centrist economic philosophy and does little to help working families are happy with that status quo, and won't support media that in any way threatens their financial interests.
Eight years ago, producers of our weekly Between The Lines' syndicated program committed to bringing voices of resistance to the airwaves and highlight the collective power we have to fight back against the repression, cruelty and corruption of the Trump regime.
While those four years were incredibly destructive to our nation's democratic institutions, with constant attacks on civil society and the foundations of a multi-racial democracy, it's certain that the next four years will be exponentially more dangerous and damaging, as most checks and balances on unlimited executive power now removed.
To many across the country, Donald Trump, who has praised Adolph Hitler and has repeatedly said he plans to prosecute and/or execute his political enemies, presents an existential threat to democracy:
- As president, he is a convicted felon who attempted to violently overturn his 2020 election loss, and is described by his former chief of staff as a fascist.
- The U.S. Supreme Court has given Trump absolute immunity for crimes committed as president if they're deemed to be official acts over the next four years.
- The prosecution of Trump for his attempted violent coup that killed five people and injured more than 140 police officers, has now been vacated because of his re-election. Trump pledges to give pardons to perhaps thousands of Jan. 6th insurrectionists convicted of violent acts, where these traitorous right-wing terrorists seeking vengeance will again be walking our streets.
- Aileen Cannon, the judge who dropped all charges against Trump for his crime of illegally moving top national security documents from the White House to his resort in Palm Beach, is under consideration by Trump as the nation's next attorney general when he's sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 2025.
- Trump comes into office with a radical right-wing agenda, detailed in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, and EPA, be placed under direct presidential control — with 50,000 federal civil servants to be fired and replaced by Trump loyalists.
- Trump has pledged to deport more than 11 million undocumented immigrants, eviscerate corporate consumer and environmental regulations, reverse policies to address the climate crisis and dismantle the Department of Education.
- Trump says he'll veto any nationwide abortion ban, favored by his Republican Christian Nationalist allies, but has indicated he's open to restrictions on contraception and the mailing of abortion medications.
As our Between The Lines production crew embark on reporting on the next four years of the Trump 2.0 regime, we remain committed to doing whatever we can to explore and disseminate effective paths to resist GOP-MAGA threats to our democracy, the violation of human rights and efforts to undermine freedom of the press in the dark days ahead.
Generous donors are matching up to $5,500, essentially doubling your contribution's impact.
With your financial contribution toward a $11,000 goal, our 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization, Squeaky Wheel Productions, will have the financial resources needed to initiate a three-part development plan to grow our audience so that more Americans will benefit from the vital information featured in each week's program:
- Outreach to new non-commercial radio stations across the U.S. with the goal of expanding the number of stations that broadcast BTL from the current 70 stations to 100 by the end of FY 2024-2025
- Expand BTL's reach by posting new weekly podcasts featuring guests with vital messages on defending democracy
- Develop new, more effective methods to employ online marketing and social media, in order to reach new listeners and attract new sources of financial support.
Without your support, Between The Lines' vital voices on the airwaves would not exist. Consider making a contribution today so we can continue the fight to protect democracy.
If you value what we do, please make online donation here.
In solidarity,
Scott Harris
Executive producer,
Between The Lines
Or, you can mail us a check, made payable to Squeaky Wheel Productions and addressed to:
Squeaky Wheel Productions
P.O. Box 110176
Trumbull, CT 06611
Thanks for all your past and continued support in the struggle for a more peaceful and just world for the next generation!
For more information, we can be reached at contact @ btlonline.org or (203) 268-8446.
In Solidarity,
Scott Harris, Executive Producer, Between The Lines and Squeaky Wheel Productions
and the rest of us at Between The Lines - Melinda, Denise, Anna, Bob, Elaine, Hank, Richard, Leslie, Jeff, Susan, Mary, Cat, Marco and Ruth Anne