Interview · moment 12 of 21
Cheryl Hines on Campaigning and Bobby's Water Keeper Legacy
from Bobby & Cheryl | The Tim Dillon Show #360 · #360
5 min
Guest
Cheryl Hines talks about the unexpected joy of meeting voters on the campaign trail across party lines, then RFK Jr. describes founding the Waterkeeper Alliance and suing Hudson River polluters, plus the Monsanto Roundup lawsuit over a groundskeeper's cancer.
- Cheryl didn't expect campaigning to be fun but found it interesting after joining Bobby in South Carolina.
- Meeting people in small communities across Middle America revealed struggles and hopes that Los Angeles life doesn't reflect.
- Bobby founded and runs the Waterkeeper Alliance, now the biggest water protection group in the world, started in 1984 defending Hudson River fishermen from pollution.
- The Waterkeeper's legal work forced polluters to spend five and a half billion dollars in penalties and remediation, transforming the Hudson into the richest waterway in the North Atlantic.
- The success on the Hudson spawned 350 waterkeeper organizations in 46 countries, each with patrol boats to track down and sue polluters.
- Bobby's law firm sued Monsanto over Roundup after a groundskeeper wearing it developed lesions, and the company never called him back despite internal discussions.
- The Monsanto case won by proving Roundup caused lesions and Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in the groundskeeper, establishing a major victory against a huge corporation.
- Standing up to corporations by producing their own internal emails as evidence that they knowingly withheld information about harm.