Each week on Saturday at noon, Concerned Families of Westchester holds a peace & justice vigil in Hastings, at the VFW Plaza (!) at noon. Our topic/focus varies, but recently we have been complaining about ICE in Minneapolis and (of course) Israel’s US-supported genocide in Gaza. For some good conversation and to do a good deed, please join us some Saturday.
As it was too cold for me to attend this week, my leaflet got zero circulation, but I’m pasting it in here so it won’t go unread. What to say in 280 words? A weekly challenge.
Minnesota Shows the Way
HOW TO STOP ICE
The people of Minneapolis are heroes. Their protests against ICE and the Border Patrol have shown that neighbors standing up for neighbors can defeat Trump’s new Gestapo. The protests in Chicago, Los Angeles, and other cities have also demonstrated that community solidarity and protest are something we all can do to fight fascism. Renee Good and Alex Pretti are martyrs in this struggle. Sadly there will be more. But we have no choice but to resist. If Trump gains control over US cities and crushes all resistance to his madness, he will use his Gestapo in November to cancel/disrupt/steal the November elections, solidifying one-party, one-person dictatorship. We can’t let this happen.
Last week the people on Minneapolis organized a one-day strike to protest the murders and the ICE occupation. Tens of thousands of Minnesotans braved extreme cold to march in a daylong general strike with the support of all major unions. They protested, transported, fed, and watched over each other, an outgrowth of weeks, months, and years of community care and abolitionist resistance. Their collective actions mark a breakthrough in the fight against the American authoritarianism of our time.
It is only a future with mass social strikes, or general strikes, involving large-scale disruption on the immediate horizon that has the chance of stopping Trump’s forces. On January 23, the Twin Cities offered a small glimpse of the sorts of work stoppages, blockades, and shutdowns that aggregated practices of collective resistance make possible. The task ahead of us, in the face of the government’s unending violence and cruelty, is to take up, share, and spread the practices modeled by networks in Minnesota.
(Some language was borrowed from the Natasha Lennard article linked below. Thanks)
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING THIS WEEK IN MINNEAPOLIS
Fifteen Below Zero
By Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, New York Review of Books [January 30, 2026]
---- Up against the delirious scale of Operation Metro Surge, ordinary people juggle daily life with looking out for each other however they can. … By then it was clear that ICE is not in Minnesota primarily to detain and deport people. The agents have come, above all, to terrorize Minnesotans. Why else would they have shown up dressed for war in tactical gear? The Obama administration deported millions of people across the country without so much fanfare. Operation Metro Surge was not well thought-out, as videos of ICE vehicles stuck in snow and agents slipping on frozen streets emphasize. But this realization brings no comfort whatsoever; even before they started killing people, it was obvious that the agents’ incompetence only made them more dangerous. The bitter cold obstructs the operation but also seems to collude with it: ICE is driving around looking for targets in weather that keeps all but those who have no choice hunkered down indoors. [Read More]
The Crime of Witness
By Fintan O’Toole, New York Review of Books [January 29, 2026]
---- It is striking that the capital offense for which both Pretti and Renée Good, who weeks earlier was shot multiple times at close range by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, were summarily executed was the crime of witness. Good was watching ICE at work from her car. Pretti was filming Border Patrol agents on the street. Both were engaged in the task that democracies assign to citizens: that of paying close attention to the workings of power. If the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, a country that inflicts the ultimate punishment on those who dare to be vigilant can no longer be free. Watchfulness is the most dangerous form of resistance because it obstructs the Trump regime’s project of habituation. Fascism works by making the extreme normal. Habit, as Samuel Beckett has it, is a great deadener. It has been obvious since the start of Trump’s second term that he is trying to make the sight of armed and masked men with virtually unlimited powers one to which Americans are accustomed. [Read More]
The People Are Winning the Battle Against ICE
By Elie Mystal, The Nation [January 28, 2026]
---- What’s happening in Minnesota is not some kind of weird inversion of the normal order of things. It’s not strange that the people are ahead of the law. This is usually how change happens: The law is a lagging indicator of social justice. The law is not now nor ever has been a leader in reversing fascism, authoritarianism, or atrocity. Movements start in the streets and later, often years later, the law tries to catch up and codify what movements have already made a reality. We celebrate legal and legislative victories—like Brown v. Board of Education or the Civil Rights Act—as bloodless acts of social change, but we forget that these victories are not possible without the toil and blood of people who take to the streets, willing to risk it all for progress and justice. … Don’t get me wrong: The cost to the people is high. People are dead. Children have been kidnapped. Lives and livelihoods have been destroyed. Victory has not been achieved. Yes, Trump is moving Greg Bovino out, but he’s moving Tom Homan in. (I saw a person on social media say replacing Bovino with Homan “is like shitting your pants and changing your shirt.”) Trump flinched in Minnesota, but when Stephen Miller wakes up tonight and crawls out of his casket, he will surely advise Trump to “double down” on evil. The Battle of Minneapolis is far from over. [Read More]
How to Block ICE in Your City
By Aru Shiney-Ajay and, Eric Blanc, Labor Politics [January 26, 2026\
---- The ICE and the Border Patrol’s terror campaign has taken the lives of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, and led to the abduction of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, among countless others. Minneapolis has answered with an astonishing surge of courage. Neighborhood Signal chats and daily community-watch patrols have turned sidewalks into lines of mutual aid and defense, while the January 23 day of mass protest and disruption proved a willingness on the part of residents to stop business as usual in defiance of ICE’s violent repression. The Twin Cities Sunrise Movement has pushed the resistance onto offense, targeting the Hilton hotels that quietly house ICE agents. This campaign to get companies to break from ICE has led to an impressive string of local victories, including getting a local Hilton to refuse service to ICE, sparking outrage from the Department of Homeland Security and the subsequent capitulation of Hilton nationally to the administration. [Red More]
A “GENERAL STRIKE”? – FOOD FOR THOUGHT
How to Defeat MAGA Tyranny, Chapters 1 & 2: A History of Social Strikes
By Jeremy Brecher, Znet [January 25, 2026] [Link]
We Can Fight This: Minnesota’s General Strike Shows How
By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [January 24 2026] [Link]
How to Spread the General Strike Beyond the Twin Cities
By Stephanie Luce, Labor Notes [January 30, 2026] [Link]
MAMDANI AND NEW YORK
Mamdani Goes From a Winter Storm to a Fiscal One
By D.D. Guttenplan, The Nation [January 29, 2026]
---- The honeymoon is officially over. That was the deeper meaning of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s somber Wednesday morning City Hall press conference disclosing the not-exactly-shocking news that regarding the next two fiscal years New York faces a $12 billion hole in the city’s finances. The budget gap itself was old news, disclosed first by Comptroller Mark Levine nearly two weeks ago—in an announcement whose details owed much to his predecessor, former comptroller Brad Lander’s final report, which had projected “a $2.18 billion gap for FY 2026…a gap of $10.41 billion [in FY 2027], $13.24 billion in FY 2028, and $12.36 billion in FY 2029.” Lander’s mid-December warning drew little coverage—apart from a New York Post editorial board’s crowing that the looming deficits “will surely dent Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s freebie-filled socialist agenda.” But the mayor’s dramatic tale of his predecessor’s fiscal fiddling was designed with a clear political agenda in mind: both to underline the magnitude of the problem and to identify the villains responsible for this perfidy. [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST - “Zohran: The Budget Crisis Is Real. Workers Shouldn’t Pay for It,” by Nick French, Jacobin Magazine [January 2026] [Link]
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
REWARDS!
This week’s Rewards for stalwart Newsletter readers highlight some of the new and old music prompted by the events in Minneapolis. In just three days, Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis” has garnered more than 4 million views and 32 thousand comments. Over in the UK, Billy Bragg’s “City of Heroes” has been watched 173 thousand times, also in 3 days. And in New Mexico, The Raging Grannies’ “All You Fascists Bound to Lose” has also been seen by scads of people and SHOULDN’T BE MISSED! Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
The Path to the Trump Doctrine
By Asli U. Bali and Aziz Rana, Boston Review [January 29, 2026]
---- The path to the Trump doctrine is long and winding, but to understand its most proximate influences we need only look back a couple of presidents—especially to their actions in the Middle East. Barack Obama may have been celebrated for his commitment to liberal internationalism, and in many ways, he did embody its last gasp. Even so, his administration designed a system of targeted killing through drone strikes in the Muslim world that purported to legalize extrajudicial executions at the sole discretion of the U.S. president. Trump’s killings at sea take such Obama-era lawlessness as their clear precedent. After Trump’s first term, the Biden presidency was billed a return to normalcy with respect to international law and global responsibility. Yet instead of resurrecting the old order, Biden cemented its end, exemplified by his refusal to apply either U.S. or international law to Gaza—even in the face of a drumbeat of official resignations. … At the same time, the Biden administration embraced its own aggressive posturing and rule-breaking. It essentially kept in place the hardline Trump policies toward Cuba, undermining trade and travel and further isolating the country after the Obama-era détente. And despite claims to the contrary, it never recommitted to the signature foreign policy accomplishment of those Obama years, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, from which Trump had unilaterally withdrawn. Instead, Biden continued to blanket Tehran with harsh sanctions. But Biden’s most visible continuation of the Trump 1.0 approach came in the so-called “pivot to Asia.” [Read More]
(Video) Why is the Doomsday Clock nearer to midnight than ever before?
From Aljazeera [“Inside Story”] [January 29, 2026]
---- Atomic scientists raise alarm over more global conflict and new risks such as artificial intelligence. The Doomsday Clock has reached the closest ever point to midnight, according to the atomic scientists who run it. They say more wars, aggression from nuclear powers and weaker arms controls are to blame, along with climate change and risks posed by AI. So, should we be worried? [See the Program]. For the Bulletin’s press statement on announcing the change in “the clock,” go here. For some good analysis, read “New START on the Brink,” by Xiaodon Liang and Daryl G. Kimball, Arms Control Today [January/February 2026] [Link].
Trump Is Not a Nationalist. He’s Something Worse.
By Jean Guerrero, New York Times [January 29, 2026]
---- The story of how Mr. Trump came to intervene in Honduran politics and align himself with a foreign terrorist organization is essential for understanding the world he is trying to build. He has been meddling in multiple elections in Latin America, and recently captured Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in a military operation to have him face federal drug trafficking charges here. He’s now threatening to arrest the president of Colombia on suspicion of drug trafficking and to bomb cartels in Mexico. His actions may seem contradictory. But there is a coherent logic to them: They expand territorial power for a class of transnational elites who believe they’re above the law. … With the return of the right-wing party to Honduras, calls for oversight are likely to be ignored. The right-wing party, an ally of Próspera, governed its citizens the way Mr. Trump and his allies envision governing Americans: through violent dispossession and exploitation. In the United States, a mirror world has already begun to form with the unleashing of multiple federal police forces that have already killed at least three citizens and a number of immigrants. These police forces do not protect the body politic; they protect the bottom line of transnational corporations that surveil and jail us for profit. We don’t stand a chance against them until we bridge the engineered divide between America’s native-born working classes and the rural poor of Latin America, including those who are now undocumented workers in the United States. … Mr. Trump’s meddling reveals what his movement is for — not borders, nations or workers but a cross-continental free-for-all where people are uprooted so profits can move freely. [Read More]
How Minnesotans became Palestinians: Top 5 Ways they are Occupied
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [January 25, 2026]
---- The people of Palestine are occupied by the Israelis. In my experience most Americans do not even know this basic fact. Ignorance of it makes it impossible to understand what is even going on in the Mideast, and I fear until recently most Americans did not. I went to see the Oscar-nominated film The Voice of Hind Rajab yesterday. The story of six-year-old Hind Rajab, murdered by the Israeli army in Gaza, is told here. It is heartbreaking because it is about the helplessness induced by occupation and the arbitrariness and impunity of the occupier. Occupiers are always arbitrary and unfair because they can be, since they have all the power, and because they feel they must act precipitately since they are the ones actually in danger. It may help Americans to understand if they can see the similarities between Minnesota under Trump’s ICE and Palestine (the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza) under the Israeli army. The logic of occupation is always the same. Cole’s Five Laws of Occupation are as follows: [Read More]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
There Is No “After Gaza”
By Sarah Aziza, The Nation [January 31, 2026]
---- Yet in the early, blood-drenched days following October 7, something else happened, too—the spectacle of Israel’s genocidal war compelled many of the previously indifferent to look, or look again, at the question of Palestine. Looking, their glimpses passed through the multiple distortions of distance and censorship, buffeted by Israel’s multimillion-dollar hasbara apparatus and frequent lies—and yet what they saw changed them. Day in and out, they saw Palestine’s hundred-year history distilled and on display each time Israel shelled a hospital or firebombed civilian tents. Hour by hour, the truth of Zionism exposed itself, as astonishing violence erased family lines and drove hundreds of thousands from one besieged zone to the next. Here was the Nakba, which had never ended, replayed as hyperbole. Here was the vaunted “only democracy in the Middle East”—Israel’s self-proclaimed title, declared to contrast its neoliberal utopia with the supposed backwardness of its millions of non-Jewish neighbors—revealing its enduring agenda of ethnic cleansing and barbarity. Palestine, and Gaza specifically, had escaped the margins of the global consciousness. Glimpsed as a mosaic of staggering suffering, astonishing courage, and stalwart tenderness, Palestine did more than shatter hearts. Palestine threw open the contradictions—and challenged the framework—of the existing order of the world. And so came another rupture. This one, a global reckoning between the millions of everyday citizens who recoiled from the wanton slaughter of Palestinians, and their institutions and governments that sided, unequivocally, with the Zionist war machine. In the ensuing months, we would witness not only genocide but also a pitched battle between a burgeoning global solidarity and the brutal overseers of the status quo. [Read More]
Kristallnacht in the West Bank on Holocaust Remembrance Day
By Jasper Nathaniel, Infinite Jaz [January 30, 2026]
[FB – Jasper Nathaniel is from Hastings. Check out his interesting site on Substack & subscribe.]
---- On Tuesday, Holocaust Remembrance Day, as leaders and institutions around the world commemorated the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis—and, to a lesser extent, the six million others—Jewish settlers in the West Bank marked the occasion by staging their own Kristallnacht. Or, more precisely, a Feuernacht: “Night of Fire.” Hundreds of settlers under the protection of the IDF rampaged through three villages in Masafer Yatta, carrying out a tightly coordinated pogrom. They stole 150 head of livestock, uprooted 500 olive trees, torched homes and cars, and beat men, women, and children with clubs. … My grandparents and great-grandparents, between them, survived the Russian pogroms, the Holocaust, and the Farhud in Iraq. These were the stories I grew up with, and they taught a simple lesson: recognize what’s unfolding before it’s too late, and do everything you can to stop it. Today, as this desecration is carried out in our name—through the chillingly familiar pattern of stripping of rights, dispossession, terror, and expulsion—where are Jewish leaders and institutions? [Read More]
Not a Trump Anomaly: The Board of Peace and America’s Crisis-Driven Power Plays
By Ramzy Baroud, Znet [January 30, 2026]
---- The Board of Peace—a by-invitation-only political club controlled entirely by Trump himself—is increasingly taking shape as a new geopolitical reality in which the United States imposes itself as the self-appointed caretaker of global affairs, beginning with genocide-devastated Gaza, and explicitly positioning itself as an alternative to the United Nations. While Trump has not stated this outright, his open contempt for international law and his relentless drive to redesign the post-World War II world order are clear indicators of his true intentions. The irony is staggering. A body ostensibly meant to guide Gaza through reconstruction after Israel’s devastating genocide does not include Palestinians—let alone Gazans themselves. Even more damning is the fact that the genocide it claims to address was politically backed, militarily financed, and diplomatically shielded by successive US administrations, first under Joe Biden and later under Trump. [Read More]
Jared Kushner’s “Plan” for Gaza Is an Abomination
By Tariq Kenney-Shawa, The Nation [January 30, 2026]
---- Last week, Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner formally announced the US government’s long-awaited “master plan” for the future of the Gaza Strip—one Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff has said was in the works for two years. Kushner could not have chosen a more fitting venue for the spectacle: the World Economic Forum at Davos, where the powerful gather to congratulate themselves for expressing concern about crises they have no intention of resolving. The picture Kushner painted of a “new” Gaza—replete with looming luxury high-rises and sprawling resorts—is unrecognizable not only from the morbid expanse of rubble that Israel has turned the territory into during more than two years of genocide, but also from the once-teeming city that endured, despite all odds, under a suffocating Israeli blockade for decades. But there is something even more sinister at the heart of Kushner’s vision: the effective absence of Palestinians. [Read More] -- ALSO OF INTEREST -- “Map shows what would happen to Gaza under the US ‘master plan’ “ by Mohammed Haddad and Mohammad Mansour, Aljazeera [January 27, 2026] [Link]; and “Gaza Is a Crime Scene, Not a Real Estate Opportunity,” by Hani Almadhoun, The Nation [January 27, 2026] [Link]
The West Bank – Articles of Interest
“Residents of This Palestinian Village Are Slowly Suffocating. Their Land Is Being Taken, and So Are Their Lives,” by Gideon Levy and Alex Levac, Ha’aretz [Israel] [January 31, 2026]
[Link[; “Israel’s Campaign to Make East Jerusalem Unlivable,” by Luisa Canciello, Znet [January 31, 2026] [Link]; “A Palestinian neighborhood’s last stand against Israeli settler takeover in Jerusalem,” by Qassam Muaddi, Mondoweiss [January 26, 2026] [Link]; and “The Final Expulsion of Palestinians Is Underway – and Your Indifference Enables It,” by Amira Hass, Ha’aretz [Israel] [January 27, 2026] [Link].
WAR ON LATIN AMERICA
(Video) Is Trump pushing a new imperialism in Latin America?
From Aljazeera [“UpFront”] [January 31, 2026]
---- Following United States forces’ abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a new set of questions is emerging as to how far Donald Trump is prepared to go in pushing US power abroad through direct intervention. But is this a real break with past policy – or the latest iteration of the US’s longstanding interventionist power play in Latin America? And with Cuba back in the administration’s sights, will Trump push for further action in the region? This week on UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks with Senior Analyst at the National Security Archive, Peter Kornbluh. [See the Program] – ALSO OF INTEREST -- “Rubio: We won’t rule out more military force in Venezuela,” by Stavroula Pabst, Responsible Statecraft [January 28, 2026] [Link].
WAR ON IRAN?
US military Action in Iran risks igniting a regional and global Nuclear Cascade
By Farah N. Jan, The Conversation [January 31, 2026]
---- The United States is seemingly moving toward a potential strike on Iran. On Jan. 28, 2026, President Donald Trump sharply intensified his threats to the Islamic Republic, suggesting that if Tehran did not agree to a set of demands, he could mount an attack “with speed and violence.” To underline the threat, the Pentagon moved aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln – along with destroyers, bombers and fighter jets – to positions within striking distance of the country. Foremost among the various demands the U.S. administration has put before Iran’s leader is a permanent end to the country’s uranium enrichment program. It has also called for limits to the development of ballistic missiles and a cutting off of Tehran’s support for proxy groups in the Middle East, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. … The American-led regional security architecture is already under strain. It risks fraying further if Gulf partners diversify their security ties and hedge against U.S. unpredictability. As a result, the Trump administration’s threats and potential strikes against Iran may, conversely, result not in increased American influence, but in diminished relevance as the region divides into competing spheres of influence. And perhaps most alarming of all, I fear that it could teach every aspiring nuclear state that security is attainable only through the possession of the bomb. [Read More] – ALSO OF INTEREST -- “The Iranian Protests Explained,” by Daniel Falcone, Foreign Policy in Focus [January 28, 2026] [Link].
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Climate Change: 55 Weather Disasters costing a Billion Dollars Each hit our Earth the Past Year
By Jeff Masters, Yale Climate Connections [January 27, 2026]
---- The world endured its costliest wildfire on record in 2025, its sixth-deadliest heat wave, and four floods or storms that caused at least 1,000 deaths. The planet was besieged by 55 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2025, insurance broker Gallagher Re said in its annual report issued Jan. 21. The total damage wrought by weather disasters in 2024 was $277 billion; 45% of those costs were covered by insurance. The 2025 damages were 25% lower than the 10-year inflation-adjusted average of $367 billion. A separate report issued Jan. 20 by insurance broker Aon put the total damage wrought by weather disasters in 2024 at $242 billion, with 47 billion-dollar weather disasters. Billion-dollar weather disasters cause about 76% of the total damages wrought by weather disasters, according to Steve Bowen of Gallagher Re. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Border Patrol Nation?
By Todd Miller, Counterpunch [January 30, 2026]
---- When U.S. Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, they were 300 miles from the U.S.-Canada border. That’s well outside the “border zone”—an area extending 100 miles inland from the border, which the U.S. established in the late 1940s as defining a “reasonable distance” for patrol purposes. In December, the Border Patrol’s Operation Metro Surge deployed 3,000 federal agents, 1,000 of them from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and about 2,000 from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This joint task force, led by Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, extended the U.S. border—and the extraconstitutional powers of its enforcers—into the country’s interior. As a CBP official told me in 2018, “We are exempted from the Fourth Amendment,” which protects against unwarranted searches and seizures. Now the borderland zone of exception, which has developed for decades, has vividly expanded. The whole country has become the border. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Lying in Politics: Reflections on The Pentagon Papers
By Hannah Arendt, New York Review of Books [November 18, 1971 issue]
---- The Pentagon Papers, like so much else in history, tell different stories, teach different lessons to different readers. Some claim they have only now understood that Vietnam was the “logical” outcome of the cold war or the anticommunist ideology, others that this is a unique opportunity to learn about decision making processes in government. But most readers have by now agreed that the basic issue raised by the Papers is deception. ... The quicksand of lying statements of all sorts, deceptions as well as self-deceptions, is apt to engulf any reader who wishes to probe this material, which, unhappily, he must recognize as the infrastructure of nearly a decade of United States foreign and domestic policy. [Read More]
The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Rage and Grief – [Kathe Kollwitz]
By Aruna D’Souza, New York Times [March 28, 2024]
---- Käthe Kollwitz’s fierce belief in social justice and her indelible images made her one of Germany’s best printmakers. A dazzling MoMA show reminds us why. ... Born in 1867, Kollwitz was an avowed socialist whose career stretched from the 1890s to the 1940s, a period of tremendous social upheaval and two world wars. Though she was a member of the progressive Berlin Secession art movement, she kept a distance from the elite art world, living in a working-class Berlin neighborhood with her husband, a doctor who tended to the poor. … Her audience was, first and foremost, her working-class neighbors. It’s why she focused on making prints, which could be widely circulated, and stuck to realism even as her peers turned to more avant-garde styles. ... She wanted her message to be as accessible as possible. [Read More]
