CFOW Weekend Update
May 26, 2017
Hello Stalwarts – The VFW Plaza will be in use this Saturday, and as some stalwarts will be out of town visiting, etc., let's CANCEL our vigil for tomorrow. - For those who can't stay away, we can meet at the diner at noon for Meaningful Conversation.
On Sunday, Maria Harris invites us to join the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society at their picnic. The festivities start at 2 pm at the Historical Society (12 Elm St. in Dobbs), and carousing will carry on until 6 p.m. – Please bring something to eat/a dish to share. And to help Maria with planning, please send a RSVP asap to Linda Snider, Picnic Coordinator Pro Tem, at peridotljs@optonline.net.
The proposal to make Hastings a "Purple Heart Village" continues to be a hot topic, and received lots of coverage in this week's Enterprise. For those tuning in late, the proposed Resolution met with significant pushback, including some comments by CFOW stalwarts, for claiming that our wars "defend the United States" and "protect our freedoms." (I've pasted in below the critical leaflet that we passed out at last week's antiwar vigil in Hastings.) The Mayor/Board of Trustees has now sent out a revised Resolution, reducing the salience of the offending passages, but still keeping the Resolution within the tradition of patriotic support for war. You can read the revised Resolution here.
Coming Attractions
Ongoing – It's sign-up time for the Hastings Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). This project is managed by CFOW stalwart Elisa Zazzera. From June to November you can pick up a weekly bundle of in-season and just-picked fruits and vegetables. For more info, go here, or email Elisa at zazzera.elisa@gmail.com.
Tuesday, May 30th – CFOW is a co-sponsor, with NYCD16 Indivisible, of a forum on the New York Single Payer Healthcare Bill. Speaking will be Dr. Oliver Fein, former President of the Physicians for a National Health Program. The NY Single Payer legislation was passed overwhelmingly by the Assembly and is now in the Senate (S4840). The program will take place at the Senator Flynn Room, Will Public Library, 1500 Central Park Avenue in Yonkers, from 7 to 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, June 3rd – CFOW will once again lead off the River Arts Music Tour. As those with working memories will recall, for the last two years we kicked off the Music Tour in Hastings with some peace and justice songs, starting at 12 and going to 1 pm, under the leadership/direction of Jenny Murphy. So we're signed up for this again. Please start vocalizing and get ready to join our Stalwart Chorus.
Contributions to CFOW
If you are able to contribute to CFOW work, we would appreciate it very much. Please send your check to Concerned Families of Westchester, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards
Helping us navigate the Memorial Day madness this weekend is John Lennon. Here we have "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance." Enjoy and Abide!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
478-3848
SOME GOOD/INTERESTING WEEKEND READING
Among the Wild Things
By Nat Hentoff, The New Yorker [January 22, 1966]
----Sendak had expected a certain amount of angry reaction to "Where the Wild Things Are." In his speech accepting the Caldecott Medal, he referred with some acerbity to those noncontroversial children's books that offer "a gilded world unshadowed by the least suggestion of conflict or pain, a world manufactured by those who cannot—or don't care to—remember the truth of their own childhood." Of these he said, "Their expurgated vision has no relation to the way real children live. I suppose these books have some purpose—they don't frighten adults. . . . The popularity of such books is proof of endless pussyfooting about the grim aspects of child life, pussyfooting that attempts to justify itself by reminding us that we must not frighten our children. Of course, we must avoid frightening children, if by that we mean protecting them from experiences beyond their emotional capabilities; but I doubt that this is what most people mean when they say, 'We must not frighten our children.' The need for half-truth books is the most obvious indication of the common wish to protect children from their everyday fears and anxieties, a hopeless wish that denies the child's endless battle with disturbing emotions." [Read More] And The New Yorker links some more classic essays on children's literature here.
Moscow, my family and me
By Martin Kettle, The New Statesman [May 9, 2017]
[FB – During the early years of my participation in antiwar and civil rights activity, the arrogance of youth often prompted me/us to look with disdain of "the failures" of our elders, primarily those of the (ex-) Communist Party activists of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Today I am more often inclined to think that they did their best, and that it is tragic that the conditions of their world did not allow them to do better, as they wished to do.]
---- On Sundays when I was a small boy my family would sometimes go to Halifax for lunch with the Thompsons. On other Sundays they might come to lunch in Leeds with us. I enjoyed playing with the Thompson children in their garden, which I think had a swing and trees, while the grown-ups talked politics, literature and history indoors. One day in 1957 I asked my mother: "When are we going to go and see the Thompsons next?" I was seven at the time. "I'm not sure," my mother replied, and changed the subject. My parents never visited Edward and Dorothy Thompson again. In fact, I'm not sure whether the four of them met at all after 1957; for there had been a parting of the ways. The Thompsons had been friends of my parents, Arnold and Margot, since their student days in the late 1930s. My mother had briefly lived in the same flat as Edward's brother Frank, who was killed by the Nazis in Bulgaria during the war. But the Thompsons left the Communist Party over the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, while my parents stayed; and that was that. [Read More]
The Gwangju Uprising (1980)
FB – During the week that President Trump appeared to be about to start a nuclear war with North Korea, the South Koreans elected a new president. President Moon is a Korean liberal, with an admirable history, as a youth, of opposition to the several South Korean military dictators who government his country. One of Moon's first acts in office was to abolish the propaganda-filled state-issued history textbooks. And then The New York Times story went on to report:
In another move on Friday that resonated with liberal South Koreans, Mr. Moon ordered that an iconic protest song be sung during a government ceremony marking the anniversary of the May 1980 pro-democracy uprising in the southern city of Gwangju, when local citizens rose up against the military dictator Chun Doo-hwan. During the uprising, hundreds of protesters were killed by the police, paratroopers and tanks dispatched by Mr. Chun. In subsequent decades, "March Song for My Dear," which commemorated those killed in Gwangju, has become a rallying cry in antigovernment or labor protests. Like the Gwangju protest, the song has become a symbol of South Koreans' often bloody struggle for democracy. It ends with the line: "We march ahead, and those alive follow us!"
No analogy can do this justice, but it is a little bit like "one of the first acts of newly elected President Bernie Sanders was to make "This Land is Your Land" the new national anthem." The Gwangju uprising of students and others in the impoverished city of that name was met by savage repression, as the US military commander released South Korean troops to put down the last stand of the South Korean people against the seizure of power by the new military dictator Chun Doo-hwan. I couldn't find a perfect video to illustrate these events, but here is a pretty good one, and is here is the song (with subtitles): enduring love on the barricades.
CFOW leaflet in response to the "Purple Heart Village" resolution
Don't Glorify War To Honor Veterans
Can we hate the war and honor the warrior? This is an old question, and a new version of this came up at last Tuesday's Board of Trustee's meeting in Hastings.
An official Resolution proposed to make Hastings a "Purple Heart Village." The Resolution was a response to some Hastings residents request that Hastings add its name to the growing number of towns and cities across the country that are becoming "Purple Heart Towns."
The Purple Heart is awarded to soldiers who are killed or injured in combat. The award has taken different forms since it was first established by George Washington. Lately there has been criticism that Purple Hearts are not given to those suffering PTSD or other forms of trauma.
As is customary, the Resolution supporting the veterans included positive support for the wars in which they had fought. The Resolution said that those earning the Purple Heart had done so "while defending the United States of America"; that "they had placed themselves in harms way for the good and protection of all Americans"; and that they "valiantly served to protect the freedoms enjoyed by all Americans."
Is it relevant to ask whether the wars since 9/11 have been fought "to defend America," or "protect our freedoms"? Can these questions be asked without being "anti-veteran"? Can we respect the veteran and also say that the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia are not being fought to defend our country, but are fought to expand our Empire, at the cost of millions of deaths and trillions of dollars?
Those opposed to war would probably say that none of the wars waged by the United States since 9/11 have been in defense of our country, with the slight exception of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. In fact, as was predicted by US intelligence agencies before the invasion of Afghanistan (2001), the wars have made the world more dangerous for Americans.
Have the wars "protected our freedoms"? Since 9/11 we have had a huge assault on our civil liberties at home. This includes the Patriot Act, the return of torture, the Guantanamo prison, increasing attacks on Muslims, an increase in police violence, cutbacks on the right to asylum, and an immense program to invade our privacy and record our communications. War takes away our freedoms; it does not protect them.
We believe that recognition of Purple Heart veterans can be discussed on its own merits, without lying about our wars and our freedoms and falsely saying that war is good for us and for the country. It is not.
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