CFOW Weekend Update
August 30, 2018
Hello All – Honoring the Labor Day holiday, and taking into account the fact that many people will be out of town, we will have NO VIGIL/RALLY this Saturday in Hastings. Instead, stalwarts will be resting up for lots of agitation in the months to come.
A one-two punch of computer problems and medical/dental affliction disabled the CFOW newsletter production team last week. With any luck, we're looking forward to a Sunday/Monday issue.
In case anyone is looking for some good/useful reading over the weekend, I've linked three interesting articles below. Each of them touches on some historical roots of contemporary issues. Thus, was John McCain a "war hero"? For those under 55 or 60, it may be hard to appreciate the horror and anger with which anti-war people regarded the bombing of North Vietnam in the mid-1960s. And so the memorials for McCain as a "war hero" serve – and perhaps are intended to serve – as the validation of the Vietnam War. This is unacceptable, and a useful article and a good segment from Democracy Now! linked below try to set the record straight.
I received an email today denouncing certain feminists as "white supremacists in high heels." Well, we know what they are talking about, but are they talking about the legacies of slavery and the manifestations of white supremacy in a way that helps us to understand the complex history of these issues? No; as so often, the point of the polemic is identity affirmation, not explanation and understanding. And so linked below is an article by a leading historian of the women's movement, Ann D. Gordon, that addresses why and how and to what extent racism became intertwined with the struggles for women's suffrage, a legacy that remains with us today.
Finally, I enjoy linking articles from Diana Johnstone, and here's another one. An American based in Europe for the last four decades of so, Johnstone has reported from Italy and France, and was the press spokeperson for the German Green Party back in its early days. And so I have come to expect that she will see Europe and its relation to the United States in a way very differently from the US mainstream media. In the article linked below, Johnstone reflects on how and how much the United States intervened in Russia and Ukraine as the Soviet Union was breaking up in the 1990s, helping them "privatize" their economies, looting their assets, and creating the "oligarchs" that we learn so much about from the Manafort trial and American pundits. "So, if Russians were trying to interfere in U.S. domestic politics," she writes, "they would not be trying to change the U.S. system but to prevent it from trying to change their own." Read on!
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Ongoing – CFOW holds a vigil/rally each Saturday at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (Warburton and Spring) from 12 to 1 p.m. Everyone invited; please join us!
Saturday, September 8th – Croton Climate Initiative, Safe Energy Rights Group, the Care for Creation Ministry, and other organizations invite us to join the Rise for Climate: Croton March. On September 8th there will be marches around the world to demand prompt and strong action to save our climate. The march starts at 10 a.m. at the Croton Free Library, 171 Cleveland Drive, Croton-on-Hudson. For more information, go here.
Sunday, September 9th - Please join us for the next CFOW monthly meeting. At these meetings we discussed events and our work of the past month and make plans for what's ahead. We meet at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 7 to 9 p.m
Thursday, September 13th – The League of Women Voters in the Rivertowns will hold a breakfast/forum to explain what the US Army Corps of Engineers is proposing to do re: storm barriers on the Hudson. The event will be held at the Jazz Forum Club, 1 Dixon Lane in Tarrytown, from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. A free Continental breakfast will be served; $10 donation optional. For more info, go to info@lwv‐rivertowns.org.
Friday, September 14th – CFOW music favorites, "Hudson Valley Sally," will be at the BeanRunner Café in Peekskill with "Songs to Inspire Hope and Change." The program goes from 8 to 10 p.m. The BeanRunner is located at 201 S. Division St.
Thursday, September 20 and 27 – Westchester for Change, the Greenburgh Human Rights Advisory Council, and many other groups invite you to attend a two-part voter turnout/civic engagement workshop. The workshop will take place at the Theodore Young Community Center, 32 Manhattan Ave. in White Plains, from 7 to 9 p.m. To learn more, go to the event's Facebook page. If you plan to attend, please RSVP.
Sunday, September 30th – Countering the Muslim Travel Ban and Deportations will be the subject of a forum sponsored by the Westchester Coalition Against Islamphobia, at the Ethical Cultural Society of Westchester, 7 Saxon Wood Rd. in White Plains, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. They write: "Religious discrimination, xenophobia, and racism are being channeled to close our borders to immigrants and asylum-seekers. This panel discussion will describe what is happening and how we can overcome it. Q&A will follow." Speaking will be Debbie Almontaser President, Board of Directors, Muslim Community Network; CEO/Founder of Bridging Cultures Group Inc. ; Albert Fox Cahn Legal Director, Council on American-Islamic Relations, New York (CAIR-NY); member, Immigrant Leaders Council of the New York Immigration Coalition; and Karina Davila Co-founder of the Yonkers Sanctuary Movement; Current DACA recipient and President, John Jay DREAMers. This event is free and open to the public. Donations gratefully accepted. Parking available on site.
Labor Day
Though it's often seen as a conservative alternative to May Day, which originated in the Haymarket Strike of 1886, Labor Day actually got its start a few years earlier. In May1882, during a period of great strike activity, the New York City Central Labor Union proposed a "monster labor festival" to take place in September. And so it happened that on Tuesday, September 5th, some 10,000 trade union members and their supporters marched from Union Square to what is now Bryant Park. Their banners included "Labor Will Be United"; "Less Work and More Pay"; and "Close the Stores at 6 p.m." Many affiliates of the Central Labor Union, as well as their leader, Matthew McGuire, were members of the Knights of Labor, perhaps thought of as an ancestor of the CIO, in contrast to the more conservative AFofL. The main speaker at the march was Terrance Powderly, the "Grand Master" of the Knights. Today, sadly, Labor Day is marked by cook-outs rather than by militancy and demands for "Less Work and More Pay," but perhaps that is changing.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
SOME GOOD/INTERESTING WEEKEND READING
(Video) Obit Omit: What the Media Leaves Out of John McCain's Record of Militarism and Misogyny
From Democracy Now! [August 27, 2018]
---- We host a roundtable discussion on the life and legacy of John McCain, the Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, six-term senator and two-time presidential candidate, who died Saturday at the age of 81 of brain cancer. We speak with Mehdi Hasan, columnist for The Intercept and host of their "Deconstructed" podcast. We are also joined by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, which McCain once referred to as "low-life scum," and by Norman Solomon, national coordinator of RootsAction, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." [See the Program] For many more details, check out this interesting article by Branko Marcetic, "John McCain Wasn't a Hero," Jacobin Magazine [August 2018] [Link].
How to Celebrate a Complicated Win for Women
By Ann D. Gordon, New York Times [August 27, 2018]
[FB – Ann D. Gordon is an emeritus research professor of history at Rutgers University and the editor of the papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. But a half century ago, she was a founding editor of Radical America, a publication especially for young historians looking into our little-known "radical" past.]
---- There's a historical haze confounding plans to observe the coming 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. It descends, first, in definitions: "That's the one that guaranteed a right to vote to all American women, right?" Not exactly. The "women's suffrage" amendment, like the 15th Amendment before it, which sought to protect the political rights of former slaves, guaranteed nothing. It simply told states that being female could no longer be a reason to bar citizens from voting. To African-American women living in states with systems in place to block African-American men from voting, the amendment provided neither clarity nor power. Haze also makes it difficult to see what merits celebration. With the most prominent advocates of women's voting rights having come under scrutiny for their racial exclusiveness, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul, can we honor their activism? Can we celebrate a transformation that broke men's monopoly on political power while we simultaneously face up to ways that the ugliest aspects of American history influenced how citizens achieved this victory and how they behaved afterward? That is possible if we tell a documented story and use appropriate lenses. [Read More] To get another perspective on what this controversy is about, I suggest reading "Women's Suffrage Leaders Left Out Black Women," by Evette Dionne, Teen Vogue [August 18, 2017] [Link].
Unipolarism versus Multipolarism: The Real Russian Interference in U.S. Politics
By Diana Johnstone, The UNZ Review [August 25, 2018]
---- The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was ostensibly a conflict between two ideologies, two socio-economic systems. All that seems to be over. The day of a new socialism may dawn unexpectedly, but today capitalism rules the world. Now the United States and Russia are engaged in a no-holds-barred fight between capitalists. At first glance, it may seem to be a classic clash between rival capitalists. And yet, once again an ideological conflict is emerging, one which divides capitalists themselves, even in Russia and in the United States itself. It is the conflict between globalists and sovereignists, between a unipolar and a multipolar world. The conflict will not be confined to the two main nuclear powers. … The basic ideological conflict here is between Unipolar America and Multipolar Russia. Russia's position, as Vladimir Putin made clear in his historic speech at the 2007 Munich security conference, is to allow countries to enjoy national sovereignty and develop in their own way. The current Russian government is against interference in other countries' politics on principle. It would naturally prefer an American government willing to allow this. The United States, in contrast, is in favor of interference in other countries on principle: because it seeks a Unipolar world, with a single "democratic" system, and considers itself the final authority as to which regime a country should have and how it should run its affairs. So, if Russians were trying to interfere in U.S. domestic politics, they would not be trying to change the U.S. system but to prevent it from trying to change their own. [Read More] For another view of the issues/dangers entailed in our crazed "discourse" about Putin, Trump, and Russia, please read "What the Brennan Affair Really Reveals," by Russian/Soviet historian Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation [August 22, 2018] [Link].
