Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
October 28, 2019
Hello All – In Georgia, a federal grand jury on Thursday found seven Catholic peace activists guilty on three felony counts and a misdemeanor charge for breaking into the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base on April 4, 2018. They face more than 20 years in prison. The activists, known as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, entered the base armed with hammers, crime scene tape, baby bottles containing their own blood, and an indictment charging the U.S. government with crimes against peace.
Kings Bay is home to at least six nuclear ballistic missile submarines, each of which carries 20 Trident thermonuclear weapons. Along with intercontinental missiles and nuclear bombers, the Trident subs are part of the US "strategic triad," the nuclear force that, in case of war, would send nuclear bombs to an enemy's homeland, targeting military and civilian targets.
The Trident submarines are the mainstay of the US nuclear program, in that they are invulnerable to attack, being deep under water and always moving. There are 18 of these subs in the US arsenal. The six subs located at Kings Bay, Georgia have 3,800 times as much destructive power as the weapon used at Hiroshima. If they were ever used, the explosions would destroy life on Earth as we know it. In addition to those killed immediately, a "nuclear winter" of dust and smoke would blot out the sun for years, adding famine to the horror of war and destruction.
For years, Catholic peace activists have challenged this insanity be taking "direct action," refusing to submit quietly to the threat to human extinction. At Kings Bay in April 2018, following the commands of the prophet Isaiah, they symbolically "beat swords into plowshares." Over the past four decades activists in the Plowshares movement have taken part in about 100 similar actions at nuclear arms facilities, beginning in 1980 at the General Electric nuclear missile plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. For their action at Kings Bay, the Ploughshares 7 chose the date of April 28, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
What is the point of these symbolic actions? What do they accomplish? For the Catholic activists themselves, it is a refusal to live in complicity with the consummate evil of our times – nuclear war. They express the intolerable existential outrage of being expected to obey a society's law that legitimate the existence, and potential use, of weapons that are so powerful that they would end organized life on Earth. And then one wonders why everyone doesn't do this, how anyone could be a bystander in this situation.
Part of citizen passivity, of course, is the blackout customarily employed by the mainstream media when it comes to citizen activism. Dissent in the "proper channels" is regarded as part of the "democratic process" that gives our war machine its legitimacy; but citizen activism not expressed in elections or petitions, but through direct action by the outraged populous, is a danger to be quarantined with silence. This is especially damaging to democracy at a time when the Trump administration, following on the initiatives of the Obama administration, is in the early stages of a trillion-dollar nuclear "modernization" program, one of whose purposes is to make nuclear weapons "more useable" by concentrating the blast area. That such heinous thoughts could even be entertained should constitute an Impeachable Offense in itself.
To learn more about the Ploughshares 7 and the Trident missile program, check out below:
Catholic Activists Stand Trial for Protesting Nuclear Weapons
By Sam Husseini, The Nation [October 21, 2019]
---- It's a mark of many Catholic Worker activists that they expect to, at some point, be taken before "rulers and authorities." As Grady and six others—a group of Catholic activists calling themselves the Kings Bay Plowshares 7—entered the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Marys, Georgia, on April 4, 2018, the loudspeakers blared: "Use of deadly force is authorized." But they were there exactly because they view the facility as an epicenter of lethal force. The Plowshares 7 brought hammers, small bottles of blood, spray paint, and crime scene tape, which they strung across the facility. The base houses the Trident nuclear missile system; the group hoisted a sign that read "The Ultimate Logic of Trident: Omnicide," poured the blood on the ground, and spray painted "Love One Another" on the pavement. [Read More]
Trident Is the Crime
By Kathy Kelly, Waging Nonviolence [October 26, 2019]
---- On October 24, following a three-day trial in Brunswick, GA, seven Catholic Workers who acted to disarm a nuclear submarine base were convicted on three felony counts and one misdemeanor. The defendants face 20 years in prison, yet they emerged from their trial seeming quite ready for next steps in their ongoing witness. …On that day, April 4, 2018, the group had entered a U.S. Navy Submarine base which is a home port for the Trident nuclear missile fleet. Just one of those nuclear missiles, if launched, would cause 1,825 times more damage than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The Plowshares activists aimed to expose illegal and immoral weapons that threaten all life on earth. [Read More]
---- On October 24, following a three-day trial in Brunswick, GA, seven Catholic Workers who acted to disarm a nuclear submarine base were convicted on three felony counts and one misdemeanor. The defendants face 20 years in prison, yet they emerged from their trial seeming quite ready for next steps in their ongoing witness. …On that day, April 4, 2018, the group had entered a U.S. Navy Submarine base which is a home port for the Trident nuclear missile fleet. Just one of those nuclear missiles, if launched, would cause 1,825 times more damage than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The Plowshares activists aimed to expose illegal and immoral weapons that threaten all life on earth. [Read More]
News Notes
Hastings' Nick Mottern recently published an article titled "US Drone Program May Have Helped Turkey Kill Kurds for Over a Decade." The Kurds in question are those living in southeastern Turkey, who have been attacked by the Turkish government for decades. Nick writes: "It is a campaign that from time to time seems to have subjected whole communities to attack, particularly in cases in which Kurdish fighters were believed to be in the communities, with U.S. drone video, heat-sensing and other surveillance equipment spotting targets for Turkish conventional aircraft, drones and ground forces." Drone technology enables the USA to assist "allies" in genocide, without any US casualties. For much more on drone warfare, check out Nick's website, https://www.knowdrones.com/.
Alan Bigelow, CFOW friend and formerly of Hastings but now living in Nyack, was recently featured in The New Yorker for his role in the "solar cooking revolution." Solar cookers burn no fossil fuels, and Alan has brought his story of how the cookers can be built and used efficiently to many audiences, including the United Nations. "About three billion people around the world cook on open fires," says Alan. Using solar cookers can reduce deforestation, save the planet, and make cooking more pleasant. Give it a try!
The Methodist Church of Southern Africa, Nelson Mandela's church, has endorsed Palestine's Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS). At a recent conference in Cape Town, the church denounced "Israel's ongoing ill-treatment and oppression of Palestinian people, and the historic prophetic role played by the church and international community in fighting Apartheid, and any form of discrimination and injustice." Read More
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Sunday, November 3rd – The next CFOW meeting is on Sunday, November 3, from 7 to 9 pm. at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. We will have lots to discuss, as the impeachment saga will be over the top, with many collateral impacts on foreign and domestic policy. Everyone is welcome at these meetings
Tuesday, November 12th - The International Sanctuary Declaration Campaign "has called together outstanding migrant rights activists from around the world to speak to the conditions they are facing, how they are responding, and what it will take to turn fortresses into sanctuaries." The event will take place at the Ethical Culture Society of Westchester, 7 Saxon Woods Rd. in White Plains, from 5 to 9:30 pm. For tickets ($10) and more information, go here.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Our leaflet and posters for our rallies are usually about war or the climate crisis, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's immigration policies are often targeted, depending on current events. We (usually) meet on the first Sunday of each month, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. And if you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
SOME INTERESTING/ILLUMINATING READING AND VIEWING
The Betrayal of the Kurds
By Peter W. Galbraith, New York Review of Books [October 24, 2019]
---- The full consequences of President Trump's decision on October 6 to withdraw American troops and give Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a green light to invade northeast Syria are not yet clear. Erdoğan claimed that he wanted to create a twenty-mile buffer zone in which perhaps one million Syrian refugees living in Turkey could be resettled, but he may have had the ambition of turning all of northeast Syria over to the Islamists whom Turkey had sponsored in western Syria during the country's civil war and who were largely defeated there. Thanks to deft Russian diplomacy, that ambition—which could have reignited the Syrian civil war just as it was winding down—appears to have been largely thwarted. But it is hard to imagine a more calamitous outcome for the United States, the Kurds, NATO, and possibly Turkey itself. … The SDF was, of course, not a party to either the Putin-Erdoğan or the Pence-Erdoğan agreements. While it has no choice but to accept the protection of Russia and the Syrian government, this does not mean that it will abandon the places right along the border where almost all Syrian Kurds live. If Erdoğan resumes his war, the ethnic cleansing could be enormous. [Read More]
America's Military Mania Is Hurting Democracy
By William Astore, The Nation [October 24, 2019]
---- When Americans think of militarism, they may imagine jackbooted soldiers goose-stepping through the streets as flag-waving crowds exult; or, like our president, they may think of enormous parades featuring troops and missiles and tanks, with warplanes soaring overhead. Or nationalist dictators wearing military uniforms encrusted with medals, ribbons, and badges like so many barnacles on a sinking ship of state. (Was Donald Trump only joking recently when he said he'd like to award himself a Medal of Honor?) And what they may also think is: That's not us. That's not America. After all, Lady Liberty used to welcome newcomers with a torch, not an AR-15. We don't wall ourselves in while bombing others in distant parts of the world, right? But militarism is more than thuggish dictators, predatory weaponry, and steely-eyed troops. There are softer forms of it that are no less significant than the "hard" ones. In fact, in a self-avowed democracy like the United States, such softer forms are often more effective because they seem so much less insidious, so much less dangerous. [Read More]
(Video) "State of Emergency" [Housing and Homelessness]
From Democracy Now! [October 26, 2019]
---- We turn now to the crisis of homelessness in the United States, which is on the rise in many major cities. California has become the poster child for this economic and humanitarian disaster, with growing encampments in Los Angeles and the Bay Area as more people are forced onto the streets. The state is home to 12% of the U.S. population, but half the country's unsheltered people. As the crisis deepens, so has the criminalization of homelessness, with increasing efforts by city and state officials to crack down on unhoused people occupying public space. [See the Program]
---- We turn now to the crisis of homelessness in the United States, which is on the rise in many major cities. California has become the poster child for this economic and humanitarian disaster, with growing encampments in Los Angeles and the Bay Area as more people are forced onto the streets. The state is home to 12% of the U.S. population, but half the country's unsheltered people. As the crisis deepens, so has the criminalization of homelessness, with increasing efforts by city and state officials to crack down on unhoused people occupying public space. [See the Program]
The Miseducation of Samantha Power
By John Carl Baker, Jacobin Magazine [October 2019]
---- Samantha Power's new memoir, The Education of an Idealist, is an important and engaging work that should be widely read — especially by those of us who disagree with her. It deftly conveys the linkage between personal biography and political belief, showing Power not as a wily imperialist villain but a committed liberal whose consistent focus on human rights has nonetheless led her to embrace perpetual empire. This distinction matters because Power's political causes — atrocity prevention, support for subjugated minorities, international human rights — should be championed by all decent people. Yet her flawed prescriptions — particularly "humanitarian intervention" by the world's most powerful military — help maintain US dominance in the world and often undermine the very principles they profess to defend. With its adoration of the military and praise for the neutrality of "public service," the memoir raises serious questions about contemporary liberalism's ability to check antidemocratic trends.. [Read More]
Our History
The FBI Has a Long History of Treating Political Dissent as Terrorism
By Alice Speri, The Intercept [October 22 2019]
---- While terrorism in the U.S. is relatively rare, over the last decade most politically motivated violence has come at the hands of far-right extremists. Despite that reality, the FBI has devoted disproportionate resources to the surveillance of nonviolent civil society groups and protest movements, particularly on the left, using its mandate to protect national security to target scores of individuals posing no threat but opposing government policies and practices. Since 2010, the FBI has surveilled black activists and Muslim Americans, Palestinian solidarity and peace activists, Abolish ICE protesters, Occupy Wall Street, environmentalists, Cuba and Iran normalization proponents, and protesters at the Republican National Convention. And that is just the surveillance we know of — as the civil liberties group Defending Rights & Dissent documents in a report published today. … But the targeting of political dissent is nothing new for the FBI. In fact, one of the bureau's first campaigns, which began a hundred years ago next month, was an abusive crackdown of politically active immigrants it viewed as disloyal potential terrorists. [Read More]
