Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
November 10, 2019
Hello All – Monday is Veterans Day. For opponents of war, Veterans Day is problematic because it has been folded into the American celebration of war, while not doing much to remember and care for our military veterans. Our editorial this week is taken from an essay written last year by David Swanson, one our most thoughtful and hard-working opponents of war. He writes:
Celebrate Armistice Day, Not Veterans Day
Do not celebrate Veterans Day. Celebrate Armistice Day instead. Do not celebrate Veterans Day — because of what it has become, and even more so because of what it replaced and erased from U.S. culture.
Exactly at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, in 1918, 100 years ago this coming November 11th, people across Europe suddenly stopped shooting guns at each other. Up until that moment, they were killing and taking bullets, falling and screaming, moaning and dying, from bullets and from poison gas. And then they stopped, at 11:00 in the morning, one century ago. They stopped, on schedule. It wasn't that they'd gotten tired or come to their senses. Both before and after 11 o'clock they were simply following orders. The Armistice agreement that ended World War I had set 11 o'clock as quitting time, a decision that allowed 11,000 more men to be killed in the 6 hours between the agreement and the appointed hour.
But that hour in subsequent years, that moment of an ending of a war that was supposed to end all war, that moment that had kicked off a world-wide celebration of joy and of the restoration of some semblance of sanity, became a time of silence, of bell ringing, of remembering, and of dedicating oneself to actually ending all war. That was what Armistice Day was. It was not a celebration of war or of those who participate in war, but of the moment a war had ended. Congress passed an Armistice Day resolution in 1926 calling for "exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding … inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples." Later, Congress added that November 11th was to be "a day dedicated to the cause of world peace."
We don't have so many holidays dedicated to peace that we can afford to spare one. If the United States were compelled to scrap a war holiday, it would have dozens to choose from, but peace holidays don't just grow on trees. Mother's Day has been drained of its original meaning. Martin Luther King Day has been shaped around a caricature that omits all advocacy for peace. Armistice Day, however, is making a comeback. [Read More]
And more thoughts for Veterans/Armistice Day
The Return: The traumatized veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.
By David Finkel, The New Yorker [September 2, 2013]
---- Two million Americans have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of those who have come back describe themselves as physically and mentally healthy. They move forward. Their war recedes. Some are even stronger for the experience. But studies suggest that between twenty and thirty per cent of returning veterans suffer, to varying degrees, from post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental-health condition triggered by some type of terror, or a traumatic brain injury, which occurs when the brain is jolted so violently that it collides with the inside of the skull, causing psychological damage. Every war has its after-war: depression, anxiety, nightmares, memory problems, personality changes, suicidal thoughts. If the studies prove correct, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created roughly five hundred thousand mentally wounded American veterans. [Read More]
I Never Expected to Protest the Vietnam War While on Active Duty
By
[FB – David Cortright is the author of the classic Soldiers in Revolt: The American Military Today (1975) and is the co-editor of a new book, Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War." He is a professor of peace studies at the Univesity of Notre Dame." [Link]. He tells how he went from being in the military band to a peace activist during the Vietnam War.]
News Notes
A few weeks ago the CFOW Newsletter included the sad news that NYC's progressive, listening-supported WBAI had been taken over by Pacifica Radio and shut down. But the station is back on this week, though the struggle for survival is far from over. It's at 99.5 FM – check it out!
As 2020 approaches, conservative political forces are once again doing what they can to purge voters and otherwise suppress the votes of lower-income people and people of color. One good account of this is "Fighting Voter Purges Across the South." Also useful is "Republicans, Not Russians, Threaten Our Elections" [Link]. People get ready.
In response to the dismal/criminal lack of coverage of our climate crisis by the mainstream media, in September a consortium of 323 news outlets large and small pledged to give the crisis the coverage it deserves. Here is a useful report: "Has Climate News Coverage Finally Turned a Corner?" [Link].
And finally, a key step in putting Brazilian fascist Jair Bolsonaro into the presidency was the imprisonment of his leftist political rival, and the former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ("Lula") on fake charges. Last Friday, Lula walked free, released because a court judged his imprisonment illegal. Catch up on this important development here.
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Tuesday, November 12th – The New York Immigration Coalition writes: "On November 12th, the Supreme Court will hear the case on "Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals" also known as DACA, and begin proceedings to determine the fate of the program. This court decision will determine the future of 700,000 recipients. To build national support and call attention to this issue, we are mobilizing to DC to have a presence outside of the court. … We will be leaving the White Plains area at 2am on Tuesday, Nov. 12th (the day after Veteran's Day) to arrive in DC around 7:30am where we will convene to eat breakfast (provided by NYIC) and head to the rally." For more information about the program and transportation/bus, go here.
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.
Thursday, November 14th – Bronx Climate Justice North will show the film, "Fire in Paradise" (a PBS Frontline documentary), about the fires in California (and discussion to follow) at the Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture, 4450 Fieldstone Road, in Riverdale, starting at 7 pm. For more information, go here.
Sunday, December 1st – CFOW meets (usually) on the first Sunday of the month at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 7 to 9 pm. We review our work of the previous months and make plans for the month to come. Everyone is welcome at these meetings.
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!
Rewards!
This week we have some rewards for stalwart readers. First up is an excellent video built around John Lennon's song, "Working Class Hero." Next, many of you will know of John Sayles and his excellent films. An interesting interview with Sayles was posted on ZNet this week, including a segment about the making of his classic 1987 film about a West Virginia miners' strike in 1920, "Matewan." Check out "If They Can Do It by Busting a Union, They'll Do It" [Link], and watch a gripping segment from the film here. Enjoy!.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
THIS WEEK'S FEATURED ESSAYS
Forged in Fire: California's Lessons for a Green New Deal
By Naomi Klein, The Intercept [
---- A Green New Deal-style approach — which fuses the battle against planet-warming pollution with the kinds of universalist health, housing, and transit policies that make daily life less stressful and more humane — is not, therefore, one of many possible climate solutions. Having exhausted every other option, it is the only kind of climate response that stands a chance of not going up in smoke. Put bluntly, we will not do what is required to confront the climate emergency unless we are willing to confront the economic and social emergencies produced by decades of neoliberal policy. Because it isn't only our dry and overheated forests and grasslands that are tinderboxes, just waiting for a tiniest spark to go up in flames. All around the world, our human societies, scorched under the stresses of late capitalism, are political tinderboxes as well. In the short window that remains, we need policies capable putting out all these flames. [Read More]
For more useful/illuminating news about the climate crisis, read/view - (Video) "Bill McKibben on U.S. Withdrawal from Paris Accord, California Fires, Climate Refugees & More," from Democracy Now! [November 5, 2019] [Link]; "US Withdrawal from Paris Climate Agreement Will Cause 'Real Harm'," an interview with Michael Mann, The Real News [November 9, 2019] [Link]; "Embracing the Green New Deal," by Jon Queally, Common Dreams [November 9, 2019] [Link], and "How Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong," by [Link].
No Premature Burial for Academic Freedom: Speaking up in Ann Arbor
By Chandler Davis, Infomed Comment
---- Let me make a case for urgency of defense of academic freedom. … The number of firings from American Universities for perceived communism in the great Red-hunt of 1947-1960 was in the hundreds, and the firings for perceived adherence to BDS or the like today are much fewer. There is one effect that looks very similar. In the 1950s any untenured academic might be leery of signing a petition critical of the US fighting a war in Korea (to take one example), knowing it would be vulnerable to public attack. The same went for critical examination of the capitalist system. In the present period, criticism of the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians is subject to the same chill. We all know perfectly well that if you want to criticize the occupation of the West Bank you had better reflect on your job security, because Canary Mission is watching you. So what? We go right ahead, only we watch our step: what's wrong with that? Let me try to shoot down this complacency. In the first place, constantly guarded speech is not free speech. It doesn't do the job free speech is needed for, the exploration of ideas and values. [Read More]
Texas Prepares to Execute Rodney Reed Amid a Flood of New Evidence Pointing to His Innocence
By Jordan Smith, The Intercept [
---- Over the last 18 years, I've written dozens of times about Reed's case. It was clear early on that it had serious problems and that Reed's conviction left open a number of questions about what happened to Stites and why. As the years have passed, the case has become even more disturbing. There is medical and forensic evidence that has been debunked. There are witnesses — including within Stites's family — who have come forward to say they were aware of the relationship. And then there's Fennell. There's been a lot of troubling information about him, too, including from law enforcement officers disturbed by his behavior both before and after Stites's murder. Some of that information should have been made available to defense lawyers before Reed's trial but wasn't. And then there are the courts, crucially including Texas's Court of Criminal Appeals, which has repeatedly demonstrated a results-oriented willful ignorance in the face of mounting evidence challenging the conviction. [Read More]
Our History
(Video) Remembering the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre When Police Shot Dead Three Unarmed Black Students From Democracy Now! [November 8, 2019]
[FB – Before Kent State, there was Orangeburg. As the students killed at Orangeburg were black, not white as at Kent State, the massacre has only a fragile hold on the history of "the '60s." This is a powerful story, based on the memories of the photographer who was first on the scene, back then.]
---- The 1968 Orangeburg massacre is one of the most violent and least remembered events of the civil rights movement. A crowd of students gathered on the campus of South Carolina State University to protest segregation at Orangeburg's only bowling alley. After days of escalating tensions, students started a bonfire and held a vigil on the campus to protest. Dozens of police arrived on the scene, and state troopers fired live ammunition into the crowd. When the shooting stopped, three students were dead and 28 wounded. Although the tragedy predated the Kent State shootings and Jackson State killings and it was the first of its kind on any American college campus, it received little national media coverage. The nine officers who opened fire that day were all acquitted. The only person convicted of wrongdoing was Cleveland Sellers, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC. Sellers was one of the organizers of the protest. He was convicted of a riot charge and spent seven months behind bars. He was pardoned in 1993. [See the Program]
