Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
December 23, 2019
Hello All – It's half-time at the Impeachment Super Bowl. How are we doing? While we can't undo what's been done, let's look at the scorecard and ask if there are any lessons to be learned. First, thinking back to the beginning of 2019, when the Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives, the Party leadership made the fateful decision to focus on investigating Trump and his crimes/misdeeds, rather than developing a bold legislative program as was suggested by advocates of the Green New Deal. Though Nancy Pelosi feared that impeachment would divide the Party, with most of the Party's eggs in the investigation basket, growing anger at Trump within the mainstream media and among the Democrats' suburban base became an unstoppable demand for impeachment when the Whistleblower's letter about the July 25th phone call between Trump and the President of Ukraine became public.
Despite the many reservations – how could the Republican-controlled Senate be persuaded to convict Trump? -- at the outset there were reasons to be hopeful. Trump's personal popularity was low. The Mueller Report was damning. Many Republican congressional representatives were choosing not to run for re-election. Much of the mainstream media was in lockstep with the idea that Trump was a traitor. A collapse of the stock market was a reasonable fear/hope. Public opinion polls showed that half the country favored impeachment and removal. And it was likely that Trump would do some indictable and/or disgusting things under the pressure of inquiry and judgment. Reasons to hope.
We need not review the last six months to see that each of these hopes/possibilities (and many more) failed to bear fruit. While analysts offered a dozen Constitutional bases for Trump's impeachment, the Democrats narrowed the "high crimes and misdemeanors" in play to his phone call with the President of Ukraine, and then to the withholding of military aid to Ukraine. While this narrowing of the Articles of Impeachment may have been necessary for Democratic Party unity, the resulting impeachment process has not eroded Trump's support in either Congress or among his political base. It's still hard to see how Trump's trial in the Senate will remove him. Thus the Democrats will have secured an historic symbolic condemnation of Trump, but at the expense of much time lost and many opportunities for building a progressive program for 2020 foregone.
Will the second half of the Impeachment Super Bowl be different? Will anything galvanize the tsunami of activism that seems to be required to prevent a second term for King Trump? It's hard to see the current leadership of the Democratic Party recognizing our problem, let alone correcting it. We the People are on our own. How can we bring the political focus of our national debates back to the real needs of real people, to a program for peace and climate sustainability and economic well being that will defeat the Trump Agenda?
Impeachment: thinking outside the box
The Radical Underuse of Impeachment
By David Swanson, Counterpunch [December 20, 2019]
---- Trump has publicly threatened nuclear war on two countries, waged and escalated numerous illegal wars, and dramatically increased the drone murder program. He's abused the pardon power and the power to declare emergencies. He's promoted racism and hatred. He's separated children from their families. He's illegally torn up treaties and proliferated weapons technology to brutal dictatorships. He's intentionally exacerbated climate collapse. Congress has ignored indisputable public acts, and impeached Trump for demanding information about a political opponent while delaying a gift of money to Ukraine to buy U.S. weapons. … Launching the endless wars, imprisoning without trial, torturing, mass warrentless spying, secret laws, signing statements, domestic use of the military, and dozens of other outrages just don't measure up to bribing Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden (who himself publicly brags about bribing Ukraine for other purposes). Or so Congress would have us believe. Impeachment has not been overused. It has been underused and misused. It and we are the worse off for it. [Read More]
The Democratic Leadership's Strategy on Impeachment Is Doomed and Dangerous
By Aaron Maté, The Nation [December 19, 2019]
---- It would be easier to feel optimistic if Democratic leaders were mounting any sort of political agenda or movement that could win over voters that they lost in 2016. But that is not the case. … Trump has betrayed the voters who were led to believe he would "drain the swamp." His tax scam continues to favor the wealthy, real wages continue to stagnate, shuttered factories haven't returned, and skyrocketing health care costs are wreaking havoc—to take one example, half of people with diabetes are skipping their insulin. Far from ending "endless wars," he has expanded them, even in Syria after announcing a withdrawal. Contrary to his vow to "stop racing to topple foreign regimes," Trump has imposed murderous sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Syria in a brazen effort to starve besieged populations into submission. Meanwhile, Trump and the GOP continue to wage their class war on the most vulnerable: … None of this is anywhere near the top of the Democratic leadership's agenda. Instead, from the failed Trump-Russia conspiracy theory to its Ukrainegate sequel, the Democratic leadership's resounding message to voters is that, in Pelosi's words, "all roads lead to Putin." . [Read More]
News Notes
Prior to last week's presidential debate, a writer in The Nation observed that the previous five debates had had not one question about poverty in the USA. That silence rings loud when there are 131 million people – or 42 percent of "We the People" – living "below poverty" or "near poverty" in the richest country in the history of the world. Needless to say, keeping the state of the poor – and thus the needed for profound change – Off the Agenda of what this election is all about works to the advantage of centrists and timid reformists, and to the disadvantage of candidates Sanders and Warren, who say that this State of the Nation cannot continue. Alan Minsky, author of The Nation piece noted above, was on Democracy Now! (min 47:00) the day after the debate to observe that, once again, the presidential debate had not had one question about poverty.
As someone who has been recently treated for cancer, I found the Democracy Now! program today especially interesting, as it features Dr. Azra Raza, author of a new book called The First Cell, who describes how and why the "slash-poison-burn" approach to cancer has failed.
For more than five years the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has been warning the world that Gaza could become uninhabitable by 2020 if the blockade does not end. Well, 2020 starts next week, and Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza continues. Basic human rights of Palestinians in Gaza are violated daily by the Israeli-imposed blockade, including the right to adequate housing, the right to education, the right to healthcare, the right to clean water and food, and in particular the right to freedom of movement. In recent years, citizen organizations like the Freedom Flotilla have attempted to break the blockade, and in May the next Freedom Flotilla will sail for Gaza. To learn how you/we can support this righteous cause, go here.
Buried in the recently passed $738 billion military policy bill was the establishment of a Space Force, a sixth branch of the US armed forces. So now we will move towards what Trump calls "the American dominance in space." To learn why this is a very bad idea, and why more than three-fourths of the Democrats voted for it, go here.
Finally, each year at this time Nation writer Katha Pollitt publicizes info on a dozen worthy causes that deserve the attention of those seeking to make the world better. And if you would like to support the work of CFOW, please send your check to PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
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 Saturday of each month, at 1:30 pm at the James Harmon Community Center (Hastings) [Note the change.] 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 a Seasonal Reward for stalwart readers: the full-length film "What Would Jesus Buy?" featuring Reverend Billy. Enjoy!!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
SOME USEFUL/INTERESTING ESSAYS
The Real Lesson of Afghanistan Is That Regime Change Does Not Work
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Code Pink & ZNet [December 20, 2019]
---- The trove of U.S. "Lessons Learned" documents on Afghanistan published by the Washington Post portrays, in excruciating detail, the anatomy of a failed policy, scandalously hidden from the public for 18 years. The "Lessons Learned" papers, however, are based on the premise that the U.S. and its allies will keep intervening militarily in other countries, and that they must therefore learn the lessons of Afghanistan to avoid making the same mistakes in future military occupations. This premise misses the obvious lesson that Washington insiders refuse to learn: the underlying fault is not in how the U.S. tries and fails to reconstruct societies destroyed by its "regime changes," but in the fundamental illegitimacy of regime change itself. … In 2019, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists kept the hands of its Doomsday clock at two minutes to midnight, symbolizing that we are as close to self-destruction as we have ever been. Its 2019 statement cited the double danger of climate change and nuclear war: "Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention." So it is a matter of survival for the U.S. to cooperate with the rest of the world to achieve major breakthroughs on both these fronts. [Read More]
---- The trove of U.S. "Lessons Learned" documents on Afghanistan published by the Washington Post portrays, in excruciating detail, the anatomy of a failed policy, scandalously hidden from the public for 18 years. The "Lessons Learned" papers, however, are based on the premise that the U.S. and its allies will keep intervening militarily in other countries, and that they must therefore learn the lessons of Afghanistan to avoid making the same mistakes in future military occupations. This premise misses the obvious lesson that Washington insiders refuse to learn: the underlying fault is not in how the U.S. tries and fails to reconstruct societies destroyed by its "regime changes," but in the fundamental illegitimacy of regime change itself. … In 2019, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists kept the hands of its Doomsday clock at two minutes to midnight, symbolizing that we are as close to self-destruction as we have ever been. Its 2019 statement cited the double danger of climate change and nuclear war: "Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention." So it is a matter of survival for the U.S. to cooperate with the rest of the world to achieve major breakthroughs on both these fronts. [Read More]
Rich Nations, After Driving Climate Disaster, Block All Progress at U.N. Talks
By Kate Aronoff, The Intercept [December 18 2019]
---- Days before talks began, a report from the U.N. Environment Program noted the gap between countries' existing commitments under the Paris Agreement ("Intended Nationally Determined Contributions," or INDCs) and what it will take to stay within the "well below 2 degrees" Celsius threshold of warming its signatories committed to. Existing INDCs will shoot temperatures up by 3.3 degrees, leaving major coastal cities and some whole nations underwater and collapsing crop yields worldwide. To get back on track for 1.5 degrees, per demands from the "global south," global emissions need to decline 7.6 percent each year between 2020 and 2030, 150 times greater than the largest single emissions drop in world history: the collapse of the Soviet Union. Every year. For a decade. "Common but differentiated" — per the UNFCCC — has generally been interpreted to mean this burden should be shared somewhat equitably. [Read More]
Why Jeremy Corbyn lost
By Louis Proyect [December 17, 2019]
---- In reviewing articles about Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn over the past two days, I was struck by the similarities between British and American politics. With all proportions guarded, Corbyn and Boris Johnson are the counterparts of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Since I regard the Labour Party as qualitatively different from the Democratic Party in class terms, I was much more open to Corbyn's electoral ambitions than I am to Sanders's. The Labour Party is still a working-class party. Or at least it was until Tony Blair got a hold of it. If it was still in New Labour's clutches, there would be not a dime's worth of differences between the DP and Labour. Starting with New Labour, you can say that—dialectically speaking—it was responsible for the emergence of Corbynism in the same way that Clinton/Obama were responsible for the Sandernistas. By the same token, New Labour's neglect of working-class interests helped fuel the Brexit campaign and Johnson's election in the same way that the post-LBJ Democratic Party paved the way for Donald Trump. Beneath all these political convulsions was the economic transformation of the UK and the USA. [Read More]
Our History
The Radical James Baldwin
By Laura Tanenbaum, Jacobin Magazine [December 2019]
[FB – This is a review of James Baldwin: Living in Fire, by Bill Mullen (Pluto, 2019).]
---- After returning to the United States in 1957, Baldwin achieved prominence as a journalistic chronicler of the Civil Rights Movement and an advocate for its aims. He wrote an important early profile of Martin Luther King in Vogue and spoke throughout the South at rallies for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), donating his speaking fees to the movement. During this period he also moved away from the elements of Cold War liberalism that had shaped some of his earlier writing: the FBI first put Baldwin squarely in its sights when he signed on to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and used his platform to push for urgent causes, such as the imprisonment of Carl Braden, a left-wing organizer jailed for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and a new trail for the "Harlem Six," a group of young men sentenced to life in prison after being beaten and tortured into confessions while in police custody. The evolution of Baldwin's political thought and writing during this stretch belies the familiar narrative of a hopeful movement toward desegregation followed by disillusionment: Baldwin saw things through an anti-colonial lens early on, shaped by an interest in the nonaligned movement and the years he spent witnessing the impact of the Algerian War on France during his formative years there. When he condemned the Vietnam War, he did so in terms similar to Martin Luther King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech: as a participant in Bertrand Russell's tribunal which sought to document and condemn war crimes. [Read More]
Now We Can Begin: Crystal Eastman's revolution.
By Vivian Gornick, The Nation [December 16, 2019]
[FB – This is a review of Crystal Eastman: A Revolutionary Life, by Amy Aronson (2019). Vivian Gornick is the author of many interesting books: my favorite is The Romance of American Communism, portraits of some interesting radicals from back in the day.]
---- In the first decades of the 20th century, there were gathered in Greenwich Village a few hundred women and men of radical temperament—artists, intellectuals, activists—bent on making a revolution in cultural consciousness. European modernism had crossed the Atlantic, and a great refusal to conform to the dictates of a worn-out American bourgeoisie was filling the air, one that made art and transgression and politics seem (as they always do in times of social rebellion) interchangeable. What was wanted, as one of them put it, was a "regeneration of the just-before-dawn of a new day in American art and literature and living-of-life as well as in politics." They were organizing in the name of experience, direct experience. To know oneself through unmarried sex, transgressive opinion, eccentric dress—these became the startling conventions of downtown radicalism in the years surrounding World War I. Among the women and men then flocking to the Village were many whose names are now inscribed in the cultural histories of the time: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eugene O'Neill, Margaret Sanger, John Reed, Randolph Bourne, Max Eastman, and his sister, Crystal. Actually, it was Crystal who got there first. [Read More]
