CFOW Newsletter - Focus on the Virus Crisis and Neo-liberalism

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

March 31, 2020

 

Hello All – At his daily media show last Sunday, President Trump said that "social distancing" and other precautions would limit the number of deaths from the coronavirus in the USA to "only" 100,000, and that he deserved a lot of credit for that.  One hundred thousand – that's more than the combined total US deaths of the Korean War (33,686) and the Vietnam War (58,220)!  This is quite an achievement for a man who began his career as a pandemic savior by claiming that the whole thing was a Chinese hoax.

 

Trump's incoherence, ignorance, and "misstatements" have gone beyond being fodder for late-night TV. Beneath the veneer of reckless incompetence, the virus is revealing a political and economic system that is a danger to billions of humans.  Some people call this system "Neo-liberalism," meaning that market considerations – profit and loss – should determine the supply and price of everything, even things essential to human needs such as healthcare. Thanks to the coronavirus, the fallacies of Neo-liberalism are on display for all to see, and the benefits of modest levels of central planning in Medicare for All, or for advance planning for sure-to-come pandemics, are simply common sense.

 

A question traditionally asked at times of social and economic crisis is, "Who will bear the burden of the bosses' crisis?"  In the 2008-2009 financial crisis, it was not the banks and bankers who ended up going to the poorhouse after wrecking the international banking system, but the millions of people who lost their homes through foreclosure, or who lost their jobs and businesses through unemployment and bankruptcy.  Now we have another crisis, where the government's metric of "success" is whether the stock market recovers and the economy returns to "normal," despite the deaths of 100,000 Americans.  This can't go on, and when this crisis subsides we can't allow the One Percent to restore a System that is so manifestly a failure and a menace to all.

 

From the front lines, here are some useful coronavirus readings – ""I'm A Doctor. The U.S. Response To Coronavirus Has Been Nothing Short Of Criminal" by Dipti S. Barot, Huffington Post [March 20, 2020] [Link]; and two segments from from Democracy Now!: (Video) "We Need a Public Health New Deal: Neoliberal Austerity & Private Healthcare Worsened U.S. Pandemic" [Link] and (Video) "'In a Week We Will Be Italy': NYC ER Doctor Says the U.S. Pandemic Will Only Get Worse" [Link].  Naomi Klein headlined a useful symposium last Friday, (Video) "How to Beat Coronavirus Capitalism" Naomi starts to speak at minute 4 [Link]  Finally, the New Yorker has made available a "Pandemic Journal," short notes from its writers around the world about a great many experiences in living with the virus [Link[. 

 

News Notes

Governor Cuomo is emerging as the "not-Trump" of the virus epidemic, speaking in complete sentences and referencing real numbers.  Many New Yorkers, however – medical people and others with working memories – remind us that Cuomo has led a savage assault on our state's medical infrastructure, and that as we speak/write an assault on the state's Medicaid funding is underway.  For a comprehensive picture and reminder of medical things past, read "Cuomo Helped Get New York Into This Mess" by Ross Barkan, The Nation [March 30, 2020] [Link].  For the wider picture, read "Corporate Media Ignores How Privatization of US Hospitals Explains Lack of Beds, Ventilators" by John Buell, Common Dreams [Link].

 

It is ironic that, while Pres. Trump seldom loses a chance to bash immigrants and refugees, "Nearly 1/3 of US Doctors are Foreign-Born, on Pandemic Front Lines," according to this useful article.  Another source, using 2017 numbers, finds that "the foreign born accounted for 28 percent of the 910,000 physicians and surgeons practicing in the United States, and 24 percent of the 2.1 million nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides" [Link].

 

The coronavirus had given dramatic proof to the importance of "Medicare for All."  For a user friendly overview of why this is so, read "Medicare For All: The Social Transformation Of US Health Care" by Hastings' own Peter S. Arno [[Link]

 

Finally, in this time of worldwide woe, we are reminded that Jefferson's "Declaration of Independence" heralded "the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness," and we ask, How is this pursuit of happiness working for Americans? – Well, the UN's World Happiness Report for 2020 is just out, and peace-historian Lawrence Wittner finds that "The World's Major Military and Economic Powers Find Happiness Elusive" [Link].

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester.  Until shut down by the virus, we have been meeting 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 the 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. In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting (by Zoom conference) each Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m.  If you would like to join our meeting, please send a return email to get the meeting's access code. 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

 

THIS WEEK'S FEATURED ESSAYS

 

For Autocrats, and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power

By Selam Gebrekidan, New York Times [March 30, 2020]

---- In Hungary, the prime minister can now rule by decree. In Britain, ministers have what a critic called "eye-watering" power to detain people and close borders. Israel's prime minister has shut down courts and begun an intrusive surveillance of citizens. Chile has sent the military to public squares once occupied by protesters. Bolivia has postponed elections. As the coronavirus pandemic brings the world to a juddering halt and anxious citizens demand action, leaders across the globe are invoking executive powers and seizing virtually dictatorial authority with scant resistance. [Read More]

 

The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life

By Ed Pilkington and Tom McCarthy, The Guardian [UK] [March 28, 2020]

---- When the definitive history of the coronavirus pandemic is written, the date 20 January 2020 is certain to feature prominently. It was on that day that a 35-year-old man in Washington state, recently returned from visiting family in Wuhan in China, became the first person in the US to be diagnosed with the virus. On the very same day, 5,000 miles away in Asia, the first confirmed case of Covid-19 was reported in South Korea. The confluence was striking, but there the similarities ended. In the two months since that fateful day, the responses to coronavirus displayed by the US and South Korea have been polar opposites. One country acted swiftly and aggressively to detect and isolate the virus, and by doing so has largely contained the crisis. The other country dithered and procrastinated, became mired in chaos and confusion, was distracted by the individual whims of its leader, and is now confronted by a health emergency of daunting proportions. [Read More]

 

Washington Uses the Pandemic to Create a $2 Trillion Slush Fund for Its Cronies

By Marshall Auerback, Counterpunch [March 30, 2020]

---- When historians look back on our current government's response to a public health emergency and resultant economic depression, there won't be many paeans to profiles in courage. It may seem impressive that Congress has approved legislation worth $2 trillion to help sustain the American economy, but it's no New Deal. Rather it's a massive economic slush fund that does its utmost to preserve the old ways of doing things under the guise of masquerading as a response to a public health emergency. … Under the guise of a public health emergency, though, serial corporate predators are being given dollops from this massive public trough with no means of engendering the kind of economic reconstruction that is truly needed right now, or even preventing a sufficiently robust response if this virus comes back in a second or third wave. [Read More]  For a good illustration of the government's priorities, read "The Relative Generosity of the Economic Rescue Package: Boeing and Public Broadcasting" by Dean Baker, CEPR [March 29, 2020] [Link]

 

Life and Death in the Epicenter

By Louis Proyect, Counterpunch [March 27, 2020]

---- With rents soaring in every borough due to gentrification, the class differences soar as well. Just a couple of days ago, the Times reported on the death of thirteen people from COVID-19 at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. This is a public hospital with 545 beds and a shortage of ventilators. To cope with the corpses piling up, the hospital now has a makeshift morgue on the street below—a refrigerated truck. Opened to the public in 1832, it is one of the oldest hospitals in the city. Two-thirds of Elmhurst's residents were born outside the United States, the highest such rate in the city. The Times referred to it as a safety-net hospital, serving mainly low-income patients, including many who lack primary care doctors. [Read More]

 

Pandemics and the Shape of Human History

By Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker [March 30, 2020]

---- The first "virgin soil epidemic" in the Americas began toward the end of 1518. That year, someone, presumably from Spain, carried smallpox to Hispaniola. This was a quarter of a century after Columbus ran aground on the island, and the native Taíno population had already been much reduced. The speckled monster laid waste to those who remained. … It's impossible to say how many people died in the first New World pandemic, both because the records are sketchy and because Europeans also brought with them so many other "virgin soil" diseases, including measles, typhoid, and diphtheria. In all, the imported microbes probably killed tens of millions of people. "The discovery of America was followed by possibly the greatest demographic disaster in the history of the world," William M. Denevan, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has written. This disaster changed the course of history not just in Europe and the Americas but also in Africa: faced with a labor shortage, the Spanish increasingly turned to the slave trade. [Read More]

 

And We're Still At War

FB – While we're focused on the coronavirus and Trump's antics, wars and the US role in them have marched on.  Here are brief updates about some of our wars and threatened military actions.

 

Iran

Beware of Trump Using the Coronavirus as a Cover for War With Iran

By Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept [March 30, 2020]

---- The news is all coronavirus. Whether it's cable news, national newspapers, public radio, or even my own Intercept podcast, we can't get away from it. The pandemic has overwhelmed us all; we talk, think, dream of little else. But let me try and grab your attention for a few moments and point you in a different direction. How many of you noticed a rather disturbing New York Times story from Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt last week that was headlined, "Pentagon Order to Plan for Escalation in Iraq Meets Warning From Top Commander"? … A conflict with Iran, as I have repeatedly pointed out, would be a strategic and humanitarian disaster. The United States would end up killing thousands of innocent Iranians; Tehran would lash out via proxy groups across the region, as well as the wider world; U.S. troops in Iraq would have a target on their backs; oil and gas prices would skyrocket. Question: What kind of maniac risks such a war in the middle of a global pandemic? [Read More]  For more information: "The Coronavirus Is Killing Iranians. So Are Trump's Brutal Sanctions," by Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept [March 17, 2020] [Link]; and "As Sanders Demands End to Iran Sanctions to Save Lives Amid Coronavirus Pandemic, Biden Says He Needs 'More Information'" y Jake Johnson, Common Dreams [March 30, 2020] [Link].

 

Venezuela

Trump's Narcoterrorism Indictment of Maduro Already Backfires

By Leonardo Flores, Code Pink [March 28, 2020]

---- For twenty years, right wing extremists in Miami and Washington have been slandering the Venezuelan government, accusing it of drug trafficking and harboring terrorists without ever offering even a shred of evidence. They finally got their wish on Thursday, when the U.S. Department of Justice unveiled indictments against President Nicolás Maduro and 13 other current or former members of Venezuela's government and military. In addition to the indictments, Attorney General William Barr offered a $15 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Maduro, as well as $10 million rewards for Diosdado Cabello (president of Venezuela's National Constituent Assembly), Tarek El Aissami (vice president for the economy), Hugo Carvajal (former director of military intelligence) and Cliver Alcalá (retired general). The indictment has backfired already. Hours after the announcement, Alcalá posted videos online that threaten to cause further splits in the opposition and could result in the arrest of Juan Guaidó. Before going into those details, however, it's important to understand just how politically biased the charges are against Maduro et al. [Read More]

 

Afghanistan

For Afghanistan Already on Brink, U.S. Aid Cut Is a Big Shove

By Mujib Mashal, New York Times [March 24, 2020]

---- As President Trump repeatedly expressed fatigue with the long Afghan war, the concern among leaders in Kabul was not that the United States would pull American troops out of Afghanistan but that it would cut crucial funding. On Tuesday, a day after frustrated American officials announced $1 billion in immediate aid reductions and threatened to cut $1 billion more next year, President Ashraf Ghani put on a brave face. … The United States cut the aid because Afghan leaders were unable to resolve a political impasse that is threatening to derail an American plan to end the long conflict. But Afghans now fear the decision could push the country, almost entirely dependent on foreign aid, past the tipping point. They believe it could lead to the unraveling of an already challenged government and the disintegration of a weary and overstretched security force. [Read More]  For an excellent background article, read "Death by Drone: America's Vicious Legacy in Afghanistan" by Emran Feroz, Foreign Policy [March 27, 2020] [Link].

 

Syria

UN calls for total ceasefire in Syria to focus on coronavirus

From Aljazeera [March 24, 2020]

---- Special envoy to Syria also urges large-scale prisoner release as country devastated by nine-year war braces for virus. … The United Nations special envoy for Syria has called for an immediate nationwide ceasefire across the war-torn country to enable an "all-out-effort" to combat the coronavirus pandemic. [Read More]

 

OUR HISTORY

The Roots of Organizing: The Young Lords' revolution.

By Ed Morales, The Nation [March 24, 2020]

---- The legacy of the Young Lords is something that has followed me throughout my adult life as a New York–born-and-bred child of Puerto Rican immigrants. The Young Lords' unrelenting calls for Puerto Rican independence, their various interventions in local politics, their unyielding solidarity with colonized and working-class people everywhere, their stunning presence (often augmented by Che-like berets and street-style military formations) all shaped the way my generation and future ones interpreted the tumultuous late 1960s and early '70s. They were, along with figures like Fred Hampton, Frantz Fanon, and Lolita Lebrón, a guide for my political and cultural life. … In her new book, The Young Lords: A Radical History, historian Johanna Fernández offers us an exhaustive and enlightening study of their history and makes the case for their influence as profound thinkers as well as highly capable street activists. [Read More]

 

Since Emancipation, the United States Has Refused to Make Reparations for Slavery

By Kali Holloway, The Nation [March 23, 2020]

---- Whether five years after Emancipation or a century and a half later, whether the claimants were the formerly enslaved or their descendants, the United States has steadfastly refused at nearly every opportunity to provide recompense for slavery and its disastrous legacy. The country reneged on its post-Emancipation promise of 40 acres and a mule just a few months after making it. In the 1890s, the federal government brutally crushed a national campaign to give freed black people pension plans. And for nearly each of the last 30 years, Congress has rejected a bill that would merely create a commission to study the consequences of slavery and consider the impact of reparations. …. What is so often labeled America's "original sin" is, in fact, a wrong this country continues to commit. Reparations would not only represent a genuine effort to redress the United States' long history of racial discrimination, white terror and anti-black lawmaking but also a recognition of the ongoing harm this country inflicts against its African American citizens. [Read More]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on the American crisis in the Year of the Plague

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

March 24, 2020

 

Hello All – In an astounding policy reversal, at yesterday evening's news conference President Trump vowed to "very soon" end portions of "social distancing" as a means to contain Covid-19 and "make America open for business" once again.  It was only three weeks ago that the Trump Administration made the pivot from denying the dangers of the corona virus toward something approaching the recommendations of medical professionals, personal isolation and social distancing.  But at yesterday's news conference, with his top medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci noticeably absent, Trump cautioned that it would be wrong "to make the cure worse than the disease," and projected near-term scenarios by which "younger people" could go back to work, while the old remained in self-isolation.

 

Needless to say, medical professionals quickly announced that this was exactly the wrong policy and risked allowing the virus to spread out of control.  Please look at/listen to what Prof. Jeffrey Sachs has to say on this morning's Democracy Now!  [Link]. And here in NYC, Prof. Arthur Caplaln, a professor of bioethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, said ""You can't call off the best weapon we have, which is social isolation, even out of economic desperation, unless you're willing to be responsible for a mountain of deaths. Thirty days makes more sense than 15 days. Can't we try to put people's lives first for at least a month?" [Link]

 

Why is Trump doing this? According to the New York Times, "members of Mr. Trump's economic team have said repeatedly in recent months that the virus does not itself pose an extraordinary threat to Americans' lives or the economy, likening it to a common flu season." The Times also cites the "record economic expansion and booming stock market that served as the basis of his re-election campaign evaporated in a matter of weeks. The president became engaged with the discussion on Sunday evening, after watching television reports and hearing from various business officials and outside advisers who were agitating for an end to the shutdown." [Link].

 

President Trump now says that he wants the economy up and running by Easter (April 12^th).  Medical experts are nearly unanimous that this is way too early, and that the virus will have many more weeks to run its course. Will Trump's attempt to impose a pro-business agenda on top of a medically driven timetable be met with widespread resistance?  Let us hope so; we shall see.

 

Some useful reading on the crisis

An excellent overview of the insanity of Trump's "business agenda" approach to the medical crisis was broadcast this morning on Democracy Now!: "Economist Jeffrey Sachs: Trump "Understands Nothing, Listens to Nothing" as Pandemic Surges in U.S." [Link]. For another view, read "Trump Toys With a Let-Them-Die Response to the Pandemic" by Jeet Heer, The Nation [March 24, 2020] [Link].  The lack of public-health preparedness is beyond scandalous: for some examples, read "Donald Trump Says America's Ventilator Shortage Was "Unforeseen." Nothing Could Be Further From the Truth" by Nick Turse, The Intercept [March 24 2020] [Link]; (Video) "'Hope Is Not a Strategy': Emergency Doctor Asks, Where Are COVID-19 Tests? Where Is Protective Gear?" from Democracy Now! [March 23, 2020] [Link]; and "Why Widespread Coronavirus Testing Isn't Coming Anytime Soon" by Robert P. Baird, The New Yorker [March 24, 2020] [Link].  At the time of writing, Congress has not yet finished with its $1.8 trillion economic/bailout program, but useful insights into what is to come can be found in "'An Utter Disgrace': GOP Stimulus Plan Would Cut Taxes for Corporations While Denying Benefits to Poorest" by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams [March 20, 2020] [Link]  and "The Kind of Coronavirus Response Package We Need" by Robert Reich [Secretary of Labor under Clinton] [March 20, 2020] [Link].

 

News Notes

Scattered until now, virus-related information can be found (for Hastings) in the Mayor's frequent emails; for the county; and state. To get frequent updates from the state about virus news, go here. [h/t MJ Shimsky]

 

Shortly after 9/11, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act, zillions of pages of legislation rolling back civil liberties, authorizing spying on citizens, etc.  This was a good example of Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" – the practice by the state and big business of imposing its agenda at a time of crisis.  This week we learned of some attempts to use the virus crisis to roll back civil liberties.  Read "DOJ Wants to Suspend Certain Constitutional Rights During Coronavirus Emergency" by Peter Wade, Rolling Stone [March 22, 2020] [Link] and "Inside The Military's Top Secret Plans If Coronavirus Cripples the Government" by William M. Arkin,  Newsweek [March 18, 2020] [Link].

 

There is widespread concern that people in prisons and jails will be highly vulnerable to the coronavirus, with calls to release all but the most dangerous.  For the situation on Rikers Island, watch the Democracy Now! segment "'Top Priority Is Release': Will Rikers Island Free More Prisoners as 60+ Test Positive for COVID-19?" [March 24, 2020] [Link] and read this statement by 34 elected prosecutors from throughout the country [Link].

 

While the presidential primary has been eclipsed in the mainstream media by the virus crisis, Bernie Sanders has been issuing statements that embody some of his fundamental programs.  Read "An Emergency Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic," ZNet [March 24, 2020] [Link].

 

Finally, for several years CFOW stalwarts have followed our Saturday vigil/protests by adjourning to the Hastings Center Restaurant for "meaningful conversation."  Like so many stores and restaurants, the Center Restaurant is nearly shut down, with take-out orders only.  In appreciation of the many hours of hospitality that we have enjoyed there, CFOW has organized a GoFundMe project to raise a gift/contribution for the waitresses and cooks who have been laid off or work only a few hours.  If you would like to contribute to this project, go here.  (As of 5 pm, the fund had reached nearly $1,000.)

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester.  Until shut down by the virus, we have been meeting 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 the 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. In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting (by Zoom conference) each Sunday evening at 7 p.m.  If you would like to join our meeting, please send a return email to get the meeting's access code. 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

A recent segment from Democracy Now! featured 17-year-old Avi Schiffmann, who developed and runs a coronavirus tracking website used by more than 40 million people around the world.  Check out his amazing story.  And this is just the right moment to bring back Gordon Gecko, who anticipated the Trump era by 25 years. [h/t GM]

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

THIS WEEK'S FEATURED ESSAYS

 

The Coronavirus Crisis Is a Monster Fueled by Capitalism

By Mike Davis, ZNet [March 24, 2020]

---- The current pandemic expands the argument: capitalist globalization now appears biologically unsustainable in the absence of a truly international public health infrastructure. But such an infrastructure will never exist until peoples' movements break the power of Big Pharma and for-profit healthcare. This requires an independent socialist design for human survival that includes—but goes beyond—a Second New Deal. Since the days of Occupy, progressives have successfully placed the struggle against income and wealth inequality on page one—a great achievement. But now socialists must take the next step and, with the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries as immediate targets, advocate social ownership and the democratization of economic power. We must also make an honest evaluation of our political and moral weaknesses. The leftward evolution of a new generation and the return of the word 'socialism' to political discourse cheers us all, but there's a disturbing element of national solipsism in the progressive movement that is symmetrical with the new nationalism. We talk only about the American working class and America's radical history (perhaps forgetting that Eugene V. Debs was an internationalist to the core). In addressing the pandemic, socialists should find every occasion to remind others of the urgency of international solidarity. [Read More]

 

Now Is the Time to Fundamentally Transform America

By Doug Henwood, Jacobin Magazine [March 2020]

---- We are facing two crises at once, health and economic, that are related in very important ways. The COVID-19 epidemic has done major damage around the world, but it's highlighting some serious structural problems with the US social model that better-run countries are not so afflicted by. We are plagued by a deep economic polarization complicated by minimal social protections; severely diminished state capacity, with eroded institutional structures and extremely debased quality of personnel at the highest levels; years of underinvestment in basic infrastructure, both broadly and in health care particularly; and decades of neoliberal policies that have shaped a common sense based on competitive individualism, with little sense of social solidarity. That's the longer-term context in which we face the acute crisis of this disease — which is almost certainly a portent of what we'll face as the climate crisis worsens. [Read More]

 

The Coronavirus Conundrum and Human Rights

By Catherine Rottenberg and Neve Gordon, Counterpunch [March 24, 2020]

---- As governments attempt to address the pandemic, we are beginning to witness a twofold approach characterised by governmental overreach on the one hand and by insufficient governmental reach on the other. Both approaches are likely to have a dramatic effect on basic human rights for hundreds of millions of people. Indeed, it is no hyperbole to say that more people will suffer and even die as a result of the way governments choose to handle the crisis than from contracting the virus. … As the crisis brutally exposes how neoliberal policies implemented over the past 50 years have rendered vast segments of the world's population vulnerable, it can also – and should – be used to launch a global pushback campaign. [Read More]

 

The Wrong Apocalypse

By Fabian Scheidler, ZNet [March 23, 2020]
---- Industrialized countries are imposing a shock program on their citizens and their economies in order to fight the Corona pandemic. For this purpose, they resort to measures that are unprecedented in recent history: civil rights such as the freedom of assembly and the freedom of movement are suspended in many countries for an indefinite period, as is the right to political asylum. Large parts of the economy are put to a halt, including gastronomy, sports, tourism, the cultural sector and even – unthinkable until recently – the automotive and aviation industry. If one compares these measures to the reaction to another, much more severe crisis, which is the threat to life on earth that is posed by climate chaos and mass species extinction, there is a striking contrast. While in the Corona crisis many governments are now acting swiftly and drastically on behalf of a higher goal – the health of their citizens – regardless of short-term economic interests, there has been hardly any real progress in the climate debate for the past 40 years. … How can this contrast be explained? [Read More]

 

"Mutual Aid"

(Video) Solidarity Not Charity: Mutual Aid & How to Organize in the Age of Coronavirus

From Democracy Now! [March 20, 2020]

----- As lockdowns and layoffs sweep the U.S., mutual aid groups are forming to protect and provide for the vulnerable, including the elderly, incarcerated, undocumented and unhoused. We look at the incredible community networks across the country that are coming together to protect their neighbors during the coronavirus pandemic — and how you can get involved. From Washington state to the Bay Area, Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota and New York City, thousands of mutual aid efforts are aimed at building solidarity, not charity. We speak with two longtime mutual aid organizers and activists in two hot spots of the pandemic. In New York City, Mariame Kaba is a longtime organizer, abolitionist, educator and the founder of the grassroots organization Project NIA, which works to end the incarceration of children and young adults. She has raised tens of thousands of dollars and redistributed it to groups across the country in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and she just did a public conference call with Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on mutual aid. In Seattle, Washington, Dean Spade is an associate professor at Seattle University School of Law and founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. He is the creator of mutual aid resource website Big Door Brigade. [Read More]

 

Read more about solidarity and mutual aid – "From mutual aid to dual power in the state of emergency," from "Woodbine," Roar Magazine [March 22, 2020] [Link]; and "Sara Nelson Says People Are Ready for Solidarity," by Sarah Jaffe, The Nation [March 20, 2020] [Link]. A modern classic about mutual aid is A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit, who was interviewed some years ago on Democracy Now!

 

Our History

What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About

By Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, [March 2020]

---- When the plague came to London in 1665, Londoners lost their wits. They consulted astrologers, quacks, the Bible. They searched their bodies for signs, tokens of the disease: lumps, blisters, black spots. They begged for prophecies; they paid for predictions; they prayed; they yowled. They closed their eyes; they covered their ears. They wept in the street. They read alarming almanacs: "Certain it is, books frighted them terribly." The government, keen to contain the panic, attempted "to suppress the Printing of such Books as terrify'd the People," according to Daniel Defoe, in "A Journal of the Plague Year," a history that he wrote in tandem with an advice manual called "Due Preparations for the Plague," in 1722, a year when people feared that the disease might leap across the English Channel again, after having journeyed from the Middle East to Marseille and points north on a merchant ship. Defoe hoped that his books would be useful "both to us and to posterity, though we should be spared from that portion of this bitter cup." That bitter cup has come out of its cupboard. [Read More]  And for more on the literary legacy of Contagions, read "A Tale of Two Plagues: Tips on self-isolation from Daniel Defoe and Giovanni Boccaccio" by Katha Pollitt, The Nation [March 20, 2020] [Link].

 

Polio, COVID-19, and Socialism

By Louis Proyect [March 14, 2020]

---- For many doctors, the goal of developing a vaccine to prevent polio became paramount. FDR [Roosevelt] founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in 1938 and promoted the March of Dimes for polio research. … Two research doctors, New York Jews, were instrumental in developing a vaccine. Neither one of them saw this as a way of getting rich. Their goal was only to save the lives of children. Born in New York City in 1914, Jonas Salk developed a vaccine based on dead polio viruses in 1955. Backing for his project was universal, with 100 million contributors to the March of Dimes, and 7 million volunteers going around with the iconic collection bank. Salk could have made millions by patenting the vaccine but he preferred to see it made as widely available as possible. When he went on Edward R. Murrow's popular "Person to Person" show, the host asked him who owned the patent. Salk replied, "Well, the people I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" (Had it been patented, it would be worth $7 billion.) As it happens, Salk graduated from CCNY, a hotbed of radicalism in the 1930s. It should come as no surprise that J. Edgar Hoover had his number. [Read More]

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on the Coronavirus Crisis

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

March 15, 2020

 

Hello All – Within the last week the coronavirus outbreak in the United States has gone from being a potential menace to gaining a vise-like grip on our economy and society. While the US death toll stood at 68 this morning, a New York Times article using estimates from the Centers for Disease Control warned that 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die if no action were taken to slow transmission.  Moreover, the same article estimated that 2.4 million to 21 million people in the USA could require hospitalization, though fewer than 100,000 staffed hospital beds are available for people who are critically ill.  Perhaps we can see our future in the crisis now engulfing Italy, which reported new 3,590 cases and 398 deaths (the largest one-day toll so far) on Sunday.  Given limited hospital and medical resources, doctors in Italy are forced to consider who will live and who will die, as treating everyone becomes impossible.  Is this America's future too?

 

The articles and analyses linked below target several key issues facing all of us as we struggle with the virus crisis and attempt to avoid worst outcomes.  They include the effort to gain and broadcast accurate information, now limited not only by our own uncertainty, but also by the Trump administration's kneejerk lying. Another arena of struggle is the demand that protection from and treatment of the virus be provided broadly and equitably, not limited by money or race.  Thirdly, as Naomi Klein points out in an article linked below, we must be alert to the "Shock Doctrine": the efforts of government and big business to gain power in the confusion of the crisis, promising solutions that only enrich or empower themselves.  Finally, as the shock of our New World begins to lessen, let us hope that throughout Westchester many voluntary networks of mutual aid spring up to assist those who need assistance.  Solidarity may be our best defense in this crisis.

 

Some readings on the coronavirus and our system crisis

America has no real public health system – coronavirus has a clear run

By Robert Reich, The Guardian [UK] [March 15, 2020]

The dirty little secret, which will soon become apparent to all, is that there is no real public health system in the United States. …Instead of a public health system, we have a private for-profit system for individuals lucky enough to afford it and a rickety social insurance system for people fortunate enough to have a full-time job. … There is no public health system in the US, in short, because the richest nation in the world has no capacity to protect the public as a whole, apart from national defense. Ad-hoc remedies such as House Democrats and the White House fashioned on Friday are better than nothing, but they don't come close to filling this void. [Read More]

 

Who Gets Forgotten in a Pandemic?

By Mike Davis Yesterday 5:27 pm

The outbreak has instantly exposed the stark class divide in healthcare: those with good health plans who can also work or teach from home are comfortably isolated provided they follow prudent safeguards. Public employees and other groups of unionized workers with decent coverage will have to make difficult choices between income and protection. Meanwhile millions of low wage service workers, farm employees, uncovered contingent workers, the unemployed and the homeless will be thrown to the wolves. Even if Washington ultimately resolves the testing fiasco and provides adequate numbers of kits, the uninsured will still have to pay doctors or hospitals for administrating the tests. Overall family medical bills will soar at the same time that millions of workers are losing their jobs and their employer-provided insurance. Could there possibly be a stronger, more urgent case in favor of Medicare for All? [Read More]

 

A Health Emergency Demands Treatment Not Tax Breaks

By Frank Emspak, Portside [March 10, 2020]
---- The Covid-19 virus shows the complete inability of the US health system to serve the majority of its citizens. But one thing is clear- a tax break and a bail out of the cruise industry will not deal with the virus. Progressives need to need to enunciate and fight for a plan to deal with the potential pandemic. Leaving solutions up to those who have made the situation worse makes no sense. Any successful plan must be based on fulfilling several criteria designed to assure that all working people have access to needed services.   As we take these first steps, we also must provide the needed support to first responders. All medical personnel as well as fire fighters need the supplies to protect themselves while they help others. Also in this mix are airline pilots, flight attendants  and all those public servants who come in contact with the public. Their unions are already in discussions with the employers to develop effective responses to the virus. What are  the criteria for a plan that could respond to the needs of working people? [Read More]

 

And also: "Cancel Everything: Social distancing is the only way to stop the coronavirus," by Yascha Mounk, The Atlantic [March 10, 2020] [Link];  "Big Pharma Prepares to Profit From the Coronavirus" by Sharon Lerner, The Intercept [March 13 2020] [Link]; "Donald Trump Is Using the Coronavirus Crisis to Attack Social Security" by Nancy J. Altman [March 11, 2020], [Link]; "To Help Stem Coronavirus, Lift Sanctions on Iran" by Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold, Common Dreams [March 13, 2020] [Link]; "How Prisons and Jails Can Respond to the Coronavirus" by Jennifer Gonnerman, The New Yorker [March 14, 2020] [Link];

And finally, "Coronavirus and climate change: 6 ways the Trump administration has botched responses to both, by Dawn Stover, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [March 11, 2020] [Link].

 

Politics

Strong pressure is coming from the Democratic Establishment and the mainstream media for Bernie Sanders to drop out, even though half of the convention delegates remain to be chosen.  While the party leaders want to move as quickly as possible to a consensus around Biden, while keeping him out of the campaigning spotlight, earlier in the week, Sanders stated that he planned to stay in the race, keeping the issues he is raising before the public and hoping to influence the Democratic platform and campaign, even if he is not the candidate.  So far in the primary campaign we have learned that Biden's support rests primarily on the belief that he is that candidate most likely to beat Trump, while exit polls show that Sanders' issues (such as Medicare for All) are strongly supported, even in Republican/Southern states. Also, there are many reasons to think that Sanders would be the stronger candidate against Trump. Finally, for two interesting/useful surveys of Sanders and the Democrats, read "Bernie Sanders: Now More Than Ever" by Jane McAlevey, The Nation [March 11, 2020] [Link]; and "Democratic Party Failures Since the Cold War" by Michael Brenes, The Nation [March 11, 2020] [Link].

 

News Notes

After spending almost a year in jail for refusing to testify about Wikileaks in front of a grand jury,  Chelsea Manning was released from jail on March 12^th.  However, while released, the judge ordered her to pay the $1,000 per day in fines that she had accumulated because of her refusal to testify – a total of $256,000.  The very heartening news, therefore, is not only that she is free, but GoFundMe site has raised enough to cover her fines, and a second campaign, to help with her living expenses, has exceeded its goal of $30,000, with 1,000 contributors.

 

Last week the Trump administration signed a semi-peace agreement with Afghanistan's Taliban, by which the USA promised to withdraw all its troops within 14 months, 4,000 of them very soon. . In return for Taliban promises to break ties with al Qaeda and ISIS, and to begin negotiations with the U.S.-backed Afghan government.  In this useful article, Phyllis Bennis says "The U.S.-Taliban Deal Won't Bring Real Peace, But It Could Reduce the Bloodshed." [Link]. For an on-the-ground perspective from writers living in a refugee camp, read "Afghans Imagine a Future of Lasting Peace" [Link]

 

One of the most complex wars in modern history – the multi-faceted conflict in Syria – may be nearing its end – or not. Turkey, the latest entry into the wars, is on the edge of a military engagement with Russia over control of the northwest corner of Syria.  Turkey has already attempted to engage NATO in the fighting, but as of this writing this is not working.  For a useful and reader-friendly overview of what's going down in Syria, read "Erdogan's Failed Gamble in Syria" by Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus [March 9, 2020]. [Link].

 

Finally, The Sunrise Movement, the young peoples' climate action group, is holding a virtual town hall with congressional candidate Jamaal Bowman on Monday, March 16^th, at 8:00 PM via Zoom or by dialing +19292056099,,490615233#. Submit your questions for Bowman 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. Also, we (usually) have a general meeting on the first Saturday afternoon of each month. 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

 

THIS WEEK'S FEATURED ESSAYS

 

Naomi Klein: Coronavirus Is the Perfect Disaster for 'Disaster Capitalism'

Interviewed by Marie Solis, Vice [March 13, 2020]

---- Let's start with the basics. What is disaster capitalism? What is its relationship to the "shock doctrine"?

NK: The way I define disaster capitalism is really straightforward: It describes the way private industries spring up to directly profit from large-scale crises. Disaster profiteering and war profiteering isn't a new concept, but it really deepened under the Bush administration after 9/11, when the administration declared this sort of never-ending security crisis, and simultaneously privatized it and outsourced it—this included the domestic, privatized security state, as well as the [privatized] invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The "shock doctrine" is the political strategy of using large-scale crises to push through policies that systematically deepen inequality, enrich elites, and undercut everyone else. In moments of crisis, people tend to focus on the daily emergencies of surviving that crisis, whatever it is, and tend to put too much trust in those in power. We take our eyes off the ball a little bit in moments of crisis.

Right now we have multiple crises happening: a pandemic, a lack of infrastructure to manage it, and the crashing stock market. Can you outline how each of these components fit into the schema you outline in The Shock Doctrine ?

NK: The shock really is the virus itself. And it has been managed in a way that is maximizing confusion and minimizing protection. I don't think that's a conspiracy, that's just the way the U.S. government and Trump have utterly mismanaged this crisis. Trump has so far treated this not as a public health crisis but as a crisis of perception, and a potential problem for his reelection.

It's the worst-case scenario, especially combined with the fact that the U.S. doesn't have a national health care program and its protections for workers are abysmal. This combination of forces has delivered a maximum shock. It's going to be exploited to bail out industries that are at the heart of most extreme crises that we face, like the climate crisis: the airline industry, the gas and oil industry, the cruise industry—they want to prop all of this up. [Read More] For another perspective on the relation between the coronavirus and the economic crisis, read "Trump Wouldn't Save You From This Pandemic Even if He Could" by Nomi Prins, The Nation [March 13, 2020] [Link]

 

Arundhati Roy: How to Think About Empire

An interview with Avni Seipal, Boston Review [January 3, 2019]

Avni Sejpal: In your book, An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2004), you identify a few different pillars of empire: globalization and neoliberalism, militarism, and the corporate media. You write, "The project of corporate globalization has cracked the code of democracy. Free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities on sale to the highest bidder." How would you update this today?

Arundhati Roy: That was fourteen years ago! The updates now would include the ways in which big capital uses racism, caste-ism (the Hindu version of racism, more elaborate, and sanctioned by the holy books), and sexism and gender bigotry (sanctioned in almost every holy book) in intricate and extremely imaginative ways to reinforce itself, protect itself, to undermine democracy, and to splinter resistance. It doesn't help that there has been a failure on the part of the left in general to properly address these issues. In India, caste—that most brutal system of social hierarchy—and capitalism have fused into a dangerous new alloy. It is the engine that runs modern India. Understanding one element of the alloy and not the other doesn't help. Caste is not color-coded. If it were, if it were visible to the untrained eye, India would look very much like a country that practices apartheid. Another "update" that we ought to think about is that new technology could ensure that the world no longer needs a vast working class. What will then emerge is a restive population of people who play no part in economic activity—a surplus population if you like, one that will need to be managed and controlled. Our digital coordinates will ensure that controlling us is easy. Our movements, friendships, relationships, bank accounts, access to money, food, education, healthcare, information (fake, as well as real), even our desires and feelings—all of it is increasingly surveilled and policed by forces we are hardly aware of. How long will it be before the elite of the world feel that almost all the world's problems could be solved if only they could get rid of that surplus population? If only they could delicately annihilate specific populations in specific ways—using humane and democratic methods, of course. Preferably in the name of justice and liberty. Nothing on an industrial scale, like gas chambers or Fat Men and Little Boys. What else are smart nukes and germ warfare for? [Read More]

 

Would the Draft Help End America's Endless Wars?

By Nan Levinson, The Nation [March 11, 2020]

---- As much as Americans love their military—it's consistently the part of the government in which they have the most confidence, according to multiple polls—the majority of them don't want to join it or be made to join it. Active-duty personnel currently account for a mere 0.4% of the population and only about 7% of us have ever been in uniform (more than half of those are over 60 years old). If we consider a tour in the armed forces a burden—as we must, despite all that thankful hand-shaking of people in uniform and their celebration everywhere—shouldn't we also consider the effects on the country of relying on an all-volunteer force (AVF) to carry that burden? One of those effects is surely that so many of the rest of us are allowed to ignore the endless wars and other conflicts "our" military has sparked and is still involved in around the world in our name. And what to make of the often-repeated claim that if only we did have a draft, this country might be far less eager to march into war? Is that, in fact, true? [Read More]

 

Chile: Notes from a Revolt

By Ariel Dorfman, New York Review of Books [March 13, 2020]

[FB – Ariel Dorman, a Chilean novelist and playwright, was an associate of President Salvador Allende when Allende was killed (or committed suicide) in the US-backed military coup of September 11, 1973.  Dorfman writes here about his memories of the coup as they mix with the youth-led uprising in today's Chile.]

---- At the very moment when, on October 6, 2019, high school students were igniting the first sparks of the rebellion by joyously jumping the turnstiles of a number of subway stations to protest a fare hike, Chile's right-wing president, Sebastián Piñera, was boasting on a television program that the country was "an oasis" in a turbulent and convulsed Latin America. The clueless leader, like most of Chile's elite, did not realize what was already erupting from the depths of a country he did not understand. Instead of acknowledging the anger behind this peaceful and playful defiance of norms—the students chanted that they had the right to "evade" the tariff just as the corrupt owners of Chile's economy were incessantly "evading" any form of reckoning—Piñera's government responded with a ferocious repression, further alienating large swaths of the citizenry. … The combination of such belligerent rhetoric, which recalled the justifications used by Pinochet to persecute dissidents, with actual tanks on the streets once again, further outraged the people of Chile, many of whom had struggled so hard, and at such a steep cost in suffering, to get the military out of their lives. On October 25, millions of men, women, and children serenely flooded cities and towns all over the country, spontaneously repudiating the repression and calling for its perpetrators to be punished. Such a nationwide assembly, the largest in our history, was unique in several ways. In contrast to every other march in living memory, this one was not organized by political parties, all of which, right, center and left, had fallen into utter disrepute with an increasingly disaffected and skeptical electorate and an underclass of primarily young people who were constantly promised paradise tomorrow while they lived a version of hell today. [Read More]