Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
December 20, 2020
Hello All – Yesterday's (small and cold) CFOW rally/vigil in Hastings focused on the wave of federal executions President Trump and Attorney General Barr have launched in the last weeks of the Trump presidency. Several prisoners have already been killed, and four more are set to die before January 20th. These executions are simply sadistic; killing for the sake of killing.
While capital punishment is no longer legal in most "advanced" countries, and is opposed by a growing proportion of the US population, it retains substantial support in the USA and presumably among Trump supporters, for whom these executions are a perverse, departing gift.
In addition to the ancient ethical arguments against capital punishment ("Thou Shalt Not Kill"), there is now a near-universal awareness that the choice of who will live and who will die has little to do with justice or deterrence of similar crimes, but has everything to do with the skin color of the alleged perpetrator and the victim. Moreover, in recent years we have learned how witness errors and prosecutorial misconduct have sentenced many innocent people to death. And the circumstances surrounding so many heinous crimes cry out for the intervention of mental health experts and emotional reconstruction, rather than killing someone.
Take Lisa Montgomery, a white woman scheduled to die next month for committing a terrible murder. From a story published in Friday's New York Times, ("Punch After Punch, Rape After Rape, a Murderer Was Made"), we learn that Lisa had suffered a lifetime of horrible abuse and was, to put it unscientifically, completely crazy. So what social benefit will we derive from executing the first woman in the federal justice system in more than a century?
People on death row arrive there by different routes. Alfred Bourgeois, a black man, was executed last Friday (read "The Man I Saw Them Kill" by New York Times writer Elizabeth Bruenig). His life was a mess and he killed his infant daughter. Executing him will bring his daughter back, or deter others from killing? Brandon Bernard was executed last Thursday, December 10th, Human Rights Day. Five of the nine jurors who voted to convict him 20 years earlier had now changed their minds, based on reflection and new evidence. From this Democracy Now! story, it is clear that Brandon was now not the person he was 20 years ago; his execution wiped out a caring and thinking person, not an "accessory to murder."
President-elect Biden says he is opposed to the death penalty. This is good, and we can hope that there will be no more federal executions under his watch. And New York and 21 other states have abolished the death penalty by legislation. But that means that in 28 other states executions are legal. Though many of these states now have an execution moratorium in place, we need federal legislation to end capital punishment forever.
How to Help in Georgia
Both Democrats and Republicans are raising zillions of dollars and phoning Georgia residents on the hour to win the two run-off races for Senate, which will be held on January 5th. The ability of the national Democrats to enact their legislative program depends on winning both elections, and it is for this reason that the Republicans want to stop them. To help out, you can send money directly to the candidates, Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. The organization Reclaim Our Vote uses phone-banking and postcards to contact low-income voters of color who may have been removed from the voting rolls. After she was cheated out of the Georgia governorship a few years ago, Stacey Abrams formed "Fair Fight," now a leading force in taking the Senate for the Georgia Democrats. And at CFOW, some of us are donating to the Southwest Georgia Project, a 60-year-old community-based project with roots in the Civil Rights era. In a conference call with black community organizers last week, the project's director, Shirley Sherrod, stressed the importance of voter mobilization in poor, rural parts of southwest Georgia, generally neglected by Atlanta-based organizations and the Democratic Party leadership, but now a target of GOP big money. This week two interesting publications highlighted the voter-turnout effort in Georgia: from The Intercept (Video) "Led by Black Women, Organizers in Georgia Work to Replicate Election Success in Senate Runoff" [Link]; and from Benjamin Barber and Facing South, "Deep canvassing effort in Georgia aims to flip the U.S. Senate" [December 17, 2020] [Link].
News Notes
This week President-elect Biden declared Congresswoman Deb Haaland as his choice to head the Department of Interior. Haaland, the first Native American to be named to the Cabinet, told an interviewer: "Growing up in my mother's Pueblo household made me fierce. I'll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land. I am honored and ready to serve." Read more here.
On the 5th anniversary of the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement, young climate activist and inspiration Greta Thunberg succinctly named our crisis: (Video) "The World Is "Speeding in the Wrong Direction" on Climate," Democacy Now! [December 14, 2020][Link].
Last Tuesday, December 15, the Center for Community Alternatives and its many allies launched the "Justice Roadmap 2021." The Roadmap is a comprehensive legislative program that would reform New York laws to decarcerate jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers. The Launch event included small rallies in NYC, Long Island, Buffalo, Westchester, and Troy. CFOW is a supporting organization of the Justice Roadmap. Read about its program here.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Taking the Covid Crisis into account, we meet (with safe distancing) for a protest/rally on Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) [But no vigil on December 26th.] Another vigil takes place on the first Monday of the month (January 4th, etc.), from 5 to 5:30 pm, in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting by Zoom conference; if you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, Tuesday and Thursday at noon and/or Saturday at 4 pm, please send a return email. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. 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!
No newsletter next week! Time for a vacation.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Trench Warfare: Notes on the 2020 Election
By Mike Davis, New Left Review [November-December 2020]
---- We assume that times of great social upheaval and human peril produce equally dramatic political reactions: uprisings, counter-revolutions, new deals and civil wars. The one and only thing that most Americans agree about is that we are living in such a time, the greatest national crisis since 1932 or even 1860. Against a background of plague, impeachment, racist violence and unemployment, one party espouses a vision of autocratized government and a return to the happy days of a white Republic. The other offers a sentimental journey back to the multicultural centrism of the Obama years. (Biden's promise of a 'new new deal' was for gullible progressives' ears only.) Both parties are backward looking, solipsistic and unanchored in economic reality, but the first echoes the darkest side of modern history. The vote, held on a day when more than 100,000 Americans tested positive for covid-19, was supposed to deliver a definitive verdict on Donald Trump. Indeed the President's increasingly frenetic attempts to delegitimize the election seemed to signal his apprehension of a Democratic landslide. In the event a projected 160 million ballots were mailed in or cast in person, representing the highest turnout rate in 120 years. A stunning judgement was expected. Instead the election results are a virtual photocopy of 2016: all the disasters of the last four years appear to have barely moved the needle. [Read More] For some additional insights, read "America, We Have a Problem: The rise of "political sectarianism" is putting us all in danger" by Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times [December 16, 2020] [Link].
The Border Patrol Is Cracking Down on Humanitarian Aid
By Jessica Suriano, The Nation [December 15, 2020]
---- In early October, for the second time in less than three months, Border Patrol agents raided a No More Deaths humanitarian aid camp about 11 miles north of the Arizona-Mexico border. After being detained with her fellow volunteers, Paige Corich-Kleim watched as agents descended into the camp with military-style vehicles and weapons to terrorize and eventually detain 12 migrants seeking food, water, and medical aid at the camp. Despite past victories in court establishing that humanitarian aid is not a crime and that No More Deaths should be able to operate freely without Customs and Border Protection (CBP) intimidation, its camps and the people seeking lifesaving assistance there continue to be threatened. …We talked to Corich-Kleim, a volunteer with No More Deaths for the past seven years who was present at the raid in October, about why the Border Patrol's retaliation tactics are escalating along the Southwest border, how publishing CBP's abuses is a tenet of the aid group's activism, and what reports and documents are in the pipeline to be published next. This conversation has been edited for clarity. [Read More]
America's War on Syrian Civilians
By Anand Gopal, The New Yorker [December 14, 2020]
[FB – From one of our outstanding war correspondents, this article describes the "new" American way of war – death from the sky, from bombing and drones – and asks, What does this do to our ancient concepts of the Laws of War and Just War?]
---- For four months in 2017, an American-led coalition in Syria dropped some ten thousand bombs on Raqqa, the densely populated capital of the Islamic State. Nearly eighty per cent of the city, which has a population of three hundred thousand, was destroyed. I visited shortly after ISIS relinquished control, and found the scale of the devastation difficult to comprehend: the skeletal silhouettes of collapsed apartment buildings, the charred schools, the gaping craters. Clotheslines were webbed between stray standing pillars, evidence that survivors were somehow living among the ruins. Nobody knows how many thousands of residents died, or how many are now homeless or confined to a wheelchair. What is certain is that the decimation of Raqqa is unlike anything seen in an American conflict since the Second World War. As then, this battle was waged against an enemy bent on overthrowing an entire order, in an apparently nihilistic putsch against reason itself. But Raqqa was no Normandy. Although many Syrians fought valiantly against ISIS and lost their lives, the U.S., apart from a few hundred Special Forces on the ground, relied on overwhelming airpower, prosecuting the entire war from a safe distance. Not a single American died. [Read More]
THE COVID CRISIS
(Video) As Wealthy Countries Hoard Vaccine Supply, Pandemic Could Rage in Poor Countries Until 2024
From Democracy Now! [December 17, 2020]
---- Health experts are raising concerns that wealthy countries have reserved enough coronavirus vaccine doses to immunize their populations multiple times over, while poorer countries may only have enough to vaccinate about 20%. Reuters reports the World Health Organization's global plan for delivering COVID-19 vaccines to 91 poor and middle-income countries faces a "very high" risk of failure and could leave billions of people with no access to vaccines until 2024. "What we see is that something like 90% of all the vaccine doses that have been purchased have actually been done directly by countries, mostly middle-income and high-income countries," says Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, founding director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, who has been tracking COVID-19 vaccine purchases around the world. "What we are seeing is a lot of side deals, in essence, where people are trying to also ensure that they are hedging their bets to make this work." [See the Program] For more on this important topic, read "Pfizer Helped Create the Global Patent Rules. Now it's Using Them to Undercut Access to the Covid Vaccine" by Sarah Lazare, In These Times [December 17, 2020]
Hospital CEOs Have Gotten Rich Cutting Staff and Supplies. Now They're Not Ready for the Next Wave.
By Matthew Cunningham-Cook, The Intercept [December 20 2020]
---- In 2006, Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx had healthier patients, just enough nursing staff to take care of them, and a CEO who was earning $2 million a year, a senior nurse and union leader told The Intercept. Fifteen years later, its patients are sicker than ever before, its staffing levels are inadequate, and, as of 2018, its new CEO is earning $13 million per year. The nonprofit hospital, like hundreds of others across the nation, has been cutting costs, progressively going leaner on staffing and supplies over the years. This accelerated approach has meant that the pandemic has hit the hospital, especially health care workers, doubly hard. The nurse, Karine Raymond, has provided care at the facility for 27 years. In the second wave of Covid-19, as in the first, she and her colleagues are taking care of double the patients that they typically do. … "[Our CEO] makes $13 million. How many nurses would his salary pay for? I do have a problem with seeing the suffering of the community I'm supposed to serve while others are collecting funds that have been provided by state and federal governments just because they can." [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
(Video) CIA-Backed Afghan Death Squads Massacred Children Inside Religious Schools in Campaign of Terror
From Democracy Now! [December 18, 2020]
[FB – This is an important story because Biden's apparent plan for Afghanistan is not to reverse (or complete) Trump's troop drawdown, but to retain a force for "training" and "counter-terrorism." This is exactly the mission that is exposed as murderous and corrupt in this article from The Intercept.]
---- A shocking exposé in The Intercept reveals CIA-backed death squads in Afghanistan have killed children as young as 8 years old in a series of night raids, many targeting madrassas, Islamic religious schools. In December 2018, one of the death squads attacked a madrassa in Wardak province, killing 12 boys, of whom the youngest was 9 years old. The United States played key roles in many of the raids, from picking targets to ferrying Afghan forces to the sites to providing lethal airpower during the raids. The Intercept reports this was part of a campaign of terror orchestrated by the Trump administration that included massacres, executions, mutilation, forced disappearances, attacks on medical facilities, and airstrikes targeting structures known to house civilians. "These militias … were established in the very early days of the Afghan War by CIA officers, many of whom had been brought back into the fold after the invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 who had previously been working in Afghanistan during the 1980s," says reporter Andrew Quilty. "This network of militias was set up and appear to be entirely under the control of the CIA but made up entirely of Afghan soldiers." [See the Program] To read the outstanding Intercept story, "The CIA's Afghan Death Squads" by Andrew Quilty, go here.
The High Price of the New High Ground [Space Wars]
By Conn Hallinan, Counterpunch [December 18, 2020]
---- When President-elect Joe Biden takes office Jan 21 he will be faced with some very expensive problems, from bailing out the Covid-19 economy to getting a handle on climate change. Vaccinating over 300 million people will not be cheap, and wrestling the US hydrocarbon-based economy in the direction of renewable energies will come with a hefty price tag. One place to find some of that would be to respond to Russian, Chinese and United Nations (UN) proposals to demilitarize space, heading off what will be an expensive–and destabilizing–arms race for the new high ground. … At this point the outlay for the Force will be $200 billion over five years, but military budgets have a way of increasing geometrically. The initial outlay for the Reagan administration's missile-intercepting Star War system was small, but it has eaten up over $200 billion to date and is still chugging along, in spite of the fact that it is characterized more for failure than success. The Biden administration will have to make hard choices around the pandemic and climate change while continuing to spend close to $1 trillion a year on its military. Adding yet another military service when American states are reeling from the economic fallout of Covid-19, and the warming oceans are churning out superstorms, is something neither the US nor the world can afford. [Read More]
Also interesting/important – IMO, priority #1 for the in-coming Biden administration is to renew the nuclear weapons/arms control treaty with Russia called "New START." The treaty is set to expire before the end of January. For background and the significance of this treaty, read "New START: A timeline of inaction and disingenuous proposals" by Shannon Bugos, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [December 14, 2020]. Also insightful is "Donald Trump's Final Act: Snuffing Out the Promise of Democracy in the Middle East" by Vijay Prashad, Counterpunch [December 18, 2020] [Link]. Foreshadowing the (likely) continuing logjam in US diplomacy towards North Korea and its nuclear weapons is a (Video) of a good discussion among former negotiators, initiated by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "The Korean Peninsula, the Incoming Biden Administration, and Advice from Four Former Chief Negotiators" [Link].
THE STATE OF THE UNION
(Video) Evictions Are Violence: Millions Could Lose Homes Amid COVID Pandemic If Federal Moratorium Expires
From Democracy Now! [December 18, 2020]
---- Millions across the U.S. could be forced from their homes in the middle of the pandemic if Congress does not extend the federal eviction moratorium that is due to expire at the end of December. Congress is expected to push the moratorium back by one month, to January 31, in the $900 billion stimulus bill being debated in Washington, but such an extension would only be a temporary fix to a much wider problem. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that one-third of U.S. households are behind on rent or mortgage payments and will likely face eviction or foreclosure in the next two months. We speak with UCLA researcher Kathryn Leifheit, who says the lifting of state eviction moratoriums this summer led to 430,000 new COVID infections and 10,000 deaths. "We think these deaths are preventable, and they could have been prevented had those moratoriums been kept in place," says Leifheit. We also speak with tenant rights activist Tara Raghuveer, who says the federal evictions moratorium "wasn't good enough to begin with," but allowing it to expire would leave "millions of families vulnerable to eviction within the first 20 days of the next year." [See the Program]
(Podcast) AOC on Ending the Pelosi Era, Biden's Corporate Cabinet, and the Battle for Medicare for All
Podcast w/Jeremy Scahill and AOC, The Intercept [December 16 2020]
---- President-elect Joe Biden's Cabinet is being constructed in significant part from corporate Democrats and Obama-era national security hawks with a small side order of more progressive figures. This week on Intercepted: As Nancy Pelosi runs unopposed in her party for another term as speaker of the House, Congress has failed for many months to deliver meaningful aid to millions of Americans suffering through the Covid-19 pandemic. But lawmakers moved swiftly to approve the National Defense Authorization Act, an overwhelmingly bipartisan military and war spending bill. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was one of just 37 Democrats to vote against the NDAA, and she is increasingly vocal in her criticism of her party's leadership. In a wide-ranging interview with Intercepted, Ocasio-Cortez discusses the fight for Medicare for All, the battle for the future of the Democratic Party, red-baiting and the 2020 election, Biden's emerging Cabinet, disaster profiteering in Puerto Rico, the weaponizing of the Espionage Act, and more. [Listen to the Program]
We Are Not Done With Abolition [Prison Labor]
By Eric Foner, New York Times [December 15, 2020]
---- Early this month, a group of Democratic members of Congress introduced an Abolition Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Why, in the year 2020, does the Constitution need an amendment dealing with the abolition of slavery? Wasn't that accomplished over a century and a half ago? The problem is that the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, which prohibits slavery throughout the country, allows for "involuntary servitude" as a "punishment for crime." This loophole made possible the establishment of a giant, extremely profitable, system of convict labor, mainly affecting African-Americans, in the Jim Crow South. That system no longer exists but its legacy remains in the widespread forced labor of prisoners, who are paid far below the minimum wage. The Abolition Amendment would eliminate the Thirteenth Amendment's "criminal exemption" by adding these words to the Constitution: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude may be imposed as a punishment for a crime." [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
(Podcast) How Palestine advocates are gearing up for the post-Trump era [In the USA]
By Natasha Roth-Rowland, +972 Magazine [Israel] [December 18, 2020]
---- There was palpable relief, and even joy, throughout the progressive movement when the U.S. presidential race was finally called for Joe Biden at the beginning of November. Four years of an administration that relentlessly attacked every minority group imaginable would finally be coming to an end, and with it, perhaps, a move away from constant firefighting. Yet Biden's election was by no means welcomed by progressives as an unmitigated win. Beyond the unimaginable wreckage left behind by the Trump administration — damage that will likely outlast Biden's presidency — those in the movement are also clear-eyed about the limitations of a centrist Democratic government. Nowhere does that assessment ring as true as in the Palestine movement, where, as Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project, tells the +972 Podcast, activists have to reckon with an administration that is "no friend of Palestine." [Listen to the Program]
OUR HISTORY
The Iraq War Logs, The War on Whistleblowers, and Lessons Learned From a Decade of WikiLeaks Revelations
By Collective 20, ZNet [December 19, 2020]
---- It's now been 10 years since WikiLeaks published the Iraq War Logs. The release of the colossal compendium of nearly 400,000 U.S. Army field reports revealing what founder Julian Assange called "intimate details" of the war undoubtedly opened the world's eyes to the literal ground truth of a war based on lies. Yes, we saw. We saw horrors that stunned the world, including war crimes and other serious human rights abuses perpetrated by American and coalition troops, private contractors, and Iraqi government and paramilitary forces. But with U.S. bombs and bullets still killing men, women, and children in some half-dozen countries today, the question is begged: What, if anything, did we learn from the Iraq War Logs and how do antiwar activists convince the American people—who have the power via the ballot box to punish the warmongers and uplift peace candidates—to eschew the former in favor of the latter? [Read More]
