Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
September 27, 2020
Hello All – Military commanders describe war as taking place in "theaters." There is the Middle East theater, the Pacific theater, and so on. The civil war ravaging the USA over the past few decades has taken place in the theaters of Men v. Women, White v. Black, Bosses v. Workers, Fossil Fools v. The Climate, Rich v. Poor, My Country v. Everyone Else, and so on. One thing these theaters have in common is that all roads soon lead to the Supreme Court. Thus the appointment of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court will impact almost all areas of my/your life for years to come. And if Trump is re-elected and gets to appoint yet another Justice, giving the Court a 7-2 reactionary majority, our children will reap the whirlwind.
Dozens of good articles have been published in the last days, and many more will appear in the days to come, explaining how Judge Barrett and a 6-3 Supreme Court will do great damage. For example:
Is Amy Coney Barrett Joining a Supreme Court Built for the Wealthy?
By
---- With a 6-3 conservative court, the country is at risk of having the few remaining tools that permit some limits on the power of business — like labor unions and environmental legislation — weakened still further. The court's future decisions could give corporations even more weight and workers less, by blocking potential legislation that might mitigate the impact of unfettered capitalism and staggering inequality. [Read More]
Amy Coney Barrett Is an Extremist—Just Not the Kind You Think
By Elie Mystal, The Nation [September 25, 2020]
---- The problem with Trump's Supreme Court nominee has nothing to do with her strongly held religious beliefs and everything to do with her right-wing Republican ones. [Read More]
(Video) Planned Parenthood CEO: Trump's SCOTUS Pick Could Overturn Roe v. Wade & Kill Obamacare
From Democracy Now! [September 28, 2020] [See the Program]
Can the appointment of Judge Barrett be stopped? It seems unlikely, given Republican control of the Senate. But Black Swans abound in this election season (witness The Times' report today on Trump's taxes), and so nothing is certain. – Circulating now is a "Memo" that lays out obstruction tactics to delay and perhaps derail Barrett's nomination. It is not a sure-fire formula, but suggests that there is a lot of hell that can be raised, and we should demand that Sen. Schumer and the Democrats fight hard. To read about The Memo, check out "Trump Taps Amy Coney Barrett — Memo Lays Out Tactics for Opposition" by Ryan Grim, The Intercept [[Link].
NEWS NOTES
Today the New York Times published a lengthy article, "Long-Concealed Records Show Trump's Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance." As many now know, Trump made hundreds of millions of dollars, lost even more, and paid virtually no taxes over the last 15 years. The Times promises detailed revelations in the coming days. What impact this will have on the election remains to be seen, but what is published so far suggests that Trump could face jail and/or heavy fines in the years ahead – if he is no longer President of the USA. The Nation magazine's Justice reporter Elie Mystal gave us a good overview on this morning's Democracy Now!
This week a Louisville, KY grand jury returned a verdict on the killing of Breonna Taylor. In essence, no one was responsible for her death, though one officer (already fired) was indicted for shooting into a neighboring home! Protests against this verdict immediately erupted in Louisville and around the country, and Sidiqa Reynolds, the head of Louisville's Urban League, gave a powerful presentation on Democracy Now! This morning's edition of Democracy Now! featured a writer for Vice News who just broke the story that there was, contrary to police reports, body camera footage that raises questions about the basic police story. ("A Police Cover-Up? New Bodycam Video from Night of Breonna Taylor's Killing Undermines State Account.") Finally, trying to keep some focus on the person whose life was snuffed out, reposted here is "The Life Breonna Taylor Lived, in the Words of Her Mother," based on interviews with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Vanity Fair [August 24, 2020] [Link].
Lydia Sargent died this week. With her partner Michael Albert, Lydia initiated and guided ZMagazine, ZNet, and the Z Media Institute over several decades. In a tender memorial essay, Mike writes about Lydia's long imprisonment in dementia, and about the many things she accomplished in her life before that. She was an educator par excellence, helping thousands to learn the nuts and bolts of living a meaningful, radical life. Lydia Sargent, Live Like Her!
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 each Saturday in Hastings, from 11 to 11:30 a.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Another vigil takes place on Mondays, from 6 to 6:30 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 2 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. 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's Rewards test the hypothesis that the best political offensive is parody. As Truth seems to have little impact on our political system, let's consider some alternatives. First up is one of CFOW's favorite funnymen, Roy Zimmerman, with "The Liar Tweets Tonight." We follow up with Randy Rainbow and "I Won't Vote Trump." Finally, a faux Frank Sinatra returns to Stephen Colbert's "Late Show" to say good-bye to the Orange One. And for those who aren't sure where this is leading, Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby break it down. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
ELECTION 2020
[FB – The likely confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court doubles down on the dangers posed by the possibility that President Trump will not recognize an election outcome that appears to end his presidency. Trending this week in the media are explanations of our archaic method of translating the popular vote into a choice for president. Also trending are proposals for Resistance if Trump mounts a protracted legal defense or simply refuses to pack his bags. And, of course, there is the vote…. Below are some useful essays addressing these and other problems.]
The Election
Our Most Vulnerable Election
By Pamela Karlan, New York Review of Books [October 8, 2020 Issue]
[FB – This is a review of Will He Go?: Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020, by Lawrence Douglas]
---- The central argument of Will He Go? is that Trump's pathologies intersect with some distinctive features of the US electoral system in a particularly dangerous way. So before we can think about the scenarios Douglas sketches to suggest just how he might not go, we need to understand the architecture of our presidential election system. … Will He Go? is focused "less [on] the possibility that Trump will steal victory than that he will reject defeat," perhaps because Douglas is particularly interested in describing the design defects in the architecture of the Twelfth Amendment and the Electoral Count Act. So the second half of Douglas's book offers three scenarios designed to show the kinds of electoral meltdowns that may occur this fall. Each of his scenarios begins on or after Election Day and involves electoral uncertainty. But we should not ignore the possibility that Douglas skips past: that Trump will create a crisis of democratic legitimacy by manipulating the election system to prevent his defeat. [Read More]
(Video) "The Election That Could Break America": Inside How Trump & GOP Could Steal the Vote
From Democracy Now! [September 25, 2020]
---- As President Trump refuses to commit to accepting the results of the upcoming election, we speak to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Barton Gellman, whose latest piece in The Atlantic looks at how Trump could subvert the election results and stay in power even if he loses to Joe Biden. "Trump's strategy is never to concede. He may win, he may lose, but under no circumstances will he concede this election," says Gellman. "That's a big problem, because we don't actually have a mechanism for forcing a candidate to concede, and concession is the way we have ended elections." [See the Program] For Gellman's article in The Atlantic [highly recommended], "The Election That Could Break America," go here.
Also of interest – "Why is the nationalist right hallucinating a 'communist enemy'?" b, The Guardian [UK] [September 26, 2020] [Link]; "With Chamber of Commerce Defections, a GOP Mainstay Finds Allies Among Democrats" by Ryan Grim, The Intercept [[Link]; and "What's the Plan if Trump Tweets That He's Won Re-election?" Editorial, New York Times [September 27, 2020] [Link].
Resisting a Coup
(Video) Bernie Sanders on How to Block Trump from Stealing Election & Preserve American Democracy
From Democracy Now! [September 25, 2020]
----- In an address to the country, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has issued a stark warning about the threat posed by President Trump's refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the November election. Trump, who has made spurious claims of voter fraud and election-rigging against Democrats for months, recently ramped up his efforts to discredit the election results by suggesting he will refuse to concede if he loses. "This is an election between Donald Trump and democracy. And democracy must win," Sanders said. We air excerpts from his speech. [See the Program] For some analysis, read "Bernie Sanders Has Given Us a Tool Kit for Defending Against Trump's Threat to Democracy" by John Nichols, The Nation [September 25, 2020] [Link].
(Video) What to do if there is a coup. A useful and user-friendly 90-minute lecture/seminar by long-time peace activist George Lakey. Recommended! [See the Video].
10 Things You Need to Know to Stop a Coup
From Choose Democracy [September 2020]. This site also advertises upcoming Zoom seminars with George Lakey on October 1st and 6th. Many other resources linked. [Link].
(Video) The Paradox of Civil Resistance in the 21st Century
By Erica Chenoweth, Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at Harvard [January 29, 2020]
---- Erica Chenoweth shares data and research on the effectiveness of non-violent movements to effect significant changes at the national level. Diligent collection and analysis of data spanning the period 1900-2006 changed her own views and examines factors for success along with pros and cons of the digital age as a component of non-violent movements. [See the Video]
And looking ahead
The GOP Reshaped America to Hold Onto Power, Can the Dems Do the Same Thing to Save It? [Court Packing]
---- Both demographics and popular political opinion are moving against the Republican Party, and Republican politicians know it. Democrats should use this moment—if we can succeed in fighting back the GOP fascist tide—to use historical precedent to reconfigure our government so it represents the will of a majority of Americans. No more Mx. Nice Guy. [Read More]
It's Not Just the Supreme Court That's at Stake
By Robert L. Borosage, The Nation [September 25, 2020]
---- There can be no illusions. This is who they are. A minority party, grounded in small, predominately white states and the South, championing a failed ideology, and committed to doing what it takes to retain power, or at least to thwart the will of the majority. … The question is much broader than that. Democrats—and particularly Joe Biden—must discard any illusions that once Trump is ousted, Republicans will have, in Biden's words, an "epiphany" and cooperate in bipartisan efforts to address the crises we face. [Read More]
FEATURED ESSAYS
Stephen F. Cohen, 1938–2020 - Мой Cтив (My Steve): A personal recollection
By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor, The Nation [September 21, 2020]
[FB – It was a coincidence that when Stephen Cohen died I was reading his magnum opus about the Russian revolutionary leader Nikolai Bukharin. In this book and many to follow, Cohen illuminated the paths open to revolutionary Russia that Stalinism (and its aftermath) foreclosed. In the 1980s, in Gorbachev, Cohen saw an alternative path re-emerging; but it too was cut short. In his last years Cohen was one of the few/only Russian scholars who tried to open America's eyes to the dangers of Russia-phobia and the essentially defensive nature of Russian foreign policy, essays recently collected in his War with Russia? This memorial essay, by Cohen's wife and editor of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel, reveals what a scholar can do on behalf of peace and justice.]
---- While Steve liked to say it's healthy to rethink, to have more questions than answers, there was a wise consistency to his political analysis. For example, as is clear from his many articles in The Nation in these last decades, he unwaveringly opposed American Cold War thinking both during the Cold War and since the end of the Soviet Union. He was consistent in his refusal to sermonize, lecture, or moralize about what Russia should do. He preferred to listen rather than preach, to analyze rather than demonize. This stance was no recipe for popularity, which Steve professed to care little about. He was courageous and fearless in continuing to question the increasingly rigid orthodoxies about the Soviet Union and Russia. But in the last months, such criticism did take its toll on him. Along with others who sought to avert a new and more dangerous Cold War, Steve despaired that the public debate so desperately needed had become increasingly impossible in mainstream politics or media. [Read More] Also of interest: "He Taught Gorbachev" by Nadezhda Azhgikhina, The Nation [September 25, 2020] [Link].
Trump's Nuclear Threats reveal the long arm of the Enola Gay and Hiroshima
---- Whether you're reading this with your morning coffee, just after lunch, or on the late shift in the wee small hours of the morning, it's 100 seconds to midnight. That's just over a minute and a half. And that should be completely unnerving. It's the closest to that witching hour we've ever been. Since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has adjusted its Doomsday Clock to provide humanity with an expert estimate of just how close all of us are to an apocalyptic "midnight" — that is, nuclear annihilation. … We know about what happened at Hiroshima largely thanks to one man, John Hersey. … And we now know just how Hersey got the story of Hiroshima — a 30,000-word reportorial masterpiece that appeared in the August 1946 issue of the New Yorker magazine, describing the experiences of six survivors of that atomic blast — thanks to a meticulously researched and elegantly written new book by Lesley Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-Up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World…. It's been 74 years since Hiroshima hit the newsstands. A Cold War and nuclear arms race followed as those weapons spread across the planet. And this January, as a devastating pandemic was beginning to follow suit, all of us found ourselves just 100 seconds away from total annihilation…. [Read More]
The Second Intifada, 20 Years On: Thousands Died in a Struggle That Failed
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [September 26, 2020]
---- Yom Kippur this year will mark the anniversaries of the outbreak of two of the most violent events in Israel's history, events that shaped its character for years. It will be 47 years since the start of the Yom Kippur War and 20 years since the second intifada erupted. Both took Israel by surprise – but neither should have surprised anyone. On September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City and the powder keg exploded. A day later, an Israel Defense Forces soldier and seven Palestinians were killed. …The demon of violent resistance to the occupation and its violent suppression exploded forcefully from the bottle. Over four lethal years would pass before the fierce uprising would be quelled, with the use of massive force, and perhaps only temporarily, until the next insurgence, although no signs of it are visible at present on the horizon. For Israel, the second intifada morphed into the nightmare of exploding buses and suicide bombers, years of unremitting horror and dread for the country's citizens. For the Palestinians, these were years of brutal suppression, extensive bloodshed, sieges, closures, lockdowns, checkpoints, mass arrests, and also combat and sacrifices that got them nowhere. Twenty years later, their situation is worse, more desperate than it was before the eruption of the Al-Aqsa Intifada and grimmer than ever: Only in the Nakba, the calamity of 1948, was their situation even harsher and more hopeless. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
U.S. War Crimes in Yemen: Stop Looking the Other Way
By , Foreign Policy in Focus [September 21, 2020]
---- The longstanding involvement of the United States in the conflict in Yemen is facing renewed scrutiny. On September 16, State Department officials testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about whether the State Department misled Congress — and the American people — by circumventing controls designed to limit arms sales and ensure congressional oversight. The crimes occurring in Yemen are serious — and the responsible parties demonstrably unwilling or unable to address them. The most recent report by the United Nations Group of Eminent and International Regional Experts on Yemen described "an acute accountability gap" and recommended that the UN Security Council refer the situation in Yemen to the International Criminal Court. … Media reports have detailed the suppression of an internal State Department analysis that U.S. personnel could be legally liable for war crimes in Yemen because of continued U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Some members of Congress raised this during the hearing. The State Department's acting legal adviser acknowledged civilian casualties were a concern, but refused to say whether he believed U.S. personnel could be held culpable for war crimes in Yemen. [Read More] For more on these war crimes, recommended is "U.S. Rationale for Military Aid to Saudis in Yemen War Is Fraying" by Edward Wong, New York Times [September 23, 2020] [Link].
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Israel Isn't Signing 'Peace' Deals
By Gregory Shupak, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [September 26, 2020]
---- Corporate media outlets such as Forbes, Bloomberg, CNN, and the Washington Post have described recent accords that normalize Israeli relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain as "peace" deals. This is a misleading label to apply to agreements that help cement a belligerent military alliance against Iran, and allow violence against Palestinians, Libyans and Yemenis to continue. … The Trump administration "do[es] not dispute that after years of American refusals to sell F-35s to the Emiratis, the change in position is linked to the diplomatic initiative," reported the New York Times. … Contrary to corporate media assertions, these US-managed agreements between three of its vassal states have little to do with "peace" and everything to do with enabling the smooth execution of despotism, war and a ruthless colonial enterprise. [Read More]
