Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
January 25, 2021
Hello All – The first week of the Biden administration saw a flurry of executive orders intended to overturn some of the cruel and misguided decisions of the Trump Agenda. Many of these are of great significance, such as rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization. The sheer number of executive-order injustices – several hundred in the area of immigration alone – could be used to illustrate what Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman meant by "The Hill We Climb." This is a welcome return to a semblance of sanity in Washington.
By all means, let us pick the low-hanging fruit of executive orders. But very soon (right now) we will encounter contested terrain, where there is disagreement within the Biden coalition over the path to take. And it is obvious – from Biden's campaign, his Cabinet appointments, etc. – that the framing of the Administration's program is well to the right of a progressive agenda. In face this is what we foresaw, as soon as Biden became the Democratic Party nominee: by however many light years he was preferable to Donald Trump, to bring about what the country needs will require a strong and relentless push from progress forces. We can't settle for a Restoration; we want and need a New Reconstruction.
This is immediately evident in the debate about Trump's impeachment. Will we get a housecleaning of the congressional people and administration underlings who conspired to subvert the presidential election? Or will the Democratic leadership focus the investigation as narrowly possible, to "do something" about Trump and move on quickly to their legislative agenda? And will the white supremacy terror network, so dramatically on display on January 6th, be investigated and suppressed, or will a few dozen high-profile cases be deemed enough to "send a lesson"? A clamor in the country for justice may make a difference.
There are also many tensions in the Biden legislative agenda. Can/will the Trump depredations be rolled back completely? Will our many wars and threats of war be rolled back or continued? Can the insights and demands of the Black Lives Matter movement be translated into policy and law? Again, these questions (any many others) depend on how strongly progressive forces can mobilize. Some of these issues and tensions are discussed in a set of readings linked below.
News Notes
When the next installment of the Economic Impact Payment checks are issued, the Westchester chapter of SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) proposes that those who can afford it donate their check to grassroots organizations via Redistribute Funds for Racial Justice. For more info, go here.
On Saturday, January 28th, the New York State Board of Elections will decide whether to certify the ExpressVote XL, a voting machine that would undermine the security of our elections. Smart Elections, the main organization working to stop certification, asks that we email the Board to ask them NOT to do this. For sample letters and more information, go here..
As Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms ban ex-president Trump and other rightists, fears have been expressed that leftist groups would be caught up in the purge. This appears to have happened to two (non-terrorist) groups in the UK. Check out the stories of the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Equality Party here. Is this just the beginning?
The Caledonian Record, reporting the news from northern Vermont and New Hampshire, has published 50 pictures to go along with their selection of the 50 top civil rights speeches. Check it out here. [h/t SR]
Finally, Tom Tomorrow explains how the Republicans plan to go about "healing" and restoring unity to our nation.
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.) Another vigil takes place on the first Monday of the month (February 1st, 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!
Rewards!
Among the groups performing at the Biden Inaugural Ceremony last week was the Black Pumas, from Austin Texas. I did not know about them until their video/song, "Colors," was played on Democracy Now! There's lots more good stuff out there; here is another favorite --
"Fire." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
THE CAPITOL ASSAULT AND THE ATTEMPTED COUP
Among the Insurrectionists
By Luke Mogelson, The New Yorker [January 15, 2021]
---- The attack on the Capitol was a predictable apotheosis of a months-long ferment. Throughout the pandemic, right-wing protesters had been gathering at statehouses, demanding entry. In April, an armed mob had filled the Michigan state capitol, chanting "Treason!" and "Let us in!" In December, conservatives had broken the glass doors of the Oregon state capitol, overrunning officers and spraying them with chemical agents. The occupation of restricted government sanctums was an affirmation of dominance so emotionally satisfying that it was an end in itself—proof to elected officials, to Biden voters, and also to the occupiers themselves that they were still in charge. [Read More]
What's Next for the Militias?
By Mike Giglio, The Intercept [January 20 2021]
---- The pride with which he recounted these details speaks to the dilemma many militant groups are now facing: They might be pro-Trump. But often they are also pro-cop and dream of being seen as community protection forces, a sort of law enforcement auxiliary. Storming government buildings and trying to overturn an election flies in the face of that. At the end of the day, it's also illegal. It's the same contradiction conveyed by the plastic cuffs: Taking the law into your own hands also means breaking it. These militant groups have arrived at a moment of truth. In meetings and conversations over the last week, I found members struggling with it. Behind all the rhetoric and threats and Trumpian claims about the election is a choice about what side of law and order they really want to be on. Where they land will say a lot about whether the political violence we saw on January 6 remains relatively isolated or metastasizes into a wider uprising. [Read More]
Also useful/interesting – "How Democrats Planned for Doomsday" b[Link]; "Capitol Riot Puts Spotlight on 'Apocalyptically Minded' Global Far Right" bKatrin Bennhold and [Link]; and "How the Israeli flag became a symbol for white nationalists" by Ben Lorber, +972 Magazine [Israel] [January 22, 2021] [Link].
PROSPECTS FOR THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION
(Video) The Way Forward: Can the Left Push Biden to Be a Transformative President Like LBJ, FDR & Lincoln?
From Democracy Now! [January 20, 2021]
---- We look at the path forward for the Biden-Harris administration and the role of social movements with political strategist Waleed Shahid and author and analyst Michael Eric Dyson. Shahid, spokesperson for the progressive political action committee Justice Democrats, says Biden could be "one of the most transformative presidents" in U.S. history if he acts boldly. "But it will take an immense amount of pressure on Joe Biden, on the political system, on the political class for him to get there," says Shahid. [See the Program].
War & Peace
What Our Forever Wars Will Look Like Under Biden
By Danny Sjursen, The Nation [January 24, 2021]
---- Hard as it is to believe in this time of record pandemic deaths, insurrection, and an unprecedented encore impeachment, Joe Biden is now officially at the helm of the US war machine. He is, in other words, the fourth president to oversee America's unending and unsuccessful post-9/11 military campaigns. … Biden inherits a global war—and burgeoning new Cold War —spanning four continents and a military mired in active operations in dozens of countries, combat in some 14 of them, and bombing in at least seven. That sort of scope has been standard fare for American presidents for almost two decades now. Still, while this country's post-9/11 war presidents have more in common than their partisan divisions might suggest, distinctions do matter, especially at a time when the White House almost unilaterally drives foreign policy. So, what can we expect from Commander in Chief Biden? [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
Climate Groups Begin Vying for Power in the Biden Era as Pressure for Unity Fades
By Rachel M. Cohen, The Interept [January 21 2021]
---- While BlueGreen's focus on public investment, good jobs, and justice shares much in common with the federal Green New Deal resolution introduced in February 2019, their "Solidarity for Climate Action" report is in tension with those in the environmental movement who call for a more rapid transition away from oil, coal, and natural gas. … The alliance — which includes large national green groups like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council and labor unions like the Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of Teachers, and the United Steelworkers — also calls for measures like restoring forests and wildlands, cracking down on employee misclassification, making it easier to unionize, winning universal high-speed internet, and investing in deindustrialized areas. … For now, some left-wing climate groups concede that even if the Biden team has close relations with the BlueGreen Alliance and the alliance plans to flex its power more in the coming months, the Biden team has also shown its willingness to be more aggressive against fossil fuel companies in ways that BlueGreen would not. [Read More]
Immigration
Immigration Activists Prepare to Fight a "Timid" Biden After He Walks Back Key Promise
By Maurizio Guerrero, The Intercept [January 19, 2021]
---- One initiative stood out as especially (and cruelly) effective in President Donald Trump's often inept White House: his administration's monomaniacal attack on immigrants. Starting with an unconstitutional Muslim ban his first week in office, Trump signed more than 400 executive actions against migrants in a single term — curtailing legal immigration, casting out tens of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers, separating undocumented families and sowing terror in immigrant communities. Trump's caging of migrant children at the border sparked nationwide protests in 2018 under the banner "Keep Families Together." But despite mass outrage among liberals, the enormous bipartisan machine built to surveil, catch and imprison migrants predates Trump. … Biden has declared a moratorium on deportations during his first 100 days in office. He also promises to send an immigration reform bill to Congress. But neither of these measures, advocates say, would necessarily effect a meaningful change; the moratorium is a temporary measure, and a bill could be delayed in Congress and might expand immigration enforcement as a trade-off for pro-migrant measures. [Read More]
Also good articles on immigration and reform – "The Republican Dam on Immigration Is Cracking, and Now They Will Pay for Their Racism" by Sonali Kolhatkar, ZNet [January 24, 2021] [Link]; "Why Biden's 'Virtual' Border Could Be Worse Than Trump's Wall" by Felipe de la Hoz, The Nation [January 22, 2021] [Link]; and "Biden Must Reckon With Obama-Era Immigration Mistakes" by Jean Guerrero, New York Times [January 23, 2021] [Link].
Civil Liberties
Biden Should End Espionage Act Prosecutions: It's time to stop the war on journalism.
By Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept [January 21 2021]
---- We have just seen the end of a dangerous administration that openly waged war against journalism. For four years, the president of the United States used the Justice Department as his personal law firm and a political cudgel against his perceived enemies, including the press. Even if Biden doesn't agree with the principles I am advocating, he could declare these Espionage Act indictments to be the toxic fruit of the poisonous and discredited Trump Justice Department. And media outlets should remember the next time a whistleblower is arrested that the most important task for journalists is to hold those in power to account rather than allow themselves to be used in a government distraction campaign. [Read More]
FEATURED ESSAYS
The Scale of Loss: 400,000 Dead
By Rivera Sun, ZNet [January 24, 2021]
---- Four hundred lights stretch along the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. Each represents one thousand people in America who have died of COVID-19. It is only in their absence that we have space to acknowledge the dead–there is not enough space beside the pool for that many people to stand. It is only by symbols that we can understand the enormity of what we've lost.
---- Four hundred lights stretch along the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. Each represents one thousand people in America who have died of COVID-19. It is only in their absence that we have space to acknowledge the dead–there is not enough space beside the pool for that many people to stand. It is only by symbols that we can understand the enormity of what we've lost.
If the living marched on DC in equal numbers, the sea of people would be as large as the DC Women's March in 2017 or twice the size of the crowd in the iconic photos of Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech during the March On Washington in 1963. It is difficult to comprehend the silence around these 400,000 deaths. When 2,977 people died in the 9/11 attacks, the nation mourned and grieved, took off their shoes at airports, invaded two countries, formed new departments of security and surveillance, tossed out half our civil liberties, and posted flags commemorating the lives lost on 9/11 in airports around the nation. There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of our failure to limit the spread of COVID-19. … Why is death by pandemic less worthy of our collective grief than death by terrorism? [Read More] And Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad make a reasonable proposal: "Why Neoliberal Leaders Who Failed to Protect Their Countries From COVID-19 Must Be Investigated" Counterpunch [January 22, 2021] [Link].
'We're witnessing a fundamental political realignment: the crisis in the United States"
An interview with Mike David, Solidarity – Against the Current [January 22, 2021]
[FB – This wide-ranging interview/essay comes from one of our most thoughtful intellectuals. Please check it out.]
Q. Thinking more broadly about the situation in the US in 2021, what do you think are the most consequential "known knowns" and "known unknowns"? What do you think are the most important issues facing the US left?
---- The conditions in this country are extreme for low-wage workers in general and the working class as a whole. They're living under depression conditions. And it's doubtful that the Biden administration will be able to do anything dramatic about that, at least in the short term. The great priority must be struggles to organise workplaces and defend workers, to organise in the communities around life and death issues like rent control and medical coverage and to build effective national protest movements after the bitter experience of last year — of seeing the pandemic response annexed by the Trumpites, allowing the far right to mount the only effective protest movement that occurred, rather than a broad progressive coalition fighting for workplace safety and supporting the healthcare and essential workers. Never has the progressive camp, or more explicitly the American left, had greater tasks and responsibilities placed on it than it has for the forthcoming year. … But in this country, the most astonishing thing, I think, is not so much the rise of Trump and far-right populism. It's that among people under 30, every poll shows that a majority looks more favourably on socialism, whatever that means to them, than on capitalism. And it's that so many of them, hundreds of thousands of them, have been active in campaigns from the Occupy movement to Black Lives Matter and so on. One of the principal concerns of progressives right now is how to sustain that activism, how to prevent it from being demobilised. … After Sanders' concession, you faced the possibility that tens of thousands of young people who had been active in his campaign would just become pessimistic and disorganised, when instead their activism was recycled by BLM. We must conserve and nurture activism above all. [Read More] Mike Davis will speak about "The Crisis After Trump" in a webinar on February 1st at 8 pm. For more information and to register, go here.
The Meaning of the Mittens: Five Possibilities
By Naomi Klein, The Intercept [
---- Pity the art directors, the stylists, and the stage managers. So much effort, taste, strategy, and money went into planning the semiotics of Joe Biden's inauguration. And yet it was all for naught. Because in a sea of exquisitely matching face masks, Bernie Sanders's ratty old mittens upstaged them all, instantly becoming the most discussed, delighted-in, and deranged visual message of the historic occasion. What should we make of this? Why did so many millions connect to whatever language the mittens were speaking? Was it pandemic delirium — all of us projecting our social isolation onto the most isolated person in the crowd? Was it sexism and racism, the Bernie Bros once again failing to acknowledge the subversive messages expressed in the fashion choices of glass-ceiling shattering women? Was it, as a friend just texted as I typed these words, "the world's secret wish that Bernie was our president"? What is the meaning, the mittenology of it all? [Read More]
THE IRAN NUCLEAR AGREEMENT
Iran Wants the Nuclear Deal It Made
By Mohammad Javad Zarif, Foreign Affairs [January 22, 2021]
[FB – Mr. Zarif is Iran's Foreign Minister.]
---- As a candidate for president in 2016, Donald Trump pledged to stop wasting American blood and treasure on wars in West Asia. During his time in office, Trump instead further trapped the United States in the region and inflamed divisions to the point where a minor incident might quickly spiral out of control and lead to a major war. The new administration in Washington has a fundamental choice to make. It can embrace the failed policies of the Trump administration and continue down the path of disdain for international cooperation and international law… Or the new administration can shed the failed assumptions of the past and seek to promote peace and comity in the region. U.S. President Joe Biden can choose a better path by ending Trump's failed policy of "maximum pressure" and returning to the deal his predecessor abandoned. If he does, Iran will likewise return to full implementation of our commitments under the nuclear deal. But if Washington instead insists on extracting concessions, then this opportunity will be lost. [Read More]
Nine hurdles to reviving the Iran nuclear deal
By Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [January 19, 2021]
[FB – Mr. Mousavian was a leading Iranian negotiator during the early stages of what became the Iran Nuclear Agreement. He is the author of The Iranian Nuclear Crisis.]
---- Five years ago, after years of intensive negotiations, six world powers managed to sign the world's most comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran. While the agreement was a political one, it was also ratified by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2231. And, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the organization tasked with verifying the agreement's technical aspects, Iran was fully complying with the deal for about three years, until President Trump withdrew from it in May 2018. In response to the US violations of the nuclear agreement, Iran too reduced some of its commitments. Most recently, on January 4, Iran announced that it had increased its uranium enrichment levels to 20 percent. Although reviving the agreement is certainly still possible, it won't be easy. The two sides will need to overcome nine hurdles to make it happen. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Israel is an apartheid state, says B'Tselem; time to ditch the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism?
By Nasim Ahmed, Middle East Monitor [January 21, 2021]
---- When B'Tselem [FB – an Israeli human rights organization] described Israel as an apartheid state in a position paper last week, it did more than just dispel long held delusions about the Zionist state. In saying that Israel "promotes and perpetuates Jewish supremacy between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River," the country's largest human rights group may have rescued the possibility of open and honest discussion from those who seek to stifle free speech under the cloak of combating anti-Semitism. … The dispute centres around seven of the eleven illustrative examples that conflate anti-Semitism with criticism of the state of Israel. Claiming, for instance, that the existence of a state of Israel is a "racist endeavour" can get you branded as an anti-Semite. As ridiculous as this sounds, B'Tselem is thus, according to the IHRA, an anti-Semitic organisation. Though the definition has no legal standing, its adoption by political parties, civil society organisations and academic institutions will still have a chilling effect on free speech, which is why British government coercion to get universities to adopt the IHRA document has been condemned. [Read More].
OUR HISTORY
Failures of Democracy in America and the Arab Spring [10th anniversary]
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [January 25, 2021]
---- Today is ten years since Egyptian youth gathered in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo demanding the resignation of Egypt's brutal and corrupt Interior Minister, Habib Adly. Even those who called for the rally were surprised by the thousands of youth and workers that showed up, on Egypt's Police Day, and by their determination to camp out in the square until not only Adly was gone was also the president for life, former Air Force general Hosni Mubarak. The determination of the youth and other disadvantaged groups provoked the Egyptian officer corps to put Mubarak on a helicopter in mid-February, making a coup and appointing a provisional government. The U.S. and Egypt are very different places, but perhaps Americans can sympathize better with what Egypt has been through if we consider some similarities related to political movements. Egypt suffered from some of the same deep social problems as the United States. [Read More]
The 1970s: Decade of the Rank and File
By Cal Winslow, Jacobin Magazine [January 2021]
---- The 1970s were a high-water mark for the US labor movement, with work stoppages, wildcat strikes, and sit-downs spreading up and down the country, involving workers in all industries.
The year 1970 saw strikes in almost every employment category. ...This was just the beginning. In the decade that followed — or the "long seventies," lasting from 1965 to 1981 — the United States experienced a strike wave like few others. Uniquely, the '70s strikes were often led by "restless" young workers whose grievances went far beyond the bread-and-butter disputes typical of the postwar decades. These disputes included the entire range of strikes: wildcats and sit-downs, grievance strikes, as well as contract rejections and contested local union elections, often initiated by a rank and file. The strikes, taken together, were reflective of the rebellious movements of the era. … With their demand for democracy in their unions, workers sought to make these institutions their own, recalling the students' demand for self-government, or "participatory democracy." [Read More]
