Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
February 2, 2021
Hello All – As the Democrats move to pass a new Covid relief package in Congress, they are divided by the question of attempting to gain Republican support, or to by-pass the Republicans (and the Senate's filibuster) altogether by pursuing the path of "reconciliation," which would require only a 51 percent majority in both Houses.
In a nutshell, the work-with-the-Republicans strategy would require the Biden people to reduce total expenditures by two-thirds, resulting in smaller individual payments and cuts everywhere else. Yet the main package, the Biden plan, calls for only a $1,400 one-time payment to individuals. This is far short of what millions of people need, and will do little to stimulate the economy.
A much better plan has been proposed by Rep. Ilan Omar and 50 House Democrats, including Westchester's Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones. It would provide for monthly payments to individuals, rather than a one-time payment. The plan, outlined in a letter to President Biden and Vice-President Harris, does not specify a sum of the monthly payment, but $2,000 monthly is the main buzz. Indeed, this was what several Senators, including then-Senator Kamala Harris, proposed last May. ""The CARES Act gave Americans an important one-time payment," stated Senator Harris at that time, "but it's clear that wasn't nearly enough to meet the needs of this historic crisis. Bills will continue to come in every single month during the pandemic and so should help from government."
The House Democrats' letter to Biden and Harris strikes the same note. "Recurring payments would provide a long-term lifeline to struggling Americans for the duration of this deadly pandemic. We are experiencing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with millions of Americans either unemployed, forced out of the workforce, or facing a decline in hours and wages." Some 54 million Americans are now facing "food insecurity," ten million fewer people are working than before the pandemic hit, and as many as 20 million people face eviction when the moratorium expires. And all areas of the crisis – not least the pandemic itself – disproportionately harm people of color.
In this moment our country faces a great moral challenge. The very richest among us have increased their wealth during the pandemic by a combined $4 trillion, while tens of millions are destitute and frightened. Mercy and charity are called for, but beyond that we need a massive reconstruction of how our economy can provide for justice, equity, and meeting basic needs.
News Notes
After an outpouring of calls and emails, the New York State Board of Elections denied certification for the ExpressVote XL voting machine last week. This machine is a "hybrid" touch screen voting machine that counts votes with barcodes. Security experts say it has a serious design flaw: the computer has the ability to add, change or omit votes on paper ballots. Because of this, experts say that election results from these voting machines cannot be confirmed by audits. While the makers of ExpressVote XL are likely to try again in the future, this week's rejection is a big win, thanks to the strong action of election-integrity activists. For more information, go here.
Israel's refusal to provide more than a token number of Covid vaccines to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and that token only recently, has led to a worldwide clamor. Several US congressional representatives have spoken out against this cruelty, including Rep. Jamaal Bowman. Code Pink has a petition asking congressional representatives to speak out against what they all medical apartheid; to sign it, go here.
Yesterday Congresswoman Alexandria Occasio-Cortez spoke via Telegraph about the trauma she experienced being under threat of attack at the Capitol on January 6th, referencing her own experience of being a sexual assault survivor and denouncing Republican calls to just "move on."
Finally, a journalist's investigation has discovered that Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was a "prolific" FBI and police informant. The Democracy Now! story reports that "Court records show Enrique Tarrio was an FBI and police informant in Florida who went undercover in multiple drug and illegal gambling investigations after he was arrested in 2012." Thus we might speculate about whether Tarrio's arrest by the FBI prior to the attack on the Capitol was a convenient way for him to be AWOL, rather than a punitive police action.
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 (March 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!
I am fortunate that CFOW stalwart JG makes sure that I never miss a Tom Tomorrow cartoon to hone my critical thinking, Tom's work during the last inning's of the Trump administration was especially poignant; enjoy his rendering of the day-after the assault on the Capitol, a summing up of the Trump Error, and the Republicans' post-Trump quest for unity.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
ASSESSING TRUMP'S INSURRECTION
77 Days: Trump's Campaign to Subvert the Election
Jim Rutenberg, et al., New York Times [January 31, 2021]
---- A New York Times examination of the 77 democracy-bending days between election and inauguration shows how, with conspiratorial belief rife in a country ravaged by pandemic, a lie that Mr. Trump had been grooming for years finally overwhelmed the Republican Party and, as brake after brake fell away, was propelled forward by new and more radical lawyers, political organizers, financiers and the surround-sound right-wing media. … Across those 77 days, the forces of disorder were summoned and directed by the departing president, who wielded the power derived from his near-infallible status among the party faithful in one final norm-defying act of a reality-denying presidency. Throughout, he was enabled by influential Republicans motivated by ambition, fear or a misplaced belief that he would not go too far. … As Mr. Trump's official election campaign wound down, a new, highly organized campaign stepped into the breach to turn his demagogic fury into a movement of its own, reminding key lawmakers at key times of the cost of denying the will of the president and his followers…. With each passing day the lie grew, finally managing to do what the political process and the courts would not: upend the peaceful transfer of power that for 224 years had been the bedrock of American democracy. [Read More]
Where Trumpism Lives
By Jacob Whiton, Boston Review [January 19, 2021]
---- Despite the now clear threat posed by continued disinformation about the legality of the 2020 election, on January 6 a majority of House Republicans affirmed their overriding loyalty to President Trump by supporting objections to the certification of Electoral College votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania. They chose to persist in doing so even after being forced to flee the House chamber by a mob of hundreds of Trump supporters—among them white supremacists and paramilitaries—who overran the Capitol grounds and brought the certification process to a halt. What relationship do these representatives have to the people they represent? A total of 139 House Republicans voted to sustain objections to the certification of at least one state's election results. A demographic and economic analysis of the constituencies they represent helps to clarify the social and material conditions in which Trumpism has taken root. In particular, the evidence cuts strongly against the common view of the movement as driven by "lumpen" Rust Belt rage and economic despair in the country's shrinking rural hinterland. Rather, the picture that emerges is one of greenfield suburbs that are both fast growing and rapidly diversifying, where inequalities between relatively well-off white households and their non-white neighbors have been shrinking the most. Low voter turnout in these places has, in turn, helped to deliver large margins to Republican candidates. These facts both help us to understand what is animating Trump's most committed supporters and point the way to defeating Trumpism electorally. [Read More]
Are We Witnessing the Emergence of a New 'Lost Cause'?
By Kali Holloway, The Nation [January 25, 2021]
---- One way to decisively convey that treasonous white-supremacist insurrectionists are unwelcome in the US Capitol might be to remove all the statues that venerate treasonous white-supremacist insurrectionists from the US Capitol. For nearly a century, the building has been home to more than 10 bronze and marble sculptures and busts honoring leaders of the Confederacy, a nation founded by traitorous white secessionists so committed to white power and black enslavement that they launched a war that cost 600,000 lives. The Capitol's National Statuary Hall features a standing Confederate President Jefferson Davis, staring into the white-supremacist future he surely envisioned when he betrayed the Union; a nearby depiction of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens sits atop a pedestal erroneously etched with the word "Patriot" and conspicuously missing his infamous 1861 declaration that the Confederacy's cornerstone was "the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man." These figures are propaganda to promote the "Lost Cause," a lie-filled depiction of history that attempts to rebrand dishonorable Confederate losers as war heroes—a myth so powerful in this white-supremacist country that in 2021 it's still being pushed by the government Confederates sought to overthrow. If we are not vigilant, the treasonous white-supremacist insurrectionists who tried to overtake the government this time around will end up getting the same whitewashed treatment. [Read More]
FEATURED ESSAYS
(Video) Dr. Peter Hotez: "Globalized Anti-Science Movement" Threatens Pandemic Response & Public Health
From Democracy Now! [January 28, 2021]
----- The Biden administration has vowed to increase the rate of vaccinations as COVID-19 continues to spread uncontrollably across the entire U.S., with 90,000 people predicted to die in the next four weeks. President Biden announced plans to acquire another 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech and is devising ways to allow retired nurses and doctors to administer vaccines. Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, says the Trump administration's lies and inaction around the pandemic laid the groundwork for the current explosion in cases. He also warns that a "globalized anti-science movement" has grown stronger in recent years, spreading dangerous disinformation and threatening the public health response to COVID-19. "It's a killer, because now people are tying their political allegiance to not getting vaccinated, to not wearing marks, to not social distancing." [See the Program]
An Open Letter to President Biden About Guantánamo
By Mansoor Adayfi, Moazzam Begg, et al., New York Review of Books [January 29, 2021]
---- We write to you as former prisoners of the United States held without charge or trial at the military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay who have written books about our experiences. First, we welcome your presidential orders to reverse many unjust and problematic decisions made by your predecessor. We appreciate your repeal of the "Muslim ban," which will now allow nationals from the Muslim-majority countries previously targeted into the United States, therefore bringing relief to families torn apart by this order.Despite some positive developments, including the repeal of the Muslim ban, there is another deeply flawed and unjust process that has continued through five US presidential administrations spanning two decades: Guantánamo Bay prison. Guantánamo Bay has existed for over nineteen years and was built to house an exclusively Muslim male population. … Considering the violence that has happened at Guantánamo, we are sure that after more than nineteen years, you agree that imprisoning people indefinitely without trial while subjecting them to torture, cruelty and degrading treatment, with no meaningful access to families or proper legal systems, is the height of injustice. That is why imprisonment at Guantánamo must end. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
The American Exceptionalism of Secretary Of State Antony Blinken
By Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof [January 26, 2021]
---- "American leadership still matters. The reality is the world simply does not organize itself," Secretary of State Antony Blinken proclaimed at his confirmation hearing. "When we are not engaged, when we are not leading, then one of two things is likely to happen. Either some other country tries to take our place but not in a way that is likely to advance our interests and values, or maybe, just as bad, no one does and then you have chaos." Much like President Joe Biden, Blinken is a neoliberal Democrat who believes in the doctrine of "Manifest Destiny." He thinks if the United States does not impose its will and shape the world then there will be no law and order. He cannot fathom how countries could survive on their own. At least, that is how he argues for greater American intervention in global regions. Blinken was confirmed as secretary of state in a vote on January 26. Not a single Democrat in the Senate voted against Blinken. [Venezuela, Libya, Yemen, Ukraine, Iran Nuclear deal, & China] - [Read More]
Biden Must End the War on Kids
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies, Code Pink [January 28, 2021]
---- Most people regard Donald Trump's treatment of immigrant children as among his most shocking crimes as President. Images of hundreds of children stolen from their families and imprisoned in chain-link cages are an unforgettable disgrace that President Joe Biden must move quickly to remedy, with humane immigration policies and a program to quickly reunite divided families. A less-publicized Trump policy that actually killed children was the fulfillment of his campaign promises to "bomb the shit out of" America's enemies and "take out their families." Trump escalated Obama's bombing campaigns against the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and loosened U.S. rules of engagement regarding airstrikes that were predictably going to kill civilians. After devastating U.S. bombardments that killed tens of thousands of civilians and left major cities in ruins, the United States' Iraqi allies fulfilled the most shocking of Trump's threats and massacred the survivors—men, women, and children—in Mosul. But the killing of civilians in America's post-9/11 wars did not begin with Trump. And it will not end, or even diminish, under Biden, unless the public demands that America's systematic slaughter of children and other civilians must be ended. The Stop the War on Children campaign, run by the British charity Save the Children, publishes graphic reports on the harms that the United States and other warring parties inflict on children around the world. [Read More]
War with China?
Averting a Cold War With China Takes On Greater Urgency
By Michael T. Klare, The Nation [January 26, 2021]
---- President Biden's top cabinet appointees have almost uniformly proclaimed their opposition to the policies of the Trump administration and have pledged to steer the nation on a new course, whether it be on health, the economy, the climate, or issues of race and racism. In one area, however, senior Biden officials have not only praised Trump's endeavors but promised to carry them further: mobilizing the nation for a new Cold War, this time with China. …Why this single-minded focus on girding the nation for a catastrophic war with China, or at the very least, a mutually debilitating Cold War? There is no single answer, but rather the explanation flows from the confluence of multiple factors on both sides. … For the Chinese, Washington's stance that China must perpetually accept second-class status is becoming increasingly intolerable, especially as their country grows in wealth in power. " … If unchecked, these forces on both sides will result in an intractable Cold War that will permeate all aspects of international relations and undermine Biden's efforts to make progress on other issues. Without China's cooperation, it will prove impossible to halt the acceleration of climate change or prevent further outbreaks of deadly pandemics. A harsh Cold War environment will also stymie any hope of diverting funds from the US defense budget to domestic revival in other areas, such as health, education, and the environment. Worst of all, growing hostility between the United States and China will increase the risk that a minor incident in the East or South China Seas will trigger a major military conflagration. [Read More] Also useful on US-China is "White House shifts from Middle East quagmires to a showdown with China" by Tyler Pager and Natasha Bertrand, Politico [January 29, 2021] [Link]. Author Mike Klare is one of several sponsors of an excellent new website, The Committee for a SANE US-China Policy. Last week the Committee presented an excellent webinar on the current status of US-China relations/tensions; see it here.
War with Iran? – The Iran Nuclear Agreement
Who goes first? Biden's first JCPOA hurdle [Iran Nuclear Agreement]
By Trita Parsi, Responsible Statecraft [January 30, 2021]
---- He's only been president for a bit more than a week, but Joe Biden's promise to return to the 2015 nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) with Iran has already hit a roadblock. While the United States and Iran both publicly favor returning to the nuclear deal, they both also insist that the other must take the first step. As heated as some of the rhetoric has been between the two sides, the "who goes first" problem has been prevalent throughout diplomacy on Iran's nuclear program, so there are nonetheless good reasons to remain calm. Both Washington and Tehran have accepted a mechanism for restoring the JCPOA: compliance for compliance. It is as simple and straightforward as it gets. Both sides simply comply with all of their JCPOA obligations with no preconditions. The Iranians drop their insistence that Washington compensate Tehran for having breached the deal in the first place, and the U.S. side refrains from using Donald Trump's sanctions as "leverage" to extract concessions from Iran before returning to the deal. Once both are in compliance with the deal, negotiations over disagreements and changes to the deal can begin. As simple as this formula is, however, it doesn't resolve the question of who should take the first step. Without providing any particular justification, Biden and Secretary of State Tony Blinken have stated that the United States will go into full compliance once the Iranians have done the same. In other words, the burden is Tehran to take the first step. … Ultimately, however, there's more room for optimism than pessimism for one very simple reason: too much is at stake for both sides to risk losing what may be the last opportunity to revive an agreement that so squarely advances their interests and security. [Read More]
Also useful on prospects for a peaceful resolution of the stand-off – "Biden admin's coercive Iran policy threatens serious new regional crisis" b[Link]; and "Iran Says It Will Not Comply With Nuclear Deal Until US Lifts Sanctions" by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [January 29, 2021] [Link]. An important conflict was settled positively this week, with the appointment of Robert Malley to head US negotiations with Iran. Read "U.S. Names Iran Envoy in Battle of Wills With Tehran Over Nuclear Negotiations," New York Times [Link].
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
(Video) Sunrise Movement's Varshini Prakash: Biden's Climate Agenda Must Go Beyond Undoing Trump's Damage
From Democracy Now! [January 27, 2021]
---- President Joe Biden is expected to issue executive orders to suspend new oil and gas leasing on federal property, reestablish a White House council of science advisers, and set a goal to protect 30% of federal land and water by 2030. He is also predicted to announce a number of initiatives prioritizing environmental justice by creating a White House interagency council on environmental justice and directing federal agencies to invest more in communities of color heavily impacted by pollution and the climate crisis. These actions, as well as executive orders to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and put a moratorium on oil and gas permits in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, come after Biden used his inaugural address to declare the climate crisis to be one of the core issues facing the nation. Varshini Prakash, co-founder and executive director of the Sunrise Movement, says Biden is "off to a good start," but says he needs to go beyond simply undoing the damage of the Trump administration. "We're going to need to see a lot more from Joe Biden at the executive level and directing every branch of the federal government to action. But we're also going to need to see him working actively to organize his congressional colleagues to pass what we need to be the greatest green jobs and infrastructure recovery plan that this country has seen," says Prakash. [See the Program]. Also very useful is an in-depth review of the [lack of] progress of the Paris Climate talks. "Biden-Kerry international climate politricks" by Patrick Bond, ZNet [January 29, 2021] [Read More].
CIVIL LIBERTIES
The Coup We Are Not Talking About [Corporate Surveillance]
[Dr. Zuboff, a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, is the author of "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism."]
---- Two decades ago, the American government left democracy's front door open to California's fledgling internet companies, a cozy fire lit in welcome. In the years that followed, a surveillance society flourished in those rooms, a social vision born in the distinct but reciprocal needs of public intelligence agencies and private internet companies, both spellbound by a dream of total information awareness. …. Surveillance exceptionalism has meant that the United States and many other liberal democracies chose surveillance over democracy as the guiding principle of social order. With this forfeit, democratic governments crippled their ability to sustain the trust of their people, intensifying the rationale for surveillance. Unless democracy revokes the license to steal and challenges the fundamental economics and operations of commercial surveillance, the epistemic coup will weaken and eventually transform democracy itself. We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have surveillance society, but we cannot have both. We have a democratic information civilization to build, and there is no time to waste.
For more on Big Tech and Surveillance – "Should President Biden Revoke Section 230?" ny [Link]; "These Machines Won't Kill Fascism: Toward a Militant Progressive Vision for Tech" by Nantina Vgontzas and Meredith Whittaker, The Nation [January 26, 2021] [Link]; and "Silenced" by Serge Halimi, editor, Le Monde diplomatique [February 2021] [Link].
THE STATE OF THE UNION
3 Million People Were Deported Under Obama. What Will Biden Do About It?
[FB - Jean Guerrero is the author of "Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda."]
---- When people demand the reunification of immigrant families today, they usually mean the thousands of asylum seekers separated from family members in the last four years. "The specter of [the Trump administration's] family separation at the borders was so haunting that the term has been kind of narrowed," said Naureen Shah, senior advocacy and policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. "But just because these things happened in the past, that doesn't mean they don't have a really awful present effect." If Mr. Biden is serious about "securing our values as a nation of immigrants," he can't just reverse President Donald Trump's decisions, or label deportations under President Barack Obama a "big mistake." He must repair the harm that was done when he was vice president, which left communities fractured and financially devastated, as the public health researcher William D. Lopez observed in his book, "Separated." He should extend some of the same relief sought for victims of Mr. Trump's policy of family separation — such as mental health services and reunification — to those torn apart by Mr. Obama's policies. [Read More] Ms. Guerrero was on Democracy Now! this week: "Biden Is Reversing Trump's Anti-Immigrant Acts. Will He Repair Harm from Deportations Under Obama?" [Link].
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
B'Tselem's Historic Declaration: Israel's Open War on Its Own Civil Society
January 29, 2021]
---- "A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid," was the title of a January 12 report by the Israeli rights group B'Tselem. No matter how one is to interpret B'Tselem's findings, the report is earth-shattering. The official Israeli response merely confirmed what B'Tselem has stated in no uncertain terms. … "B'Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it)," the Israeli rights group concluded based on the fact that the "bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians." … For years, a persisting argument within the Palestine-Israel discourse contended that, while Israel is not a perfect democracy, it is, nonetheless, a "democracy for Jews." Though true democracies must be founded on equality and inclusiveness, the latter maxim gave some credibility to the argument that Israel can still strike the balance between being nominally democratic while remaining exclusively Jewish. That shaky argument is now falling apart. Even in the eyes of many Israeli Jews, the Israeli government no longer possesses any democratic ideals. Indeed, as B'Tselem has succinctly worded it, Israel is a regime of Jewish supremacy "from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea." [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
The Real Rosa Parks Story Is Better Than the Fairy Tale
---- Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks dominate the Civil Rights Movement chapters of elementary and high school textbooks and Black History Month celebrations. And yet much of what people learn about Mrs. Parks is narrow, distorted, or just plain wrong. In our collective understanding, she's trapped in a single moment on a long-ago Montgomery bus, too often cast as meek, tired, quiet and middle class. The boycott is seen as a natural outgrowth of her bus stand. It's inevitable, respectable and not disruptive. But that's not who she was, and it's not how change actually works. "Over the years, I have been rebelling against second-class citizenship. It didn't begin when I was arrested," Mrs. Parks reminded interviewers time and again. Born Feb. 4, 1913, she had been an activist for two decades before her bus stand — beginning with her work alongside Raymond Parks in 1931, whom she married the following year, to organize in defense of the "Scottsboro Boys" (nine Black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping two white women). Indeed, one of the issues that animated her six decades of activism was the injustice of the criminal justice system. [Read More]
