Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
April 11, 2021
Hello All – On Friday, veteran peace advocates launched a new website/project called BanKillerDrones. In introducing their site, the creators say: "In BanKillerDrones.org we hope to provide you with basic information and arguments that will persuade you of the need for an international treaty to ban weaponized drones and military and police drone surveillance. And we hope to provide you with inspiration to help you, working with thousands of others, to achieve this goal." And they do this with user-friendly website sections on "Proliferation," "Dangers," and "Action." Thus we learn about the amazing/horrible proliferation of military and surveillance drones since the beginning of the new century, their increasing sophistication and targeting abilities, and their threats to (primarily) civilians and non-combatants. They state:
… This officially sanctioned, racially based, drone vigilantism in support of colonial invasion, occupation and intervention has led not only to increased drone killing but to increased military and police drone surveillance. … This international vigilantism, championed by the U.S., is leading to the development of a new wave of more powerful, dangerous drones, guided more and more by artificial intelligence (AI), drones that will enable not only more colonial repression but will quite likely will lead to war among the world's major colonial powers, such as the U.S. and China.
The website is especially useful in combating some of the so-called justifications for the use of drones. For example, do they really protect US ground troops in combat areas? Can they/the drone operators discriminate between combatants and non-combatants? Or do drones actually increase the likelihood of military combat by allowing killing without risking US troops? It is clear from reading the material included on this website that we are entering a Brave New World of military combat and domestic surveillance/repression. Our long-range goal must be to ban these weapons, especially before they are fully taken over by Artificial Intelligence (coming soon). In the here-and-right-now, we need to open our eyes to what's happening and school ourselves and others about what needs to be done to reduce and ultimately end this menace.
News Notes
Undocumented workers and others who had been excluded from federal relief or stimulus payments during the Covid-19 pandemic achieved a dramatic victory last week when Gov. Cuomo conceded the creation of an assistance $2.1 billion fund. The victory was the outcome of thousands of "excluded workers" and their supporters in dozens of statewide organizations. While some important details remain to be worked out, the scope of the victory and the way in which it was achieved can be read about here and here.
Many reports praise the film/program "Exterminate All the Brutes" now playing on HBO. The 4-part program surveys the history of western imperialism towards indigenous peoples in the Americas, Africa, and elsewhere. Based on Sven Lindqvist's "Exterminate All the Brutes" and other documentation, the film receives an excellent overview from Louis Proyect here. Also of interest is a roundtable discussion including the film's director, Raoul Peck, who also produced "I Am Not Your Negro" and "The Young Karl Marx."
How to Help
On Monday, April 12th, "Smart Elections" and their supporters will phone Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (914-423-4031) and Speaker of the Assembly Carl Heastie (718-654-6539) to ask them to allow two important pieces of legislation to come to a vote and to support their passage. The bills – A1115 (Assembly) and S309 (Senate) – would ban voting machines that security experts say can change votes on our ballots. For some basic info on why these machines are dangerous to democracy, click here; to sign up to make some calls, click here.
On Tuesday, April 13th, the People's Campaign for Parole Justice will be calling legislators in support of two pieces of legislation: the Elder Parole and the Fair & Timely Parole bills. The bills would establish the right to a parole hearing for older prisoners who have already served long sentences, working to "prevent aging, sickness, and death in prisons, reunite families and communities, and help to uproot NY's racist criminal legal system." To learn more about the campaign and the issues, go here; to participate in the faith-based Advocacy Day in honor of Second Chance Month, click 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.) Another vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6 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 5 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!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Blowout in Bessemer: A Postmortem on the Amazon Campaign
By Jane McAlevey, The Nation [April 9, 2021]
---- Earlier today the National Labor Relations Board announced the results of the vote on whether workers at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., would join a union. The vote was 738 in favor to 1,798 against. It's bad news, but it doesn't mean workers in future Amazon campaigns won't or can't win. They can. The results were not surprising, however, for reasons that have more to do with the approach used in the campaign itself than any other factor. … Three factors weigh heavily in any unionization election: the outrageously vicious behavior of employers—some of it illegal, most fully legal—including harassing and intimidating workers, and telling bold lies (which, outside of countries with openly repressive governments, is unique to the United States); the strategies and tactics used in the campaign by the organizers; and the broader social-political context in which the union election is being held. … To stand any chance of reversing the diminishing fortunes of America's workers, HR 842, the Protecting the Right to Organize [PRO] Act of 2021, which just passed the House, is desperately needed. Support for unions today is at record highs, and support for big business is at historic lows. Sadly, popular support for any proposal has little if nothing to do with legislation getting approved by Congress. [Read More]
"Capitalism has become a weapon of mass destruction": Seven questions with Arundhati Roy
By Emily Tamkin, The New Statesman [UK] [April 2021]
Q. Are there things that have surprised you? That got worse (or better) faster and more intensely than you thought they would?
AR. Yes. People. People have surprised me in two very different ways. On the one hand, I have been surprised by just how fertile and receptive the ground was when the seeds of hatred were sown and how quickly that dense forest has grown around us. It's not uncommon for people to feel that this very uniquely Indian form of fascism is a partnership between the political establishment and the "masses". … On the other hand, while political parties in the opposition and the various institutions that are meant to serve as checks and balances have abdicated their responsibilities almost entirely, ordinary people have stepped into the breach. The courage and imagination of protestors, just when it seemed that hope was lost, has surprised me. The massive protests against the anti-Muslim citizenship law and the National Register of Citizens, which has resulted in two million people being stripped of their citizenship in the state of Assam alone, and the ongoing protests against the three new farm bills say something about a simmering, brewing rebellion. … We'll have to see what happens. Either way, I don't think it's possible to exaggerate what a dangerous situation India is in right now. How do you unpoison a river? You let it unpoison itself, I guess. The current will do that, eventually. We have to be a part of that current. [Read More]
Surviving the Crackdown in Xinjiang [China]
April 5, 2021]
----When Anar Sabit was in her twenties and living in Vancouver, she liked to tell her friends that people could control their own destinies. Her experience, she was sure, was proof enough. She had come to Canada in 2014, a bright, confident immigrant from Kuytun, a small city west of the Gobi Desert, in a part of China that is tucked between Kazakhstan, Siberia, and Mongolia. "Kuytun" means "cold" in Mongolian; legend has it that Genghis Khan's men, stationed there one frigid winter, shouted the word as they shivered. During Sabit's childhood, the city was an underdeveloped colonial outpost in a contested region that locals called East Turkestan. The territory had been annexed by imperial China in the eighteenth century, but on two occasions it broke away, before Mao retook it, in the nineteen-forties. In Beijing, it was called New Frontier, or Xinjiang: an untamed borderland. Growing up in this remote part of Asia, a child like Sabit, an ethnic Kazakh, could find the legacy of conquest all around her. [Read More]
To better understand the complexities – "Fighting anti-Asian violence cannot include apologism for the Chinese state" by Promise LI, Lausan [Hong Kong] [April 8, 2021] [Link]; (Video) "China, the U.S. and the Risk of Nuclear War," from the Committee for a SANE US – China Policy – 90 minutes [April 7, 2021] [Link]; "Senate Unveils Sweeping Legislation To Confront China" by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com. [April 9, 2021] [Link]; and "Western Media Incite Anti-Asian Racism When They Join in Cold War Against China" by Joshua Cho, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] [April 8, 2021] [Link].
Fears of White People Losing Out Permeate Capitol Rioters' Towns, Study Finds
April 6, 2021]
---- Most of the people who took part in the assault came from places, his polling and demographic data showed, that were awash in fears that the rights of minorities and immigrants were crowding out the rights of white people in American politics and culture. If Mr. Pape's initial conclusions — published on Tuesday in The Washington Post — hold true, they would suggest that the Capitol attack has historical echoes reaching back to before the Civil War, he said in an interview over the weekend. In the shorter term, he added, the study would appear to connect Jan. 6 not only to the once-fringe right-wing theory called the Great Replacement, which holds that minorities and immigrants are seeking to take over the country, but also to events like the far-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 where crowds of white men marched with torches chanting, "Jews will not replace us!" … Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic white population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists. This finding held true, Mr. Pape determined, even when controlling for population size, distance to Washington, unemployment rate and urban or rural location. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
Hunting in Yemen: The War Must End
By Kathy Kelly, Waging Nonviolence [April 10, 2021]
---- Since March 29th, in Washington, D.C., Iman Saleh, age 26, has been on a hunger strike to demand an end to the war in Yemen. She is joined by five others from her group, The Yemeni Liberation Movement. The hunger strikers point out that enforcement of the Saudi Coalition led blockade relies substantially on U.S. weaponry. … While UN agencies struggle to distribute desperately needed supplies of food, medicine and fuel, the UN Security Council continues to enforce a resolution, Resolution 2216, which facilitates the blockade and inhibits negotiation. … Now, in the seventh year of grotesque war, international diplomatic efforts should heed the young Yemeni-Americans fasting in Washington, DC We all have a responsibility to listen for the screams of children gunned down from behind as they flee in the darkness from the rubble of their homes. We all have a responsibility to listen for the gasps of little children breathing their last because starvation causes them to die from asphyxiation. The US is complying with a coalition using starvation and disease to wage war. With 400,000 children's lives in the balance, with a Yemeni child dying once every 75 seconds, what US interests could possibly justify our further hesitation in insisting the blockade must be lifted? The war must end. [Read More] As for the Biden administration's current policy, read "Biden Mum on Yemen Action as War Rages" b[Link].
(Video) Destroying Syria: 10 Years of Intervention
From Massachusetts Peace Action – [FB – This 90-minute program gives imo an excellent summary and overview of the Syrian civil war and its many outside interventions. With Prof. Joshua Landis, whose "Syria Comment" website is invaluable in attempting to understand what is going on in Syria. – NB I recommend skipping the introduction; Prof. Landis starts about 10 minutes into the program.] [See the Program]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Greening Earth and creating Jobs, Biden to slash Fossil Fuel Subsidies and Extend Wind, Solar Credits
---- President Biden intends to slash tax subsidies for fossil fuels like coal and petroleum and to use taxes instead to encourage renewable energy. Since jobs in the coal industry are plummeting, and since job growth in renewable electricity is over 3 percent a year, Biden's plans will actually increase employment. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen explained that cutting fossil fuel subsidies would realize a revenue for the government of $35 billion over ten years. The exact subsidies to be cut were not identified, but an important one would be the provision that allows oil companies to write off the cost of new drilling. Keep it in the ground. …So, why can we tie these changes in taxes and subsidies to jobs? Because Biden is backing the winners. [Read More] And NB Prof. Cole reports "More CO2 in our Atmosphere now than any time since 3.6 mn Years Ago, when Oceans were 90 feet higher (that's our fate)" [Link].
How Debt and Climate Change Pose 'Systemic Risk' to World Economy
April 7, 2021]
---- How does a country deal with climate disasters when it's drowning in debt? Not very well, it turns out. Especially not when a pandemic clobbers its economy. Take Belize, Fiji and Mozambique. Vastly different countries, they are among dozens of nations at the crossroads of two mounting global crises that are drawing the attention of international financial institutions: climate change and debt. They owe staggering amounts of money to various foreign lenders. They face staggering climate risks, too. … The United Nations said Thursday that the global economic collapse endangered nearly $600 billion in debt service payments over the next five years. Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are important lenders, but so are rich countries, as well as private banks and bondholders. The global financial system would face a huge problem if countries faced with shrinking economies defaulted on their debts. [Read More] And from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: "Report: Big banks still pouring trillions into fossil fuel" [March 28, 2021] [Link].
CIVIL LIBERTIES
Two Years After Assange's Arrest, Biden Can End Trump's Assault On Press Freedom
By Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter [April 11, 2021]
---- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been detained at the high-security Belmarsh prison in London for two years. During that time, Assange became the first publisher to be indicted under the United States Espionage Act and prevailed after a district judge denied the U.S. government's extradition request. … The U.S. Justice Department dramatically escalated the political prosecution against Assange on April 11, 2019, when it unsealed a single charge indictment against the WikiLeaks founder. Ecuador allowed British police to enter their London embassy and drag him to a van. … Those who support freedom of the press may also recall the U.S. war crimes in Iraq that Assange helped to expose by publishing disclosures from Pfc. Chelsea Manning… [FB – and much more] [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Their Lawsuit Prevented 400,000 Deportations. Now It's Biden's Call. [Temporary Protective Status - TPS]
April 7, 2021]
---- For years, Morales met with local police and government officials to advocate for the undocumented parishioners in her church. Now, faced with the possibility of her own deportation, she decided it was time to advocate for herself. Morales contacted a local committee of the National T.P.S. Alliance, a grass-roots organization that began advocating for T.P.S. holders during the final months of the Obama administration. Soon she and her daughter, Crista Ramos, became the lead plaintiffs in Ramos v. Nielsen, a suit with 14 plaintiffs representing T.P.S. holders from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan as well as their U.S.-citizen children…. Some 2.3 million Hispanic Americans now trace their roots to El Salvador, more than to any other place except Mexico and the U.S. territory Puerto Rico. Many people point to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 as the catalyst for this immigration. But according to testimony given by a Census Department official before Congress in 1985, Salvadorans did not begin to leave their country en masse until April 1980, 15 years after that act was passed. According to the Pew Research Center, in 1980 there were an estimated 92,000 foreign-born Salvadorans living in the United States. By 1990, that number had rocketed to 459,000. Why did hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans move to the United States in a single decade? The answer to this question is the history of T.P.S. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
[FB – The apparently abstruse debate over the definition of antisemitism is actually of great practical importance, as the definition preferred by Israel and adopted by Europe and the USA finds criticism of Israel to be unacceptable. An attempt at a new definition – "the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism" – tries to detach the concept from the State of Israel, but this in turn has raised questions that pro-Palestinian advocates – here the Jewish Voice for Peace – attempt to remedy. The debate over definitions is connected with anti-BDS legislation and much else. Read on!]
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism: Why the oldest hatred needs a new definition.
By Brian Klug, The Nation [April 1, 2021]
---- Confronted with the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), published on March 25, 2021, it is tempting—especially for Jews at this time of year—to ask: Why is this definition of anti-Semitism different from all other definitions? Actually, the question to ask is more specific. In 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental body, produced its "working definition of antisemitism." The IHRA definition has been endorsed by the secretary general of the United Nations and adopted by governments, political parties, public agencies, universities, and other bodies (including numerous Jewish organizations) in countries around the world. The European Parliament has called upon all member states to adopt the definition. The JDA is written, in large part, as a response to the IHRA text. So, a better question might be: How is the JDA different and why does the difference matter? In short: Why the JDA?
Five Principles for Dismantling Antisemitism: A Progressive Jewish Response to the Jerusalem Declaration
From Jewish Voice for Peace [April 5, 2021]
---- We write this statement with urgent concern about the ongoing attempts of the Israeli government to evade accountability for its human rights abuses and violations of international law by levying accusations of antisemitism at Palestinians and those who advocate for Palestinian rights. Not only does this silence Palestinians and their advocates, but it also jeopardizes Jewish safety and the struggle to dismantle antisemitism. The most prominent example of this dangerous campaign is the attempt to impose the flawed and widely discredited International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism on governments, public institutions, universities, and civil society. The IHRA definition is not designed to protect Jewish communities from the rising bigotry and racist attacks we face, predominantly carried out by white supremacists. Instead, it has been employed in many countries as a bludgeon to suppress advocacy and academic freedom. … However, in attempting to remedy the deceptive claims of the IHRA definition, the JDA falls into the trap of situating Israel-Palestine at the centre of conversations about antisemitism. If the drafters required this special scrutiny to respond fully to IHRA, then they should have included representative Palestinian perspectives and analyses in shaping the document, without which the JDA remains incomplete. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
(Video) Eric Hobsbawm: The Consolations of History
From London Review of Books [April 2021]
[FB – The late Eric Hobsbawm was one of the 20th century's great historians. His writing was influlenced by his membership in the communist movement, which he joined as a teenager in pre-Hitler Germany and continued throughout his professional career in England. Thus his connection with workers' and revolutionary movements influenced all of his work, while avoiding the pitfalls of Stalinist orthodoxy posed additional challenges. And he was a very interesting man, to say the least.]
----In this feature-length documentary, Anthony Wilks traces the connections between the events of Hobsbawm's life and the history he told, from his teenage years in Germany as Hitler came to power and his communist membership, to the jazz clubs of 1950s Soho and the makings of New Labour, taking in Italian bandits, Peruvian peasant movements and the development of nationalism in the modern world, with help from the assiduous observations of MI5. [See the Program]
