Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
June 27, 2021
Hello All – On the front burner of American politics is the rise of an interracial coalition demanding progressive change. This coalition is still small, but it is clearly growing. The election of Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones is part of this. Change is in the air.
This is the threat to which Republicans and conservatives are responding with their opposition to federal voting-rights legislation in Congress. In the Senate, Republicans are reviving the claim that voting is a "state's rights" issue. In defending her opposition to the voting rights bill S.1, for example, Senator Susan Collins argued: S.1 "would take away the rights of people in each of the 50 states to determine which election rules work best for their citizens." And this is where the Republicans have, and are using, strength to defend against an expanding democracy. Already, for example, the voting crisis has produced some 400 measures in 48 state legislatures to suppress voting rights; already 20 of them have become law..
Speaking in Congress last week, Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia said: "Rather than adjusting their agenda and changing their message, they are busy trying to change the rules. We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights and voter access unlike anything we have seen since the Jim Crow era." Foremost among the "rules" protecting white supremacy is the filibuster, which has so far prevented the Senate from even discussing S.1 and voting rights. "What could be more hypocritical and cynical," Warnock asked, "than invoking minority rights in the Senate as a pretext for preventing debate about how to preserve minority rights in the society?"
Republicans recognize that they cannot win elections based on their rich-man's Agenda. As Trump once said, going forward, Republicans can never win a fair election. The demographic changes in the nation no longer allow a majority coalition to be formed on the basis of the rich-man's agenda. For years Republicans have dealt with this dilemma by pushing their racist "Southern Strategy" and demonizing immigrants and the poor. But even this is now not enough, and to stay in power they have to change the democratic rules of the game. And so we are at a crossroads: Will the basic rules of self-government be sustained and repaired, or will we enter an era where the democratic process no longer allows the majority of the people to govern?
News Notes
Last week 73 Democrats sent a letter to President Biden calling on him to declare Israeli squatter-settlements in Palestine illegal and to revoke Trump's "deal of the century." While largely restating the US position on Israel/Palestine under Pres. Obama, the letter reflects a significant push-back by Democrats against unconditional support for Israel. Local Reps. Bowman and Jones were among the signers of the letter. To learn more, click here.
Also last week, socialist India Walton won the mayoral election in Buffalo, NY. She upset a four-term Democratic incumbent, and is now on track to become the first democratic-socialist mayor of a US city in half a century. Read more by John Nichols in The Nation.
Thatcher Pass, north of Winnemucca, Nevada, is the home of the Fort McDermitt Indians and also the site where Lithium American Corp. plans to build a giant open-pit mine. A camp, similar to Standing Rock, has been built as a base for protest, education, and direction action. To learn more and to donate to this important action, click here.
Finally, Leonard Crow Dog, a stalwart at the 1973 occupation of the Pine Ridge reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, died last week. Following the occupation and his release from prison, he dedicated his life to preserving the traditions of the Sicangu Lakota. "I think that this was the greatest moment in my life," Chief Crow Dog said of Wounded Knee, "and that our 71-day stand was the greatest deed done by Native Americans in this century." Learn about his life here.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6 pm, in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email. Our 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!
The reward for stalwart readers this week come from the 1937 Broadway musical "Pins and Needles," perhaps the only Broadway show produced and performed by a labor union, the International Ladies Garment Workers union [Link]. The union had a socialist orientation and many of the workers/performers were political activists; and it was directed by African-American dancer Katherine Dunham. Revivals included a 1962 performance starring the young Barbara Streisand; and from that version I think you will like "Status Quo"; "It's Better with a Union Man"; "Doing the Reactionary"; "Chain Store Daisy"; and "Sing Me a Song of Social Significance." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
'We Have to Make Our Nation Confront What It Doesn't Want to Remember' –
From The Nation [June 25, 2021]
[FB – This is an interview/conversation with the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen. Born in Vietnam and raised in the United States, where his family was resettled as refugees, Nguyen is eloquent champion of the displaced and a trenchant critic of empire.]
---- I'm teaching a class on the Vietnam War. I have my students interview survivors, both Americans and Southeast Asians from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. One of the things they find out is that, of the American soldiers who were there during the Vietnam War era, some of them saw horrible things and were in combat, and a lot of them didn't; they were serving as clerks and the like. Now, every single Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian person they interview, soldier or civilian, has a horrifying story, and that involves being a refugee. Anybody who is a refugee in this country has been through something horrifying or at least terrible in order to escape wherever they came from and get to this country. I say this because I don't want to advertise my own story, when among Vietnamese refugees we all have these stories, and for us it's completely normal. [Read More]
War & Peace
Dividing the World Into Opposing Camps Is the Road to Armageddon
By Michael T. Klare, The Nation [June 25, 2021]
---- The leaders of the Western world—meeting first as the G7 powers in Cornwall, England, on June 11-13 and then as the NATO members in Brussels on June 14—did not exactly initiate Cold War II. However, they did lay the necessary groundwork by describing a world divided along fundamental ideological lines. On one side, they contend, are the democratic, stability-seeking nations that adhere to international norms and rules; on the other are aggressive, authoritarian states like China and Russia that seek to undermine the rules-based international order. While it might be possible to work across this divide on matters of common concern, such as climate change and nuclear nonproliferation, the West's main task in the coming decades must be to enhance its capacity to defend itself against the other camp—and diminish the other side's economic, political, and technological clout. … Ostensibly, the aim of all this summitry was to revitalize the Western alliance in the wake of all the damage wreaked by former president Donald Trump and to restore America's status as the West's leading champion. But what is this new chapter really about? The 79 points in the final communiqué make the intent clear: to recast NATO in the image of the US military, with its focus on "great power competition" and a renewed arms race with Russia and China. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
Dispossessed, Again: Climate Change Hits Native Americans Especially Hard
Christopher Flavelle and
---- From Alaska to Florida, Native Americans are facing severe climate challenges, the newest threat in a history marked by centuries of distress and dislocation. While other communities struggle on a warming planet, Native tribes are experiencing an environmental peril exacerbated by policies — first imposed by white settlers and later the United States government — that forced them onto the country's least desirable lands. And now, climate change is quickly making that marginal land uninhabitable. The first Americans face the loss of home once again. In the Pacific Northwest, coastal erosion and storms are eating away at tribal land, forcing native communities to try to move inland. In the Southwest, severe drought means Navajo Nation is running out of drinking water. At the edge of the Ozarks, heirloom crops are becoming harder to grow, threatening to disconnect the Cherokee from their heritage. Compounding the damage from its past decisions, the federal government has continued to neglect Native American communities, where substandard housing and infrastructure make it harder to cope with climate shocks. The federal government is also less likely to help Native communities recover from extreme weather or help protect them against future calamities, a New York Times review of government data shows. [Read More]
The State of the Union
When You Lift from the Bottom, Everyone Rises: Have We Entered America's Third Era of Reconstruction?
By Liz Theoharis, The Poor Peoples' Campaign [June 24, 2021]
---- West Virginia, a state first established in defiance of slavery, has recently become ground zero in the fight for voting rights. In an early June op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin vowed to maintain the Senate filibuster, while opposing the For the People Act, a bill to expand voting rights. Last week, after mounting pressure and a leaked Zoom recording with billionaire donors, he showed potential willingness to move on the filibuster and proposed a "compromise" on voting rights… Manchin's apathy toward democracy actively harms millions of West Virginians in a state where 40% of the population is poor or low-income and voter turn-out rates remain dismally low. …The debate on protecting voting rights and on the filibuster in Congress is only part of an assault on democracy underway nationally. Halfway through 2021, the very Republican extremists who continue to cry wolf about a "stolen" presidential election have introduced close to 400 voter suppression bills in 48 states (including West Virginia), 20 of which have already been signed into law. As journalist Ari Berman recently tweeted all too accurately, this wave of reactionary legislation is the "greatest assault on voting rights since the end of Reconstruction in the late 1870s." [Read More]
Israel/Palestine
Israel is 'considerably weakened' — as BDS finds a home in the Democratic Party
ByJune 21, 2021]
---- The news from the political convulsion in Israel is that power has shifted. Israel is no longer dictating terms to the United States, the United States is in a position to dictate terms to Israel. So much is clear from a number of events. The recent Israeli onslaught on Gaza ended after 11 days and not 51 or 22, because Joe Biden told Netanyahu to stop. And that was because Rashida Tlaib told Biden to make it stop. For once there was political pressure on the White House from the Israel-critical lobby. Now Netanyahu is gone and Israel's new prime minister is to the right of Netanyahu on the West Bank, but it doesn't matter. Naftali Bennett won't dare to go too far, whatever that means. Yes– what does it mean to go too far? For the first time this is the discussion taking place inside the Democratic Party. What is our line going to be? … Israelis are keenly sensitive to American politics. Arguably this is how Naftali Bennett became prime minister. Israeli leadership sees the Biden Democratic Party leaving the reservation and it wants to preserve Israel as a bipartisan issue. The Israeli government knows it has to tone things down. Right, left and center agree on that. [Read More] Mondoweiss is running an interesting/tragic series of "Gaza Diaries," about the experiences of Gazans during the recent war. The most recent is "I was waiting for my turn to be bombed," by Zahra Shaikha. And last week the New York Times put up a detailed video of what happens when Israel bombs Gaza. [Link].
Our History
The Rosenbergs were executed for spying in 1953. Can their sons reveal the truth?
By Hadley Freeman, The Guardian [UK] [June 19, 2021]
[FB – After the Rosenbergs were executed, their young sons were brought up in the home of the Meeropols, who lived on Villard Ave., and went to Hastings High School. Their new father, Abe Meeropol, wrote "Strange Fruit" for Billie Holliday. There's more; it's an interesting family history.]
---- Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sent to the electric chair for being Soviet spies, but their sons have spent decades trying to clear their mother's name. Are they close to a breakthrough?
It is a bitter, rainy spring day when I interview the Rosenbergs' sons. Only three and seven when their parents were arrested, six and 10 when they were killed, they are now grandfathers with grey beards and known as Michael and Robert Meeropol, having long ago taken the surname of the couple who adopted them after the US government orphaned them. When their parents were arrested, Michael, always a challenging child ("That's putting it kindly," he says), acted out even more, whereas Robert withdrew into himself. This dynamic still holds true: "Robert is more reserved and I tend to fly off the handle," says Michael, 78, a retired economics professor, whose eyes spark with fire when he recalls old battles. Patient, methodical Robert, 74, a former lawyer, considers every word carefully. We are all talking by video chat, and when I ask where Robert is, he replies that he's at home in Massachusetts, in a town "90 miles west of Boston and 150 miles north-east of New York City. [Read More]
