Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
November 21, 2021
Hello All – Friday's "not guilty" verdict in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse turns another page in the dangerous growth of militarized White Supremacy in the USA. The legal issues in the trial turned on the question of whether Rittenhouse was acting in "self-defense" when he killed people trying to disarm him. But the larger issue stems from Rittenhouse's arrival in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to oppose large protests against the police shooting of an unarmed and unresisting Black man, Jacob Blake. And for this, Rittenhouse brought his rifle.
The acquittal was not altogether surprising. The judge clearly favored Rittenhouse and the defense, and the alleged right to shoot someone in "self-defense" also made the case a difficult one for the prosecution. As the family of one of Rittenhouse's victims said after the trial, the verdict sends the "unacceptable message that armed vigilantes can use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street." Indeed, observers fear that it is now "open season on protesters." One legal expert, writing about the case of murdered Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, wrote that "Arbery's Killers Are Using the Logic of Slave Patrols to Defend Themselves." In fact, one can almost hear echoes of the Supreme Court's Chief Justice Taney in the 1857 Dred Scott decision saying that Black people "had no rights which the white man is bound to respect."
Some useful reading on the Kyle Rittenhouse case
Saddening, Infuriating, and Utterly Unsurprising': Rittenhouse Acquitted
Kyle Rittenhouse Has Gotten Away With Murder—as Predicted
By Elie Mystal, The Nation [November 19, 2021] [Link].
Kyle Rittenhouse has walked free. Now it's open season on protesters
By Cas Mudde, The Guardian [UK] [November 19, 2021] [Link]
Arbery's Killers Are Using the Logic of Slave Patrols to Defend Themselves
By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [November 19, 2021] [Link]
News Notes
For those keeping score at home, the Covid-19 virus has already killed more people this year than it did in 2020. This is despite the now-proven efficacy of masks and social distancing, and for several months the availability of effective vaccines. To take safety precautions (or not) has become a divisive political issue in the USA, and so now there are three times as many unvaccinated Republicans as Democrats. This vaccine-gap shows up in mortality: for the first 9 months of 2021, of the 29,000 deaths by Covid in Texas, only 8 percent were fully vaccinated. For more on this medical madness, go here.
The vaccine-gap also shows up in the differences in vaccination rates between rich and poor countries. Fewer than 5 percent of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose of vaccine, compared to 69 percent in the USA. Is there any doubt that this is a major ethical problem, and that we cannot rely on "the market" to care equitably for humankind? For more on this topic, go here.
For at least this writer, the massive resistance from indigenous peoples against drilling, extraction, and pipelines on their ancestral lands has had the collateral effect of teaching and learning more about the Canadian and USA relation to native people. A current instructive example is the Canadian attack on the Wet'suwet'en people of British Columbia. As a leading water protector told Democracy Now! this week, "This project does not have free, prior, informed consent of the Wet'suwet'en people. It's as if we don't exist as Indigenous people, and that we don't have our own governance and that we don't have our own system of law."
Finally, CFOW recently joined the Westchester Alliance for Sustainable Solutions (WASS), part of a national consortium of grassroots with a focus on preventing and closing waste incinerators. WASS is hiring an organizer to work on this, starting with the dirty incinerator in Peekskill. For more information, go 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 6:00 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!
We're back this week with some more Tuba Skinny, which is nursing me through today's newsletter. One of the great things about this group is their leader/cornet player Shaye Cohn, and here is a short appreciation of her work. And here's the band in their home habitat of New Orleans' French Quarter. There are hundreds of their videos on line; enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
(Video) "Hell on Earth": Millions of Afghans Face Starvation as U.S. & West Freeze Billions in Gov't Funds
From Democracy Now! [November 16, 2021]
---- Humanitarian and economic conditions are rapidly deteriorating in Afghanistan, where the U.N. estimates that more than half of the population suffers from acute hunger. The country has fallen into an economic crisis after the U.S. and other Western countries cut off direct financial assistance to the government following the Taliban takeover in August. Taliban leaders are also unable to access billions of dollars in Afghan national reserves that are held in banks overseas. "Forty million civilians were left behind when the NATO countries went for the door in August," says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who recently visited Afghanistan and with refugees in Iran, where as many as 5,000 Afghans are fleeing every day. "They told me very clearly, 'We believe we will starve and freeze to death this harsh winter unless there is an enormous aid operation coming through.'" [See the Program] On Friday the US special envoy for Afghanistan responded Friday to an appeal from the Taliban for Washington to release billions in frozen Afghan funds. Thomas West, who recently replaced Zalmay Khalilzad, said the Taliban would have to first 'earn' legitimacy." [Link]
House Democrats Just Gave Their Party a Fighting Chance in 2022
By John Nichols, The Nation [November 19, 2021]
---- The November 2 off-year elections sent a wake-up call to President Joe Biden and Democratic Party leaders in Congress, after the party suffered setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey, and other states. The voters who in 2020 gave the president and his party control of the White House and Congress were tired of bickering and wanted results. House Democrats got the message. After months of dithering on Capitol Hill, they decided to govern. Since November 2, they have approved a $1 trillion infrastructure bill and a $1.9 trillion social welfare and climate justice bill. … They've backed a plan that, while significantly smaller than what progressives led by Senate Budget Committee chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had hoped for, is consequential in scope and character. [Read More] The details of both the legislation passed and the negotiations leading up to this are important and explained well by Ryan Grim, "Centrist Democrats Honor Promise as House Approves Build Back Better Act," The Intercept [November 19, 2021] [Link]. Surveying the Democrats' prospects for 2022 and 2024, New York Times analyst Thomas B. Edsall writes, "Democrats Shouldn't Panic. They Should Go Into Shock" [Link].
Democracy Under Attack
(Video) With Extreme Gerrymandering, the Republicans Are Rigging the Next Decade of Elections
From Democracy Now! [November 17, 2021]
---- Republicans are set to claim the House majority in next year's midterm elections with help from heavily gerrymandered congressional district maps in states nationwide that could shape politics for the next decade, securing Republican wins even as the party's popular vote shrinks at the national level, says Mother Jones reporter Ari Berman. "The same states that are pushing voter suppression are also pushing extreme gerrymandered maps to lock in white Republican power for the next decade at the state and federal level," says Berman. [See the Program] For more details, read Berman's article in Mother Jones, "Republicans Are Erasing Decades of Voting Rights Gains Before Our Eyes" [Link]; and from today's New York Times, Michael Wines writes, "As Gerrymanders Get Worse, Legal Options to Overturn Them Dwindle" [Link].
War & Peace
Iran deal hanging by a thread as talks set to resume
By Muhammad Sahimi, Responsible Statecraft [November 17, 2021]
---- Negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 for reviving the agreement for limiting Iran's nuclear program are expected to resume on November 29. Last year during his presidential campaign President Biden said multiple times that his administration will quickly rejoin the JCPOA, but over a year after his election, that has yet to materialize. This is mostly due to the U.S. refusing to lift all the sanctions that the Trump administration had imposed on Iran, although Iran's internal political dynamics, and the power struggle between the administration of former President Hassan Rouhani and the hardliners, also played role. … The fact remains that the Biden administration missed its chance to reach an agreement with the Rouhani administration last spring and, with their rigid and ideological view of the world, Iran's hardliners will be much tougher to reach an agreement with. [Read More]. One potential flash point involves the 900+ US troops in Syria: read "To Avoid another War Biden must get US Troops, caught in Israel-Iran Crossfire, out of Syria" b[Link].
The Climate Crisis
To Govern the Globe: Washington's World Order and Catastrophic Climate Change
---- When the leaders of more than 100 nations gathered in Glasgow for the U.N. climate conference last week, there was much discussion about the disastrous effect of climate change on the global environment. There was, however, little awareness of its likely political impact on the current world order that made such an international gathering possible. World orders are deeply rooted global systems that structure relations among nations and the conditions of life for their peoples. … But within a decade, climate change will already be wreaking a kind of cumulative devastation likely to surpass previous catastrophes, creating the perfect conditions for the eclipse of Washington's liberal world order and the rise of Beijing's decidedly illiberal one. In this sweeping imperial transition, global warming will undoubtedly be the catalyst for a witch's brew of change guaranteed to erode both America's world system and its once unchallenged hegemony (along with the military force that's been behind it all these years).. [Read More] For a detailed review of what was accomplished – and what was not accomplished – at the Glasgow climate meeting, read "COP26: What You'd Expect When Oil Companies Are in and Environmentalists Are Out" b [LInk].
The State of the Unions
Teamsters United Takes the Wheel
By Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes [November 18, 2021]
[FB – If we are to save ourselves, an important role will be played by the revival of rank-and-file democracy and the strengthening/expansion of our union movement. As noted even in the mainstream media, last month saw a huge leap in the number of USA people out on strike. In this article, the rank-and-file democratizing efforts in the Teamsters union have just won a huge victory; and in the article below, a month-long strike by thousands of workers at the John Deere Company was also successful. For an overview of "Striketober," go here.]
---- A new administration will soon take the helm of the 1.3 million-member Teamsters union. The Teamsters United slate swept to victory in this week's vote count, beating out their rivals 2 to 1. It's the first time in almost a quarter-century that a coalition backed by Teamsters for a Democratic Union has taken the driver's seat in the international union. … The challengers rode a wave of fury over concessions and weak contracts, especially at UPS, the union's biggest bargaining unit, where TDU and other Teamsters United supporters had campaigned for a no vote on a contract that would create a lower-paid second tier of drivers. [Read More]. And a strike that gained national publicity was won by the thousands of UAW workers at John Deere (farm machinery manufacture); read "'Sacrifice and Solidarity' Pay Off as Striking John Deere Workers Win Bigger Wage Hike," by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams [November 18, 2021] [Link]. For some thought-provoking historical context, read "The Labor Upsurge of the 1930s and '40s in the U.S.: Lessons for Today", by Michael Goldfield and Cody R. Melcher, Organizing Upgrade [November 21, 2021] [Link].
Israel/Palestine
Celebrating poetry of the people: an interview with Mohammed El-Kurd
[FB – Mohoammed El-Kurd has become known to many people because of his leadership in East Jerusalem's Sheikh-Jarrah neighborhood, which is under attack from Israeli authorities and settler/squatters. He is also a poet, and his debut poetry collection is called Rifqa, the name of his grandmother; and his poems follow difficult life before and during the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem. This interview was conducted by George Abraham and published on November 19th.]
---- I think Jerusalem is a city that is really unique in this world in the sense of the hyper-surveillance, the hyper-militarization, the very specific approach to culture and religion, and the approach to life in Jerusalem. It's just unlike any place else in the world, and it's very violent. And yet it's still, and I don't want to do the whole romanticizing thing, but it's still very beautiful in a lot of ways. And it's also a reminder of the Empire being finite, right? Jerusalem has had so much turmoil and wars and occupations, and they've always always fallen and Jerusalem remains for its people. When you interpret the world through Jerusalem, you remind yourself of what you deserve, of your right to fury, your right to dignity. It teaches you dignity. … And when you interpret the world through Jerusalem, you remind yourself of what you deserve, of your right to fury, your right to dignity, right? It teaches you dignity. It teaches you how to stand up for yourself to a certain degree because you're like being shoved from all places. They want to displace you, they want to silence you. They want to do this, they want to do that. So you stand up for yourself. [Read More]
(Video) 'Everyone's a Suspect.' Six Former Israeli Soldiers Speak on Their Time in Hebron.
From The New York Times [November 16, 2021]
---- The director of this short documentary, Rona Segal learned filmmaking in the Israeli army.
Now, she turns the camera on her fellow soldiers who had served in the occupation force in the Palestinian city of Hebron. The job: to protect the several hundred Jewish settlers who had moved in to "redeem" Hebron, and to terrorize the Palestinians into submission. [See the Program]
Now, she turns the camera on her fellow soldiers who had served in the occupation force in the Palestinian city of Hebron. The job: to protect the several hundred Jewish settlers who had moved in to "redeem" Hebron, and to terrorize the Palestinians into submission. [See the Program]
Our History
(Video) Who Killed Malcolm X? Two Men Are Exonerated as Manhattan DA Reveals Details of FBI Cover-Up
From Democracy Now! [November 19, 2021]
---- We speak with independent researcher Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, whose work is featured in the Netflix documentary "Who Killed Malcolm X?" and helped ignite widespread public support for two men falsely convicted of assassinating the civil rights activist in 1965. Muhammad was in the courtroom this week as a judge exonerated 83-year-old Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam due to revelations uncovered by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and the Innocence Project that key evidence was withheld at the trial. Aziz has maintained his innocence and addressed the court after he finally received an official apology, saying his false conviction was "the result of a process that was corrupt to its core." Muhammad says being in the courtroom was "surreal." "To watch the government admit that these brothers were sent to prison for a crime they didn't commit was stunning." [See the Program]
