Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
February 21, 2021
Hello All – Concerned Families of Westchester invites you to join us, and more than 100 New York State organizations, to "Tax the Rich" and rescue our economy/services from disaster. Also known as "Invest in Our New York, the campaign advocates for the passage of a package of six pieces of legislation that would raise $50 billion to restore/maintain services needed by millions of New Yorkers. Without additional sources of revenue may soon be on the chopping block.
The "Tax the Rich" legislation would raise this money by relatively small tax increases on the very wealthiest New Yorkers. (Details of each piece of legislation can be found here.) The bills would:
- Increase tax rates for those making more than $1 million a year;
- Place a small fee on each Wall St. transaction;
- Establish an inheritance tax on very large estates;
- Add a tax on very large capital gains, equivalent to the tax breaks received from Trump;
- Increase corporate tax rates to the level they were at four years ago; and
- Begin work on a state constitution amendment that would allow taxing great wealth.
The key to successful passage of this legislation lies with the State Senator who represents most of the readers of this Newsletter, Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Advocates of this legislation believe that Stewart-Cousins will allow the legislation to come to a vote ONLY if she perceives MASSIVE support for it throughout the state.
Please take a few minutes to contact Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Via phone (518-455-2715) or email (scousins@nysenate.gov), tell her that you support the "Invest in Our New York" legislation package, and ask her to bring it to the Senate floor for a vote. Thanks!
News Notes
"The past is never dead," wrote William Faulkner. "It's not even past." And here it is again! Impeachment didn't work, but Donald Trump might still be prevented from future office-holding via the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which "disqualifies from public office any individual who has taken an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and then engages in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or has given aid or comfort to those who have." This strategy is gathering steam, as reported by The Nation's John Nichols [Link]. And as The New York Times' Charles Blow points out, the NAACP and others are going after Trump and Rudy Giuliani for their roles in the January 6th insurrection on the basis of a 1871 law intended to stop the Ku Klux Klan from derailing elections. Once again, History is not even past.
The barbarous spectacle of 13 federal prisoners put to death in the last weeks of the Trump era may, possibly, result in the end of the death penalty. A useful explanation of where things stand and what might be possible is laid out in a New York Times article by Elizabeth Bruenig, "The Government Has Not Explained How These 13 People Were Selected to Die." [Link]
The hard-working people at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in NYC have put up a dozen incisive reports outlining "A Progressive Agenda in the Biden Era." Check them out 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 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!
The Rewards for readers of this week's Newsletter are pulled from the song bag of Black History Month. There are so many great ones! – Here are Nina Simone with "I wish I knew (how it would feel to be free)"; the Resistance Revival Chorus with "Ella's Song"; and Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday," which helped to make MLK's birthday a national holiday. And there are so many more. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
THE COVID-19 CRISIS
Trump Is Guilty of Pandemicide
By Laurie Garrett, Foreign Policy [February 18, 2021]
---- At long last, we see glimmers of hope. The COVID-19 epidemic in the United States has fallen below the numbers of daily new cases tallied on the eve of the presidential election, the point at which this viral nightmare soared. Using the New York Times' coronavirus data tracker, on Nov. 1, 2020, there were 74,195 new cases counted in the country; by Feb. 16, new case reports came in at 64,376. But in between those dates, a national horror unfolded, peaking on Jan. 8 with 300,619 new cases reported in just 24 hours. This staggering wave, one full year into the pandemic, was completely unnecessary for the world's richest country. Achieving any sense of closure will require holding Donald Trump accountable for the failure. … According to a new Lancet Commission report compiled by an international team of august scientists and public health leaders, some 40 percent of America's COVID-19 death toll during the Trump administration was needless, meaning it could have been averted with available nonmedical interventions. [Read More] To illustrate Garrett's point, check out the graphic on today's NYTimes' front page, showing how more than half of US Covid deaths took place while Trump was focus on overturning the November 2020 election.
(Video) Lancet Report: 40% of U.S. COVID Deaths Were Preventable. The Country Needs Universal Healthcare Now
From Democracy Now! [February 15, 2021]
---- As the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 approaches half a million, a new report says nearly 40% of the deaths were avoidable. By comparing the pandemic in the U.S. to other high-income nations, the medical journal The Lancet found significant gaps in former President Donald Trump's "inept and insufficient" response to COVID-19, as well as decades of destructive public policy decisions. [See the Program]. And to read the Lancet report, "Public policy and health in the Trump era," go here.
Inside the Worst-Hit County in the Worst-Hit State in the Worst-Hit Country
e, The New Yorker [February 8, 2021]
---- Every day seems to bring another test of whether our democracy can succeed in managing the problems of a country as big, varied, and individualistic as ours. In Minot, a city of forty-eight thousand people in Ward County, North Dakota, the twice-monthly city-council meeting was into its fourth hour when an alderwoman named Carrie Evans put forward an unexpected motion: she wanted Minot to adopt a mandatory-mask policy. It was Monday, October 19th, two weeks before the Presidential election. … I wanted to understand what made it so difficult for people to come together and address a deadly crisis. [Read More]
FEATURED ESSAYS
How Can We Revive Herd Immunity to Fascism?
By Gilbert Achcar, The Nation [February 20, 2021]
---- The onset of this far-right pandemic goes back to the 1980s and was powerfully boosted in the following decade. Like the classical fascism of the three decades that followed the First World War, this "neofascism"—arguably the best designation, as it refers to both historical affinities and the renewal of forms in tune with our times—takes different shapes according to the countries in which it develops. … There is indeed a clear and undeniable correlation between the neoliberal onslaught that started in the 1980s, led by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan—an onslaught that made "deregulation" one of its main goals, along with privatization, reduction of social spending, and tax cuts for the rich—and the rise of phenomena such as neofascism and religious fundamentalism after decades of marginalization. Likewise, the Great Recession, triggered in 2007, gave a major boost to neofascist forces, as did the major wave of mostly Syrian refugees pouring into Europe in 2015…. Achieving a new state of herd immunity to fascism, like that of the postwar years, requires not only a political defeat of the most prominent neofascist movements and an uncompromising fight against their ideologies. It also requires, most crucially, a global shift away from the neoliberal paradigm that has been dominant over the past four decades. [Read More]
The Trumpers Among Us
By Katha Pollitt, The Nation [February 18, 2021]
---- What are we going to do about the 74 million of our fellow citizens who voted for Donald Trump? After he won the White House in 2016, Democrats were told we had to understand them. "Economic anxiety" was the preferred left explanation—no matter how often one pointed out that Trump voters had a higher median income than Clinton voters or wondered out loud how come Black and Latino people's economic anxieties didn't make them cast ballots for a reactionary reality-TV clown. The Trumper was always the small farmer, the miner, the worker whose factory had closed. Except for the occasional piece marveling at women and evangelicals who didn't care about Trump's pussy-grabbing, nobody was too interested in interviewing dentists or realtors or supermarket owners—the regular Republicans who were the vast majority of his supporters. [Read More]
The Lockdown Showed How the Economy Exploits Women. She Already Knew. [Silvia Federici]
---- Silvia Federici, the 78-year-old scholar and theorist of domestic labor, one of the most influential socialist feminist thinkers of the last century. … I had asked to meet because the pandemic and its cascade of economic, social and political breakdowns had led to a profusion of Federician thinking in places I had never encountered it before. Suddenly notions and phrases from her work were all over my social media feeds, op-ed pages and exchanges with friends, as people confronted what kinds of labor are considered essential and why. Federici is a longtime advocate of the idea that domestic work is unwaged labor and was a founder of the Wages for Housework movement in the early 1970s. [Read More]
The Arab Spring Failed But the Rage Against Misery and Injustice Continues
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent [UK] [February 17, 2021]
---- Ten years ago, people across the Middle East and North Africa rose up in protest against their rulers, demanding freedom and democracy. Despotic rulers were toppled or feared that power was being torn from their grasp in countries across the region, as millions of demonstrators surged through the streets, chanting that "the people demand the fall of the regime". There was nothing phoney about this mass yearning for liberty and social justice. Vast numbers of disenfranchised people briefly believed that they could overthrow dictatorships, both republican and monarchical. … Out of the six countries where the Arab Spring had the greatest impact, three – Libya, Syria and Yemen – are still being ripped apart by endless civil wars. In two of them – Egypt and Bahrain – state violence and suppression are far worse than in the past. Only Tunisia, where the protests began after a street vendor burnt himself to death, has so far escaped tyranny or anarchy, though the uprising has largely failed to deliver a better life for its people. [Read More]
Where is the US Border?
FB – A few weeks ago the Newsletter linked an imo insightful article by Harsha Walia called "The Long Arc of the US Border Policy." In the article Walia summarized one of the themes of her new book, Border & Rule, arguing that "borders" were more than lines on the map, and reflected power relations and some legacies/current features of imperialism. Two articles on this very topic caught my eye this week; see what you think.
Guatemala Takes a Hard Line Against Migrants—With US Support
By Jeff Abbott, The Nation [February 16, 2021]
---- As tens of thousands of desperate Hondurans and Salvadorans streamed through Guatemala on their way to the United States, the Trump administration increased pressure on the Central American country to control migratory routes. In response, the Guatemalan government has increasingly deployed the military, backed by police, to disband caravans and "irregular" migration. … The United States has for years exported the control of migratory routes to Mexico and Central America. The repression of the most recent Honduran migrant caravan highlights this shift, but the effort began much earlier, during the Obama administration.. [Read More]
If It Were A Narco Lab, It Would Be Working [Honduras]
By John Perry, London Review of Books. [February 17, 2021]
---- On the day he was inaugurated, Joe Biden halted the construction of Trump's Mexican border wall. A few days earlier, 1500 miles to the south, a new 'caravan' of at least eight thousand Honduran migrants had set off northwards, partly in the hope that by the time they tried to cross into Texas, Biden's promised softening of immigration policy might have taken effect. Obstacles left by Trump still stand in their way. … Why do people take these risks? The truth is that Honduras is a failed state and, unless US policy towards it changes radically, many thousands more will head north. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
[FB – It is too early to be discouraged, but President Biden's foreign policy moves suggest that he will at best move too cautiously to end US military support/action for our half-dozen wars around the world. To ambiguities about his statements about withdrawing support from Saudi Arabia's war against Yemen must be added concern that his statements about Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan suggest hopes for US troop withdrawals may be only that, "hopes." Biden's statements about Venezuela seem to reaffirm the US commitment to the hostility of the Obama/Trump regimes, and his statements on Israel/Palestine give the Palestinians nothing. His "diplomacy" on the Iran Nuclear Agreement seems to be a recipe for failure, as the articles linked below explain. "Progressives" must speak out; "not being Trump" is not enough.]
Will the US restore the Iran Nuclear Agreement?
First steps toward returning to the Iran nuke deal — but what's next?
By Joe Cirincione, Responsible Statecraft [February 18, 2021]
---- Something is going very wrong with President Joe Biden's Iran policy and it's not clear why. Unless he corrects course, Biden risks losing a vital agreement and putting the two nations back on a path towards war — at precisely the time he wants to focus on the multiple domestic crises gripping America. In his first month in office, Biden quickly reversed the most damaging of Donald Trump's policies on climate, immigration, health care, and many others. But he has left untouched Trump's Iran policy. He has retained all of Trump's onerous sanctions and has not renewed the diplomatic exchanges between the two nations that were routine during the last years of the Obama-Biden administration. Biden is, in effect, continuing Trump's failed "maximum pressure" campaign. Why? … The greatest danger of Donald Trump's Iran policy was that the two sides would stumble into a war that neither government wanted. Now the greatest danger of Joe Biden's policy is that the two sides could fumble away a deal that both governments actually want. [Read More]
Is Biden Committing Diplomatic Suicide Over The Iran Nuclear Agreement?
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Code Pink [February 17, 2021]
---- As Congress still struggles to pass a COVID relief bill, the rest of the world is nervously reserving judgment on America's new president and his foreign policy, after successive U.S. administrations have delivered unexpected and damaging shocks to the world and the international system. Cautious international optimism toward President Biden is very much based on his commitment to Obama's signature diplomatic achievement, the JCPOA or nuclear agreement with Iran. Biden and the Democrats excoriated Trump for withdrawing from it and promised to promptly rejoin the deal if elected. But Biden now appears to be hedging his position in a way that risks turning what should be an easy win for the new administration into an avoidable and tragic diplomatic failure. [Read More]
Also useful reading on the US and Iran – "Why Is Biden Creating Himself An Iran Quagmire?" from Moon of Alabama [February 18, 2021] [Link]; and "US Ready to Meet With Iran if Invited by the EU" bHow to Write About Iran: A Guide for Journalists, Analysts, and Policymakers" by Ladane Nasseri, McSweeney's [February 16, 2021].
Will Biden End the 20-Year War in Afghanistan?
Trump was right: Get out of Afghanistan
By Stephen Kinzer, Boston Globe [February 18, 2021]
---- A truly historic moment is fast approaching. Under an accord signed last year, our two-decade war in Afghanistan will finally conclude in May. Afghans will be left to shape their own future, and American blood and treasure will no longer flow in Central Asia. It is President Trump's one and only claim to diplomatic glory: ending a war. Oh, wait — not so fast! The prospect of withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan has struck terror into many hearts in Washington. Arms makers, retired generals, and the think tanks that love them have launched a multipronged campaign aimed at President Biden. They want him to renounce last year's agreement and keep troops in Afghanistan. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
The US Returns to the Paris Agreement Today—With Lots of Work Ahead for the World
By Tom Athanasiou, The Nation [February 19, 2021]
---- Today, the United States formally reenters the Paris Agreement. Signed in December of 2015 by the Obama administration and abandoned in 2017 by then-President Trump, the accord was and remains a landmark achievement in global climate diplomacy. … As the United States reenters the Paris circle, a bit of reflection is in order. Scientists are terrified, and delivering messages that are difficult to hear, particularly now, when we have good reasons to doubt that our political systems will rise to the challenge. Despair, with the complacency it can breed, is a real danger. It's easy to see why many people believe the accord's weaknesses is more evidence of the larger institutional impotence. In fact, though, the Paris Agreement can work, but the first crucial steps must be completed, soon. [Read More]
The Real Reasons Texas's Power Grid Is So Vulnerable
By Zoë Carpenter, The Nation [February 19, 2021]
---- Millions of people across Texas have now spent as many as five days without electricity and water, thanks to a blast of Arctic air that plunged much of the Southern Plains into bone-chilling temperatures and overwhelmed the state's power grid. The reasons the system failed are complex, though that's not the impression you'd get from Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and other conservative politicians and media personalities, who've spent the week blaming one particular scapegoat: wind turbines. … But what's happening in Texas is not an indicator that renewable energy is less reliable, or that climate change is insignificant: It's a signal that our infrastructure is frighteningly unprepared for the kinds of extreme weather events that are driven by climate change. [Read More] And from 350.org's founder Bill McKibben, "Blaming the Wind for the Mess in Texas Is Painfully Absurd," The New Yorker [February 18, 2021].
CIVIL LIBERTIES
The Atrocious Prosecution of Julian Assange
---- There is no doubt: Assange is being prosecuted for practicing journalism, for his 2010 publication of military documents leaked by Chelsea Manning, revealing U.S. war crimes in Iraq. Most damning was the classified, nearly 40-minute video, released by Wikileaks and Assange, called "Collateral Murder" and filmed from the gun-sight of a U.S. Apache helicopter shooting at and killing over a dozen Iraqi civilians, among them two Reuters journalists on a suburban street. That video shocked the world. That video sealed Assange's fate. [Read More] And for an update, read "On the Matter of Assange's Lawyers Considering a Cross Appeal" by Alexander Mercouris, Antiwar.com [February 19, 2021] [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Freedom From Poverty Should Be a Human Right
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, The Nation [February 20, 2021]
---- In a moment of unprecedented crisis, when 140 million people in the richest country on the planet are poor or low-income, when tens of millions of them are on the verge of eviction and millions more have lost their health care in the midst of a pandemic, at a moment when Congress and the president are debating the next Covid-19 relief package, isn't it finally time for human rights and guarantees to become the standard for any such set of policies? … Today, Congress is being driven to respond to a crisis that has this country in its grip with a $1.9 trillion relief package. The lesson of history, however, is that such measures, when they align with the basic demands of justice, should not be piecemeal or temporary. [Read More] And to amplify one of Rev. Theoharis's points, read "Yes we need the $1.9 Trillion Stimulus: Real Unemployment is 3 times what they're telling us" by Work Won't Love You Back': Sarah Jaffe on Toxic U.S. Work Culture & the Fight Against Inequality" from Democracy Now! [February 17, 2021] [Link].
(Video) "Not Doing This Is a Choice": Biden Drags His Feet on Canceling Student Debt Despite Campaign Pledge
From Democracy Now! [February 18, 2021]
---- Students, campaigners and top Democrats have been pushing President Joe Biden to use executive authority to cancel at least $50,000 in student loan debt per person. Student loan debt in the U.S. stands at $1.7 trillion, with some 45 million people owing money. Filmmaker and organizer Astra Taylor, an author, documentary director and organizer with the Debt Collective, says Biden has clear legal authority to cancel student debt. "Not doing this is a choice," she says. [See the Program] Also useful is "What Joe Biden Gets Totally Wrong About Student Debt" by Elie Mystal, The Nation [February 19, 2021] [Link].
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Noam Chomsky: Solidarity movements key to changing US Middle East policy [Interview]
By Lilach Ben David, +972 Magazine [Israel] [February 17, 2021]
---- Professor Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned linguist and one of the most important political thinkers of last half century, may have celebrated his 92nd birthday late last year, but his intellect and instincts are as sharp as ever. Among many areas of his impact on the global left, he has remained a fierce critic of American empire, global capitalism, and Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. I sat down with Chomsky for a conversation over Zoom in December 2020, just a few months after Israel signed normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and just weeks after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the U.S. election. We discussed the effects of the Abraham Accords, what Biden can do to stop Israel's apartheid policies, and the possibility of a widespread solidarity movement to support the Palestinian people. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
The roots of revolutionary nonviolence in the United States are in the Black community
February 15, 2021]
---- Many are wondering how to respond to the current white supremacist threat. We only have to look to history — to those who organized against the brutal culture and laws of segregation in this country — for inspiration on the importance of relationship building, creative strategies and training to dismantle it today. Few people today know that it was transnational solidarity between Black and white Christian clergy in the United States and Indian activists fighting for independence from British colonial rule that introduced the philosophies and strategies of revolutionary nonviolence to the United States, and that this work would build the foundation leading towards the civil rights movement. … Many of the participants had met through civil rights activities during the '40s, and were World War II resisters. Members of this group went on to organize and train CORE's DC Summer Workshops, including Bayard Rustin, Wally Nelson and George Houser. Wally and Juanita Nelson and Ernest and Marion Bromley, along with Ralph Templin — and many who had been involved in the Harlem Ashram and CORE — founded the Peacemakers in 1948, and organized the present-day war tax resistance movement. [Read More]
(Video) Democracy Now! Turns 25: Celebrating a Quarter-Century of Independent News on the Frontlines
From Democracy Now! [February 19, 2021]
---- Democracy Now! first aired on nine community radio stations on February 19, 1996, on the eve of the New Hampshire presidential primary. In the 25 years since that initial broadcast, the program has greatly expanded, airing today on more than 1,500 television and radio stations around the globe and reaching millions of people online. We celebrate 25 years of the War and Peace Report with an hour-long retrospective, including highlights from the show's early years, some of the most controversial interviews, and groundbreaking reports from East Timor, Standing Rock, Western Sahara and more. [Read More]
