CFOW Newsletter - Focus on prospects of hope for our future

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

November 7, 2021

 

Hello All – Let's admit it.  Things are not looking great.  A casual scan of the evening news shows the climate summit in Glasgow will not do what's needed to prevent climate disaster; the USA seems determined to intensify a new "Cold War" with China; and at home the Republicans and some conservative Democrats have stymied President Biden's moderately progressive program to move the country forward.  How do we deal with this?

 

For some, though of course not all, the "state of the world" has a significant effect on our feeling of personal well-being. Reports of "depression" among political activists are widespread, and may be true. The possibility of another four years of Trump & his agenda are deeply alarming, perhaps shutting the door on many things we need to do. Under the best of circumstances, we have a titanic struggle ahead of us to save the human species from self-destruction.

 

"Hope," of course, is by definition dealing with an unknown future.  If we knew what was likely to happen, we would be afraid or confident, depending on our knowledge.  But "hope" is a response to what we don't know will happen.  In the face of the Unknown, do we retire from the struggle or continue our efforts to change what we want to change? Noam Chomsky has addressed this personal dilemma often.  For example:

 

"Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it's unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there's a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours."

 

We may consider ourselves fortunate or unlucky that our lives coincide with a moment of great peril for our civilization.  Nevertheless, this is the hand that Life has dealt us.  My hope is that we can continue our efforts to save ourselves, and my further hope is that these efforts will bear fruit. As noted above, the choice is ours.

 

Remembering Andy Ryan

Our stalwart comrade Andy Ryan died last month after a long illness.  Until his last stay in the hospital, Andy was the leafleter at our weekly vigils and struggled to find ways to attend demonstrations in the City, to join his friends from Occupy and Extinction Rebellion, to do what he could to advance peace and justice, to Save the Planet. CFOW's photographer Susan Rutman has assembled a great collection of her pictures of Andy, which you can see on Facebook.  We will hold a memorial gathering for Andy today, at the Dobbs Historical Society; and if you are seeing this Newsletter early enough, you can watch the speaking on Zoom, here.  Andy Ryan, thank you.

 

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!

As the Rivertowns ties its knickers in knots over the question of whether to allow marijuana dispensaries, one's thoughts turn naturally to the hit TV series "Weeds," which had a great music playlist.  The Rewards this week are taken from that archive: here are "Terrible Things"  by April Smith; "Did You Tell Her?" by Betty; and "F**k Was I" by Jenny Owen Youngs.  "Weeds" was a nice show for the whole family. Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

CFOW Weekly Reader

 

Why does the media keep saying this election was a loss for Democrats? It wasn't

By Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian [November 6, 2021]

---- Pretty much anything that happens to the Democrats is a sign that they're weak and losing and should be worried, according to the storylines into which mainstream media tends to stuff news. Pretty much nothing, including losing, seems to signify that the Republicans are losers. In so habitually and apparently unconsciously fitting a wide array of new and varied facts into familiar old frameworks, the media shape the political landscape at least as much as they report on it. It's in the language. … It is true that the Democratic Party is large and chaotic with a wide array of political positions among its elected officials, which is what happens when you're a coalition imperfectly representing a wide array of voters, by class, race, and position from moderate to radical on the political spectrum. It's also true the US is a two-party system and the alternative at present is the Republican Party, which is currently a venal and utterly corrupt cult bent on many kinds of destruction. It's the party whose last leader, with the help of many Republicans still in Congress, produced a violent coup in an attempt to steal an election. A friend who is an independent Democratic party organizer remarked to me: "Democrats are analyzed completely differently from Republicans, mainly because Democrats try to govern and to enact policies that affect the entire country. The media don't cover the fact that Republicans don't govern and can't seem to report on what a party doesn't do and doesn't talk about." Looming in the background, of course, is the fact that Republicans themselves believe they are losers, because they've hitched their wagon to the shrinking demographic of angry white suburban and rural voters. Their efforts to suppress votes and undermine voting rights, control or replace election officials, gerrymander like crazy and overturn election results are the moves of a party that doesn't believe Republicans can win fair elections. All this is treated as more or less ordinary and mostly not very newsworthy. [Read More]

 

America's Toxic Militarism has left Afghanistan, but Afghan Women are still Living with its Consequences

By Ann Jones, Informed Comment [November 1, 2021]

---- I arrived in Kabul in early 2002 after the bombing had stopped, as a volunteer with a small NGO run by and for women. From my frigid room on the second floor of what had once been a house, I looked down upon a bungalow next door: the windows still painted white to prevent people from staring at the women confined there and to prevent the women from looking out. It seemed, whatever Laura Bush might have imagined, that they had not been set free by America's bombs. In fact, it took both time and courage for women in the capital and other Afghan urban centers to find one another and begin to make common cause. From 2002, I worked with some of those women for years, not so much teaching or leading them, as merely answering questions, offering friendship and assistance as they worked together to make their own way out of those confining burqas and into a new world of greater confidence. They chose their own projects, their own strategies, their own compatriots. Then they entered public life, denouncing violence against women, backing women candidates for the new legislature, and publicizing their work. They developed ways to help widows, child brides, new mothers, rape victims, battered women, incarcerated women, and the raft of girls who had tried and failed to commit suicide by setting themselves on fire. [Read More]

 

America is a Poor Advertisement for Democracy

By John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus [November 3, 2021]

---- In 988, Prince Vladimir was undecided about which of the three great monotheistic religions to bring to his Russian realm. He sent envoys to the lands of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. The envoys returned with stories of the three faiths. According to legend, Vladimir rejected Judaism and Islam because of their dietary restrictions. The envoy who returned from Byzantium, meanwhile, spoke of the beauty and pomp of the services in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. As a result, Vladimir chose what would become Orthodox Christianity and forced his subjects to convert accordingly. Today, more than a thousand years later, Russia remains a predominantly Orthodox nation. Now, imagine that the ruler of a contemporary country must decide on what political system to adopt. She sends envoys to the capitals of three different realms: Washington, Brussels, and Beijing. A month later, the envoys return full of stories. The envoy to Brussels describes the prosperous region of Europe…. [Read More]

 

War & Peace

We've All Pretended About Taiwan for 72 Years. It May Not Work Any Longer.

By Jon Schwarz, The Intercept [November 5, 2021]

---- Recently a Republican college student asked President Joe Biden during a town hall on CNN if he could "vow to protect Taiwan" from China. "Yes," Biden responded. Anderson Cooper, who hosted the town hall, followed up with Biden, asking, "Are you saying that the United States would come to Taiwan's defense if China attacked?" "Yes," Biden said, "we have a commitment to do that." There are several problems with this. First, the U.S. does not, in fact, have a commitment to do that. Second, the policy we do have is deliberately ambiguous, requiring that the U.S., China, and Taiwan pretend that certain aspects of reality do not exist. Third, the lifespan of this delicate situation may be drawing to a close, yet the most sensible way of resolving it will always be opposed by America, since it would crack the foundations of the worldwide U.S. Empire. In other words, the whole morass is one of the most insoluble in international relations, which is saying something. It's also a situation that is genuinely frightening, since it could lead to a large war between China and the U.S., both armed with nuclear weapons. [Read More] Also interesting/useful is "Alternatives to the Pentagon's China Nightmares" by Joseph Gerson, Committee for a SANE US-China Policy [November 6, 2021]

[Link].

 

The Climate Crisis

COP26: Can a Singing, Dancing Rebellion Save the World?

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Code Pink [November 3, 2021]

---- COP Twenty-six! That is how many times the UN has assembled world leaders to try to tackle the climate crisis. But the United States is producing more oil and natural gas than ever; the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere and global temperatures are both still rising; and we are already experiencing the extreme weather and climate chaos that scientists have warned us about for forty years, and which will only get worse and worse without serious climate action. And yet, the planet has so far only warmed 1.2° Celsius (2.2° F) since pre-industrial times. We already have the technology we need to convert our energy systems to clean, renewable energy, and doing so would create millions of good jobs for people all over the world. So, in practical terms, the steps we must take are clear, achievable and urgent. The climate crisis has exposed this system's structural inability to act in the real interests of humanity, even when our very future hangs in the balance. The greatest obstacle to action that we face is our dysfunctional, neoliberal political and economic system and its control by plutocratic and corporate interests, who are determined to keep profiting from fossil fuels even at the cost of destroying the Earth's uniquely livable climate. The climate crisis has exposed this system's structural inability to act in the real interests of humanity, even when our very future hangs in the balance. So what is the answer?  [Read More]

 

Two excellent speeches at COP26 – (Video) Greta Thunberg Accuses World Leaders of 'Pure Madness' for Climate Failures at COP26, by Julia Conley, Common Dreams [November 5, 2021] Link] and (Video) Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley: 2 Degrees of Global Warming Is "Death Sentence" for Millions," from Democracy Now! [November 5, 2021] [Link].

 

The State of the Union

India Walton Lost, but She Started Something That Could Last [Buffalo mayoral election]

By JoAnn Wypijewski, The Nation [November 4, 2021]

---- On November 2, Walton didn't succeed in becoming "the first socialist mayor of a major American city in 100 years"—an idea that was wildly oversold by the progressive press nationally and used as a cudgel locally by Mayor Byron Brown, the putative victor in the mayor's race, who ran as a write-in candidate after suffering a stunning loss to Walton in the Democratic primary last June. What Walton did was galvanize a new electoral coalition in the city—across colors, ethnicities, generations, neighborhoods, classes. It wasn't enough to win, and her official campaign organization was raggedy, but at the watch party, even as the outcome of the vote became clear, Alexandria and other young folk who'd been working with the independent group Our City Action Buffalo, making calls and knocking on doors, talking about the state of things with their neighbors, were dancing. They'd tasted the joy of politics, and they aren't going away. [Read More]

 

Israel/Palestine

"I Would Like to See The New York Times Wash the Blood Off Its Hands"

An interview with Mohammed El-Kurd, by Noura Erakat The Nation [November 5, 2021]

---- Mohammed El-Kurd is a Palestinian poet, writer, and activist who grew up in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. When he was 11 years old, settlers carrying rifles and backpacks, and supported by the Israeli army, took over half his house. This spring, El-Kurd returned to Palestine from the United States, where he was studying for his MFA, to fight a renewed push to expel his family and neighbors from their homes. In the process, he helped spark what has come to be known as the Unity Intifada. He has since been named one of the 100 most influential people of 2021 by Time, and The Nation recently tapped him as our inaugural Palestine correspondent. In October, he published a book of poetry, Rifqa. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. —Noura Erakat [Read More]

 

The Long Arm of Israeli Repression

By Yousef Munayyer, Foreign Policy [November 5, 2021]

---- When the Saudi dissident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated by a team of Saudi regime operatives in Istanbul in 2018, the world reacted with horror at the gruesome crime as well as Riyadh's chilling message of repression to dissenters around the world: We will try to silence you wherever you are. While this led to an increased focus on transnational repression—the effort by various countries to extend their repressive reach beyond their borders—the Israeli government's effort to muzzle its critics has flown largely under the radar. The recent designation of six leading Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations by Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz—which has been dismissed by European governments and recently exposed in the Israeli press as based on dubious evidence—is the most recent and perhaps most high-profile step in a long-running campaign aimed at silencing critics of Israel's human rights abuses around the globe. [Read More]

 

Our History

Ancient History Shows How We Can Create a More Equal World

By David Graeber and David Wengrow, New York Times [November 4, 2021]

[FB – David Graeber was one of the founders of Occupy.  Shortly before he died last year, he and his co-author completed a book, which will be published this week, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Graeber was an academic anthropologist and an anarchist, an interesting combo, which is reflected in this essay adapted from the new book.]

---- Most of human history is irreparably lost to us. Our species, Homo sapiens, has existed for at least 200,000 years, but we have next to no idea what was happening for the majority of that time. In northern Spain, for instance, at the cave of Altamira, paintings and engravings were created over a period of at least 10,000 years, between around 25,000 and 15,000 B.C. Presumably, a lot of dramatic events occurred during that period. We have no way of knowing what most of them were. This is of little consequence to most people, since most people rarely think about the broad sweep of human history anyway. They don't have much reason to. Insofar as the question comes up at all, it's usually when reflecting on why the world seems to be in such a mess and why human beings so often treat each other badly — the reasons for war, greed, exploitation and indifference to others' suffering. Were we always like that, or did something, at some point, go terribly wrong? [Read More]