Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
April 24, 2022
Hello All – Earth Day was born in 1970 not as a celebration, or a feel-good moment for big corporations, but as a protest – one of the biggest protests in US history, with some 20 million people on the streets. The protest jump-started the environmental movement, and within just a few years we had congressional legislation protecting clean water and air, and more. Writing in
The Nation, Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope remind us of the extent of the movement, and of the important role played by the mainstream media in launching the environmental movement. They write:
CBS and ABC devoted virtually their entire broadcasts to the Earth Day story, with correspondents emphasizing the scourges of air and water pollution in reports from New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago, Denver, Albuquerque, and St. Louis. NBC's coverage was less extensive but featured one item that, viewed today, seems eerily prescient. Anchorman Frank Blair reported that "a government scientist" had told colleagues at the American Geophysical Union that "over-pollution, unless checked, could so warm the earth in 200 years as to create a greenhouse effect, melting the Arctic ice cap and flooding vast areas of the world." At the time, network television was approaching the height of its power to influence public opinion. So when the evening newscasts lavished so much attention on Earth Day, and made their support for tackling pollution so clear, the effects were profound.
But then the movement to save the Earth stalled. Fossil fuel corporations poured millions of dollars into propaganda supporting burning more coal, oil, and natural gas, and funding PR firms to confuse us about whether "climate change" was real. As a result, though scientists knew by the late 1980s that we had an emergency, we lost decades in actually getting anything done to save ourselves. Needless to say, even as the UN is producing reports titled "A Question of Survival," it is unimaginable that the mainstream media would treat this news with the same urgency and dire warnings that their mainstream counterparts did 50 years ago. And yet today we have tons of scientific evidence, including the just-published UN report, which says we have only a few years to turn on a dime, and to make an instant transition from burning fossil fuels to using renewable energy such as solar and wind. Moreover, as Tom Athanasiou notes in an article linked below, we have not only the knowledge about what needs to be done, but also – as the examples of Covid funding or the bank bailouts of 2009 or our massive military expenditures – we know that we can spend whatever sums are needed when we have an emergency.
People, we have to get focused. We have to get angry. We have to move. Millions of people in the USA and around the world know disaster is coming. We have a clear consensus that in a few short years we will reach a "tipping point," beyond which a cooler planet cannot be recovered. What can we do to minimize this harm, and to give our descendents a chance for a good life? Our Ship of State is going down; let's make every day Earth Day.
Beauty as Fuel for Change
CFOW's new initiative, Beauty as Fuel for Change, is now launched. Our founding statement says: "At this time when our #Democracy is at a crossroads, CFOW embarks on a new initiative for 2022. As Community leaders of this initiative, Concerned Families of Westchester stalwarts hope to inspire an exploration of expressive, creative visioning. We want to plant seeds of positive representations, to interrupt the negative, divisive patterns we live with today. A project to change the conversation, with creative expression that is hopeful and helpful and inspires us to create a better world! This is a vehicle for positive imaginings & a way to reach out beyond borders to build bridges between activists in all arenas and to let us unleash the power of creativity in our human community!" To learn more, go to our Facebook Group. To contact the project organizers, email BeautyAsFuel@gmail.com.
CFOW Nuts and Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting, 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 will be held each 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 for the link. 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!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
How We Stopped Believing That People Can Change
April 22, 2022]
---- My friend Jarvis Masters entered San Quentin prison in 1981 as an angry teenager guilty of numerous counts of armed robbery, and then, with help from a friend on the outside, a new set of ideas and values came his way. … Mr. Masters has been in San Quentin for 41 years, most of that time on death row for a crime I and many others believe, based on careful review of the case, that he did not commit. … But the legal system shows little interest in the strong case for his innocence on the charges and seems to see him as only the surly young Black man it locked up all those years ago. Prisons have long used language such as "correctional," "reformatory" and "penitentiary" that suggest they are committed to changing their inmates, but in the tough-on-crime era, the prison system focused on punishment rather than reform. To this day, it seems poorly equipped to recognize when those transformations have taken place, unless it's in a parole hearing, and people sentenced to death don't get that. It's not just prisons and the criminal justice system. We as a society seem unequipped to recognize transformations, just as we lack formal processes — other than monetary settlements — for those who have harmed others to make reparations as part of their repentance or transformation. [Read More]
A Campaign of Terror Against Reproductive Rights Is Already Forging a Post-Roe World
By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [
---- From local law enforcement agencies to governors' offices, anti-abortion crusaders are already acting as though Roe v. Wade is dead and abortion is fully criminalized. A post-Roe reality has been the de facto status quo for years in dozens of states where abortion can't be accessed. What we're observing now is an escalation in which abortion-seekers and providers are terrorized as violent criminals, even prior to the act being formally criminalized. The case that we cannot rely on the courts to protect reproductive rights is only made stronger when examining this campaign of terror against seekers and providers of abortions: Those who would deny these people's autonomy or block their access to reproductive health care are carrying out their campaign by employing tactics beyond the law. This isn't just about judges ruling in favor of one side or the other. The forces at work here go beyond the criminalization of abortions — this is about how policing works. … The fascist campaign against reproductive rights has placed pregnant people — particularly pregnant people of color without resources — within that category. [Read More] Recently, Democracy Now! had a useful program, "Abortion Bans Pass in GOP-Led Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma & Tennessee as SCOTUS Set to Overturn Roe."
The War in Ukraine
Chomsky: Our Priority on Ukraine Should Be Saving Lives, Not Punishing Russia
An interview with C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout [April 20, 2022]
---- Our prime concern should be to think through carefully what we can do to bring the criminal Russian invasion to a quick end and to save the Ukrainian victims from more horrors. There are, unfortunately, many who find heroic pronouncements to be more satisfying than this necessary task. Not a novelty in history, regrettably. As always, we should keep the prime issue clearly in mind, and act accordingly. Turning to your comment, the final question is by far the most important one; I'll return to the earlier ones. There are, basically, two ways for this war to end: a negotiated diplomatic settlement or destruction of one or the other side, either quickly or in prolonged agony. It won't be Russia that is destroyed. Uncontroversially, Russia has the capacity to obliterate Ukraine, and if Putin and his cohort are driven to the wall, in desperation they might use this capacity. That surely should be the expectation of those who portray Putin as a "madman" immersed in delusions of romantic nationalism and wild global aspirations. That's clearly an experiment that no one wants to undertake — at least no one who has the slightest concern for Ukrainians. [Read More]
Ukraine's Nuclear Flashpoints
By Michael T. Klare, The Nation [April 20, 2022]
---- Until very recently, the prospect of nuclear weapons use by a major nuclear power has appeared relatively remote, enabling other issues—terrorism, climate change, Covid—to dominate the global agenda. But that period of relative immunity to Armageddon has drawn to a close and we have entered a New Nuclear Era, in which the risk of nuclear weapons use by the major powers has reemerged as a daily fact of life. … We have now entered a period in which the deliberate use of nuclear weapons is again a distinct possibility, and every clash between the major powers carries the risk of nuclear escalation. The conditions that made this transformation possible—including a renewed emphasis on nuclear war-fighting among the major powers—have been in place for several years, but the decisive shift was propelled by Russian President Vladimir Putin's multiple threats to employ nuclear weapons against any other state that attempt to impede his drive to subjugate Ukraine. [Read More]
US Weapons, European Supplicants Block Peace in Ukraine
, The Grayzone [April 21, 2022]
----As the Russia-Ukraine war opens a new phase in the Donbas, scholar Richard Sakwa on the absence of diplomacy; the Western media's veneration of Zelensky; the European Union's self-implosion over the war; and the crackdown on dissent in both Ukraine and Russia. [Read More] Also of interest is an article by Aaron Maté [April 10th], "Siding with Ukraine's far right, US sabotaged Zelensky's mandate for peace," [Link].
War & Peace
(Video) Is nuclear disarmament possible?
From Aljazeera [April 22, 2022] [13 minutes]
13 minutes Up Front Mark Lamont Hill
---- "We are pushing closer and closer to that point where [nuclear weapons are] eventually going to be used, and we have to drastically change," says Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN. ICAN was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for spearheading the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Fihn says it is imperative for all countries to eliminate nuclear weapons, adding that the treaty is a "way of creating a revolution in this nuclear structure that we created". [See the Program]
The New Gold Rush: How Pentagon Contractors Are Cashing in on the Ukraine Crisis
By William D. Hartung and Julia Gledhill, Tomdispatch [April 18, 2022]
---- The war in Ukraine will indeed be a bonanza for the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. First of all, there will be the contracts to resupply weapons like Raytheon's Stinger anti-aircraft missile and the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin-produced Javelin anti-tank missile that Washington has already provided to Ukraine by the thousands. The bigger stream of profits, however, will come from assured post-conflict increases in national-security spending here and in Europe justified, at least in part, by the Russian invasion and the disaster that's followed. … For U.S. arms makers, however, the greatest benefits of the war in Ukraine won't be immediate weapons sales, large as they are, but the changing nature of the ongoing debate over Pentagon spending itself. Of course, the representatives of such companies were already plugging the long-term challenge posed by China, a greatly exaggerated threat, but the Russian invasion is nothing short of manna from heaven for them, the ultimate rallying cry for advocates of greater military outlays. [Read More] Also of interest is "The U.S. Spent 7.5 Times More on Nuclear Weapons Than Global Vaccine Donations," by Sarah Lazare, In These Times [April 20, 2022] [Link].
The Climate Crisis
Points of Comparison — Can We Afford a Fair Global Climate Transition?
April 18, 2022]
---- How to create the political backing for the international effort necessary to achieve a fair and rapid global climate transition, even though that support would be properly denominated not in billions of dollars but rather in trillions, or even as percentages of Gross World Product?
One eye-opening approach is to proceed by way of comparison – to show that the likely costs of the climate transition, great though they may be, are small when considered against the alternatives, and entirely affordable when considered against other, even larger expenditures, which we routinely accept as inevitable. …The good news here is that such comparisons are now routinely being made. Since the 2009 global financial crisis, and especially since the COVID pandemic, large governmental and inter-governmental financial interventions have, in the face of cascading emergencies, become almost routine. In both cases, very large numbers of people, and even significant fractions among the political elites, have been jolted into understanding that major mobilizations of public finance are sometimes absolutely, indisputably, necessary. ["Environmentally destructive gov. subsidies; Covid recovery funding; military expenditures; etc.] [Read More]
The State of the Union
Joe Biden Detained Tens of Thousands of Asylum-Seekers in the Last Year
By Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept [April 21, 2022]
---- President Joe Biden's immigration policies on the U.S.-Mexico border have fueled the prolonged detention of tens of thousands of asylum-seekers in the past year, according to a new report by a human rights group. Nearly all the immigrants apprehended by authorities during the period were taken into custody in a region where asylum access has been largely shuttered since March 2020 and where anyone who asks for asylum outside a port of entry — a right enshrined under domestic and international law — is considered a threat until proved otherwise. … In place of "border security threat" priorities for asylum-seekers, Human Rights First is pushing for "alternative to detention" programs that would link those individuals with legal counsel outside the jailhouse setting. Such programs have proved highly effective at ensuring that asylum-seekers attend their court hearings. A 2021 study by the American Immigration Council found that 96 percent of nondetained immigrants represented by a lawyer attended all of their hearings from 2008 to 2018. The "alternative to detention" programs are also vastly less expensive than the current model. [Read More]
Israel/Palestine
How Israel Uses Radical Islam to Justify the Occupation
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [April 24, 2022]
---- The events unfolding over the last few weeks in the occupied territories seem as if they've been taken out of the Bible. Everything is immersed in religion and fundamentalism – the Temple Mount, Joseph's Tomb, the yeshiva at Homesh, the pilgrims, the worshippers, Ramadan, the sacrificial lamb, the Temple. A religious war taken straight out of the biblical stories. Despite this, make no mistake, religion is only a theatrical prop. The motive driving the settlers and their supporters remains ultra-nationalist, fueled by real estate considerations, including the attendant evil, violence and sadism employed by settlers and the authorities behind them. The Palestinian aspirations always were and remain national ones: rights, independence, removal of the occupier. This is what underlies the violent unrest expressed by unbridled young Palestinians. Religion is used by both sides only as an excuse. Despite all the trappings, this is not a war of religion, although it may well become one. [Read More]
Our History
It's Woody Guthrie's World. We Just Live in It.
By Gene Seymour, The Nation [April 15, 2022]
---- When he wasn't playing around with random chords or teasing sentence fragments into full-bore choruses, Woody Guthrie was using whatever pieces of paper he could find to draw cartoons, pastoral scenes, and anything else that could usefully occupy a blank space. And when he wasn't drawing pictures or playing his guitar, he was pounding typewriters to distill the ideas, memories, and impressions he collected like rare stones from railroad tracks and prairie roads, street corners and boarding houses, political rallies and kitchen tables, labor camps and radio stations. As magnetic and diligent a performer as he was, Guthrie was also a rapt and empathetic observer of the human condition, and he collected swatches of life from what he read, heard, and saw from one end of the country to the other. He wove these swatches into more than 3,000 songs with a breathtaking range of subject, tone, and lyricism; some were as intimate as a love ballad, others as astringently funny as a dark farce; still others were as playful as a game of hopscotch, as comprehensive in their accounts of injustice as an investigative news story, or as rapturous as a twilight reverie. [Read More]
