CFOW Newsletter - Focus on the murder of 19 children in Texas

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

May 29, 2022

 

Hi All – The pictures of the 19 fourth graders and their two teachers break our hearts. The agonies of parents and families are too much to bear.  When will this stop?  How can we live with the knowledge that Congress will do little to heal our national agony? The killing at the Texas elementary school was the 198^th mass shooting (4 or more killed or wounded) in 2022. Now the number is up to 214.  According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 692 mass shootings in 2021 and 610 in 2020.  About 12 a week, or more than one a day.  This only happens in the United States.

 

330 million Americans now own 400 million guns.  Of the 45 thousand people killed by guns in 2021, 21 thousand were murdered and 24 thousand were suicides. 692 children under the ago of 12 were killed, as were 1,247 teenagers.  68 police officers were killed by a gun, while 1,331 people were killed by police.  Again, this only happens in the USA. Two-thirds of killings used a hand gun, but the AR-15 rifle gets the headlines, used in both Buffalo and the Texas school shooting. Kyle Rittenhouse used one in Kenosha.  The white supremacist used one on Buffalo, and the school shooter in Texas had two.  When will this madness be stopped?

 

Some useful reading on guns and gun violence in the USA

 

Bang for the Buck:The American love affair with guns

By Adam Hochschild, New York Review of Books [April 5, 2018]

---- If reason played any part in the American love affair with guns, things would have been different a long time ago and we would not have so many mass shootings like the one that took the lives of seventeen high school students in Parkland, Florida on February 14. Almost everywhere else in the world, if you proposed that virtually any adult not convicted of a felony should be allowed to carry a loaded pistol—openly or concealed—into a bar, a restaurant, or classroom, people would send you off for a psychiatric examination. Yet many states allow this, and in Iowa, a loaded firearm can be carried in public by someone who's completely blind. Suggest, in response to the latest mass shooting, that still more of us should be armed, and people in most other countries would ask you what you're smoking. Yet this is the NRA's answer to the massacres in Orlando, Las Vegas, Newtown, and elsewhere, and after the Parkland killing spree, President Trump suggested arming teachers. [Read More]

 

In the U.S., Backlash to Civil Rights Era Made Guns a Political Third Rail

By Amanda Taub, New York Times [May 25, 2022]

---- Other countries changed course after massacres. But American political protection for guns is unique, and has become inseparable from conservative credentials. "The modern quest for gun control and the gun rights movement it triggered were born in the shadow of Brown (v. Board of Education of Topeka, the landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1954)," Reva Siegel, a constitutional scholar at Yale Law School, wrote in a 2008 article in the Harvard Law Review. "Directly and indirectly, conflicts over civil rights have shaped modern understandings of the Second Amendment." Desegregation sparked a reactionary backlash among white voters, particularly in the south, who saw it as overreach by the Supreme Court and federal government. That backlash, with the help of conservative political strategists, coalesced into a multi-issue political movement. Promises to protect the traditional family from the perceived threat of feminism drew in white women. And influential conservative lawyers framed the Second Amendment as a source of individual "counterrights" that conservatives could seek protection for in the courts — a counterbalance to progressive groups' litigation on segregation and other issues. [Read More]

 

Also of interest – "'We Refuse to Go On Like This': US Students Walk Out to Demand Gun Control," by Julia Conley, Common Dreams [May 26, 2022] [Link]; "Uvalde Police Didn't Move to Save Lives Because That's Not What Police Do," by Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [May 27, 2022] [Link]; and (Video) "'Enough Was Enough: How Australia Reformed Its Gun Laws & Ended Mass Shootings After 1996 Massacre," from Democracy Now! [May 26, 2022][Link].

 

Please take action

We are down to the wire with the effort to prevent the use of "hybrid" (and hackable) voting machines in NY.  For some in-depth explanation about why these machines are dangerous, go here and  here but the MAIN ASK is that you make 3 quick phone calls to Albany TODAY to let important people know that you want them to support the legislation called A1115C.  Here's what to do: Please call:

 

1. Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, chair of the Elections Committee 518-455-4466

2. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie District number (718) 654-6539 or 518-455-3791

3. Your own Assembly Member– Tom Abinanti – 518-455-5753 or find another.

 

CFOW Nuts & 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 is held each Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. To learn about our new project, "Beauty as Fuel for Change," go here. 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

 

Rewards!

I've been listening to Tracy Chapman this week. "Fast Car" and "Talking About A Revolution," come from her first album (1988).  I think you will also like "Give Me One Reason." (1999). Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

CFOW Weekly Reader

 

War & Peace

Position of World's Governments on Ukraine is Considered Insane Pacifism in U.S.

By David Swanson, Counterpunch [May 27, 2022]

---- The stance taken on Ukraine by many of the governments of the world is outside acceptable debate in the United States. The Secretary General of the United Nations António Guterres has proposed a ceasefire, urged a negotiated settlement, and met with the President of Russia despite opposition in the West to doing so. Pope Francis has urged a ceasefire and negotiations, declared that no war can be justified, and encouraged workers to block weapons shipments. China's Ambassador to the United Nations Zhang Jun has urged nations' governments to pursue a ceasefire and offered China's assistance. The President of Italy Sergio Mattarella, speaking to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, has urged pursuit of a ceasefire and negotiated settlement. Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio have even proposed a draft agreement. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged a ceasefire and peace talks. The President of France Emanuel Macron has proposed a ceasefire, negotiations, and the creation of new non-military alliances. [Read More]

 

Washington already calling for thousands of new troops, permanent bases in Europe

By David Vine, Responsible Statecraft [May 23, 2022]

---- With momentum building for Finland and Sweden to join NATO, don't be surprised when calls for basing more U.S. military forces in Europe intensify leading up to NATO's annual summit in June. Heeding such calls would be a grave and foolish error. Permanently installing new U.S. bases and troops in Europe would be militarily unnecessary, fiscally wasteful, and dangerously provocative amid sky-high tensions with nuclear-armed Russia. While fears about Russia among some in Europe are understandable, U.S. leaders shouldn't let these fears shape our strategy. I'm one of more than 30 military experts and organizations sending an open letter to the Biden administration and Congress this week opposing any new U.S. military bases in Europe and offering smarter ways to support Ukrainian, U.S., and European security. [Read More]

 

More reading on the surging US military network – "The Rise of NATO in Africa," by Vijay Prashad, Counterpunch [May 27, 2022] [Link]; "On The Abolition Of Foreign Military Bases," by Colonel (Ret) Ann Wright, Popular Resistance [May 23, 2022] [Link]; and "New report: Decades of US military aid has been a disaster for Nigerians," by Nick Turse, Responsible Statecraft [May 23, 2022] [Link].

 

The Climate Crisis

The Ukraine War's Collateral Damage: The Health of an Overheating World Is at Stake

By Michael Klare, Tom Dispatch [May 22, 2022]

---- The war in Ukraine has already caused massive death and destruction, with more undoubtedly to come as the fighting intensifies in the country's east and south. Many thousands of soldiers and civilians have already been killed or wounded, some 13 million Ukrainians have been forced from their homes, and an estimated one-third of the country's infrastructure has been destroyed. Worse yet, that war's brutal consequences have in no way been limited to Ukraine and Russia: hunger and food insecurity are increasing across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East as grain deliveries from two of the world's leading wheat producers have been severed. People are also suffering globally from another harsh consequence of that war: soaring fuel prices. And yet even those manifestations of the war's "collateral damage" don't come close to encompassing what could be the greatest casualty of all: planet Earth itself. …Before the Russian invasion, environmental policymakers still believed it might be possible to avoid that ghastly fate. Such success, however, would require significant cooperation among the major powers — and now, due to the war in Ukraine, that appears unattainable, possibly for years to come.  [Read More]  Also of interest: "Big Fossil's Disaster Capitalist Response to Russia-Ukraine," by Amy Westervelt, The Intercept [May 25, 2022] [Link].

 

Civil Liberties/"The War on Terror"

He Fought For Truth and the Freedom to Publish — Now We Must Fight to Save Him

By Karen Sharpe, Counterpunch [May 27, 2022]

---- I'm speaking, of course, of Julian Assange, the founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, who is languishing in a high-security London prison awaiting a ruling to determine whether he will be extradited to the US to ultimately spend the rest of his days in a supermax prison, never to be heard from again. Julian is a pioneering journalist, publisher, author. As a journalist he has received some of the highest awards in the field; as a publisher he devised an ingenious system whereby whistleblowers could anonymously submit information about war crimes, crimes against humanity, corruption, and much more, that WikiLeaks published for all to read and use; as an author he wrote books, blogs, essays that reveal his perspicacity and prescience, his polymathic interests, and his humanism. He is also an ardent crusader for peace and justice who has been nominated eight times for the Nobel Peace Prize. … While Julian's voice has, for now, been silenced, ours can still be heard, so we must all speak out loudly and clearly wherever and however we can to denounce the illegal and inhumane treatment of the foremost champion of justice, accountability, freedom of expression, whose unceasing persecution reveals serious consequences for all who seek to speak and publish the truth. We must demand that the extradition be dropped and that Julian be freed. [Read More]

 

The State of the Union

How to defeat the billionaire class – the Chris Hedges Report

From The Real News Network ]May 27, 2022]

---- Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant describes how her party has mobilized ordinary people to win victories in the war being waged on the working class and the poor—despite opposition from Democrats. Since being elected to office in 2013, Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and her socialist party have been locked in a bitter battle against the city's moneyed elites…. Her leadership and her party provide an example of effective resistance to the war being waged on the working class and the poor—but, as she explains in this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, every victory has been won in spite of entrenched opposition from Democrats. Instead of depending on the Democratic Party establishment, Sawant says the only way to make advances in the class war is through class struggle and mobilizing ordinary people. [Read More]

 

Israel/Palestine

Americans Must Demand a Credible Investigation Into Shireen Abu Akleh's Killing

By Phyllis Bennis and Richard Falk, Foreign Policy in Focus [May 23, 2022]

---- Shireen Abu Akleh was a seasoned al-Jazeera correspondent for the past 25 years. She was known and respected throughout the Arab world for her brave, honest reporting of the Palestinian struggle. On May 11, she was shot and killed while covering an Israeli raid on the Palestinian refugee camp outside Jenin. Abu Akleh's killing in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was shocking, but hardly unusual. According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, she was the 86th journalist to be killed while covering Israeli oppression since Israel first occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem in 1967. But her killing is part of a longer pattern of Israeli violence and collective punishment — not just against journalists but against all Palestinians — committed with impunity and rationalized by trumped up "security" concerns.… Calls for an independent, credible investigation need to include a focus on United States responsibility. … Why? Above all, because our own tax dollars pay for 20 percent of Israel's entire military budget. The bullet or the gun used to kill Shireen could have even been purchased from U.S. weapons manufacturers with our own money. If that's the case, we need to know — because U.S. laws prohibit it. The Leahy Law's restrictions on military aid is unequivocal: "No assistance shall be furnished," it says, "to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights." [Read More]

 

Our History

On-the-line in Auto — 1970s-1990

By Elly Leary, Against the Current [May-June 2022]

[FB – In the early 1970s, many veterans of student/campus politics joined political organizations and/or moved into industrial/factory jobs with the intention of building and radicalizing the US labor movement.  Accounts of this experience are rare, and good ones rarer still.  I found this memoir of a young woman who "industrialized" very interesting; perhaps you will too.]

---- Fortunately, when I applied to GM/Framingham the company was under pressure from EEOC to hire women and "minorities." Our factory was part of the first post-WWII wave of auto plants relocated from the cities to "greenfield" sites in the countryside to eliminate job applications from African Americans. With no public transportation, 30 miles west of Boston set next to the women's prison, which enabled GM to hire very few African-Americans and to count men (only) from the Azores as minorities…. So what was it like once I got there in 1977? Three things stand out…. [Read More]

 

 

 

 

A new project from Concerned Families of Westchester - Beauty As Fuel For Change

                                      

At this time when our Democracy is at a crossroads, Concerned Families of Westchester, a 21-yr-old community-based peace and justice organization, embarks on a new initiative for 2022,"Beauty As Fuel for Change."

 

Inspiring an exploration of beauty through creative expressions, we call for individuals, families and organizations throughout Westchester to use all the arts to envision and help manifest a better world. By incorporating the art, music, images, writings and activities created, embodying positive, light filled, transformative change, we hope to inspire brand new ideas for our continuing progressive activism, "of the People, by the People, for the People".  

 

We are asking for your financial support for this project. While the costs of producing the art will be borne by the creators, we hope to raise $10,000 to support the making of a professional-quality video that will document and showcase what the participants have created and use the video in many venues (galleries, community organizations, as well as online) to stimulate discussion and serve as a catalyst for further efforts. Exhibits & film screenings are planned for the end of 2022. We have secured the collaboration of an experienced video editor, and we have already received many submissions (deadline Oct 1) – still photographs and video clips illustrating "Beauty as Fuel for Change."  The announcement of this project has elicited significant enthusiasm. For more information about the project email BeautyAsFuel@gmail.com.

 

We have secured WESPAC as our fiscal sponsor.  There are three ways to donate to this project:

 

All Online Donations of any amount are tax deductible at donorbox.org/beauty-as-fuel-for-change

Mail-in Checks $100 or greater are tax deductible, payable to WESPAC Foundation, ("Beauty As Fuel For Change" in Memo).  Mail to WESPAC Foundation, 77 Tarrytown Rd. Suite 2W, White Plains, NY 10607.

Mail-in Checks of any amount with no charitable tax deduction, payable to CFOW, ("Beauty As Fuel For Change" in Memo). Mail to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings on Hudson, NY 10706.

Many thanks for your financial support!

Concerned Families of Westchester

 

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on Buffalo and White Supremacy

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

May 22, 2022

 

Hi All – One week ago an 18-year-old white man drove 200 miles to a mostly Black section of Buffalo, where he killed 10 people and wounded 3 more. What can we DO?

 

One thing we should have learned by now is that the easy access to high-powered guns means that people will die.  Buffalo was the 198^th mass shooting (4 or more people shot) in 2022, an average of 10 a week. (And there have been 13 since Buffalo.) Despite warnings of mental health problems, the shooter was able to buy an AR-15 assault rifle. After every well-publicized mass shooting, it's the same story.  The shooter used a military combat weapon that Congress or whoever has been unable to prevent from being manufactured or sold to people who have expressed publicly their interest in killing lots of people.   Despite our zillion-dollar Pentagon budget, we have not managed to find a way to defend ourselves against somebody who can buy an AR-15.

 

We have also learned – or been reminded of – the trending variant of white supremacy called "the replacement theory." The bit of nonsense premiered in Charlottesville in 2016, when white guys with Tiki Torches marched and chanted "They will not replace us" and "Jews will not replace us."  Historian Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor explains what this means in a New Yorker article linked below. What is especially significant about this, in my opinion, is that these marchers and chanters are in existential fear of Jews, people of color, immigrants, and all those unworthy to live in the same country as these white guys; and the failure of white women to have more babies is a big part of the problem. This is all classic, old-school fascism.

 

Let us hope that the naming of so many enemies of the fascist dystopia will motivate the "enemies" thus named to unite in common cause, and to fight back on the many fronts where battle is now raging.  We can do this. 

 

Further Reading About The Buffalo Massacre

 

"We Are Not Terrified. We Are Tenacious." - Life against death in Buffalo.

By JoAnn Wypijewski, The Nation [May 20, 2022]

---- A "majority minority" city now, it is 43 percent white. I don't know what high-schoolers learn about their state anymore, but the City of Good Neighbors' history is linked to waterway commerce, grain milling, heavy industry, the railroad (Underground and over), immigration, … At least some of that must filter through to youth in the state's unnoticed tiny towns, because, in good times and bad, Buffalo is a city that is talked about. … The spirit of the people who held on—and it cannot be overstated that the East Side has survived because of those people, including the roll of the long and most recent dead—is evident now in the wake of horror. It is memorialized in the names, and the ages, of those killed: Ruth Whitfield, 86: Pearl Young, 77; Katherine Massey, 72; Heyward Patterson, 67; Celestine Chaney, 65; Geraldine Talley, 62; Aaron Salter Jr., 55; Andre Mackniel, 53; Margus Morrison, 52; Roberta Drury, 32. It is exemplified in the outpouring of mutual support. In love and in rage. In endeavors that have grown up from the roots. [Read More]

 

American Racism and the Buffalo Shooting

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New Yorker [May 17, 2022]
---- Once startling and noteworthy, mass shootings have melded into the background of life in the U.S. Since January, there have been almost two hundred shootings involving at least four victims shot or killed, according to the Gun Violence Archive. A recent report published by the C.D.C. showed that, from 2019 to 2020, the over-all homicide rate involving a firearm rose by nearly thirty-five per cent. The Buffalo massacre stands out not only because of the number of people killed but because of the political nature of the assault. This must be viewed within the context of the growing normalization of racism and political violence in the U.S. If Dylann Roof, the white racist who killed nine Black parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June of 2015, helped to inaugurate the racial grievance at the core of the Trump Presidency, then the Buffalo shooter's killing spree may be emblematic of its still rippling effects. Roof, whom the Buffalo shooter acknowledges in his manifesto as a "freedom fighter," also penned a manifesto full of deranged ideas, linking Black crime with the decline of white life in the U.S. [Read More]

 

News Notes

The messy process of mapping a new set of New York congressional districts (to take into account that NY will be losing one representative, based on the Census), has now been concluded.  Here is a link to a good map of the redrawn congressional districts.  One result of the new district boundaries is that the Rivertowns (from Hastings to Tarrytown, but not Sleepy Hollow) are in Jamaal Bowman's district, CD 16. Another result of re-districting is that Co-op City and some heavily Black neighborhoods in the Bronx are no longer in Bowman's district, meaning that he has lost 17 percent of his Black constituency.

 

Indeed, political line-ups in our part of New York are in turmoil, as Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney is claiming the rights to CD 17, now held by Mondaire Jones, and Jones has decided to contest a newly created district in lower Manhattan and a part of Brooklyn.  For a first-glance overview of the districting changes, read "DCCC Chair and Rep. Mondaire Jones Flee Blue Districts, a Bright-Red Warning for Democrats," by Ryan Grim, The Intercept [May 21, 2022] [Link].

 

I think it is noteworthy that Representative Bowman is one of 60 House Democrats who have signed a letter to the State Department and the FBI calling for an independent investigation [i.e., not just Israel] into the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, while reporting for Al Jazeera. This follows his co-sponsorship of a Resolution introduced by Rep.Rashida Tlaib last week proposing to commemorate the "Nakba," or what Palestinians described as "the disaster," that led to the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians during what Israelis describe as their War for Independence.

 

Finally, I would like to call attention to a fund-raising campaign, sponsored in part by our friends at BanKillerDrones, which is raising money for a surgical operation for a Yemeni man struck by a US drone and in danger of losing his legs and his life.  Veteran journalist Nick Turse describes the man's plight and puts it into the context of US drone warfare and the US refusal to compensate civilians injured in "precision" drone strikes.

 

CFOW Nuts & 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 is held each Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. To learn about our new project, "Beauty as Fuel for Change," go here. 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!

 

Rewards!

This week's Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers are dredged up from my distant youth.  I was surprised to learn that mathematician and song-writer Tom Lehrer is still perking at the age of 94.  For those too young to have seen him in his prime, or those so old that they did, I hope you will enjoy "The Vatican Rag," "We Will All Go Together When We Go," and "The Elements."  There are lots more online.  Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

CFOW Weekly Reader

 

Featured Essays

The Violent Defense of Whiteness

By Kathleen Belew, New York Times [May 17, 2022]

[FB - Dr. Belew is the author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America.]

 ---- The great replacement is the latest incarnation of an old idea: The belief that elites are attempting to destroy the white race by overwhelming it with nonwhite groups and thinning them out with interbreeding until white people no longer exist. This idea is not, at its core, about any single threat, be it immigrants or people of color, but rather about the white race that it purports to protect. It's important to be cautious and not too credulous when reading the writings of assailants in attacks motived by race, but we should note an important pattern: their obsession with protecting white birthrates. … White-power extremism reveals that the core of this ideology is not the victims it attacks, but rather the thing it attempts to preserve — and the mechanism that transfigures this ideology into racial violence. It imagines that a conspiracy of elites, usually imagined as Jewish "globalists," are deliberately working to eradicate both white people and white culture. This is why white nationalism is so often virulently antisemitic, and also why it feeds on deep distrust of the media, education, science and other arbiters of expertise. [Read More]

 

Entering the Season of Death at the Border

By Todd Miller, The Border Chronicle [May 19, 2022]

---- At first it was a bit startling to see a man stumble onto the road in front of me. I was just south of Tombstone on Highway 80 in southern Arizona, cruising at about 60 miles an hour toward the border at Douglas. When the man appeared, I was listening to a podcast and staring out into the landscape, a beautiful stretch of rural road parallel to the San Pedro River valley, with views on all sides of the Dragoon, Huachuca, and Mule mountain ranges. The man looked injured and so disoriented that I thought he was going to limp right into the road. Then he stopped and looked at me, driving toward him. He held up an empty plastic bottle. He wore a ripped white T-shirt, and his face had that raw look of a person who's been walking in the sun for days. It was mid-morning but already hot, forecast to be the hottest day of the year thus far, triple digits in nearby Tucson. He stared right at me and raised the bottle again. He had no water left. But I didn't stop because there was a white van on my tail and the shoulder seemed narrow. "What am I doing?" I thought, and pulled over, van be damned. I turned around, stopped, beeped to get his attention, and gave him my water bottle and all the food I had in my front seat. As I drove away, the voices on the podcast—a news show from New York—seemed a million miles away. I've been seeing people come out of the desert borderlands for two decades now, and it is startling every time. I couldn't get that man's desperate face and lunging limp out of my mind. The season of death in the borderlands had now arrived, as it does every year. [Read More]

 

Noam Chomsky: The Supreme Court Is Wielding Illegitimate Authority in the US

An interview with C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout [May 20, 2022]

---- The Supreme Court has traditionally been a reactionary institution. There is some deviation, but it's rare. The Warren Court's major decisions greatly enhanced freedom and basic rights, but not in isolation: There were popular movements, primarily African American but joined by others to a degree, which made it possible for the Warren Court's rulings to be implemented. Today's reactionary Roberts Court is reverting to the norm with its dedicated efforts to reverse this deviation. And it can do so thanks in large measure to the conniving and deceit of the leading anti-democratic figure in the Republican organization — no longer an authentic political party: Mitch McConnell. … The court has played its role in reviving the ugliest elements of the history we are instructed to suppress. Probably the most egregious decision of the Roberts Court was to dismantle the Voting Rights Act on ridiculous grounds (Shelby), offering the South the means to restore Jim Crow. Citizens United extended the Buckley doctrine that money is speech — very convenient for the very rich particularly — to giving virtually free rein to those sectors in a position to buy elections. Next on the chopping block is Roe v. Wade. The effects will be extreme. A right regarded by most women, and others, as solidly established is to be wiped out. That's almost unprecedented. Undermining of the right of Black people to vote by the Shelby decision is a partial precedent. [Read More]

 

The War in Ukraine

Ukraine: An Antiwar Dilemma

By Nan Levinson, Tom Dispatch [May 17, 2022]

---- I've been watching this country at war for many years now and, after 9/11, began spending time with American veterans who came to disdain and actively oppose the very conflicts they were sent to fight. The paths they followed to get there and the courage it took to turn their backs on all they had once embraced intrigued and impressed me, so I wrote a book about them. While doing so, I was often struck by a strange reality in that era of American war-making: in a land where there was no longer a draft, most Americans were paying remarkably little attention to our ongoing wars thousands of miles away. I find it even stranger today — and please note that this takes nothing away from the misery of the Ukrainian people or the ruthlessness of Vladimir Putin's invasion — that the public seems vastly more engaged in a war its country is not officially fighting than in the ones we did fight so brutally and unsuccessfully over the past two decades. … I wanted American feelings of empathy for the terrorized to translate into the gift of peace, and now, I want some of our resources to be made available to rebuild the places and lives we destroyed in those countries over so many years. Instead, just as in the previous two decades, America's involvement in war, this time with Russia, is above all a bonanza for war profiteers and our military-industrial-congressional complex. [Read More]

 

Four Ways to Understand the $54 Billion in U.S. Spending on Ukraine

By Bianca Pallaro and Alicia Parlapiano, New York Times [May 20, 2022]

---- The more than $40 billion in additional aid to Ukraine approved by Congress on Thursday brings the total U.S. commitment during the Russian invasion to roughly $54 billion, when combined with the aid package passed in March. The bulk of the aid is allocated through traditional foreign aid channels. That includes money to provide urgent support, health services and food assistance to Ukrainian refugees inside and outside Ukraine. The latest bill, which had been delayed for a week by the objection of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, includes money for logistical support and training for Ukrainian military and national security forces, and for a fund intended to secure the continuity of Ukraine's government.  Forty percent of the aid has been directed to weapons transfers, to provide medical and intelligence support to allied countries in Europe, and to deploy troops there. The bill passed Thursday allows President Biden to authorize the transfer of an additional $11 billion in American weapons, equipment and defense supplies to Ukraine, and allocates $9.1 billion to replenish that stockpile. [Read More]

 

Also useful/interesting – "Military-Industrial Complex Is Itching to Send "Hunter-Killer" Drones to Ukraine," by Sara Sirota, The Intercept [May 18 2022] [Link]; and "'Disinformation' Label Serves to Marginalize Crucial Ukraine Facts," by Luca GoldMansour, Fairness and Accuracy in the Media [FAIR] [May 18, 2022] [Link].

 

The State of the Union

Where are the Men? No More Bystander Boys in the Post-Roe Era

By Robert Lipsyte, Tom Dispatch [May 20, 2022]

---- For 50 years now, people have told desperate, heart-breaking stories about what it was like to search for an abortion in the days before Roe v. Wade. These were invariably narratives of women in crisis. They sometimes involved brief discussions about economic inequality, police-state intrigue, and unwanted children, but for the most part men were invisible in them, missing in action. Where were they? And where are they now that a wall of fundamental rights seems to be crumbling away not just for women, but for all of us? This is another example of what I used to call the Bystander Boys. … Forget about moral responsibility — what about the jeopardy our lives are in as the possibility of a Trumpian-style authoritarian future closes in around us? Sixty years ago, it already seemed remarkably clear to me how crucial it was that men stop leaving women to face this nightmare essentially alone — and it still does. … There are more of us than them and, if we stand together and fight, we can still win. No place for bystanders now. [Read More]

 

The Democratic Party's Leadership Is Trying to Destroy Progressives

By David Sirota, Jacobin Magazine [May 2022]

---- Progressive candidates have established a few tenuous footholds in recent years. Democratic leadership and their corporate donors are now doing everything they can to destroy those progressives. Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sounded an important alarm about all this, slamming billionaires and conservative advocacy groups blanketing the airwaves with television ads supporting corporate candidates in this week's pivotal Democratic congressional primaries. But the Vermont senator understated the situation. The perpetrators rigging these elections aren't just meddling oligarchs operating on their own. This call is coming from inside the Democratic house from party leaders, who are at minimum passively condoning the trend, and in many cases actively fueling it with endorsements and its machine. [Read More]

 

Israel/Palestine

Shireen Abu Akleh: Two Assassinations, Four Funerals

By Khaled Farraj, Mondoweiss [May 21, 2022[

---- This is not a lament for Shireen, nor is it a political article. It is not a press report, nor is it a study. It is not a tribute or condolence, because Shireen Abu Akleh deserves more than all of these. … I do not write this to praise her virtues, everyone has done so already, although she deserves a lot, and a lot from us…. The assassination of Shireen, turning her into news, is an Israeli attempt to hide the truth; and to discipline, intimidate, and deter those who seek to show it. However, the reaction to her murder exceeded all expectations, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets to express their anger, not only in solidarity with Shireen's small family, but because to most of them Shireen is family. [Read More] Also of interest on Israel's response to Shireen's murder is (Video) "Israel's disinformation playbook: Delay, deflect, deny," from The Listening Post, Aljazeer English [May 21, 2022] [Link].

 

Our History

The Many Moods: Rachel Carson's sea.

By Hannah Gold, The Nation [May 17, 2022]

----Rachel Carson was a passionate and poetic writer, but she was not a particularly subtle one. When she set out to write a book, it did not end until the mountains had crumpled into the sea, all organisms dead or alive had vanished therein, and the form of life itself on Earth had been radically altered. Before Carson wrote her most influential book, Silent Spring, she wrote three thrilling books on the ocean's creative power over all of life's forms, each of them ending just this way…. For so many writers, the sea has been a beautiful, convenient image for evoking the mystery of human interiority. The sea that the narrators of countless novels have gazed out upon is like the surface of a vast, twinkling unconscious from which fathomless stories are trawled, then lowered once more. But for Carson, the sea connects rather than isolates, reveals rather than obscures. It is the substance of every story she tells. The earth's ecological systems, which she often refers to in her oceanic writings as "life itself," provided her with a menagerie of fascinating terms by which to better understand the boundless energy and imagination of the sea and everything under its domain—the human and nonhuman life it sustained, punished, and inspired. Carson devoted her life to the sea as a scientist, but also for the same reasons that most serious writers commit to their subjects: because to her it was inescapable. [Read More]

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on protecting reproductive rights in the USA

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

May 16, 2022

 

Hello All – On Saturday in Hastings, CFOW hosted a rally to protest the Supreme Court's (likely) decision to end the right to abortion embodied in the Court's 1973 decision Roe. v. Wade. More than 100 people attended the rally, one of more than 400 events initiated by the Women's March and Planned Parenthood. As usual, our rally featured an "open mic," allowing people to share their opinions about what was going on.  Many women spoke about their own experiences with abortion or reproductive health issues.  (Pictures and video on our Facebook page.)  Based on early reports, like the other rallies the tone of our rally was serious, angry, and full of determination to stop this threat to reproductive rights in its tracks, however long that will take.

 

The errors and absurdities in the Court's draft decision by Associate Justice Samuel Alito are cogently addressed in an editorial from The Lancet, the UK's leading medical journal. In part, the absurdity of the draft decision stems from Alito's basic position that, if something is not mentioned in the Constitution or stems from a long-standing American tradition, it is not a constitutional right.

 

What is so shocking, inhuman, and irrational about this draft opinion is that the Court is basing its decision on an 18th century document ignorant of 21st century realities for women. History and tradition can be respected, but they must only be partial guides. The law should be able to adapt to new and previously unanticipated challenges and predicaments. Although Alito gives an exhaustive legal history of abortion, he utterly fails to consider the health of women today who seek abortion. Unintended pregnancy and abortion are universal phenomena.

 

The Lancet points out that the Court's draft opinion also ignores the predictable consequences of a decision that will outlaw abortion for half of the states in the USA:

 

In the USA, Black women have an unintended pregnancy rate double that of non-Hispanic White women. And the maternal mortality rate for Black women, to which unsafe abortion is an important contributor, is almost three times higher than for white women. These sharp racial and class disparities need urgent solutions, not more legal barriers. The fact is that if the US Supreme Court confirms its draft decision, women will die. The Justices who vote to strike down Roe will not succeed in ending abortion, they will only succeed in ending safe abortion. Alito and his supporters will have women's blood on their hands.

 

By removing the 14^th Amendment's "right to privacy" foundation of Roe, the Court also opens the door to legislation that would outlaw contraception, same-sex marriages, inter-racial marriage, and just about everything having to do with sex.  What will women do – what will we all do – to block and defeat this Hand Maid's Tale dystopia?  An organizer of Saturday's abortion rights rally in Washington, D.C. called for "a summer of rage."  If this is what is needed, how will we in New York do our share of the work?  I think this is an urgent question for us to discuss in the coming weeks.

 

News Notes

We are down to the wire with the effort to prevent the use of "hybrid" (and hackable) voting machines in NY.  For some in-depth explanation about why these machines are dangerous, go here and  here but the MAIN ASK is that you make 3-4 quick phone calls to Albany TODAY to let important people know that you want them to support the legislation called A1115C.  Here's what to do: Please call:

 

1. Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, chair of the Elections Committee 518-455-4466

2. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie District number (718) 654-6539 or 518-455-3791

3. Central Assembly Staff 518-455-4355

4. Your own Assembly Member– Tom Abinanti – 518-455-5753 or find another.

 

From Extinction Rebellion, we have "Global Newsletter #64," featuring climate-crisis protests over the last few months in New York, Paris, London, and more. [LInk].

 

Hastings residents should welcome the Clean Air Collective.  One of their projects is putting a stop to gas powered leaf blowers, which are noisy, polluting, and a poor substitute for the old-fashioned rake (or just leaving the leaves alone).  According to the Collective, our Board of Trustees has not responded to their requests for action on this issue; so please consider signing

this petition asking the Trustees to stop the noise and pollution.

 

A few years ago, we were delighted by the rebellious antics and protests of Russia's Pussy Riot.  Needless to say, now is a hard time to be a dissenter in Russia, and so please check out this exciting tale of one of the group's leaders escape from Russia, disguised as a food delivery person.

 

CFOW Nuts & 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 is held each Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. To learn about our new project, "Beauty as Fuel for Change," go here. 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!

 

Rewards!

This week's Rewards for stalwart readers are some pieces (new to me) from Dixieland favorite Tuba Skinny.  Here is a recent collection from a stripped-down Skinny team [Link].  And here's something lovely, as Tuba Skinny is joined by the Los Mariachis of Corpus Christi.  And in case you missed it, a Ukrainian group won this year's Eurovision song contest.  Check it out here..

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

CFOW Weekly Reader

 

The Palestinian "Nakba" (Catastrophe) of 1948

Nakba Day: What happened in Palestine in 1948?

By Mohammed Haddad, Aljazeera [May 15, 2022]

---- Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world mark the Nakba, or catastrophe, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. Having secured the support of the British government for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, on May 14, 1948, as soon as the British Mandate expired, Zionist forces declared the establishment of the State of Israel, triggering the first Arab-Israeli war. Zionist military forces expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands and captured 78 percent of historic Palestine. The remaining 22 percent was divided into what are now the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip. [Read More]

 

Also interesting/illuminating on the Nakba – "Nakba74: Palestinian refugees in Gaza remember the Nakba through possessions of their ancestors," by Tareq S. Hajjaj, Mondoweiss [May 15, 2022] [Link]; "Nakba74: Rethinking Zionism as a gendered colonial enterprise," by Tamam Mohsen, Mondoweiss [May 15, 2022] [Link]; and (Video) "How the Nakba reshaped Arab politics for decades" Aljazeera [May 15, 2022] [Link].  An interesting four-part documentary about the Palestinian struggle is (Video) "Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe."  To get started with Episode 1, go here.

 

The Buffalo Massacre

(Video) Buffalo Massacre: Gunman Cited Racist "Great Replacement" Conspiracy Theory Popularized by Fox News

From Democracy Now! [May 16, 2022]

---- The mass shooter who killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday posted a racist manifesto online before targeting a majority-Black neighborhood. His writings took heavily from conservative conspiracy theories that white people were in danger of being replaced by people of color. This so-called Great Replacement conspiracy theory has been promoted by major far-right media figures including Tucker Carlson of Fox News. "What it does is create a dynamic where believers view immigrants and nonwhite people as an existential threat not only to themselves physically but to their position in society," says Nikki McCann Ramírez, associate research director at Media Matters for America, who has researched how Carlson uses his show to launder white nationalist ideology. We also speak with prominent antiracist scholar Ibram X. Kendi, who says mainstream conservatives are increasingly parroting extremist talking points. [See the Program]  Also illuminating is "Why White Nationalism Requires Antisemitism," by Peter Beinart [May 15, 2022] [Link].

 

The War in Ukraine

Endless War in Ukraine Hurts National and Global Security

By Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation [May 11, 2022]

---- What are the United States' goals in the Ukraine war? Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently announced that the United States wants "Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine." The US commitment toward that end has been substantial. Congress passed the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act by near-unanimous vote, invoking the "arsenal of democracy" we provided to Britain during World War II. President Biden is seeking $33 billion in additional aid. When the defense ministers of some 40 countries gathered at Ramstein Air Base in Germany last month, the focus was not a peace settlement but outright Ukrainian victory or at least the "permanent weakening" of Russia's military power.  But as the violence continues, the war fever rises, and we had better be clear about our objectives. A commitment to a long, grinding proxy war with Russia would have severe consequences not only for the Ukrainian people but also for the security interests of the United States and its allies. [Read More]

 

America and Its Allies Want to Bleed Russia. They Really Shouldn't.

By Tom Stevenson, New York Times [May 11, 2022]

---- The war in Ukraine has entered a new phase. It is no secret that the initial invasion went badly for Russia. Expecting easy victories, the Russian Army inflicted terrible destruction — especially in its shelling of cities — but for the most part failed to take territory outside the southeast of the country. Ukrainian resistance was fierce. After six weeks of war, undermanned Russian forces were made to retreat from Kyiv and its suburbs. In the hope of winning new victories, Russia has now confined its forces to the south and east of Ukraine. The main battles are taking place in small towns and villages along the Donets River. Russia talks of cutting off the Ukrainian Army from the Donbas, but so far, its forces have made slow progress advancing from the Black Sea coast. In response, the United States and its allies have also shifted their position. At first, the Western support for Ukraine was mainly designed to defend against the invasion. It is now set on a far grander ambition: to weaken Russia itself. Presented as a common-sense response to Russian aggression, the shift, in fact, amounts to a significant escalation. By expanding support to Ukraine across the board and shelving any diplomatic effort to stop the fighting, the United States and its allies have greatly increased the danger of an even larger conflict. They are taking a risk far out of step with any realistic strategic gain. [Read More]

 

Also interesting/important on the war – "$40 Billion War Fever Grips Congress as U.S. Escalates Ukraine War," by Cole Harrison, Massachusetts Peace Action [May 13, 2022]

[Link]; and "Our Global Food System Was Already in Crisis. Russia's War Will Make It Worse," by Raj Patel, Boston Review [May 2022] [LInk].

 

The Climate Crisis

What's Left of the New Green Deal?

By John Feffer, Counterpunch [May 9, 2022]

---- In November 2018, the Green New Deal became a rallying cry for climate activists when members of the Sunrise Movement occupied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office and adopted the slogan as their unifying message. A few months later, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who had joined the young activists in Pelosi's office, brought this message to Congress when she partnered with Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) to introduce their Green New Deal resolution. More manifesto than binding legislation, the resolution laid out a vision of an equitable clean energy transition for the United States…. Since the original resolution, other Green New Deal bills have emerged on education, housing, and cities. U.S. cities, too, have established Green New Deal initiatives, and many civic organizations continue to champion the GND as a radical vision for a reoriented U.S. society. Yet many of the actual components of a clean energy transition have stalled in Congress even though the candidate who promised such a transition won the presidential election in 2020. [Read More]

 

Israel/Palestine

(Video) Ayman Mohyeldin On The Killing Of Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

From MSNBC [May 11, 2022] [5 minutes]

[FB – Ayman Mohyeldin, now an anchor at MSNBC, was on the ground as an Aljazeera reporter in Gaza during the 2008-2009 war.  His reporting (with his colleague Shireen Todros) was terrific, and their experiences during the war are recorded/honored in the prize-winning documentary "The War Around Us."  The film is available via Kanopy to anyone with a Westchester library card; to see the film, go here.]

---- Ayman Mohyeldin remembers his friend and colleague, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed today reporting on an Israeli military raid in the West Bank. "The killing of journalists, whether it's in Mexico or Ukraine or the Occupied Palestinian Territories, that must be condemned and investigated – but not by the countries accused of allegedly killing them, but by independent bodies who claim to uphold free speech and the right to a free press as fundamental human rights." [See the Program]

 

(Video) Rashid Khalidi: Israel Systematically Targets Palestinian Journalists to Hide Reality of Occupation

From Democracy Now! [May 12, 2022]

---- Palestinians are holding a state funeral in Ramallah for Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran journalist who was one of the best-known television journalists in Palestine and the Arab world. Abu Akleh, who was a U.S. citizen, was wearing a press uniform and covering an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank when she was fatally shot in the head on Wednesday. Israel initially claimed she may have been shot by a Palestinian gunman, but later said it was unclear who shot her, after witnesses, including other journalists, said she was shot dead by Israeli forces. "People are shocked all over Palestine, all over the Arab world, actually," says Rashid Khalidi, professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University. Israel's "colonial army" has "systematically targeted" Palestinian journalists, says Khalidi. "It's really important to Israel that nobody see what's going on in the Occupied Territories."  [See the Program] 

 

To read more - Aljazeera has produced many excellent reports on the context and significance of the murder of its leading reporter in Palestine; check out (Video) "Is Israel a rogue state?" [May 12, 2022] [Link]. Also very good are "Killing journalists, attacking funerals: What fuels Israel's reign of terror?" by Zubayr Alikhan, Mondoweiss [May 13, 2022] [Link]; and (Video) "Palestinian American Reporter Shireen Abu Akleh Killed in Israeli Raid in Jenin, "Brave" Truth Teller," from Democracy Now! [May 11, 2022] [Link].

 

Our History

(Video) Indian Boarding Schools Were Part of "Horrific Genocidal Process" Carried Out by the U.S.

From Democracy Now! [May 13, 2022]

---- The Interior Department has documented the deaths of more than 500 Indigenous children at Indian boarding schools run or supported by the federal government in the United States which operated from 1819 to 1969. The actual death toll is believed to be far higher, and the report located 53 burial sites at former schools. The report was ordered by the first Indigenous cabinet member, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, whose grandparents were forced to attend boarding school at the age of 8. "It's kind of a misnomer to actually call these educational institutions or schools themselves," says Nick Estes, historian and co-founder of The Red Nation. Estes says the institutions were part of a "genocidal process" of "dispossession and theft of Indigenous people's lands and resources." [Read More]  And to get involved, check out "Support the Establishment of a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding Schools" [Link].