Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
May 8, 2022
Hello All – Like so many things in the USA, the origins and changing meanings of Mother's Day are complex and embedded deep in our history. The "Mothers' Day Proclamation" by Julia Ward Howe (author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic") was meant as a protest of the bloody Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and perhaps the beginnings of an international movement of women to end war. For Howe, the Civil War had been traumatic, but that it led to emancipation might justify its terrible bloodshed. The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 was another story. She remembered:
"I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone know and bear the cost?"
"I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone know and bear the cost?"
She sat down immediately and wrote an "Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World." Men always had and always would decide questions by resorting to "mutual murder." But women did not have to accept this state of affairs, she wrote. Mothers could command their sons to stop the madness. "Arise, women!" Howe commanded. "Say firmly: 'We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.'"
But a time of bloody political reaction soon followed, and southern racists and northern elites collaborated in rolling back the actual and potential gains of post-Civil War Reconstruction. By the time of the First World War, when President Woodrow Wilson made the day a national holiday, "Mothers' Day" had become a day to honor mothers – and perhaps pacify them, as the fight for women's right to vote was very intense and opposed by most of the political elite. And thus began the commercialization of Mothers' Day, until today more than $200 on average are spent honoring each mother.
Coming just after we learn that the Supreme Court appears headed toward overturning Roe v. Wade, and thus moving back towards the day of compulsory motherhood, celebrating Mothers' Day this year is tinged with some irony. The institution of honoring and gifting mothers remains alive and well, but the shadow of a menacing patriarchal restoration obscures the sunniness (for many) of the day. To paraphrase the poet W. B. Yeats, "What rough beast, its hour come at last, slouches towards Gilead to be born again?"
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 will be 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!
The Mother's Day rewards for stalwart readers are brought to us by the Resistance Revival Chorus. The Chorus was begun (I believe) about two years ago, and has made some great music. Here are "Ella's Song"; "This Joy: and their version of a Woody Guthrie favorite, "All You Fascists Bound to Lose." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
The War in Ukraine
(Video) Historian Timothy Snyder: Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Is a Colonial War
From Democracy Now! [May 5, 2022]
---- We speak to Yale University historian Timothy Snyder about his latest article for The New Yorker, "The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War." Snyder writes about the colonial history that laid the foundations for the Russian war in Ukraine, such as Russia's imperial vision and how leaders including Hitler and Stalin have aimed to conquer Ukrainian soil on different premises. "The whole history of colonialism … involves denying that another people is real. It involves denying that another state is real," says Snyder. "That is, of course, the premise of Russia's invasion of Ukraine." [Read More] You can read Snyder's New Yorker article, "The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War," [April 28, 2022] [here].
Antiwar Groups Protest Defense Industry Profiteering in Ukraine
By Tyler Walicek, Truthout [May 5, 2022]
---- The war of aggression that Russia has perpetrated in Ukraine has rightly generated widespread condemnation, both among Russia's Western critics and the world at large. On the war's obvious heinousness, almost all of the U.S. political spectrum is in agreement. However, opinions as to the appropriate Western response proceed from vastly different premises. … Whatever their perspective on the circumstances, organizers from left-liberals to communists are calling upon the means of protest at their disposal, from media initiatives to global rallies to demonstrations at the thresholds of the military-industrial complex. … Large-scale real-world protests against the war have erupted on numerous fronts — both within Russia and Ukraine and across the globe. Progressive, pacifist and anti-imperialist groups in the U.S. are no exception, having mobilized their considerable institutional resources to voice their own opposition. Given the unlikelihood of influencing the actions of the Russian government, they've targeted the realm in which they are mostly likely to have an impact — namely, U.S. policy. Because of its deep entanglements in the war, the U.S. response could easily be a critical determining factor on the outcome: either negotiation, drawdown and eventual peace, or escalation and sustained bloodshed. [Read More]
Toward a Peoples Ukraine Wars Tribunal
---- The deepening current Ukraine Crisis is properly linked to the Russian aggression that commenced with a massive military attack against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and has continued to ravage the country since, including inducing a refugee flow numbering several million. There is a broad consensus around the world that such aggression is a criminal violation of international law, and while noting the irresponsible nature of NATO provocations, it is widely agreed, provides Russia with no legally or morally relevant excuse with respect to accountability for so violently encroaching on Ukrainian sovereign rights and territorial integrity. … Given such developments, the time has come for civil society initiatives to counter the disastrous global confrontation that is now endangering the world, and indeed even species survival prospects, in the pursuit of these geopolitical goals by the United States. … In light of this line of interpretation, I am proposing the establishment of a civil society tribunal along the lines of the Russell Tribunal that brought independent critical voices to the fore on the Vietnam War in the midst of the Cold War in 1966-67. [Read More]
Also interesting/useful on the war in Ukraine – Many good articles were published this week. Among them are Victor Grossman's Berlin Bulletin [May 5, 2022], a round-up of pro- and anti-war activities in Germany; "The Left in Europe Confronts NATO's Resurgence After Russia's Invasion of Ukraine," by Alice Speri, The Intercept [[Link]; "Why Won't Europe Call for an End to This War?" by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, ZNet [May 6, 2022] [LInk]; "The Economic Shock Waves From the War in Ukraine Will Impact Us All," by Rajan Menon, The Nation [May 6, 2022] [Link]; and an interview with Noam Chomsky, "US Is Prioritizing Its Jockeying With Russia, Not Ukrainians' Lives," Truthout [May 4, 2022] [Link].
The Abortion Rights Movement after Roe
The End of Roe: Saving Abortion Rights Means Taking Them Into Our Own Hands
By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [May 3, 2022]
---- Since we cannot rely on Democratic leaders, we must — following the example of organizers on the front lines of this struggle — work around the law, exploiting the coming interstate jurisdictional chaos around abortion law that the end of Roe will bring into even sharper relief. The fight for free and accessible abortions has always required solidarity, risk, and cunning. To keep reproductive justice alive, we must fight on terrain beyond the law, in contravention of certain laws, or in post-Roe legal gray areas. … The policing of this post-Roe world gives us much reason to fear — but even more reason to resist, and fight with and for the communities with the least power, who will no doubt be the most targeted. Networks already exist to send abortion medication to jurisdictions where it has been made illegal. These will have to grow, using various online tools and techniques, physical mailing systems, and assistance with transportation — especially to ensure that those with the fewest resources are reached. Crucially, though, this fight is something to join, not invent anew. Many will be shocked by the end of Roe, but they need to realize that there are existing efforts and groups on the ground that need support, more so than major organizations like Planned Parenthood. [Read More]
The Logistics Arm of the Abortion-Rights Movement Is Gearing Up
By Amy Littlefield, The Nation [May 6, 2022]
---- For many abortion providers and activists, this moment confirms an implicit understanding they have had for years—that absent any uncharacteristically aggressive action from a Democratic Party that seems more interested in campaigning on the loss of Roe than taking meaningful action to address it, mitigating the unimaginable desperation that is about to descend on this country will be almost entirely their responsibility. … an enormous logistics operation is underway, as many of the most visionary activists across the movement dedicate vast amounts of energy to figuring out how to move people across entire regions of the country that are about to go dark on abortion access. Activist groups across the country are holding trainings and publishing videos, subway ads, and infographics to spread the word about how people can safely self-manage an abortion with pills ordered online. Practical support organizations and abortion funds have spent months methodically planning for the incomprehensible. [Read More]
Some critical thinking on Alito's draft opinion – "Will Demise of "Roe" Be a Death Knell for Contraception, Marriage Rights?" by Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [May 5, 2022] [Link]; "The Fact-Free Logic of Samuel Alito," by Jordan Smith, The Intercept [May 4, 2022] [LInk]; and "A majority of Americans have supported abortion rights for decades, polling shows," from the Boston Globe [May 3, 2022] [Link].
The Climate Crisis
What Remains of the U.S. Green New Deal?
By , Foreign Policy in Focus [May 5, 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. … 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. In response to the war in Ukraine and a surge in gas prices, the Biden administration announced at the end of March the release of a million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And instead of restricting fossil fuel production, the United States has been scrambling to persuade other countries to boost output to substitute for the loss of banned Russian imports, particularly for European partners. These developments contrast sharply with the latest IPCC report, which appeared at the beginning of April. Although pessimistic about recent trends in carbon emissions, the report stressed that halving emissions by 2030 was still within reach. [Read More]
The State of the Union
Nurses Are Fighting Back—but the Nightmare Continues
By Bryce Covert, The Nation [April 30, 2022]
---- As the pandemic pushed our health care system to the brink of collapse, images of overworked nurses were plastered all over the media. But difficult working conditions existed long before Covid. What's changed is that nurses have decided to fight back, with a wave of strikes and labor organizing sweeping across the industry. There were 76 strikes in health care between January 2021 and mid-April 2022 alone, including a nearly year-long strike last year at St. Vincent Hospital in Massachusetts over unsafe staffing, which may be the longest nursing strike the country has seen in at least three decades. But despite the fierce labor activism and a new public interest in the plight of essential workers, nurses are still at a breaking point. … Individual, hospital-by-hospital organizing can chip away at poor conditions and inadequate staffing, but the problem is too big to leave to nurses alone. One way to take the burden off nurses would be for the government to step in and require hospitals to have enough staff to ensure good care. But only one state, California, currently mandates staffing ratios. Some states have tried to join California, but they've met stiff resistance from the health care industry. New York considered staffing-ratio legislation, but after hospital associations "pushed back really strongly," lawmakers ended up only requiring hospitals to form committees on the issue. [Read More]
The Border-Industrial Complex in the Biden Era: Robotic Dogs and Autonomous Surveillance Towers Are the New Wall
---- During Donald Trump's years in office, the media focused largely on the former president's fixation with the giant border wall he was trying to have built, a xenophobic symbol so filled with racism that it was far easier to find people offended by it than towers like this one. … What I was now witnessing, however, could be called Biden's wall. I'm speaking about a modern, high-tech border barrier of a different sort, an increasingly autonomous surveillance apparatus fueled by "public-private partnerships." The technology for this "virtual wall" had been in the works for years, but the Biden administration has focused on it as if it were a humane alternative to Trump's project. In reality, for the Border Patrol, the "border-wall system," as it's called, is equal parts barrier, technology, and personnel. While the Biden administration has ditched the racist justifications that went with it, its officials continue to zealously promote the building of a border-wall system that's increasingly profitable and ever more like something out of a science-fiction movie. [Read More]
New York's Redistricting Chaos Is Now the Nation's Problem
By Ross Barkan, The Nation [May 6, 2022]
---- Last week, the New York State Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, invalidated the House and state Senate districts that had been drawn by the Democrat-controlled legislature. The ruling was a shock to the state's political class, which did not expect such a legal challenge—initiated by Republicans—to succeed in a court where six of seven judges are registered Democrats. The court decision threw the task of drawing new maps to a court-appointed special master, who will have until May 24 to produce new House maps. To comply with this timeline, the judges ordered federal and some state primaries to be shifted from June to August. [Read More].
Israel/Palestine
The ADL [Anti-Defamation League] Goes Full Bully
By Joshua Leifer, The Nation [May 5, 2022]
---- The ADL is an organization with considerable resources and relationships with state and local governments. With its new attention to fighting Palestine-solidarity groups, the ADL will bring its institutional heft to the ongoing, aggressive campaign aimed not just at delegitimizing the cause of Palestinian freedom but also at making support for Palestine-solidarity campaigns and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement punishable by law. As my Jewish Currents colleagues Isaac Scher and Mari Cohen have reported, an increasing number of US states have incorporated the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Association definition of anti-Semitism—which conflates Zionism and Judaism—into their statutes, while other states have passed legislation prohibiting companies from boycotting Israel. Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim activists, on college campuses and beyond, are already facing the brunt of these repressive measures. The ADL's redoubled anti-Palestine efforts will further tighten the screws. [Read More] Also of interest is "Why is the ADL Equating Palestinian Rights with White Nationalism" by Peter Beinart [May 3, 2022] [Link]
Our History
Abolition Democracy: W.E.B. Du Bois and the making of Black Reconstruction
By Gerald Horne, The Nation [May 3, 2022]
---- When Black Reconstruction was published [1935], the ruling consensus on Reconstruction—the period immediately following the Civil War, from 1865 to 1876—was that it had been an outrageous failure, virtually justifying the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Rather than a time during which the newly emancipated and their allies struggled to create a new democratic order in the South, Reconstruction was described as a tragic period of corruption and misrule, and only after it came to an end was the South able to be "redeemed." … The popular and scholarly rendering of the Reconstruction era was more than just a matter of factual error. It also upheld a reactionary view of US history, in particular that of the South, and justified the region's continuing inequalities. To "redeem" the South from the corruption and misrule of Reconstruction required reasserting the previous racial order, depriving Black folk of voting rights and undoing any chance they had to achieve economic independence. For this reason, the effort to refute the longstanding consensus on Reconstruction was also a matter of politics. [Read More]
