Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
January 11, 2022
Hello All – Last week saw the anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attempted coup at the US Capitol. It is evident that, despite the work of the congressional investigating committee, much remains to be done, including securing the testimony of high-ranking Republican witnesses. Yet already we have learned a lot about the behind-the-scenes actions of the coup plotters, indicating that the events of January 6th themselves represented only the tip of an iceberg of insidious and dangerous planning for forcible and anti-democratic regime change. (For example, "Trump came much closer to pulling off a January 6 coup than people realize," and "Why was the federal government so unprepared?")
I draw two conclusions from what we have learned so far. The first is that the goal of the coup plotters – however amateurish were some of its moving parts – was a permanent counter-revolution in American politics. That is, the goal was not only to disrupt the counting of the votes of presidential electors, but to overturn the remnants of legislation and social change initiated by the New Deal and the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In that sense, the events of January 6th themselves should be seen as a prelude, a first-draft, a glimpse of the hole card in the hand held by those seeking to restore a vanishing era of white supremacy and unchallenged corporate control. Several articles about the background of January 6th, linked below, develop this theme. A second conclusion is that we must focus on the on-going efforts of the January 6th attempted counter-revolution that are now somewhat dispersed, focusing on local theaters of conflict as state legislatures and school boards. We turn now from open conflict to trench warfare, no less important than the Big Picture battles.
This will be a hard fight, even to sustain the imperfect level of democracy that we now have, let alone establish the kind of society we need and deserve. Though the majority of the country clearly supports progressive positions and programs, the decades-long damage done to our courts and the judicial system, the capture of administrative agencies by the business interests they are supposed to administer, the dominant role of big money in election contests, and the concentration of media monopolies in the hands of giant corporations are among the many structural obstacles to making the wishes of the majority of the country effective in making policy.
What should we do now? Last week Sen. Bernie Sanders asked and answered the same question in an essay published in The Guardian:
Despair is not an option. We must stand up and fight back. … And let's be clear. Class warfare in this country is intensifying. Greed is on the rise. What history has always taught us is that real change never takes place from the top on down. It is always occurs from the bottom on up. That is the history of the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the environmental movement and the gay rights movement. That is the history of every effort that has brought about transformational change in our society. … And here is our new year's resolution. Like the thousands of workers who stood up and fought courageously in 2021, we will do the same. No one individual is going to save us. We must rise up together.
To quote a tenant organizer I once knew, "Nothing to it but to do it."
Some reading on the roots and consequences of January 6th
(Video) "American Insurrection": How Far-Right Extremists Moved from Fringe to Mainstream After Jan. 6 Attack, from Democracy Now! [January 5, 2022] [Link]; and to see the full documentary film go here.
Noam Chomsky: GOP's Soft Coup Is Still Underway One Year After Capitol Assault
Interviewed by C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout [January 6, 2022] [Link].
The Party of January 6, by January 5, 2022] Link]
The next US civil war is already here – we just refuse to see it, by Stephen Marche The Guardian [UK] [January 4, 2022] [Link].
News Notes
"Takeover," a short documentary film by Hastings native Emma Francis, has been short-listed for an Oscar. "Takeover" recounts the 12-hour take over of Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx by the Young Lords in 1970 to demand better healthcare. You can see the film here. Emma was interviewed on Democracy Now! last summer in conversation with program host Juan Gonzalez, one of the Young Lords back in the day and a participant in the hospital action [Link]..
This week's Rivertowns Enterprise published a letter by CFOW stalwarts Jackie Lhoumeau and Susana Rutman, "Bowman Deserves Credit for Vote on Infrastructure Bill." It pushes back against local criticism of Bowman for voting against the bill, in which he was joined by 5 other members of the House. The writers point out that those voting No correctly understood that Sen. Manchin and the Republicans were not about to allow a vote on the larger "Build Back Better" bill, which had been the basis, up until then, of the demand from the Progressive Caucus that the two bills should be voted on in tandem, rather than separately. In a nutshell, Rep. Bowman and colleagues were right, and the Democratic Party leadership made a mistake.
Rep. Mondaire Jones (CD-17) is one of the original sponsors of legislation that would add four new seats to the Supreme Court to correct the Republican-created 6-3 partisan imbalance in the Court. Last week the 95-member House Progressive Caucus voted to support this legislation. For the full story of why this legislation is needed and what it would mean, go here.
CFOW supports RAPP (Release Aging People in Prison). We received the following message yesterday: "We are saddened to share that someone we're deeply close with has passed on. Kahlil White, the son of RAPP's Western New York Community Organizer, Donna Robinson, transitioned a few days ago. He was Donna's oldest son and dear friend. He gave the New York State prison system nearly a decade of his life and for the last few years was living in Florida as a wonderful son, sibling, and family man. We ask that you please consider supporting Donna, her family, and the broader RAPP community during this difficult time. Please consider donating to the funeral fund of Kahlil. RAPP has pledged $1,000 and we're asking you to please chip in what you can too. Every little bit counts. If you're able, please send a donation via Cashapp to $davegeorge1923. All proceeds will go directly to Donna and her family."
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather/covid 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 on Monday, February 7th 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
Why Republicans Keep Falling for Trump's Lies
---- When called upon to believe that Barack Obama was really born in Kenya, millions got in line. When encouraged to believe that the 2012 Sandy Hook murder of 20 children and six adults was a hoax, too many stepped up. When urged to believe that Hillary Clinton was trafficking children in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor with no basement, they bought it, and one of them showed up in the pizza place with a rifle to protect the kids. The fictions fed the frenzies, and the frenzies shaped the crises of 2020 and 2021. The delusions are legion: Secret Democratic cabals of child abusers, millions of undocumented voters, falsehoods about the Covid-19 pandemic and the vaccine. While much has been said about the moral and political stance of people who support right-wing conspiracy theories, their gullibility is itself alarming. Gullibility means malleability and manipulability. We don't know if the people who believed the prevailing 2012 conspiracy theories believed the 2016 or 2020 versions, but we do know that a swath of the conservative population is available for the next delusion and the one after that. And on Jan. 6, 2021, we saw that a lot of them were willing to act on those beliefs.
(Video) Guantanamo Turns 20: Ex-Prisoner Moazzam Begg Calls on Biden to Close Site & End Legacy of Torture
From Democracy Now! [January 11, 2022]
[FB – Today's full-length program also includes segments/interviews with imprisoned military chaplain James Yee and released prisoner Mansoor Adayfi. A shameful milestone in an incredible history.]
---- On the 20th anniversary of the first prisoner's arrival at Guantánamo Bay, we spend the hour with former detainees, starting with Moazzam Begg, who was imprisoned for three years at the military prison and eventually released without ever being charged with a crime. He now advocates on behalf of victims of the so-called war on terror, calling on the Biden administration to follow through on promises to shut down the military prison and release the remaining 39 prisoners. Twenty years after the detention center opened, Begg reflects on the absurdity and lawlessness of Guantánamo, describing how its torture methods were not only unethical but ultimately extracted very little credible intelligence. "The legacy of this place is imprisonment without trial, torture, the absence of the rule of law, the removal of the presumption of innocence," says Begg. [See the Program]
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the World's Future
---- Late January of this year will mark the first anniversary of the entry into force of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This momentous international agreement, the result of a lengthy struggle by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and by many non-nuclear nations, bans developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, and threatening to use nuclear weapons. Adopted by an overwhelming vote of the official representatives of the world's nations at a UN conference in July 2017, the treaty was subsequently signed by 86 nations. It received the required 50 national ratifications by late October 2020, and, on January 22, 2021, became international law. … The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has acquired considerable momentum over the past year. During that time, an additional nine nations ratified it, thus becoming parties to the treaty. And dozens more, having signed it, are expected to ratify it in the near future. Furthermore, the governments of two NATO nations, Norway and Germany, have broken free from the U.S. government's oppositional stance to the treaty and agreed to attend the first meeting of the countries that are parties to it. [Read More]
'The State of Israel vs the Jews' — important new book chronicles Israel's spiritual demise
By Robert Herbst, Mondoweiss [January 10, 2022]
[FB – This is a review of The State of Israel vs. the Jews by Sylvain Cypel. The writer, Robert Herbst, is a member of JVP-Westchester.]
---- In 2014, in the wake of Operation Protective Edge that devastated Gaza and killed 2,000 Palestinians, including more than 500 children, the cognitive dissonance between Jewish moral and religious values and Israeli anti-Palestinian apartheid – and American Jewish support for it all — became too much for me to bear, and I started speaking out against the Jewish oppression of Palestinians – outside the Jewish tribe. After a few years, I started using a phrase that I thought adequately summarized my feelings about it: "The oppression of Palestinians is perpetrated by Jews, in an Israel of, by and for Jews, but it is not Jewish." In my efforts in the last seven years to educate myself, I've been to Israel, East Jerusalem, and up and down the West Bank. I've read articles, reports, and books about the oppression – about the facts on the ground, the depressing and undignified conditions of Palestinian life under occupation and within the Green Line, about apartheid, about settler-colonialism, about the Zionist project. But it wasn't until I was recently browsing the New Non-Fiction shelves of my local library that I happened on the one book that I would now recommend to any American, and especially other Jews, who want to know how bereft of human decency Israelis have become in their treatment of Palestinians, and how much of our Jewish moral and religious patrimony we have given up in creating, supporting and tolerating a Jewish State that so systematically, persistently and brutally deprives Palestinians of their human rights and dignity. [Read More]
War & Peace
What a sensible Ukraine policy would look like
By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor of The Nation [January 10, 2022]
---- Lessening tensions won't be easy. Putin forced the talks with his military buildup and publicly demanded immediate guarantees: that Ukraine not join NATO; that NATO not expand farther to the east; that the United States not deploy missiles on Russian borders; and that NATO reduce its forces in Eastern and Central Europe. These "red lines" have been rejected out of hand by the Biden administration. But instead of demanding de-escalation before progress in talks could be made, imagine if Biden had taken the first steps toward negotiations between the two countries. What would a sensible U.S. posture look like? [Read More]
On this week's round of negotiations – For a summary of Biden administration threats if Russia does not comply with US demands, read "U.S. Details Costs of a Russian Invasion of Ukraine" by David Sanger and Eric Schmitt, New York Times. Washington's positions are summarized in Julian Borger, "Ukraine's fate hangs in balance as 'critical' week of talks begins," The Guardian [UK]. Also useful is "Russia Warns That U.S. Doesn't Understand Its Goals on Ukraine" by Anton Troianovski, New York Times; and "Putin Unlikely to Invade Ukraine Despite Overheated U.S. Rhetoric," from yesterday's Democracy Now! For a good summary of Monday's talks in Geneva, read "Ukraine crisis: tense talks between US and Russia open in Geneva" by Julian Border, The Guardian.
For some background/context for the current crisis - (Video) "War in Ukraine? NATO expansion drives conflict with Russia" [50 minutes], in which The Grayzone's Aaron Maté interviews Richard Sakwa, author of Frontline Ukraine [See the Program]. An astute and user-friendly essay is "Ukraine: The Most Dangerous Problem in the World. But there's already a solution" by Anatol Lieven, The Nation [November 15, 2021]. The peace plan on the table – but ignored since its inception – is The Minsk Accords, summarized by Lieven in "Ending the Threat of War in Ukraine. A Negotiated Solution to the Donbas Conflict and the Crimean Dispute," The Quiincy Institute [June 2021] [Link].
America Must Stay Away from Kazakhstan's Troubles
By Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft [January 10, 2022]
---- Despite Russian hints, there is no evidence that the United States was involved in the latest violent protests in Kazakhstan. However, there now exists a strong temptation for America to get involved — and it is a temptation that must be firmly resisted by the Biden administration. Aspects of the latest unrest remain unclear. It has been suggested that it was partly caused by struggles within the Kazakh elites between supporters and opponents of former President Nur-Sultan Nazarbayev, who until this week retained considerable power over the government. The most important underlying reason for the unrest however is entirely clear. It lies in the gross mismatch between Kazakhstan's huge revenues from energy exports (more than $30 billion in 2021), the vast wealth of its elites, and the poverty of the mass of its population, with an average household income last year of only $3,200. As a Kazakh trades unionist told the New York Times: "Kazakhstan is a rich country, but these resources do not work in the interests of the people, they work in the interests of the elites. There is a huge stratification of society." [Read More]
The Covid Crisis
As an E.R. Doctor, I Fear Health Care Collapse More Than Omicron
---- The harsh reality is this: Fewer providers means fewer available beds because there are only so many patients a team can treat at a time. This also means treatment is slower and people will spend more time in the E.R. And the longer these patients stay in the E.R., the longer others remain in the waiting room. The domino effect will affect all levels of the health care system, from short-staffed nursing homes to ambulances taking longer to respond to 911 calls. It's understandable that people are tired of Covid-19. Health workers are, too. But leaning too heavily on us and our hospital beds is foolhardy. A highly contagious variant like Omicron, even if it causes milder illness, can still risk precipitating the failure of our health care system. [Read More]
For more on Covid and the crisis of the healthcare system – Dr. Spencer was interviewed on Democracy Now! last week Yesterday, also on Democracy Now!, the Atlantic's Ed Yong described the US healthcare system as "at the breaking point." (Yong's recent article in the Atlantic – "Hospitals Are in Serious Trouble" – can be read here.) In The Nation, Yale's Dr. Gregg Gonsalves writes, "We're All Tired of This Pandemic—and Some of Us Are Sick" [Link].
(Video) "A Vaccine for the World": U.S. Scientists Develop Low-Cost Shot to Inoculate Global South
From Democracy Now! [January 3, 2022]
---- As COVID cases skyrocket, we speak to Dr. Peter Hotez at Texas Children's Hospital about the Omicron surge, as well as his groundbreaking work developing an affordable patent-free coronavirus vaccine. Last week the Indian government gave emergency approval to the new low-cost, patent-free vaccine called Corbevax, which Hotez co-created. He says it could reach billions of people across the globe who have lacked access to the more expensive mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna. "We can really make a vaccine for the world," says Hotez. Hotez also addresses problems stemming from ongoing vaccine hesitancy. [See the Program]
The Climate Crisis
Defusing the Global Climate Emergency Depends on Defusing the Democracy Emergency
By Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation [January 6, 2022]
---- The democracy emergency is closely linked to the climate crisis. Each is grounded in a big lie—that climate science is a hoax, that Trump won in 2020—pushed by the same right-wing politicians and propaganda "news" outlets and embraced with cult-like devotion by Trump's followers. Left untreated, each threatens disaster. If Trump's forces do change enough electoral rules and personnel to guarantee victory in 2022 and beyond, there is zero chance the US government will take the strong climate action needed to avert global catastrophe. Defusing the global climate emergency therefore depends on protecting democracy. To be sure, the United States is not the only country where anti-democratic trends hamper climate progress. Most of the worst laggards at November's Cop26 climate summit were countries where authoritarianism is either entrenched or on the rise: China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India, the US. But the collapse of US democracy would carry especially damaging climate consequences. Slashing global emissions in half by 2030, as science says is imperative, would be impossible if the world's biggest economy and leading historical carbon emitter refuses to help. [Read More]
Israel/Palestine
Imagine you had a Palestinian child — could you support the '2-state solution'?
By
--- So American politicians say nothing as Israel builds more Jewish-only settlements where the Palestinian state was supposed to go and cordons off Jerusalem from the West Bank so there can never be a Palestinian capital there. Palestinian children are raised with no rights in the occupied territories and no freedom to go to the seashore 15 miles away, or Jerusalem, and Betty McCollum can only get 30 signatures on her bill to remove American funding from Israeli programs that punish children. … Anyone with a conscience and two eyes understands what a cruel joke the two-state solution is. It is a never-ending promise to Palestinians that if you just behave yourselves some day we will be able to promote the idea of sovereignty for you. Not yet! Not now! And meanwhile Israel will continue to swallow up your lands and push you off them, and America will give Israel $4 billion a year. [Read More]
Also illuminating on Israel/Palestine – "'We Will Remain Standing on This Land and Teach'" by Nina Shoman-Dajani, a review of Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village by Jody Sokolower, Organizing Upgrade; and "Sheikh Jarrah: Palestinian family faces forced displacement," from Aljazeera [January 5, 2022].
Our History
Sidney Poitier – Hollywood's first Black leading man reflected the civil rights movement on screen
[FB – Prof. Goudsouzian is the author of a biography of Sidney Poitier.]
---- In the summer of 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. introduced the keynote speaker for the 10th-anniversary convention banquet of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Their guest, he said, was his "soul brother." "He has carved for himself an imperishable niche in the annals of our nation's history," King told the audience of 2,000 delegates. "I consider him a friend. I consider him a great friend of humanity." That man was Sidney Poitier. Poitier, who died at 94 on Jan. 7, 2022, broke the mold of what a Black actor could be in Hollywood. Before the 1950s, Black movie characters generally reflected racist stereotypes such as lazy servants and beefy mammies. Then came Poitier, the only Black man to consistently win leading roles in major films from the late 1950s through the late 1960s. Like King, Poitier projected ideals of respectability and integrity. He attracted not only the loyalty of African Americans, but also the goodwill of white liberals. [Read More]
