Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
March 12, 2023
Hello All – This weekend marks 12 years since the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. Along with the earlier disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine, the destruction of the Fukushima plant and the resulting radiation leaks should have marked a turning point towards ending the use of nuclear power asap. But they did not. More than 90 nuclear plants still operate in the USA, all but a few now nearing (or exceeding) their age limit, with the prospect of "decommissioning" (or closing down) the plants fast approaching.
As we are learning from the decommissioning of our own Indian Point plant, this is an expensive and difficult process, whose costs and dangers must be entered into the ledgers against the benefits of "cheap electricity." In the case of Indian Point, the corporation charged with decommissioning plans to dump more than a million gallons of radioactive (tritium) water into the Hudson River. A campaign to stop this has sprung up along the river: resolutions against the dumping have been passed by Westchester and Rockland Counties, and a similar resolution will be on the agenda at the next board of trustees meeting in Hastings. Much still has to be done, however, to generate the groundswell of public opposition that will persuade a court to rule that the plan to dump irradiated water into the Hudson River is illegal.
Though the disaster at Fukushima dwarfs the decommissioning problems at Indian Point, they share the common danger of disposing of radioactive water. The Japanese government intends to dump more than a million tons of radioactive water – now stored on-site at the nuclear plant – into the Pacific Ocean. Needless to say, there is massive opposition to this in Japan. Yet, as in the case of Indian Point, the cost of "safety-first" is deemed to be too high by those with the power to make decisions. In NYC on April 8th there will be a march and rally denouncing both of these dangerous plans. To learn more, go here.
Some Useful Reading on Fukushima and Indian Point
Fukushima: Japan insists release of 1.3m tonnes of 'treated' water is safe
By Justin McCurry, The Guardian [UK] [February 14, 2023]
---- Almost 12 years have passed since the strongest earthquake in Japan's recorded history resulted in a tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people along its north-east coast. As the country prepares to mark the 11 March anniversary, one of the disaster's most troubling legacies is about to come into full view with the release of more than 1m tonnes of "treated" water from the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. [Read More]
A Dozen Years after Fukushima, Nuclear Power is Still a Death Wish
---- A dozen years after four atomic reactors exploded at Fukushima, the plant STILL daily irradiates 150 tons of water which must be treated and stored forever. Thousands of tons more of such lethal liquid are still held in rotting tanks. The Japanese government wants to dump them in the Pacific, but local resistance is fierce. The build-up will continue for countless years to come, with gargantuan quantities of deadly liquid ever-readier to destroy our oceans. [Read More]
Experts explain how tritium in water impacts health and safety [Indian Point]
By Regina Clarkin, The Peekskill Herald [February 20, 2023]
---- With Holtec's announcement earlier this month that it plans to dump a million gallons of contaminated wastewater from the Indian Point nuclear power plant into the Hudson River sometime this summer, the latest Critical Public Health & Safety expert panel, organized by a coalition of environmental advocacy groups, took on new urgency amid calls for action on the part of citizens. A Thursday, February 16th seminar on Zoom featured three experts in the fields of medicine and science who walked the 265 viewers through the ramifications of radioactive hydrogen or tritium entering the water that is a drinking source for seven communities. … Visit here to learn more and listen to a recording of the session. [Read More]
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 (winter schedule) on the first Monday of each month; the next vigil will be April 3rd from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. Another Facebook page focuses on the climate crisis. 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. 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 reward for Newsletter readers this week is a new album from Iris DeMent called Workin' on a World." The title song expresses what many peace & justice stalwarts feel in their hearts about what we do and how we feel about it. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Celebrating International Women's Day [March 8th]
(Video) International Women's Day: Roots in Radical History, Labor & Reproductive Rights
From Democracy Now! [March 8, 2023]
[FB – This is the first part of a four-part DemNow program celebrating International Women's Day.]
---- March 8 marks International Women's Day around the world, seeking to end gender discrimination, violence and abuse. We start the show by looking at the day's roots in socialism, and what it means for the movement for reproductive justice in the United States. Our guest is Nancy Krieger, renowned professor of social epidemiology at Harvard University's School of Public Health and director of the Interdisciplinary Concentration on Women, Gender, and Health. She's also co-founder and chair of the Spirit of 1848 Caucus in the American Public Health Association, which links social justice and public health. [See the Program]
Also of interest – "Happy International Women's Day: a look back at over a century of the global fight for justice and equality," by Sarah Johnson, The Guardian [UK] [March 8, 2023] [Link]; and Temma Kaplan, "On the socialist origins of International Women's Day," Feminist Studies [1985) [Link].
Featured Essays
Why Poverty Persists in America
March 9, 2023]
---- For the past half-century, we've approached the poverty question by pointing to poor people themselves — posing questions about their work ethic, say, or their welfare benefits — when we should have been focusing on the fire. The question that should serve as a looping incantation, the one we should ask every time we drive past a tent encampment, those tarped American slums smelling of asphalt and bodies, or every time we see someone asleep on the bus, slumped over in work clothes, is simply: Who benefits? Not: Why don't you find a better job? Or: Why don't you move? Or: Why don't you stop taking out payday loans? But: Who is feeding off this? Those who have amassed the most power and capital bear the most responsibility for America's vast poverty: political elites who have utterly failed low-income Americans over the past half-century; corporate bosses who have spent and schemed to prioritize profits over families; lobbyists blocking the will of the American people with their self-serving interests; property owners who have exiled the poor from entire cities and fueled the affordable-housing crisis. [Read More]
The American War from Hell, 20 Years Later: How Washington Lost Its Moral Compass in Iraq
By
---- Who remembers anymore that, in 2003, we were Vladimir Putin? Today, our cable and social-media news feeds are blanketed with denunciations of the president of the Russian Federation for his lawless and brutal invasion of Ukraine. … Yes, it's true, on the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, that war is long forgotten here. No one in the Biden administration today cares that it ruined what credibility America had as a pillar of international order in the global south and gave Putin cover for his own atrocity. So, sit back for a moment and let me take you on a little trip into a long-lost all-American world. … In retrospect, on the 20th anniversary of the nightmarish decision to invade Iraq, we've lost more than our credibility in the Global South or a true commitment to international law. As a country, we lost our moral compass and now, amid Russian crimes in Ukraine, it seems that we have also lost all memory of the path we paved and the example we set in Iraq, as well as the crimes that went with it. [Read More]
Also of interest – "The False Promise of ChatGPT," by[Link]; "The Hard Head and Wild Heart of Barbara Ehrenreich," by Sarah Jaffe, In These Times [March 7, 2023] [Link]; and (Video) "Life inside an MST landless workers' settlement in Brazil," bMarch 9, 2023] [Link].
War & Peace
Biden's new whopping $886B defense budget request
By William Hartung, Responsible Statecraft [March 9, 2023]
---- The Pentagon released its budget request for Fiscal Year 2024 today. The figure for the Pentagon alone is a hefty $842 billion. That's $69 billion more than the $773 billion the department requested for Fiscal Year 2023. Total spending on national defense — including work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy — comes in at $886 billion. Adding in likely emergency military aid packages for Ukraine later this year plus the potential tens of billions of dollars in Congressional add-ons could push total spending for national defense to as much as $950 billion or more for FY 2024. The result could be the highest military budget since World War II, far higher than at the peaks of the Korean or Vietnam Wars or the height of the Cold War. The proposed budget is far more than is needed to provide an effective defense of the United States and its allies. [Read More]
The Earthquake Has Left Syrian Kurds Even More Under Siege
By Kurtis Dengler and Debbie Bookchin, The Nation [March 8, 2023]
---- The February 6 earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people and injured more than 120,000 across southeastern Turkey and northwestern Syria has had a particularly devastating aftermath in the Kurdish communities in northern Syrian. Here, instead of trying to alleviate the suffering of their citizens, the governments of Turkey and Syria weaponized the crisis for their own political ends, particularly against the Kurdish people. This became painfully clear during our tour of three largely Kurdish areas. … While people were cold and hungry, for two weeks the Assad regime refused to let a single truck of emergency aid into Sheikh Maqsoud. When we arrived on February 20, we passed a convoy from Heyva Sor, the Kurdish Red Crescent, including ambulances, medical workers, trucks full of food, tents, blankets, medicine, and heating fuel—all sitting on the side of the road. They had been there for a week, waiting for permission to cross. [Read More]
The War in Ukraine
What a Victory for Ukraine Should Look Like
By Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft [February 22, 2022]
---- Differences are growing within the Biden Administration over what kind of victory for Ukraine the United States should support. On the outcome of these discussions could depend not only the outcome of the war in Ukraine, but even conceivably the future of humanity. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has described a Ukrainian attempt to retake not just the Ukrainian territories seized by Russia over the past year, but Crimea (annexed by Russia in 2014) as a "red line" for Russia, that could lead Moscow to widen the war. … To judge by his latest speeches in Kyiv and Warsaw, President Biden himself appears not yet to have decided what the territorial goal of U.S. support to Ukraine should be. He has said that this must be a matter for the Ukrainians to decide, but has stopped short of endorsing their aim to recover Crimea. The issue at stake here for Americans is whether this war should end in a peace that would leave Russia in de facto (if not de jure) possession of Crimea and the eastern Donbas (territory it seized in 2014) while returning (if Ukraine can recapture them) the land seized since the invasion began a year ago; or if America should give massive help to Ukraine indefinitely with a view to recapturing all the lost Ukrainian lands. [Read More]
Conflicting Reports Thicken Nord Stream Bombing Plot
By Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept [
---- In the month since veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published his bombshell report alleging that President Joe Biden personally authorized a covert action to bomb the Nord Stream pipelines, we've seen a frenzy of speculation, detailed dissection of Hersh's specific assertions, and the emergence of competing narratives both supporting and denouncing the report. The question of whether Hersh's story is accurate — either in whole or in part — is of monumental significance, and there are some issues related to this story that have not received as much attention as they deserve. [Read More] Also informative is "In Nord Stream attack, US officials use proxy media to blame proxy Ukraine," by Aaron Maté, Substack [March 8, 2023] [Link]
Also of interest – "Silent in Ukraine: Weapons Perpetuate, Do Not End Wars," by[Link]; "The Far Right in Ukraine," from New Politics: Steve Shalom interviews Taras Bilous, [February 8, 2023] [Link]; and "The Conversation About Ukraine Is Cracking Apart," by Stephen M. Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University [February 28, 2023] [Link].
The Climate Crisis
(Video) "Hopeful": Historic U.N. High Seas Treaty Will Protect 30% of World's Oceans from Biodiversity Loss
From Democracy Now! [March 6, 2023]
---- The first-ever international treaty to protect the oceans was agreed to by negotiators from more than 190 countries at a United Nations conference this weekend, capping nearly two decades of efforts by conservation groups. The legally binding pact could help reverse marine biodiversity loss by establishing marine protected areas covering nearly a third of the world's seas by 2030. We hear more from one of the treaty's scientist-negotiators, Minna Epps, a marine biologist and director of the Ocean Team at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. [See the Program]
Civil Liberties/ "The War on Terror"
(Video) Opposition Grows to Atlanta "Cop City" as More Forest Defenders Charged with Domestic Terrorism
From Democracy Now! [March 9, 2023]
---- Prosecutors in Atlanta have charged 23 forest defenders with "domestic terrorism" after their arrests late Sunday at a festival near the site of Cop City, a massive police training facility being built in the Weelaunee Forest. The arrests followed clashes between police and protesters on Sunday afternoon and came less than two months after Atlanta police shot and killed Manuel "Tortuguita" Terán, a 26-year-old environmental defender. For an update on the growing movement to fight Cop City in Atlanta, we're joined by Micah Herskind, a local community organizer, and Kamau Franklin, founder of Community Movement Builders. [See the Program]. Also of interest is "Atlanta Cop City Protesters Charged With Domestic Terror for Having Mud on Their Shoes," by Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [[Link].
Israel/Palestine
Israel's new far-right government: Unprecedented challenges and opportunities
By Palestinian BDS National Committee [March 5, 2023]
---- Supporting the recent pogrom by fascist Jewish-Israeli militias against Palestinians in Huwara near Nablus in the occupied Palestinian territory and overtly inciting state terrorism, senior Israeli government minister, Bezalel Smotrich, a self-declared "fascist," said, "I think Huwara needs to be erased. The state should be the one to do that." Still, Israel's new far-right government is the most racist, fundamentalist, sexist, corrupt, authoritarian and homophobic ever—without masks. It constitutes simultaneously an escalation in Israel's ongoing settler-colonial and apartheid policies against Indigenous Palestinians and a potentially radical departure in its far-reaching plans for judicial, social and cultural "reforms" affecting Jewish Israeli society, and most likely Israeli economy. This provides advocates of Palestinian rights worldwide, particularly in the BDS movement, an even more urgent responsibility and an opportunity that is unprecedented in 74 years. … But opportunities alone do not lead to change but only provide the fertile ground for it. The anti-racist BDS movement for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality, led by the largest Palestinian coalition ever, has a special responsibility to push the limits even further in exposing Israel's regime of oppression and holding it accountable while, at the same time, carefully, accurately and effectively analyzing the current realities to help guide our human rights campaigning. If ever there was a time to get out of our comfort zones and further grow our intersectional movement and mainstream BDS pressure, it is now! [Read More]
Also of interest re: Israel/Palestine – "The Palestinian Authority is a fig leaf for Israeli apartheid. Disband it." By [Link]; (Video) "The reality for Palestinians: 'There is nobody here to protect us,'" MSNBC interview with Diana Buttu, former legal adviser to the Palestinian Authority [Link]; and (Video) "On The Brink: Jenin's Rising Resistance," from Mondoweiss [March 5, 2023] – 20 minutes - [Link].
Our History
Wounded Knee 50 Years Later: the Fight for Self-Determination Continues
---- The 1973 Siege at Wounded Knee is the longest "civil unrest" in the history of the US Marshal Service. For 71 days, the American Indian Movement (AIM) and members of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) nation were under siege in a violent standoff with the FBI and US Marshals equipped with high powered rifles and armored personnel carriers. Two people were killed, over two dozen wounded. At stake, sovereignty and self-determination guaranteed through treaty rights. Fifty years have passed but for American Indians the struggle for recognition of the nation-to-nation treaties continues to be seen as survival. [Read More] This article does not mention the plight of still-incarcerated Leonard Peltier, still in prison (and nearing death) for a murder he did not commit during the FBI siege of Wounded Knee. You can learn a lot from the website of the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. Also very interesting is the documentary film "Incident at Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story." Produced by Robert Redford (1992) and for rent on You Tube for $3.99 [Link]
'Working 9 to 5': A Firsthand Account of the Women's Movement, Labor Union and Iconic Movie
By Eleanor J. Bader, MS Magazine [March 6, 2023]
---- Shortly after Ellen Cassedy graduated from college in 1971, she joined her friend Karen Nussbaum as an office worker at Harvard University. The pair—close friends who first met as undergraduates—quickly began speaking with other female typists and administrative assistants about the need for better pay, better working conditions, and better and more respectful treatment from their often-condescending male bosses. Within a year, the initial group of 10 Boston-based women went from grousing about their jobs to forming 9 to 5, a bold labor rights organization that eventually became a model for innovative workplace activism throughout the country [Read More]
