Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
September 10, 2023
Hello All – Monday, September 11th, will be the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. On the following day, September 12th, three families in Dobbs Ferry met to discuss… what was going on. They invited friends to another meeting, and then another, and soon began to call themselves Concerned Families of Westchester, hoping that an inoffensive, family friendly name would get them a meeting with their (Republican) congressional representative. (Alas.)
Like millions of others, those meeting in Dobbs Ferry were focused on the horrible loss of life in the Twin Towers, and also on the possibility of additional attacks – Where was this going? Also, like the apparent majority of New Yorkers, our concern was not on revenge, but on preventing further killing. As the Bush administration and the media whipped up hatred for the killers, however, our discussion group became an antiwar group, focused on the stupidity of the emerging war and the possible starvation of tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, dependent on the World Food Program for basic survival. We also became acquainted with organizations such as 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, whose members had lost loved ones on 9/11 but were adamant that their grief should not be used to justify further killing.
In the 22 years that followed, Concerned Families has served as a platform and as a home base for Rivertowns residents wishing to speak out against the wars that followed 9/11, and against the violations of civil liberties and the racial injustices that accompanied the hardening of the USA into a warfare state. During these two decades, the political center of gravity has moved decisively to the right, not withstanding the strong mobilizations around racial justice, the climate crisis, women's rights, and much more. Despite these gains, however, all those working for peace in the USA are confronted with a political landscape in which the more liberal of the two political parties strongly supports wars and is investing hundreds of billions of dollars into weapons and other programs that will only hasten human self-destruction. The echoes of 9/11 remain with us, to our sorrow.
Some useful reading about 9/11 and its consequences
(Video) Noam Chomsky on 9-11 (2002)
An extended speech by Noam Chomsky, delivered 4 months after the 9/11 attacks, on the occasion of the publication of his book 9 -11. [See the Speech].
How 9/11 Bred a "War on Terror" from Hell
By Norman Solomon, TomDispatch [September 7, 2023]
---- Under the "war on terror" rubric, open-ended warfare was well underway — "as if terror were a state and not a technique," as Joan Didion wrote in 2003 (two months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq). "We had seen, most importantly, the insistent use of September 11 to justify the reconception of America's correct role in the world as one of initiating and waging virtually perpetual war." In a single sentence, Didion had captured the essence of a quickly calcified set of assumptions that few mainstream journalists were willing to question. … For the White House, the Pentagon, and Congress, the war on terror offered a political license to kill and displace people on a large scale in at least eight countries. The resulting carnage often included civilians. The dead and maimed had no names or faces that reached those who signed the orders and appropriated the funds. And as the years went by, the point seemed to be not winning that multicontinental war but continuing to wage it, a means with no plausible end. Stopping, in fact, became essentially unthinkable. No wonder Americans couldn't be heard wondering aloud when the "war on terror" would end. It wasn't supposed to. [Read More]
The Climate March & Rally
Climate March – Sunday, September 17th
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called a September 20 Climate Ambition Summit to address the global climate emergency. On Sunday, September 17, a wide coalition of environmental, social justice, youth, indigenous, labor, and faith groups is converging in NYC for the March to End Fossil Fuels. We will demand that President Biden declare a climate emergency and take bold and immediate action to end our reliance on fossil fuels. Please join us! CD16 and CFOW will be on the first car on the MetroNorth train that stops in Hastings at 10:58 a.m. (Check times from Tarrytown to Riverdale for the same train). We will convene by the information booth in Grand Central between 11:45-noon and head to the start of the march (near Columbus Circle) together. The event will end around 4:30 near the UN. For detailed information on the march: go here. For some background on the March: go here. go here. For why the climate crisis demands immediate action:
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 in Yonkers on Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm 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!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
US Foreign Policy Has an Extinction Agenda
By Spencer Ackerman, The Nation [September 5, 2023]
---- In April 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the sort of warning that would galvanize a sane society into historic action. Unless greenhouse gas emissions cease rising by 2025, the IPCC found, humanity will not be able to limit the warming of the planet to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the temperature at which the worst ravages of climate change might still be avoided—though not all of them, just the most catastrophic. The choice implied by the IPCC was between a globe-spanning initiative to halve emissions by 2030, thereby giving us a chance of remaining within the 1.5˚C threshold, or a 21st century defined by an increasingly uninhabitable world. … Seventeen months have passed since the IPCC's warning. Summer 2023 featured both the hottest July ever recorded and an understandable focus on wet-bulb temperatures, which helps measure the point at which external heat and humidity overwhelm the body's ability to cool itself and survive extended exposure. [Read More]
(Video) Democratic Republic of Congo Faces "Worst Hunger Catastrophe" as Mineral Extraction Enriches the Few
From Democracy Now! [September 7, 2023]
---- The Democratic Republic of the Congo is seeing a dramatic deterioration of infrastructure and displacement of citizens as a result of armed violence, flooding and the world's largest hunger crisis. In recent months, rampant violence of armed groups has forced more than half a million people to flee their homes, while the United Nations says some 3,000 families also lost their homes after recent intense flooding and mudslides in the eastern part of the country. Twenty-five million people are facing starvation as displaced citizens are unable to access their land to grow their own food, and the humanitarian response has so far failed to address the crisis. "The crisis is beyond belief," says Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland, who just visited the DRC and reports that the international community still looks for the country's resources while ignoring its plight. "The Congo is not ignored by those who want to extract the riches of that place. It's ignored by the rest of the world who would want to come to the relief of the children and families of the Congo." [See the Program]
What role does culture play in Palestinian liberation?
By Mohammed El-Kurd, Mondoweiss [September 5, 2023]
---- I am often asked, in interviews and on university campuses, what role I think literature plays in the Palestinian liberation movement. And though the question itself isn't subversive, it certainly feels that way: What is the role of literature? Who does it serve, here, in the English-speaking world, in fancy hotel lobbies and Ivy League auditoriums, planets away from the makeshift rifles of the refugee camps? It's hard to say. It's hard to imagine what a poem can do in the barrel of a gun. … Even though there has been 75 years of Palestinian scholarship and knowledge production, and every journalist, diplomat, and lawmaker has access to visual and material evidence of the atrocities committed against the Palestinian people, I believe, at least for the time being, that we are not past the time for persuasion. Artists can and have influenced international public opinion in many instances across history. [Read More]
The War in Ukraine
Two themes headed the news from the war in Ukraine last week: a new round of US funding for more weapons and ammunition, and a strong pushback from the USA and NATO against claims that Ukraine's "counteroffensive" against Russian forces in Ukraine was "stalemated." Along with US Secretary of State Blinken's sudden trip to Kiev, the combined effort was to reassure the Ukrainian government that US and NATO support for the war was undiminished, and to refute critics/skeptics about the war, maintaining that victory was still possible.
The new round of US aid for Ukraine ($1 billion) included $275 million for an assortment of weapons, including (controversially) artillery shells made from depleted uranium, valued because of their hardness/penetrating ability (tanks), but producing radioactive dust on impact with health consequences for civilians as well as soldiers. This was the 74th package of military aid for Ukraine since Biden took office; for a useful/comprehensive summary of US military aid since the start of the war ($70 billion), go here.
Two themes on my mind this week are the (tiniest) possibility of peace talks, and the geographical expansion of war. This article ("Eastern European NATO Countries Fear Peace Talks Between Ukraine and Russia") illustrates a few of the complexities in moving toward negotiations at any point in the future; while debris from a missile attack on Ukraine that fell on the Rumanian side of the Danube River has prompted additional NATO F-16 air patrols on the border. Also interesting to me is an article from the New York Times, "Turbulent Waters: How the Black See became a Military Hot Spot" [Link]. The geographical expansion of the war (including the Polish-Belarus border) increases the possibility of accidental/on purpose contact between NATO and Russian forces.
Finally, highly recommended is a program this week from Democracy Now! – "Ukrainian & Russian Activists on How Putin's War Emboldens "Authoritarian Forces" Around the World." While not in agreement with their view that continued military escalation is the proper path, they have many important things to say about the destruction caused by the war and what may have motivated Putin to actually invade in February 2022. [See the Program]
War & Peace
Thanks to Biden, the War Party is back
By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Responsible Statecraft [September 5, 2023]
---- President Joe Biden recently appointed Victoria Nuland, Dick Cheney's point person on Iraq, acting deputy secretary of State, the department's number two official. He named Elliott Abrams, convicted perjurer and grim apologist for Central American torturers under Ronald Reagan, to his Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. War may or may not be the health of the state, but surely it is a tonic for neo-conservative armchair warriors. In the White House, while Biden has touted a new "foreign policy for the middle class," his policies have largely been a reversion to the ruinous policies of the foreign policy establishment and its belief in America's benevolent hegemony.[Read More]
The Rules of Engagement of Violent Islamophobia: 22 Years of Drone Warfare and No End in Sight
By Maha Hilal, Tom Dispatch [September 6, 2023]
---- In 2023, this country's drone warfare program has entered its third decade with no end in sight. Despite the fact that the 22nd anniversary of 9/11 is approaching, policymakers have demonstrated no evidence of reflecting on the failures of drone warfare and how to stop it. Instead, the focus continues to be on simply shifting drone policy in minor ways within an ongoing violent system. … Since the war on terror was launched, the London-based watchdog group Airwars has estimated that American air strikes have killed at least 22,679 civilians and possibly up to 48,308 of them. Such killings have been carried out for the most part by desensitized killers, who have been primed towards the dehumanization of the targets of those murderous machines. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
Summer of 2023 hottest recorded in 'wake-up' call to cut carbon emissions
By Damian Carrington, The Guardian [UK] [September 6, 2023]
---- The summer of 2023 was the hottest ever recorded, as the climate crisis and emerging El Niño pushed up temperatures and drove extreme weather across the world. In June, July and August – the northern hemisphere summer – the global average temperature reached 16.77C, which was 0.66C above the 1991 to 2020 average. The new high is 0.29C above the previous record set in 2019, a major jump in climate terms. Heatwaves, fires and floods have destroyed lives and livelihoods across the globe, from North and South America, to Europe, India, Japan and China. [Read More]
The State of the Union
How the War on Poverty Stalled
By Kim Phillips-Fein, The New Republic [August 28, 2023]
---- In 1962, a 33-year-old freelance writer who had little institutional or academic standing published a book widely credited with helping inspire the creation of Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start, and food stamps—representing the commitment of the federal government to a war on poverty. .. The opening pages of The Other America set out the problem: There was a "familiar America" of postwar prosperity, of televisions and radios and automobiles and suburban homes, and then there was a shadowland—"another America"—of between 40 and 50 million people who lived in poverty. … Matthew Desmond's latest book, , sets out from a very different starting point. In the early 1960s, when Harrington published his book, poor people were hardly part of political discourse at all; today, there are few who would be so naïve as to claim to simply not know poverty exists in American society. As a result, Desmond presents his book not as an exposé but as an effort to answer the question: Why? Why is there still so much poverty in the United States? [Read More]
Also of interest – "The US Welfare State Expanded During the Pandemic. On Biden's Watch, It's Been Rolled Back," by Luke Savage, Jacobin Magazine [September 8, 2023] [Link]; and "'Totally devastating': borrowers on the start of student loan repayment," by Lauren Aratani, The Guardian [UK] [September 6, 2023] [Link].
(Video) "A Political Prosecution": 61 Cop City Opponents Hit with RICO Charges by Georgia's Republican AG
From Democracy Now! [September 6, 2023]
---- Georgia is intensifying its crackdown against opponents of Cop City, with the state's Republican attorney general announcing sweeping indictments of 61 people on racketeering charges over protests and other activism related to the $90 million police training facility planned to be built in Atlanta. …We also speak with Keyanna Jones, a Stop Cop City organizer with Community Movement Builders, who notes the indictments are dated from May 25, 2020, the day Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. [See the Program] And the struggle continues: "Defying RICO Indictment, Faith Leaders Chain Themselves to Bulldozer to Stop Cop City," The Intercept [September 7, 2023] [Link].
Israel/Palestine
Far From the Eyes of the World, an Unbelievable Population Transfer Is Underway in the West Bank
By Gideon Levy and Alex Levac, Haaretz [Israel] [September 9, 2023]
---- All that remains in the valley now is black, scorched earth, a memento of what was until last week a place of human habitation. There also is a sheep pen, which the banished residents left behind as a memorial or perhaps also in the hope of better days, when they will be able to return to their land – a prospect that looks very far-fetched indeed at present. Across from the blackened soil loom two tents that portend evil, along with a van and a tractor, all belonging to the lords of the land: the settlers who invaded this shepherding community and terrorized its residents day and night until last Friday, the last of the families, who had lived here for more than 40 years, set out for the desert to find a new place of habitation. [Read More]
As 1.2m Palestinians Face Food Crisis, Civil Society Orgs Urge Blinken to Override GOP Aid Block
By Ben Samuels, Haaretz [Israel] [September 6, 2023]
---- As 1.2 million Palestinians are potentially days away from a food shortage directly linked to Washington political infighting, civil society organizations are urging U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to override a Republican-issued hold on $75 million in food assistance. Republican lawmakers have placed holds on the State Department from providing appropriate funding for food assistance for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, accusing UN aid agency UNRWA of fomenting anti-Israel sentiment while being explicitly linked to terror organizations. Twenty-three civil society organizations warned that "a devastating humanitarian crisis looms with more than 1.2 million people potentially left without food as early as mid-September, including hundreds of thousands of children who will be left hungry." [Read More]
Our History
Teaching SNCC: The Organization at the Heart of the Civil Rights Revolution
By Adam Sanchez, Rethinking Schools [September 2023]
[FB – "SNCC" = "The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee"]
---- Probably the most important part of SNCC's legacy is not its nonviolent direct action tactics, but its base-building through community organizing. SNCC was influenced by the communities in which they organized, just as SNCC influenced them. The debates throughout SNCC's various organizing campaigns reflect this relationship with the communities in which they organized. Playing out these debates in the classroom shows students that social movements aren't only about protest — but also about tactics, strategy, and the ability to hold a debate and move forward together. Tracking SNCC's ideological transformation can also help highlight how social movements can quickly radicalize, as what seemed impossible only a few years before is made possible through protest and organization. [Read More]
From the Partial Test Ban Treaty to a Nuclear Weapons-Free World
By Lawrence Wittner, Peace Action [September 5, 2023]
[FB – And my first "March on Washington" 1962.]
---- This September is the sixtieth anniversary of U.S. and Soviet ratification of the world's first significant nuclear arms control agreement, the Partial Test Ban Treaty. Thus, it's an appropriate time to examine that treaty, as well as to consider what might be done to end the danger of nuclear annihilation. Although the use, in 1945, of atomic bombs to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki unleashed a wave of public concern about human survival in the nuclear age, it declined with the emergence of the Cold War. But another, even larger wave developed during the 1950s and early 1960s as the nuclear arms race surged forward. … In reaction to this growing menace, millions of people around the world began to resist nuclear weapons. They formed new, activist organizations. …Even in the Soviet bloc, concerned scientists pressed for an end to the nuclear arms race. [Read More] 
