Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
June 23, 2024
Hello All – We live in very difficult times. There is little point in enumerating the threats to freedom and, indeed, human life that fill our world, except to recall that our survival depends on doing things that seem beyond our capacities. War, the climate crisis, civil liberties, and justice pre-occupy the pages of this newsletter and the work of Concerned Families of Westchester. Somehow we must find the strength to continue and the wisdom to find effective courses of action.
This edition of the newsletter considers the wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan. In the first two of these wars, our country is directly involved, supplying weapons and money and diplomatic support, working night and day to prevent peace from breaking out. In both cases, perhaps a majority of Americans see these wars as wrong and dangerous; yet our leaders – President, Pentagon, Congress, mainstream media, etc. – refuse to consider alternatives that might bring the wars to an end.
In these wars, War will be the winner, and the only winner. Israel, Hamas, Ukraine, and Russia have already suffered deadly losses, for which it may take decades to recover. The United States has nearly destroyed whatever international reputation it retained after Iraq and Afghanistan. The United Nations and international law have been overwhelmed by the refusal – not for the first time – of the "Great Powers" to support the principals of the UN Charter. "Concerned Families" everywhere hardly know where to turn. We are becoming refugees, trying not to be buried in the rubble of war.
This week's news from the Gaza war is that Israel is preparing to widen the war by attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon. Such a war would be even more deadly than the war now being waged on the people of Gaza, as the UN Secretary General warned on Friday. The Israeli war minister is now in Washington, presumably to get permission and perhaps to arrange for collaboration for this war. Such a war would offer the danger (or is it the opportunity?) of engaging the US and Iran, a long-held aspiration of Israel. In a short video ("Apocalyptic Thinking and Israel's Looming War in Lebanon"), Peter Beinart explains why this is very dangerous/insane.
Work for peace. And don't forget to vote.
Illuminating the Week That Was
(Video) Inside Al-Aqsa hospital: Doctor shares experience in Gaza medical facility
From Aljazeera English [8 minutes] [June 20, 2024] – 8 minutes
---- Al Jazeera has been given special access inside Gaza's largest, remaining, functioning hospital, where medical workers are struggling to provide care to an ever-growing number of patients. Our correspondent Hani Mahmoud was taken through Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir el-Balah by Doctor Bushra Othman who's a general surgeon working with an overseas medical mission. [See the Program]
UN Commission Finds Israel Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity
By Bashir Abu-Manneh, Jacobin Magazine [June 2024]
---- A new report by a UN commission finds that Israel intended to murder civilians en masse, inflict wide-scale civilian destruction, and collectively punish Palestinians in Gaza — holding them hostage to its political aims. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory issued its "first in-depth investigation into the events that took place on and since 7 October 2023." The report holds the Israeli occupation responsible for the ongoing catastrophic situation in Gaza. But it also alludes to the possibility that October 7 is a watershed moment for even harsher Israeli occupation unless international law is urgently implemented. [Read More]
(Video) UN chief warns against escalation in Lebanon
From Al Jazeera English [June 21, 2024] ---- Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah must not turn Lebanon into "another Gaza", UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns. "The risk for the conflict in the Middle East to widen is real and must be avoided when a rash move, when miscalculation, could trigger a catastrophe that goes far beyond the border and, frankly, beyond imagination," he told reporters at UN headquarters. [See the Program]
The Bowman Campaign
Rep. Jamaal Bowman's campaign to win the Democratic Party nomination for Congress is now in its final days. Early voting has gone on for a week, and the official Election Day is Tuesday, June 25. There has been little reliable polling, though talking heads say that his opponent is in the lead, thanks to an unprecedented spending campaign by the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and its affiliates. But canvassers from CFOW have found that, at least in Hastings, where Bowman is supported by Mayor Nikki, Bowman may have an edge. In any case, there is across-the-board agreement that the election depends on turnout, which depends in part of Bowman's ninth-inning volunteers. To help out and get involved – with door-knocking or phone-banking or whatever - go here to see what's happening and to sign up.
This election has been dominated by the determination of the Israel Lobby to defeat one of the handful of members of Congress supportive of Palestinian rights and opposed to Israel's horrible war on Gaza. Behind the scenes, the immense spending on ads and mailers and whatever by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliates has turned the election into one that raises questions about election interference by Big Money in service to a foreign country (Israel). Here are two short videos that highlight this issue:
(Video) This NY race is history's most expensive House primary. Here's why.
With Chris Hayes, MSNBC [June 19, 2024] ---- "Why all that spending? And where is it coming from? Well, this race isn't really about the candidates, at least the spending part of it," says Chris Hayes on Democratic primary for New York's 16th congressional district. [See the Program]
(Video) Some Jewish voters don't like what he's saying about the war in Gaza. Why that might cost him his seat
From CNN [June 22, 2024] – And filmed in Hastings!
---- Congressman Jamaal Bowman represents one of the largest Jewish populations in the country. Here is how some Jewish voters in his district have reacted to his comments on Israel and Gaza — and what that may mean for his upcoming primary on June 25th. [See the Program]
And also
AIPAC vs. Jamaal Bowman: New York Democratic Race Turns Into Referendum on pro-Israel group
By Ben Samuels, Haaretz [Israel] [June 21, 2024]
---- AIPAC has spent over $14 million in its bid to unseat the far-left Democrat in his race against challenger George Latimer next Tuesday. In response, Jamaal Bowman has called the pro-Israel group 'the Zionist regime' and questioned its targeting of Black lawmakers. [Read More] Also of interest is "NY Dem challenging Bowman shares dozens of donors with Republican who sought Santos' seat," by Michelle Bocanegra and Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky, The Gothamist [June 13, 2024] [Link]
News Notes
Arundhati Roy is in trouble again. This time it is for a speech she made in 2010 about the disputed territory of Kashmir, claimed by both India and Pakistan. As Nitasha Kaul writes in "Arundhati Roy 'anti-terror' charge part of a push to silence Modi's critics," the newly reelected Hindu nationalist government in India is poised to punish Roy as a means to silence all dissenters.
What we call "The Movement" is made up of thousands and thousands of people working hard for peace and justice. Frank Emspak, from Tuckahoe, was one of them. In "The Passing of a Troublemaker," labor historian Paul Buhle writes about the life and times of Emspak, and about what a stalwart's stalwart did in one lifetime. The labor movement, civil right, the peace movement – he did it all. Thank you, Frank.
Our team lost two other members this week. In their own ways they helped to weave a more just world, while giving us great pleasure as they plied their trades. Here is a nice video remembering Willie Mays, while another video remembers Donald Sutherland and the great antiwar cabaret group "FTA."
Rewards!
This week's Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers come from Democracy Now's Juneteenth broadcast last week. It begins with an interview with musical artist Rhiannon Giddens, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her opera Omar, about Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar in Africa who was sold into slavery in the 1800s. [See the Program] And here is a link to the song mentioned in the program, "When the Moon Meets the Sun." Enjoy!
Best Wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
(Video) 'The Night Won't End': Biden's War on Gaza
---- From air strikes to field executions, Fault Lines investigates the killings of civilians by the Israeli military in Gaza and the role of the United States in the war. As Israel's bombing campaign continues in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis deepens to catastrophic levels, the Biden administration has not wavered in its support for Israel. United States weapons transfers – from 2,000-pound bombs to artillery shells and tanks – have been a crucial part of the Israeli military campaign. Fault Lines worked with journalists in Gaza to profile three families as they try to survive the war. Together with Airwars, Fault Lines also investigated an air strike on December 11 in north Gaza in which more than 100 people from the same family were killed. Numerous attacks on civilians – including that on Hind Rajab and her relatives in late January – have raised international concern and questions over continuing US support. [See the Program]
The United States Is the Main Obstacle to Peace in Palestine
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Code Pink [June 17, 2024]
---- The United States seems determined to share Israel's self-inflicted isolation from voices calling for peace from all over the world, including large majorities of countries in the UN General Assembly and Security Council. But perhaps this is appropriate, as the United States bears a great deal of responsibility for that isolation. By its decades of unconditional support for Israel, and by using its UN Security Council veto dozens of times to shield Israel from international accountability, the United States has enabled successive Israeli governments to pursue flagrantly criminal policies and to thumb their noses at the growing outrage of people and countries across the world. This pattern of U.S. support for Israel goes all the way back to its founding, when Zionist leaders in Palestine unleashed a well-planned operation to seize much more territory than the UN allocated to their new state in its partition plan, which the Palestinians and neighboring countries already firmly opposed. [Read More]
The Art of the Submarine
By Frida Berrigan, Counterpunch [June 21, 2024]
---- On a train with all her belongings, Beatrice Cuming looked out the window — so the story goes — as it pulled into New London and impulsively got off, drawn by what she later described as the "obviously beautiful, powerful, dramatic, [and] exciting" subject matter in our town. And she stayed, painting city scenes and diving into the local arts community. To support herself, she got a job as a security guard at the General Dynamics Electric Boat company. I try to imagine her, maybe wearing a green jumpsuit, a flashlight, and a ring of keys at her waist, patrolling Electric Boat's massive yard and docks in nearby Groton. During World War II, that company must have been a 24/7 operation as it churned out 74 submarines and 398 PT boats from those very docks. … Eventually, realizing the prodigious talent of its security guard, the company commissioned Cuming to begin documenting its contributions to the war effort. As Electric Boat's artist-in-residence (so to speak), she produced a number of breathtaking works. All too literally. I sat across from her painting Welders at Electric Boat Company unable to breathe. [Read More]
Sudan Starves
By Joshua Craza, et al, New York Review of Books [June 23, 2024]
---- Ninety-five percent of Sudan's total grain production occurs in November and December. It should be a time of plenty. In the southeastern state of Blue Nile, farmers fashion conical gourds into wazza, horn instruments with a bright clear sound, which they play to celebrate the harvest season. Last year they were silent. In April 2023 a war broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the major factions of Sudan's ruling military junta. The conflict has created a humanitarian catastrophe. In January the UN published a report claiming that during the first eight months of the war, between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed just in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state; no one knows how many have died overall. Over a million people have fled abroad. Ten million are internally displaced, more than in any other country. … It is easy to forget that hunger in Sudan has a long political history. Droughts might have provoked food insecurity, but governments cause famines. For six painful decades the country's postcolonial rulers have weaponized hunger, choosing a select few to live and leaving the rest to die. [Read More]
The War on Gaza
'Netanyahu Knows He's Out if Hostages Return'
By Bar Peleg, et al, Haaretz [Israel] [June 22, 2024]
---- Tens of thousands of people protested against the Netanyahu coalition and for a deal that would release the hostages in Tel Aviv and in several other locations across Israel, including Jerusalem, Caesarea, Haifa, and Be'er Sheva. As every week, the main protest calling for early elections was held on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv, while a rally of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum was held at the same time at the so-called Hostage Square outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. A protest by the anti-government hostages' families is held in front of the Israeli defense ministry complex. After the protests largely ended, demonstrators began marching toward Tel Aviv's city center. Some marched from the defense ministry complex to Hostage Square, in a route approved by police, but some deviated from it and headed to the Likud headquarters, where hundreds of them lit fires in front of the entrance. [Read More]
Also of interest - (Video) 'All of the rats in the Knesset': Mass antiwar protest in Israel, from Aljazeera [Link]; and "Hostage Families demand Deal, Netanyahu Resignation, in Largest Demonstrations since Oct. 7," by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [June 23, 2024] [Link].
(Video) The World Food Program on Gaza: "Famine Means Failure"
---- The World Food Programme's Palestine director on urgent aid in Gaza, where trapped civilians struggle amid a collapsed infrastructure. The human cost of Israel's ongoing war on Gaza is becoming increasingly evident. For those on the ground, the reality is stark and harrowing. With ongoing bombardments and almost destroyed infrastructure, how are people coping as the food, water and other basic essentials they need, become increasingly scarce? And is there any way the humanitarian crisis in Gaza can be alleviated? Matthew Hollingworth, the country director for the World Food Programme in Palestine, talks to Al Jazeera. [See the Program]
Ten Holocaust survivors condemn Israel's Gaza genocide
An Open Letter [June 22, 2024]
[FB – One of the signers of the Open Letter is Lillian Rosengarten. A member of JVP-Westchester, Lillian escaped from Germany in 1936.]
---- The co-founder of Human Rights Watch, Aryeh Neier, has recently said that Israel is engaged in genocide in Gaza. He's also said that using accusations of antisemitism to attack Israel's critics "debases the whole concept of antisemitism." As Holocaust survivors, we are writing to agree wholeheartedly with Professor Neier — who himself only survived the Holocaust by escaping Nazi Germany as a child in 1939. At a recent Holocaust memorial, Netanyahu declared: "We'll defeat our genocidal enemies. Never again is now!" Meanwhile, at another memorial, Biden warned of a "ferocious surge of antisemitism" on college campuses. In our opinion, to use the memory of the Holocaust like this to justify either genocide in Gaza or repression on college campuses is a complete insult to the memory of the Holocaust. [Read More]
The War in Ukraine
(Video) The Ukraine "Peace Summit"
With Anatole Lieven, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft [June 18, 2024]
---- The Ukraine "Peace Summit" in Switzerland on June 15th and 16th is taking place in the absence of Russia (not invited), as well as China and other key countries. The ten-point "peace plan" put forward by the Ukrainian government is generally regarded by experts as standing no chance of success. Nonetheless, Western governments hope that the summit will help to rally international support and sympathy for Ukraine. To assess the outcomes of the meeting, the Quincy Institute held a conversation with John Mearsheimer…. [See the Program]
Reality Has Changed: the Ukraine War Slams Europe Rightward
By Eve Ottenberg, Counterpunch [June 21, 2024]
---- So has fascism come back to Europe or are Europeans simply sick of the Empire's endless wars? The smart money's on the latter, because what mostly unites the diverse right-wingers recently elected to the European Parliament is objection to the Ukraine War. But even that unity shows many cracks, as this motley collection of rightists share little regarding policies. That's not to say that a far-right European parliament can't have nasty effects – it can and very well may. But for now, what voters for these reactionaries generally want is peace – and it's hard to fault them for that. What the elected officials in fact provide is another story. [Read More
Also of interest - "Ukraine-Russia Peace Is as Elusive as Ever. But in 2022 They Were Talking," b Anton Troianovski, et al., New York Times [June 15, 2024] [Link]. On his Substack site, Aaron Maté has a useful essay about The Times' revelations/article, "New evidence US blocked Ukraine-Russia peace deal, and a new Ukrainian excuse for walking away" [June 23, 2024] [Link].
The Climate Crisis
Unprecedentedly Hot: Why we Need a National Climate Action Plan
By John J. Berger, Tom Dispatch [June 19, 2024]
---- Nobel Prize-winning former Energy Secretary Steven Chu now claims it's no longer possible to keep the global temperature from rising more than 1.5°C above the historical average, as the 195-nation signatories to the 2015 Paris climate agreement had hoped. In fact, he projects that the target of 2°C will also be broken and that, by 2050 the global temperature will have risen above 3°C. Nor is his pessimism unique. Hundreds of other scientists have recently forecast a strong possibility of hitting 2.5°C, which should hardly be surprising since, for well over 30 years now, global leaders have failed to heed the warnings of climate scientists by moving decisively to phase out fossil fuels and their heat-trapping gases. It could hardly be clearer that the world is already in the throes of a climate catastrophe. That means it's high time for the U.S. to declare a national climate emergency to help focus us all on the disaster at hand. [Read More]
Biden's border restrictions are stranding climate migrants in extreme heat
By Ayurella Horn-Muller, Grist [June 12, 2024]
---- With much of the southwest baking under record temperatures, immigrants' rights advocates worry President Joe Biden's decision to effectively close the border to asylum seekers for the foreseeable future will endanger lives and further marginalize climate-displaced people seeking refuge in the U.S. Their concerns come as a heat dome lingering over Mexico and the southwestern United States has obliterated temperature records from Phoenix to Sacramento, California. The promise of a hotter-than-average summer has raised fears that Biden's directive, which allows the government to suspend border crossings when they surpass 2,500 daily, will lead to a surge in heat-related illnesses and possibly deaths. [Read More]
The State of the Unions
What Is the State of Organized Labor?
By Arthur MacEwan, Dollars and Sense [May-June 2024]
---- In the short run, there are clear conflicts between efforts by unions to extend their organizing efforts and other union responsibilities—in particular, bargaining and protecting their members from employers' mistreatment and abuses of union members (i.e., employers' contract violations). These relatively immediate union responsibilities can include strikes, which, in turn, mean using union resources to maintain a strike fund. There would seem to be, and often are, conflicts between using union resources to support organizing and meeting immediate responsibilities. Given the difficulties in organizing noted above, it is easy to forego organizing in favor of immediate responsibilities. This approach is "Fortress Unionism," advocating that unions use their limited resources to protect their existing strengths and forego costly and lengthy organizing drives until the environment (economic structure, political context, employer aggressiveness) changes. But there are two major problems with the "Fortress Unionism" argument: first, the environment is unlikely to change appreciatively without a stronger labor movement—which means a larger labor movement; and, second, it turns out that unions' resources are not so limited! [Read More] Also of interest is "Unions Must Seize the Moment to Organize the South," by Ben Carroll, Portside [June 15, 2024] [Link].
Our History
Exploring the History of Freedom Schools
By Deborah Menkart and Jenice L. View, Zinn Education Project [June 2024]
---- The Freedom Schools of the 1960s were part of a long line of efforts to liberate people from oppression using the tool of popular education, including secret schools in the 18th and 19th centuries for enslaved Africans; labor schools during the early 20th century; and the Citizenship Schools formed by Septima Clark and others in the 1950s. The Freedom Schools of the 1960s were first developed by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi. They were intended to counter what Charles Cobb refers to as the "sharecropper education" received by so many African Americans and poor whites. Through reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and civics, participants received a progressive curriculum during a six-week summer program that was designed to prepare disenfranchised African Americans to become active political actors on their own behalf (as voters, elected officials, organizers, etc.). Nearly 40 Freedom Schools were established serving close to 2,500 students, including parents and grandparents. [Read More]
The Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., 1928–2024
By Peter Dreier, The Nation [June 13, 2024]
---- In the spring of his senior year, Lawson received a draft notice. He had decided to pursue the ministry and could have received a deferment, but he thought it was unconscionable for clergy to be deferred while others had to serve in the Korean War. He ended up serving 13 months in prison. After his release, Lawson moved to Nagpur, India, where he worked for three years as a Methodist missionary and studied satyagraha—Mohandas Gandhi's principles of nonviolent resistance. One day in 1955, while in India, Lawson was reading a newspaper and saw photographs of masses of African Americans launching a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. He began whooping, clapping, and dancing in joy. This shocked a colleague in the next hut, who only knew Lawson as a serious and cerebral man. But for Lawson, the photographs offered evidence that a nonviolent mass movement was taking hold back home. [Read More]
