Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
July 28, 2024
Hello All – Will Kamala Harris make a difference? As Harris replaces Biden as the Democrats' presidential candidate, will US support for Israel's war on Gaza change, or will it continue? And what can we do to work more effectively for an end to the war?
After Harris met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu this week, she spoke to the press. She repeated many of the standard lines about US support for Israel, but she also spoke at length about the suffering of the Palestinian people, their right to self-determination, and the need to end the war quickly. Perhaps most important, she stated that the US expected Netanyahu to cooperate with the peace talks now underway, and to accept the outcome. Does her speech signal a change for US policy supporting Israel's endless war? We do not know. Her record on Israel/Palestine is in line with the Democrats' traditional and unconditional support for Israel, in war and "peace." But there are reasons to think that Harris may see things differently than Biden; most importantly, she may see that she cannot win the presidency in November if the war continues.
Under these circumstances, the US antiwar efforts are very important. Today's flare-up in Israel re: Hezbollah's (alleged) attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights (Syria) is viewed in Israel – and presumably in the US – as a prelude to a dangerous expansion of the war. Moreover, regarding the Gaza peace negotiations now underway in Rome, there is testimony from an Israeli negotiator that It is likely that Netanyahu will sabotage negotiations for peace. What then will Biden do? What will Harris say? In a better world, if this were to happen, the US would cut off financial and military support to Israel, and cease protecting Israel at the UN. Will Harris's implied threat to pull the plug be implemented? Perhaps we will see – very soon. For our part, by keeping up our agitation, our clamor for an end to US support for Israel's horrific slaughter of Palestinians, by making it impossible for Harris to campaign without dissent from peace activists, we have the opportunity and the obligation to put our finger on the scales for peace. It may make a difference.
Illuminating the Week That Was
Netanyahu's speech to Congress
(Video) Over 100 Lawmakers Skip Netanyahu's Address to Congress Amid Protests over U.S. Support for War in Gaza
From Democracy Now! [July 25, 2024]
---- Foreign policy analyst Phyllis Bennis says the speech was "horrifying," but says it showed that "support for Israel has become a thoroughly partisan issue." Bennis adds that peace activists in the U.S. have built a broad consensus against the war on Gaza and military support for Israel, and says Vice President Kamala Harris has an opportunity to chart a new path on Middle East policy as she runs for president. [See the Program]
(Video) Noura Erakat: During Netanyahu Speech, U.S. Lawmakers Cheered "What Is Essentially a War on Children"
From Democracy Now! [July 25, 2024]
---- We speak with Palestinian human rights lawyer Noura Erakat about Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress, in which he defended Israel's brutal war on Gaza, lied repeatedly about the dire humanitarian conditions on the ground and refused to talk about how to reach a ceasefire to end the bloodshed. Although more than 100 Democrats skipped the speech, Erakat says the jubilant reaction from lawmakers in attendance showed U.S. leaders cheering "for what is essentially a war on children." [See the Program]
Kamala Harris: Will She Make a Difference?
Kamala Harris Will Shift on Gaza Only if We Make Her
By Y.L. Al-Sheikh and Nickan Fayyazi, The Nation [July 26, 2024]
---- The need for a comprehensive reset on the Democratic Party']s policy toward the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and freedom is paramount. It is clear that anyone who cares about this issue must demand right now: that Harris tells the American public and the world that Israel can no longer occupy Palestinian land and impose apartheid on millions while enjoying US support and protection from accountability. But we must be equally clear that Harris will not do any of these things without sustained, relentless political pressure from the movement for Palestine. … Poll after poll shows that the demand for a ceasefire is mainstream, with voters more likely to cast a ballot for a Democrat who expresses clear support for one than a Democrat who mirrors the Republican on the issue. More than 45 percent of voters who expressed support for the Biden-Harris ticket say that military assistance to Israel should be decreased. The campaign for the "uncommitted" ballot option in states like Michigan, New Jersey, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Washington enabled Democratic voters in the hundreds of thousands, alongside professional organizers and activists, to express opposition to Biden's unconditional support of Israel's occupation and apartheid system. [Read More]
The One Vice-Presidential Pick Who Could Ruin Democratic Unity
By David Klion, The New Republic [July 24, 2024]
---- This is a hopeful moment for the whole left-liberal coalition. The vibes, for once, are good. Almost every leftist I know is excited about Harris and thinks Trump is beatable. With a newly united party behind her, there are only so many ways Harris can screw it up, but one seems all too plausible: She could select Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate. … Shapiro also stands out among the current field of potential running mates as being egregiously bad on Palestine. It's not just that he, like many Democrats, is an outspoken supporter of Israel—though he certainly is, having championed Israel's war against Hamas consistently and without any apparent concern for Palestinian civilians. Shapiro has, moreover, done far more than most Democrats to attack pro-Palestine antiwar demonstrators, in ways that call into question his basic commitment to First Amendment rights. [Read More]
News Notes
On Tuesday evening the Westchester Human Rights Commission, joined by similar groups from Dobbs, Irvington, Ardsley, and Hastings, will hold a live webinar on "Hate Crimes, Bias Incidents, and Discrimination" at 6 pm. For the link to the webinar, call the Dobbs committee at (914) 231-8500.
(Video) Project 2025: The Radical Conservative Plan to Reshape America Under Trump
From The Wall Street Journal [July 13, 2024]
---- The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 is a radical blueprint for a future Republican administration. Former president Donald Trump has distanced himself from the plan, but Democrats aren't buying Trump's rebuke. If enacted, this 920-page document would usher in the most conservative executive branch in modern American history. [See the Program]
(Video) Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee Remembered: Opposed Iraq War, Advocated for Juneteenth, Reparations & More
From Democracy Now! [July 22, 2024]
---- Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown remembers longtime Texas Democratic Congress member Sheila Jackson Lee, who was a tireless fighter for civil rights and progressive causes throughout her three decades in the U.S. House. Jackson Lee has died at the age of 74 after announcing last month she had pancreatic cancer. Lee was an early and outspoken opponent of the disastrous and illegal invasion of Iraq, as well as an advocate for reparations to the descendants of enslaved African Americans. "She has left a legacy of service, a legacy of love," says political organizer LaTosha Brown of Black Voters Matter. "She was someone you could always depend on. [See the Program]
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 Mondays 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 make out your check to "Frank Brodhead," write "CFOW" on the memo line, and 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
The Illusion of Party Unity in the Democratic Party
Deference to the leadership of the Democratic Party has come at much too high a price.
By Norman Solomon, The Nation [July 23, 2024]
---- Subduing progressive power is a key goal of dominant party leaders as they gauge when and where to strike. While nominally supporting the two-term progressive congressman Jamaal Bowman for reelection in his New York district last month, powerful party elders nonetheless winked and nodded as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee poured some $15 million into backing a corporate pro-war Democrat against him. …Alan Minsky, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, had this to say when I asked him to describe the party's political culture: "While the Democratic Party is a complex organization with a lot of dimensions, I think the role of money—and, more specifically, the never-ending need to raise more money—has become its central organizing principle. This, of course, skews the priorities of the party in a conservative direction. Democrats who can raise money comparable to the levels raised by the GOP are seen as indispensable to the party, and grow in power and influence.… In turn, these powerful money-raising Democrats have little use for anyone inside the party who is perceived as jeopardizing the flow of money—such as left-progressives and other advocates for the poor and working class." [Read More]
For a Solidarity State
What Is the State For? The state structures society. It can make us more prone to care for one another.
By Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor, Boston Review [July 2, 2024]
---- On a summer afternoon in 1966, an estimated six thousand welfare recipients rallied around the United States in twenty-five cities. Children in tow, the women held forth in public squares, marched on state capitols, and occupied local welfare offices as part of the first cross-country demonstration of recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children. … Their actions launched a powerful national movement—the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO)—that aimed to increase material support for all struggling families and create the foundation of a care-based economy. Its militancy and rapid growth opened an opportunity to alter the relationship of the state to its citizens, and the movement brought concrete reforms—though the movement would be undone by the changing political climate of the mid-1970s, when the War on Poverty gave way to the War on Crime. Ever since, progressives have been fighting to salvage remnants of the liberal welfare state. They are right to push for more egalitarian policies, whether in the form of higher taxation, more generous public provision, or a stronger regulatory regime. But as the NWRO made clear, the social and emotional dimensions of statecraft are just as key. As we forge a more equitable social contract, we also need to change the character of our social relationships and arrangements. A new approach—rooted in the ethic of solidarity—should be our north star. [Read More]
The War on Gaza
(Video) "Unspeakable": Doctors Back from Gaza Say Death Toll "Much Higher," Push Harris, Biden for Ceasefire
From Democracy Now! [July 26, 2024]
---- We speak to two doctors who are part of a group of 45 U.S. doctors, surgeons and nurses who have volunteered in Gaza since October 7 and wrote an open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, demanding an immediate ceasefire and an international arms embargo of Israel. The group includes evidence of a much higher death toll than is usually cited: more than 92,000 people, which represents over 4% of Gaza's population. The doctors write, "With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. Israel's continued, repeated displacement of the malnourished and sick population of Gaza, half of whom are children, to areas with no running water or even toilets available is absolutely shocking." The conditions in Gaza are "unacceptable," and "people know this is wrong but no one is speaking up," says Dr. Thalia Pachiyannakis, an obstetrician and gynecologist who volunteered at the Nasser Medical Complex. "We all saw evidence of a death toll that is certainly much higher than what is reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health," adds Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon who volunteered at the European Hospital. [See the Program]
The decimation of Gaza's academia is 'impossible to quantify'
By Ibtisam Mahdim, 972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [July 26, 2024]
---- The annihilation of higher education is particularly tragic for Gaza's future: this source of learning, economic growth, livelihoods, and community is now gone. But the stories of the teachers and schools we have lost, and the educational opportunities that are now foreclosed, deserve to be told. … On Oct. 11, Israel bombed the Islamic University of Gaza, razing the entire campus. Among the demolished structures was the university mosque, in contravention of international laws prohibiting attacks on places of worship. The university had been damaged in previous wars, but the scale of the current destruction is unprecedented. U.N. experts have estimated that 80 percent of schools and universities have been damaged or destroyed since October — amounting, in their view, to "scholasticide." "It may be reasonable to ask," the experts wrote, "if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system." [Read More] - Also of interest is "Every University in Gaza Has Been Destroyed. So Have These Students' Dreams," by Sondos Fayoumi, The Nation [July 2024] [Link].
The War at Home
Major Unions Are Calling for an End to Israeli Military Aid
By Alex N. Press, Jacobin Magazine [July 2024]
---- A coalition of unions representing nearly half of all union members in the United States sent a letter this week urging President Joe Biden to halt all US military aid to Israel. The letter, sent ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the US today, urges Biden to stop arming Israel "as part of the work to secure an immediate and permanent cease-fire in the war in Gaza." … Biden has ended his reelection bid, but he intends to remain the country's president for the duration of the year. There is no telling how many Palestinians Israel will kill in that interim, and as Kamala Harris seeks the votes of the millions of workers who are members of the signatory unions. In releasing this week's letter, union leaders and the members who have pushed them on the issue hope to demonstrate the centrality of the issue to both Biden and Harris, at last acting in keeping with the wishes of the Palestinian trade-union movement's demand for solidarity. [Read More].
(Video) Not Welcome: Jewish & Palestinian Activists Protest Netanyahu's Address to Congress, 400 Arrested
From Democracy Now! [July 24, 2024]
---- Some 400 Jewish activists, including over a dozen rabbis, were arrested Tuesday during a sit-in inside the Capitol to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress and demand an immediate U.S. weapons embargo on Israel. "It is absolutely shameful that congressional leadership has invited a war criminal, who is currently leading a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, to address a joint session of Congress," says Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action. Lawmakers have rolled out a "blood-soaked red carpet to a war criminal" by inviting Benjamin Netanyahu, adds Palestinian American organizer Linda Sarsour, co-founder of the Muslim advocacy group MPower Action. Tuesday's civil disobedience protest was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace. [See the Program]
The Beauty of the Gaza Encampment at Columbia
The media has failed to show what I found there: community.
By Kholood Eii, Hammer and Hope #4 [Summer 2024]
-----Columbia's students helped spark a worldwide student movement, with tents cropping up at universities across the U.S. and then the globe — all with the common goals of demanding academic institutions divest from Israel and holding them accountable for profiting from an apartheid regime and a genocide. These students and their allies prioritized amplifying Palestinian voices and calling for liberation, risking their academic and professional careers and their safety. … There was something sweet and intimate about a communal space that welcomed people from all backgrounds, though joy can feel jarring at a time like this. Yet as a Palestinian, I also know that joy can be a form of resistance. Joy is what conveys our humanity when we're reduced to victims or villains, numbers without names. Here was a moment of happiness during a time of endless grief. [Read More]
An expanded war?
Israel and Hezbollah Closer Than Ever to All-out War
From Haaretz [Israel] [July 28, 2024]
---- On Saturday afternoon, 12 children and teenagers were killed by a heavy Falaq rocket launched by Hezbollah. Another 29 people were injured, some of them seriously. … Hezbollah's fire was a response to an Israeli attack in the village of Kila, in which four members of Hezbollah's commando Radwan Force had been killed earlier. The defense establishment convened on Saturday for urgent consultations, with anonymous sources warning of a severe response. Now, it's likely that Netanyahu, Gallant and the defense establishment will decide on a harsher retaliation. Some of the people involved believe that Hezbollah can be pushed into a corner through a few intense "days of combat," without being dragged into an all-out war. This is a wager, the results of which are hard to anticipate. What is already clear is that not reaching a hostage deal and a cease-fire with Hamas in the south, which have been on the agenda for a long time, will complicate things in the north even further. Israel preferred not to engage in all-out war on two fronts at once. It's possible that it will now face escalation in the north without having stabilized the south. [Read More]
The State of the Union
(Video) "Tragic beyond Proportions": Attorney Ben Crump on Sonya Massey's Killing and Police Cover-Up
From Democracy Now! [July 24, 2024]
---- The family of Sonya Massey is demanding justice after they say authorities tried to cover up her fatal shooting by a sheriff's deputy in Springfield, Illinois, by initially claiming it was "self-inflicted." Police body-camera footage showed this was a lie. The 36-year-old mother of two was shot dead in her own home on July 6 after she called 911 for help. "This is the worst police shooting video that I've seen. It is so senseless," says Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney representing the family. "[Massey] needed a helping hand. She did not need a bullet to the face." [See the Program]
Our History
American Fascism: It Has Happened Here
Sarah Churchwel, New York Review of Books [June 22, 2020]
"In America Negroes do not have to be told what fascism is," the poet and activist Langston Hughes told an audience in the 1930s. "We know."
---- An American fascism would, by definition, deploy American symbols and American slogans. Fascism's ultra-nationalism means that it works by normalizing itself, drawing on familiar national customs to insist it is merely conducting political business as usual. … Reading about the inchoate American fascist movements of the 1930s during the Trump administration feels less prophetic than proleptic, a time-lapse montage of a para-fascist order slowly willing itself into existence over the course of nearly a century. It certainly seems less surprising that recognizably fascistic violence is erupting in the United States under Trump, as his attorney general sends troops to the national capital to act as a private army, armed paramilitary groups occupy state capitols, laws are passed to deny the citizenship and rights of specific groups, and birthright citizenship as guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment is attacked. When the president declares voting an "honor" rather than a right and "jokes" about becoming president for life, when the government makes efforts to add a new question of citizenship to the decennial census for the first time in the nation's history, and when nationwide protests in response to racial injustice become the pretext for mooting martial law, we are watching an American fascist order pulling itself together. [Read More]
Racial Violence in Black and White
Images of violence against African Americans have a radical heritage as instruments of critique.
By Benjamin Balthaser, Boston Review
---- [Civil rights leader] W.E.B. Du Bois was not alone in coming to think that lynching images could be put to reformist rather than racist ends. To place lynching images in the official public sphere—in downtown New York City, where the NAACP held their offices—was to co-opt their use by white people, thereby changing the conversation about lynching as well as the images represented. In effect, Du Bois turned the tactics of whiteness against itself, showing how lynching images could function not as tools of terror or white solidarity but as instruments of protest and change. By subjecting the pathologies of white supremacy to a public discourse and exposing its workings on a national stage, African American activists aimed to rob lynching photographs of their racist power. For Du Bois and other anti-lynching activists, the lynching image could undermine the very white supremacy it had helped to construct. [Read More]
