Hello All – War and postwar now overwhelm Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, Lebanon, and Syria. Lebanon’s shaky “peace” is disrupted daily by Israeli bombing, and it remains to be seen whether even this level of “armistice” can/will be sustained. More than 4,000 Lebanese have been killed in 10 weeks or war, with hundreds of thousands more displaced. And the civil war in Syria, aggravated since 2011 by the intervention of a half-dozen states hoping to “reshape the Middle East,” may at least be on pause.
But the war against Gaza shows no sign of ending, and it appears unlikely that the Biden administration will make even the pretense of seeking a ceasefire before January 20th. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 44,000 people have been killed in the war, though estimates by medical experts and others believe the true toll is in the hundreds of thousands. Last week, Amnesty International issued a report (described below), stating that Israel’s war had become a genocide, and that the United States and other nations supporting Israel’s war were complicit in genocide. Needless to say, Biden spokespeople deny that a genocide is taking place, just as they have denied similar findings from the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and the UN General Assembly. Along with Israel, the United States stands virtually isolated in world opinion, no longer having any moral credibility.
Syria – At last the dictator is gone. We don’t know what will come next, but the hopes and expectations of millions of Syrians is that they will be able to return from exile, to return from their displacement, and to live normal lives. Today Aljazeera English is broadcasting images of thousands of political prisoners leaving their torture chambers, and additional thousands celebrating in Syria, Berlin, Stockholm, etc. that they will soon be able to go home. This is a great moment; but needless to say the insurgents who overthrew Assad’s regime will be beset on all sides by “the international community,” looking to gain or restore a privileged position (military, markets, resources, etc.) in the new state. Israel has already annexed some Syrian territory in the Golan Heights, for example. The USA still has 950 soldiers in eastern Syria, a “strategic location” yes, but also the site of Syria’s oil resources. During his first term, Trump attempted to withdraw these troops, but the Pentagon refused to cooperate. There is no telling what will happen next; the only certainty is that the Syrian people will have to fight once again to rebuild their homeland.
SOME THOUGHTS ILLUMINATING THE ABOVE
(Video) Amnesty International: Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza with Full U.S. Support
From Democracy Now! [December 6, 2024]
---- Amnesty International has released a landmark report that conclude Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, making it the first major human rights group to do so. The nearly 300-page report examines the first nine months of the Israeli war on Gaza and finds that Israel’s actions have caused death, injury and mental harm on a vast scale, as well as conditions intended to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and the United States have rejected Amnesty’s conclusion. Amnesty researcher Budour Hassan, who covers Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, dismisses the criticism. … “If there is any country that has the capacity, the power and the tools to stop this genocide, it’s the United States. Not only has the United States failed to do so, it has consistently awarded Israel. It has consistently continued to flout the United States’ own laws in order to continue giving Israel the weapons — the very same weapons that are used by Israel to commit the genocide in Gaza.” [See the Program] TO READ AMNESTY’S REPORT, “’You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza,” go here.
(Video) “All That Remains”: As Gaza Faces Child Amputee Crisis, New Film Tells Story of 13-Year-Old Leyan
From Democracy Now! [December 6, 2024]
---- Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian territory since October of last year has killed tens of thousands of people and wounded over 100,000 more, leaving many with life-altering injuries. The United Nations said this week that Gaza now has the highest per-capita rate of child amputees in the world, with many children forced to endure surgery without anesthesia. For more, we look at All That Remains, a new film from Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines that follows the story of 13-year-old Leyan Abu al-Atta as she recovers from having her leg amputated due to an Israeli airstrike. [See the Program]
REVOLUTION IN SYRIA
(Videos) What happened in Syria? How did al-Assad fall?
From Aljazeera [December 8, 2024]
---- The stunning collapse [of more than 53 years of al-Assad family rule has been described as a historic moment – nearly 14 years after Syrians rose in peaceful protests against a government that met them with violence that quickly spiralled into a bloody civil war. Just a week ago, the regime still maintained control over significant portions of the country. So how did it all unravel so quickly? [Read/View More]
Why Iran can’t Stand up for the al-Assad Government: Russia isn’t Offering Air Support – [Yesterday’s News]
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [December 7, 2024]
---- I suggest that Tehran has no choice but to leave Syria. Without Russian air support, the couple thousand Revolutionary Guards and the remnants of the Hezbollah forces in the country, along with the tattered Syrian Arab Army, cannot hope to defeat the rebels now any more than they could in 2015. The situation is even worse than in in the summer of 2015, since Hezbollah’s forces have been devastated by the recent war with Israel, which saw their commanders blinded or crippled by Israeli booby traps and many of their tactical personnel killed or wounded in battle. Moreover, if Hezbollah attempted to deploy in a big way in Syria now, without Russian air support, Israel would hit them. Russia had offered them their only air defense umbrella, and then only as long as they were doing Russian bidding in targeting the Sunni fundamentalists. Russian air power made the difference then. Without it, the Syrian government and its few allies are doomed. [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST is “As Civil War Heats Back Up, U.S. Troops Are Still Deployed in Syria — And Under Fire,” by Nick Turse, The Intercept [December 5, 2024] [Link]; and “Taking Syria: The opposition’s battles shown in 11 maps for 11 days,” from Aljazeera, [December 8, 2024] [Link].
NEWS NOTES
Climate stalwart Greta Thunberg explains why and how she is linking the fight against the climate crisis to stopping the war on Gaza. Watch (Video) “Greta Thunberg on Gaza: “This has shown the true colours of the world,” on Mark Lamont Hill’s Aljazeera program “UpFront” [See the Program]
Last week’s massive protest mobilization in South Korea deserves much of the credit for thwarting the attempt by an unpopular President to declare martial law. For many South Koreans, the martial law declaration recalled the horrible days of 1979-80, when another President declared martial law and murdered thousands who protested. The epicenter of the 1980 protest was in the southern city of Gwangju, coincidentally (?) the birthplace of Han Kang, who won last year’s Nobel Prize for literature, and one of whose novels describes, with fabulous writing, the resistance and subsequent massacre of students protesting for freedom. For more, read “Atrocities Made a South Korean City Infamous. A Novelist Made It Immortal,” by Victoria Kim, New York Times.
Responding to news stories about the murder of the CEO of United Healthcare’s Brian Thompson, thousands of Americans have posted comments saying essentially that Thompson and United Healthcare deserved it, usually adding to their comments a story about being denied coverage for medical care. New York Times commentator Zeynep Tufekci writes an interesting assessment of this, “The Rage and Glee That Followed a C.E.O.’s Killing Should Ring All Alarms” [Link]. ALSO OF INTERST is “Delay and Deny,” by Jeffrey St. Clsair, Counterpunch [December 6, 2024] [Link].
Though few in number, young Israeli continue to resist conscription, whether their objection is to the war In Gaza or policing the apartheid state. One resister is Sofia Orr, whose interview (“You Can’t Buy Paradise with Blood”) is published by Jacobin Magazine. She speaks about “the lust for war in her home country, pathways to peace in the Middle East, and why she will never regret her decision to refuse conscription.”
PEACE ACTION – THINGS TO DO
CFOW is an affiliate member of Peace Action New York State (PANYS), a network of a dozen community-based peace groups (like CFOW). One of the groups is located in Syracuse, where our friends the Syracuse Cultural Workers have a fine array of peace calendars, t-shirts and other such holiday-giftable things. Purchases from the Syracuse Cultural Workers “store” will generate a donation for PANYS if you shop using this code and use the discount code “PANYS” at check-out. Thanks!
Monday, December 9, 4 to 6 pm. “Make the Road New York is offering a Train the Trainers workshop focused on Knowing Your Rights during interactions with ICE. . Please invite any allies, volunteers, electeds, etc. who are interested in being trained on this topic, and who are eager to bring this information back to their respective hubs. Some of the topics covered will be
· Difference between USCIS, ICE, and DHS
· ICE activity at home, workplace, in the car, and in public spaces
· Calling the court
· Creating a family plan
Interested folks should fill the registration link. Once they register they will receive an automatic zoom link.
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.) 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!
REWARDS!
Last week’s Reward for stalwart readers failed to include a proper link, so this week we bring it back: Charlie Chaplin’s speech concluding “The Great Dictator.” Here the Jewish barber, mistakenly thought to be the “great dictator” Adenoid Hynkel, speaks to the assembled soldiers and citizens. He says what many are saying today, that freedom is precious and fascism must be defeated. 84 years later, not much needs to be changed. [See the Speech]
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
Noam Chomsky at 96: A Massive Intellectual and Moral Force
By Robert F. Barsky, Counterpunch [December 5, 2024]
---- Noam Chomsky, one of the world’s most famous and respected intellectuals, will be 96 years old on Dec. 7, 2024. For more than half a century, multitudes of people have read his works in a variety of languages, and many people have relied on his commentaries and interviews for insights about intellectual debates and current events. Chomsky suffered a stroke in June 2023 that has severely limited his movement, impaired his speech and impeded his ability to travel. His birthday provides an occasion to consider the tremendous corpus of works that he created over the years and to reflect on the many ways that his texts and recordings still critically engage with contemporary discussions all across disciplines and realms. Chomsky’s vast body of work includes scientific research focused on language, human nature and the mind, and political writings about U.S. imperialism, Israel and Palestine, Central America, the Vietnam War, coercive institutions, the media and the many ways in which people’s needs are subjugated in the interest of profit and control…. One important theme in his broad corpus is his lifelong fascination with human creativity, which helps explain his vociferous attacks on those who seek to keep the rabble in line. [Read More]
Palestinian-American Historian Rashid Khalidi: 'Israel Has Created a Nightmare Scenario for Itself. The Clock Is Ticking'
By Itay Mashiach, Haaretz [Israel] [November 30, 2024]
---- Khalidi has been described as the most significant Palestinian intellectual of his generation, as the successor to Edward Said, and as the preeminent living historian of Palestine. Last month he retired from Columbia after 22 years, during which he also edited or co-edited the Journal of Palestinian Studies. In his 2020 book "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine," he summed up the conflict by way of six "declarations of war" on the Palestinians. … "The extermination of one side by the other is impossible. The expulsion of one side by the other is – I would have said impossible – I think now possible but unlikely. So, you have two peoples. Either the war continues, or they come to an understanding that they have to live on a basis of absolute equality. Not a very optimistic answer, but the only answer. [Read More]
TRUMP’S WAR ON IMMIGRANTS
(Video) Muzaffar Chishti on Mass Deportation
From the Beinart Notebook [December 8, 2024] – one hour
[FB – This is an excellent overview and legal primer re: what we can expect from Trump’s planned expulsion of thousands of migrants, what the laws are regarding immigration and deportation, and what needs to be done/what people can do. Peter’s guest is Muzaffar Chishti, Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, and one of America’s foremost experts on immigration policy.] [See the Program]
Biden Urged to Act Now as Trump's Mass Deportation Plan Looms
By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams [December 2, 2024]
---- As an estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants brace for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's return to office, Amnesty International on Monday called for immediate action from the outgoing Biden administration to "protect people seeking safety." … Specifically, Amnesty is urging Biden to issue new Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and deferred enforced departure designations, extend authorization dates for individuals who have already been paroled into the United States, and expand legal pathways and protections for farmworkers and undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. The group also wants the president to prioritize additional resources for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to address the long backlogs and issue protections for those who have applications pending for advanced parole, asylum, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, TPS, and work permits. The group is further calling on him to "stop detention expansion efforts, shut down the most problematic detention centers that have long perpetuated violence and harm toward people seeking safety, and release vulnerable individuals and those who are eligible for TPS and parole." ]Read More]
THE WAR ON GAZA
A Sober Assessment [Negotiating with Hamas]
By Gershon Baskin, The Times of Israel [December 5, 2024]
[FB – Gershon Baskin has partnered with Hamas activists and attempted to negotiate peace between Hamas and Israel for 18 years.]
---- It is very difficult to assess where we are regarding negotiations to end the war in Gaza and to bring the hostages home. In September, two Hamas leaders from the Hamas politburo, one of them a member of the Hamas negotiating team, conveyed to me that they were prepared to agree to the “Three Weeks Deal” that I proposed during which time the war would end, all 101 hostages would be returned to Israel in exchange for an agreed number and list of Palestinian prisoners who would be freed from Israeli prisons, Israel would withdraw completely from Gaza and Hamas would no longer rule Gaza – the governance of Gaza would be given to a civilian Palestinian professional technocratic council. The Israeli negotiators responded that the Israeli government and the Prime Minister refused to end the war and Hamas responded that they would not agree to any deal that did not end the war. …. Today, no one knows for sure that if the Hamas leadership outside of Gaza agrees to anything, the remaining Hamas leaders in Gaza have the ability or the willingness to implement the agreement. Since the killing of Sinwar, no one knows if Hamas is willing to give up governance over Gaza or to end the war. [Read More]
The ICC: Myths and Realities [The International Criminal Court and Israel]
By James A. Goldston and Aryeh Neier, New York Review of Books [December 6, 2024]
---- On November 21, when three International Criminal Court judges issued arrest warrants for leaders of Israel and Hamas, the decision drew a frenzy of hostile and often ill-informed reactions from many American lawmakers and defenders of Israel. The incoming senate majority leader, John Thune, had already called the charges against Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant “outrageous and unlawful” and promised that imposing sanctions against the ICC would be a “top priority in the next Congress.” Now Senator Lindsey Graham threatened to “sanction any country that aids and abets the arrest of any politician in Israel,” including Britain, Canada, France, and Germany. Meanwhile, writing in The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz announced that he is “assembling a team of world class lawyers from around the globe to help defend Israeli leaders.” [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST – “A Massive Database of Evidence, Compiled by a Historian, Documents Israel's War Crimes in Gaza,” By Nir Hasson, Haaretz [Israel] [December 5, 2024] [Link]; “Israel Builds Bases in Central Gaza, a Sign It May Be There to Stay,” by Aaron Boxerman, et al., New York Times [December 2, 2024] [Link]; and “America’s ‘Greatest Ally’ Cost US Taxpayers $310 Billion” [Israel], by Joziah Thayer, Antiwar.com. [December 6, 2024] [Link].
THE WAR IN LEBANON
Truce in Lebanon: Can Diplomacy Rise From the Ruins?
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Code Pink [December 4, 2024]
---- On November 26th, Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement for a 60-day truce, during which Israel and Hezbollah are both supposed to withdraw from the area of Lebanon south of the Litani River. The agreement is based on the terms of UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the previous Israeli assault on Lebanon in 2006. The truce will be enforced by 5,000 to 10,000 Lebanese troops and the UN’s 10,000-strong UNIFIL peacekeeping force, which has operated in that area since 1978 and includes troops from 46 countries. The truce has broad international support, including from Iran and Hamas. Israel and Hezbollah were apparently glad to take a break from a war that had become counterproductive for them both. Effective resistance prevented Israeli forces from advancing far into Lebanon, and they were inflicting mostly senseless death and destruction on civilians, as in Gaza, but without the genocidal motivation of that campaign. [Read More]
THE WAR IN UKRAINE
U.S. Sending $725 Million in Arms to Ukraine, Including More Land Mines
By John Ismay, New York Times [December 2, 2024]
---- The Pentagon will send Ukraine an additional $725 million in military assistance from its stockpiles, including anti-personnel land mines, drones, portable antiaircraft missiles and anti-tank missiles. The new support comes amid deep concerns in Ukraine that the incoming Trump administration might cut off military aid to the country. President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to end the war quickly, though he has not said how. But Vice President-elect JD Vance has outlined a plan that would allow Russia to keep the Ukrainian territory it has seized. … The provision of land mines to Ukraine has been condemned by a variety of lawmakers and human rights groups because of the indiscriminate nature of those weapons. Anti-tank land mines cannot tell the difference between an enemy tank and a civilian car that drives over them, just as smaller anti-personnel mines are unable to distinguish whether they are being triggered by an enemy soldier or a noncombatant. [Read More]
The Cynical Selling of the War in Ukraine
By Ted Snider, Antiwar.com [December 2, 2024]
---- When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S. poured military aid into Ukraine in defense of the “core principles” of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the “sovereign right” every country has “to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances.” As Western support for military aid became harder to maintain, the warning of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperialism rose from a background note to a dominant message. … This narrative was effective on U.S. President Joe Biden. Biden is, by his nature, an old cold warrior who looks out from the White House on a Manichean world of democracy versus autocracy. But support for military aid to Ukraine is getting softer and Biden’s time in the White House is setting. Trump is a new president. … So, the message for selling the war to the West is taking on a new tone. … “[j]oint protection by the US and the EU of Ukraine’s critical natural resources and joint use of their economic potential.” … Buried under eastern Ukraine is close to 500,000 tons of lithium oxide, a source of the lithium that, among other things, is essential for the batteries in electric cars, making it one of the richest sources of lithium in the world. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
No, the Fight for the Climate Isn’t “Over”
By Kevin A. Young [December 2, 2l024]
---- The struggle against climate change is over” if Donald Trump wins again, tweeted Bernie Sanders before Election Day 2024. Presumably our fate is now sealed. The conclusion is understandable. On our current course, we’re already set for about 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) of heating in the coming decades. That will kill tens of millions of people from heat stroke, starvation, and disease. Vast portions of the globe will be made uninhabitable while chaos spreads everywhere else. With the fossil fuel barons now retaking the helm of the world’s most powerful government, changing course becomes harder. In addition to the carbon they’ll add to the atmosphere, their evisceration of laws governing air quality, water contamination, and toxic chemicals will kill tens of thousands in just the next few years. Yet apocalyptic arguments are both paralyzing to our movement and scientifically misguided. Saving the climate isn’t an all-or-nothing game. We’re very likely to breach the dangerous 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold. But there’s an enormous difference between 1.5 and 3 degrees Celsius, or even between 1.5 and 1.6 degrees Celsius. “Every fraction of a degree matters,” as climate experts often remind us. Furthermore, the notion that we’re locked into a future of “runaway climate change” — a phrase commonly heard on the left — is wrong. [Read More]
As Oceans Warm, Weather Goes Berserk
By Eve Ottenberg, Counterpunch [December 6, 2024]
---- Hotter oceans kill plankton, upon which the entire maritime ecosystem depends. They are the meal at the base of the food chain – seas without plankton will rapidly become seas without fish and then without marine mammals. Already depleted by industrial over-fishing and immensely destructive techniques like trawling the sea floor (now fortunately banned in many locations across the globe), oceans cannot tolerate the disappearance of plankton due to hotter water; that would cause cataclysmic ichthyologic decimation. But hotter oceans don’t just mean no sushi on the menu. They engender more hurricanes, and indeed the most recent hurricane season so far cost the U.S. over $100 billion. … So the Climate President became the War President and voila! The world kept getting hotter faster. Now we’ve got Trump, an anthropogenic climate change denier, so don’t expect any respite from deadly burning of oil and gas. Given that 2023 was the hottest year on record and 2024 will probably beat it, in keeping with the pattern over the last decade, you’d think our plutocratic rulers would, if only out of self-interest, try to cope with this fiasco. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES
Trump Is Using “Unitary Executive” Theory in His Bid to Amass Supreme Power
By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [December 3, 2024]
---- In the weeks since the presidential election, president-elect Donald Trump and his allies have made a series of moves that indicate their intent to dangerously consolidate executive power under the controversial “unitary executive” theory of the Constitution. During the presidential campaign, Trump posted a video on Truth Social that referred to his second administration as a “unified Reich,” invoking Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich in Nazi Germany. As president-elect, Trump’s cabinet selections have corroborated his campaign pledge to be a dictator on day one. With the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s decision granting him absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for his core “official” functions, and the 920-page “Project 2025” right-wing blueprint for an autocratic government, Trump is positioning himself to change the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over all aspects of the executive branch — and thereby becoming a “unitary executive.” [Read More]
(Video) Spy in Your Pocket? Ronan Farrow Exposes Secrets of High-Tech Spyware in New Film “Surveilled”
From Democracy Now! [December 4, 2024]
---- He warns that it’s not just “repressive governments” that abuse Pegasus and other surveillance technology, but also a growing number of democratic states like Greece, Poland and Spain. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies under both the Biden and Trump administrations have also considered such spyware, although the extent to which these tools have been used is not fully known. “Surveillance technology has historically always been abused. Now the technology is more advanced and more frightening than ever, and more available than ever, so abuse is more possible,” says Farrow. [See the Program] ALSO OF INTEREST is Farrow’s article in The New Yorker, “Other Western democracies have been roiled by the use of spyware to target political opponents, activists, journalists, and other vulnerable groups. Could it happen here?” [Link].
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Trump’s Project 2025 May Not Be What It Seemed. It’s Worse.
By Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times [December 2024]
---- In this struggle, who are the targets? The list is long, often focusing on academia, especially on elite universities like Harvard, Yale and Stanford; fields such as sociology and psychology; sanctuary cities; the nonprofit sector, which employs 12.8 million people, with an annual payroll of $873.1 billion; the roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants; the three major television networks that are not Fox; the top ranks of the Justice Department, the C.I.A. and the armed forces; the array of civil rights enforcement departments embedded throughout the public and private sectors; and the already faltering diversity, equity and inclusion nests in corporations across America. [Read More]
No One Should Go Hungry in America
NYT Editorial [December 6, 2024]
---- Food insecurity is defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as the lack of access to enough food for an active and healthy life. More than 13 percent of Americans — 47 million people — experienced food insecurity in 2023; the rates are even higher in Black and Latino communities. In some of the poorest regions of America, mostly rural areas in the South, food insecurity among children is as high as 48 percent. But it is present in every county in the country. … But nearly half of Americans who are food insecure are unlikely to qualify for federal programs like SNAP because many have incomes that are too high to be eligible. Most families of four that receive SNAP benefits have incomes below $40,560. Feeding America estimates that that leaves around 20 million people in a no man’s land, where they can neither afford sufficient food nor qualify for help to pay for it. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
The Fifty-Year Revolt [On prison organizing]
By Dan Berger, n+1 magazine [Fall 2024]
[FB – This is a review of Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt., by Orisanmi Burton; and Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People Are Dismantling Mass Incarceration by Jocelyn Simonson.]
---- On September 16, 1971, militants incarcerated at Leavenworth went on strike to protest their working conditions in the prison’s brush, furniture, and clothing factories. There was more to the strike than that: rebels were also protesting the murders of imprisoned comrades, including Black Panther Field Marshal George Jackson in San Quentin on August 21 and the twenty-nine prisoners killed by state troopers at Attica Correctional Facility on September 13, where an uprising had been violently suppressed. For days afterward, hundreds of surviving dissidents at Attica were tortured by New York State Police and prison guards. … Incarceration has also long been a form of counterinsurgent warfare aimed at those who would upend the order of things. Buoyed by participation in Black and associated radical movements, cadres of militants in the early 1970s inspired broader groups of incarcerated people to make the US prison system ungovernable, through uprisings, strikes, lawsuits, unionization drives, and other means. [Read More]
