“If there is nothing we can do about the killing of thousands in Gaza, why should we pay attention? Trump won’t listen to us, and he wouldn’t do anything anyway.” The same kind of thinking probably went through the minds of many people in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. “It’s not my business.” “Why stick your neck out?” “Besides, I’m very busy.”
The Germans, of course, had some excuses that people in “the Free World” do not have. Their information about the war and the killing was fragmentary, often work-of-mouth. Lucky us, the genocide is live-streamed and we can watch it 24/7. Also, the Germans in the 1930s and of course during the war would likely pay a heavy price for getting caught or speaking out; so far, we have nothing like that here. Our “censorship” is largely self-imposed, for complicated reasons no doubt.
No one knows how many people have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023. The “official number” is more than 50,000, with tens of thousands of additional bodies buried under rubble. Tens of thousands more have died because of the destruction of Gaza’s health system, as wounds treatable under “normal” circumstances lead to death because of infection or the unavailability of ordinary medical devices. And tens of thousands more are in the edge of dying due to starvation, as Israel’s blockade of food and medicine continues. Articles below about the state of Palestinian prisoners, the destruction of Gaza’s medical system, and the destruction of ALL of Gaza’s universities show that Israel’s “plan” has more to it than just killing and starvation.
“Genocide” is not just about how many people are killed, but also about the intentions of the killers. Throughout the war, Israel’s leaders have said over and over that they want to remove ALL of the Palestinians from Gaza, either by killing them or taking them to some other country. They have also justified the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals, universities, schools, teachers, and doctors, etc. as part of its mission to destroy Palestinian society and its people as a step toward reclaiming all of Palestinian occupied lands, including the West Bank, for Israeli Jews. In the plain language of the UN’s Genocide Convention (1949), this is the definition of the crime of genocide – the intentional destruction of a people, in whole or in part.
“No Kings Day” – Saturday, June 14th
June 14th is “Flag Day,” another celebration of nationalism and patriotism. Sadly for us, it is also the little king’s birthday, and Trump promises to fill the streets to celebrate himself, the flag, and the armed forces with a parade of tanks and soldiers and more stuff like that. For this reason, Indivisible and many allies will host a thousand or so protest events across the USA. One of them will be in Yonkers, near the Greystone train station, sponsored by the NAACP Yonkers branch #2188, Indivisible 16/15, Safeguarding Democracy, and CFOW. To learn more and register for one of the events, go here, (and find us at zip 10701.) For some interesting thoughts about this and similar protests against the little king, read “June 14th: Magnificent Resistance and Beyond,” by Michael Albert of Znet [Link].
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING OUR WEEK
Hamas Responds to Witkoff Gaza Proposal, Demands Trump Guarantee Israel Won’t Resume Genocide
By Jeremy Scahill and Jawa Ahmad, Drop Site News [May 31, 2025]
---- Hamas has submitted a new proposal for a Gaza ceasefire that the group says “aims to achieve a permanent ceasefire, a comprehensive withdrawal [of Israeli forces] from the Gaza Strip, and ensure the flow of aid to our people and our families in the Gaza Strip.” The thirteen point document, obtained by Drop Site, represents Hamas’s official response to an Israeli proposal for a 60-day temporary truce circulated Thursday by President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff. Among the terms Hamas wants included in any deal are a guarantee that as long as Palestinian resistance forces hold their fire, negotiations for a complete end to the genocide will continue beyond a 60-day initial truce and that this would be guaranteed by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar. “The United States and President Trump are committed to working diligently to ensure the continuation of negotiations until a final agreement is reached,” the document says. Hamas also wants the immediate resumption of aid deliveries in accordance with the protocols established in the original January ceasefire deal, as well as guarantees that the flow of aid—distributed primarily by the UN and Red Crescent—will not be shut off by Israel as long as negotiations continue. The mediators “will ensure that negotiations continue until a permanent ceasefire agreement is reached, along with the ongoing cessation of hostilities and the entry of humanitarian aid,” the document says. [Read More]
Germany's Enslavement to Its Past Kept It Silent on Gaza for Far Too Long
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [May 29, 2025]
---- Germany has betrayed the memory of the Holocaust and its lessons. A country that saw its highest task as not to forget has forgotten. A country that told itself that it would never remain silent is silent. A country that once said "Never Again," and now: "again," with arms, with funding, with silence. There is no country that should be better than Germany at "discerning nauseating processes." Every German knows much more about them than Yair Golan. Here in Israel they are in full swing, yet Germany has not yet recognized them for what they are. It was only recently that it woke up too late and to too little effect. When Germany sees the Flag March in Jerusalem, it must see Kristallnacht. If it does not see the similarities, it is betraying the memory of the Holocaust. When it looks at Gaza, it must see the concentration camps and ghettos that it built. When it sees hungry Gazans, it must see the wretched survivors of the camps. When it hears the fascist talk of Israeli ministers and other public figures about killing and population transfer, about there being "no innocents" and about killing babies, it must hear the chilling voices from its past, who said the same in German. [Read More]
The Deadliest Period in History for Palestinian Prisoners in Israeli Detention
By Mariam Barghouti, DropSite News [June 1, 2025]
---- At least 70 Palestinian detainees have been confirmed killed in Israeli detention between October 2023 and May 2025 as a result of torture by Israeli interrogators or prison units, systemic starvation, or medical negligence through the deliberate denial of medical care. ccording to prisoner rights groups, dozens more have been killed in detention, particularly those arrested from Gaza, yet remain unidentified. Israel refuses to provide a comprehensive list of all detained Palestinians, with significant numbers forcibly disappeared and their whereabouts or condition unknown. Nearly all Palestinians released from Israeli prisons and detention camps, regardless of age, often emerge with ashen faces, shaved heads, scrawny bodies, and extensive bruising. In recent months, prison conditions and mistreatment of Palestinian detainees appear to be deteriorating even further. On May 21, Addameer, the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, released a joint statement saying, “The continued escalation by the brutal prison system against detainees in various prisons and military camps has entered a more dangerous phase than in previous months.” [Read More]
NEWS NOTE
Today the Freedom Flotilla Coalition left its port in Sicily and began its aid mission to Gaza. An overview of earlier aid missions, and of Israel’s bombing of an aid ship off Malta last month, can be read here. Climate activist and human rights activist Greta Thunberg, one of the crew of the aid ship, describes the Freedom Flotilla’s mission (video) here.
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.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter has resumed its weekly Monday night vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW 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!
This week’s Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers start of with a full-length recording of Bruce Springsteen’s "Land of Hope & Dreams" Manchester, England concert last month, the one that got him into trouble with the little dictator. And on the lighter side of the sort-of-fake news, I think you will like this energetic video - "Taco, Taco Taco - Trump Always Chickens Out." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
Could Trump’s wrecking crew have been stopped?
By Seymour Hersh [May 30, 2025]
---- We are now in a crisis of integrity and leadership in Washington—a badly depleted and demoralized official Washington. After the election but before the confirmation of the most inept Cabinet in modern history we in the press missed another chance to warn America about one of the bizarre advisers President Donald Trump has put in charge of funding and revamping the federal bureaucracy. The crucial point man for Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE assault on the federal workforce and the many federal agencies that sponsor research into every aspect of the well-being in America has been Russell Vought. He is an extreme conservative who was the architect of the Heritage Foundation’s infamous Project 2025 blueprint that called for the all-out dismantling of the federal bureaucracy. In the view of the far right, that bureaucracy had morphed into an all-powerful and unelected fourth branch of the US government and the president no longer had control of the administrative state. Although this was a major issue in the 2024 campaign—Trump, under pressure, would disavow any connection to Project 2025 during the campaign—many in America, including some who supported Trump, were stunned when the president did what he said he wouldn’t do. [Read More]
In Sarajevo, a ‘Gaza Tribunal’ seeks accountability amidst international failure to stop Gaza genocide
By David Kattenburg, Mondoweiss [May 30, 2025]
---- The Sarajevo Declaration of the Gaza Tribunal was released Thursday morning, following three days of public hearings at the International University of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. “We believe that the world is approaching a dangerous precipice, the front edge of which is in Palestine,” a People’s Tribunal on the Gaza genocide declared today in Sarajevo, and “dangerous forces” are “pushing us toward the abyss.” Inspired by past People’s Tribunals — most notably the 1966 Russell Tribunal on the US war on Vietnam, and the 2003-2005 World Tribunal on the US’s war on Iraq – the Gaza Tribunal was launched in London in November 2024. Faced with a “total failure of the organised international community to implement international law in the most severe, visible case of genocide in real time,” the Gaza Tribunal’s website states, it aims to legitimize “an alternative paradigm of international law, one that derives its authority from people and their sense of justice rather than relying solely on governments and their institutions.” [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST - “Gaza “a Gaping Wound on Humanity:” Spain Convenes Int’l Conference to call for Arms Embargo on Israel,” by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [May 26, 2025] Link]
Does a River Have Legal Rights?
By Robert Macfarlane, New York Times [May 30, 2025]
---- The doctrine of human supremacy, which waxes strong in the current administration, portrays life as a hierarchy with humans at the top, rather than a web within which humans are entangled. Consider that a scant 0.0002 percent of Earth’s total water flows in rivers at any given time, yet rivers have been vital, fragile accomplices to human flourishing for thousands of years. To view rivers only as sources and drains is to reduce them to base functions rather than to see them as the life-giving, world-shaping forces they are. Over the past 20 years, a powerful movement has emerged that contests human exploitation of the natural world. It is usually known as the rights of nature movement, and it calls for recognizing the inherent, inalienable rights of ecosystems and natural communities to exist and flourish. At its best, the rights of nature movement challenges anthropocentric presumptions, which are embedded in our laws and imaginations. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “How the Rights of Nature Movement is Reshaping Law and Culture,” by Dana Zartner,et al, Counterpunch [May 30, 2025] [Link]; and “Ecuador: Rights of Nature on Paper — The Case of Sarayaku” by Riki Cevallos, Ecuador, Esperanza Project, [May 26, 2025] [Link].
Serbia’s Organized Chaos
By Diana Johnstone, Consortium News [May 27, 2025]
---- Serbia is a small country which used to be a favorite of Western Allied powers like France and Britain for its heroic resistance to Austrian and German invasion in two world wars. They liked it so much that in redrawing European boundaries at Versailles in 1918, they enlarged it into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes which later became Yugoslavia. Some Serb leaders at the time felt that this was too much, but at the time, Croat and Slovene leaders were glad to leave the Austro-Hungarian Empire and join the winning side. All this changed abruptly in the 1990s. Germany had been reunited and began to drop its humble post-World War II foreign policy. With German support and encouragement, the Yugoslav republics (states) of Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence, with the intention of joining the club of the rich: the European Union. … As the Yugoslav disintegration grew confused and violent, Western media and government enthusiastically echoed the Habsburg line, not as such, but as defense of Western values and self-determination. Western media put all the blame for everything on the Serbs, evoking the inevitable Hitler analogy to describe Serbia’s besieged leader, Slobodan Milosevic, as a “dictator” and to liken his failing efforts to keep Yugoslavia together with the Third Reich’s massive invasion of the rest of Europe. “Heroic little Serbia” was transformed into the Pariah of the Western World. [Read More]
TRUMP’S BUSY WEEK
Trump’s Lying Now Produces Deadly, Costly, and Soon Calamitous Consequences
By Ralph Nader, Counterpunch [May 29, 2025]
---- Ensconced in the White House, Trump’s lies are no longer just words; they have deadly and costly effects and can soon produce calamitous consequences. Here are some samples. Trump falsely dismisses with repeated disbelief the violent climate crises – notwithstanding record wildfires, floods, hurricanes, sea level rise and droughts. His response to these problems: push to abolish FEMA, already firing thousands of staff. He is also dismissing scientists who study, document and predict approaching climate disasters, from federal agencies, including the National Weather Service, and the EPA and cutting grants to scientific organizations and Universities. He continues to scoff at expert predictions of emerging By pandemics, as he did in early 2020, mocking and dillydallying, while COVID-19 spread, resulting in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths. His response to these perils: strip-mine the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health expert staff and their grants to outside scientists. … He absurdly and cravenly asserts the super-rich and giant corporations are over-taxed. His response to this ridiculous allegation: push through Congress super-rich tax cuts, ballooning the deficit, forcing cuts in Medicaid and even Medicare, afflicting people with disabilities, and closing many rural hospitals (See, New York Times: What’s in Trump’s Tax Bill?) He grotesquely describes this legislation as a “big, beautiful bill” even though it will cut critical feeding programs for poor children, severely weaken “Meals on Wheels,” “Head Start,” and federal food inspection programs. [Read More]
Why the World’s Richest Nation Is Killing the World’s Poorest Children
By Alfred McCoy, Tom Dispatch [May 26, 2025]
---- The sharp cuts to U.S.A.I.D.’s humanitarian programs represent a crippling blow to America’s soft power at a time when great-power competition with Beijing and Moscow has reemerged with stunning intensity. … China has moved quickly to take over a number of the abolished agency’s humanitarian programs, particularly in Southeast Asia, where Beijing is locked in an intense strategic rivalry with Washington over the South China Sea. Writing in the journal Foreign Affairs, two public health specialists observed that “a U.S. retreat on global health, if sustained, will indeed open the door for China to exploit the abrupt, chaotic withdrawal of U.S. programs in… Southeast Asia, and it may do the same in Latin America.” … Although the demolition of U.S.A.I.D. and sharp cuts to economic aid will have consequences for the world’s poor that can only be called tragic, it’s but one part of President Trump’s attack on the key components of America’s soft power — not only foreign aid, but also reliable information and skilled diplomacy. [Read More]
Trump Dreams of Minerals: in Ukraine and Greenland
By John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus [May 28, 2025]
---- The clean energy transition that the Biden administration touted as the focus of its industrial policy required large amounts of mineral inputs. Batteries for electric vehicles depend on lithium, solar panels contain gallium and molybdenum, and powerful magnets in wind turbines can’t be built without rare earth elements. Biden’s landmark legislation, such as the 2022 Inflation Adjustment Act, effectively resurrected industrial policy in the United States but this time on the basis of a shift away from fossil fuels. … Two regions that have figured prominently in Donald Trump’s mineral ambitions are Ukraine and Greenland. These two areas, one a country at war and the other a semi-autonomous possession of Denmark, couldn’t be more different. Greenland is the world’s largest island. Covered mostly with ice, it has a population of fewer than 60,000 people. Ukraine has a smaller land mass but is a major industrialized country and a top agricultural producer, with a current population of about 37 million people. From Donald Trump’s point of view, the two regions share a key attribute: they are, in the lexicon of Wall Street, assets ripe for a takeover. [Read More]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
The Tide Is Turning in Palestine’s Favor—But Is It Too Late?
By Joe Coleman May 29, 2025
---- For the first time in decades, a shift is emerging in how some Western nations approach the question of Palestine. It’s visible in a wave of diplomatic recognitions, stern condemnations, and increasingly public discomfort with Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Spain, Ireland, and Norway have formally recognized the State of Palestine. The World Health Organization now openly decries Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health system. And the International Court of Justice has ruled it “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide. But suppose we strip away the press conferences and symbolic gestures. In this case, we’re left with an unsettling reality: Israel’s bombardment continues unabated, the death toll climbs, and many of these same countries still arm the Israeli military. So, is this a long-overdue turning of the tide—or merely an elaborate pantomime of conscience? This moment demands a sharper lens. A movement of solidarity is forming—but it is fragmented, hesitant, and often hypocritical. The core question remains: will it matter in time to save lives, or has the window already closed? [Read More]
Palestinians describe being treated like animals as chaos breaks out again at U.S.-run aid site in Gaza
By Tareq S. Hajjaj May 29, 2025
---- Thursday marked the third day this week that the food distribution operation run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation devolved into chaos as too many people crowded through the site to obtain too little aid. The American company has been widely condemned by international aid agencies and the UN as complicit in the Israeli weaponization of aid for political aims, including using the aid as bait to lure Palestinians into concentrated ghettoes in Gaza to facilitate the Israeli army’s permanent occupation of the Strip and the displacement of its population. … The distribution of aid resumed on Thursday after being briefly suspended in the wake of Tuesday’s incident. The new center is located northeast of the Netzarim Axis, which separates north and south Gaza, and has been used as a major strategic military position for the Israeli army throughout the genocide. People headed to the aid center based on instructions sent to their mobile phones by the company. Contacting just a handful of families in Gaza, the news still spread like wildfire among the population in the area. Soon after, thousands flocked to the center. [Read More]
In Emaciated Children, Gaza’s Hunger Is Laid Bare
By Vivian Yee, visuals by Saher Alghorra, New York Times, [May 30, 2025]
---- The starvation of Gaza can be measured in the jutting ribs of a 6-year-old girl. In the twig-like thinness of her arms. In the pounds she and those around her have lost. In the two tomatoes, two green chili peppers and single cucumber a destitute child can buy to feed his family that day. Until last week, Israel had blocked all food, fuel and medicine from entering the Gaza Strip for 80 days, attempting to pressure Hamas into releasing the Israeli hostages it still holds as negotiations over a cease-fire remain deadlocked. With international alarm surging over its total blockade, Israel allowed in a drip of aid starting last week. That enabled some bakeries to reopen. But humanitarian officials said it did little to alleviate Gaza’s enormous needs and to stop the territory’s slide toward famine. Limited amounts of food began being distributed to residents on Tuesday under a much-criticized plan backed by Israel. In northern Gaza, cut off by Israeli troops from the rest of the territory, hundreds of thousands of people are reduced to waiting for hours for charity-kitchen food that runs out too soon and to digging boreholes for water to drink, unsanitary though it might be. There is never enough. [Read More]
THE WAR IN UKRAINE
Arms Race in Ukraine [Military drones]
By Tim Judah, New York Review of Books [June 12, 2025 issue]
---- This spring, as President Donald Trump tried to secure a cease-fire in a war that he once boasted would be so easy to end that he could do it in twenty-four hours, Ukrainians were left bewildered by his mood swings and the parroting of Kremlin propaganda about Ukraine by him and his team. … The lessons that most Ukrainians draw from this are that allies cannot be relied upon, that Russia, under Putin and probably under his successors too, will never give up the desire to subjugate their country, and that their country needs to be armed to the teeth to defend itself. But how to accomplish this? … In February 2022 the Ukrainians had virtually no military drones. Last year they made 2.2 million, and this year they hope to make 4.5 million. The majority of these are “first-person view” (FPV) drones, which means that the operator wears goggles or controls them from a screen. Ukrainian forces have been faced with recruitment problems, and this has forced the country “to turn to technology to compensate for that deficit.” The speed with which drones have emerged as the leading weapon of the war is a direct result of manpower shortages and having a homegrown industrial capacity to make them. [Read More]
THE STUDENTS
(Video) “Worse Than McCarthyism”: Historian Ellen Schrecker on Trump’s War Against Universities & Students
From Democracy Now! [May 30, 2025]
---- We speak with esteemed historian scholar Ellen Schrecker about the Trump administration’s assault on universities and the crackdown on dissent, a climate of fear and censorship she describes as “worse than McCarthyism.” “During the McCarthy period, it was attacking only individual professors and only about their sort of extracurricular political activities on the left. … Today, the repression that’s coming out of Washington, D.C., it attacks everything that happens on American campuses,” says Schrecker. “The damage that the Trump administration is doing is absolutely beyond the pale and has never, never been equaled in American life with regard to higher education.” Schrecker is the author of many books about the McCarthy era, Cold War politics and right-wing attacks on academic freedom. [Read More]
Marco Rubio Is Attacking American Education. International Students Are His Pawns.
By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [May 30, 2025]
---- On the same day that a federal judge deemed Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s attempt to deport Mahmoud Khalil on alleged “foreign policy” grounds likely unconstitutional, Rubio announced in a gnomic statement that the Trump administration will “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students, including those with “ties to the Chinese Communist Party” or who are studying in “critical fields.” Little more detail was given. But it’s clear that Rubio is weaponizing his legal purview, under the guise of foreign policy, not just to crush dissent and target international students — but also to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of decimating U.S. higher education and producing an even more unequal United States. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “We are going on hunger strike at the City University of New York. Here’s why,” By CUNY students staff and faculty on hunger strike for Gaza [May 31, 2025] [Link]; (Video) “MIT class president says students 'for a free Palestine',” [Link]; and “Hundreds of NYC Students Walk out of Class for ‘Anti-Trump, Nonpartisan’ Protest,” by Michael Elsen-Rooney and Amy Zimmer, Chalkbeat [May 29, 2025] [Link].
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
The False Promise of Nuclear Power
By Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation [May 29, 2025]
---- Politically, nuclear power enjoys bipartisan support in Congress, where Republicans are trying to pass a sprawling budget bill that rescinds nearly all of the IRA’s clean energy subsidies but provides tax breaks for nuclear. Locally, Trump’s stated goal of quadrupling how much electricity the United States gets from nuclear power would require building hundreds of nuclear plants. That implies that each of the country’s 50 states would host at least one plant, and some states even more. Reporters can ask residents, government officials, and business leaders what they think about that scenario, amid lingering safety concerns about nuclear power. But journalists equally need to focus on economics. A new book explains why it is above all economics, not safety, that undercuts nuclear as a climate solution. The Hype About Hydrogen, by former US Department of Energy official Joe Romm, describes nuclear and hydrogen energy as “false solutions” to the climate crisis. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES
The “Invasion” Invention: The Far Right’s Long Legal Battle to Make Immigrants the Enemy
By Molly Redden, ProPublica [May 23, 2025]
---- When top Trump adviser Stephen Miller threatened on May 9 that the administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus in response to an “invasion” from undocumented immigrants, he was operating on a fringe legal theory that a right-wing faction has been working to legitimize for more than a decade. “The Constitution is clear — and that of course is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller said earlier this month in response to a question about Trump’s threat to suspend habeas corpus, the legal right of a prisoner to challenge their detention. Days after Miller’s remarks, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem issued the same warning when a member of a House panel asked her if the number of illegal border crossings meets the threshold for suspending the right. “I’m not a constitutional lawyer,” Noem said. “But I believe it does.” Hard-liners have referred to immigrants as “invaders” as long as the U.S. has had immigration. By 2022, invasion rhetoric, which had previously been relegated to white nationalist circles, had become such a staple of Republican campaign ads that most of the public agreed an invasion of the U.S. via the southern border was underway. Now, however, the claim that the U.S. is under invasion has become the legal linchpin of President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-immigrant campaign. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Could a Bold Anti-Poverty Experiment From the 1960s Inspire a New Era in Housing Justice?
By Deyanira Nevárez Martínez, The Conversation [May 27, 2025]
---- In cities across the U.S., the housing crisis has reached a breaking point. Rents are skyrocketing, homelessness is rising and working-class neighborhoods are threatened by displacement. These challenges might feel unprecedented. But they echo a moment more than half a century ago. In the 1950s and 1960s, housing and urban inequality were at the center of national politics. American cities were grappling with rapid urban decline, segregated and substandard housing, and the fallout of highway construction and urban renewal projects that displaced hundreds of thousands of disproportionately low-income and Black residents. The federal government decided to try to do something about it. President Lyndon B. Johnson launched one of the most ambitious experiments in urban policy: the Model Cities Program. [Read More]
