Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
April 6, 2020
Hello All – Saturday, April 4th, was the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. King was murdered when he was only 39 years old; and in this moment of worldwide crisis it is tempting to think about how/if the world would be different today if he had lived. This, of course, is something that we cannot know; but when we look back at the things he was saying and doing in the last year of his life, many of these things are right on target in addressing the firestorm formed by today's converging crises.
Exactly one year before his murder, King made an historic speech at NYC's Riverside Church called "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence." The significance of the speech was, in part, that it was given at all. For King to condemn Lyndon Johnson's war, at a time when the civil rights movement needed the support of the federal government, was considered ill-advised by many of his inner circle. And the speech received negative comments from the overwhelming majority of the mainstream press. But it was given, and looking back we can read in its concluding sections – looking into the future and sketching the diverging paths that lay before America – some lessons for our own times, with our own crises. "We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation," King said.
The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. … We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."
And so here we are, today, with time running out on us. It is not enough to know what has to be done, but somehow to do it – tomorrow, yesterday – as time is nearly up. The coronavirus paints a vivid picture of the need for immediate change in our politics and economy. Scientists tell us that the climate crisis is upon us, with no time to dither. Common sense sees the dangers of nuclear war in our endless military aggressions across the world. Is it "too late"? We can only hope that doing all we can will somehow be enough.
People Pushing Back
Perhaps it is significant that, on the evening before he was killed, Martin Luther King spoke ("I've Been to the Mountaintop") at a rally of Memphis sanitation workers, who had been on strike for several weeks. And in his plan going forward was the Poor People's Campaign, which would bring thousands of poor people to Washington, DC – an Occupy of 1968! – Going on around the country today are hundreds of rank-and-file protests that are only beginning to get some media attention. Many of these protests are by gig workers or others who have no union representation and very little control over their working conditions. And some of the protests are coming from unionized workers such as teachers and transit workers. What we are watching for, imo, is the moment when these protests start to link up with each other, and with community groups and unions giving support. A good example is this segment from today's Democracy Now!, in which a nurse from a group of protesting medical workers at Harlem Hospital describes the unmet needs of workers and patients, and references contacts between her activist group and similar groups at other NYC hospitals.
Here are some links to stories reporting on the outbreak of rank-and-file activism – especially among typically unorganized workers – and some analysis of how strong this is. An excellent report by Democracy Now! of another nurses' protest, this one at Mt. Sinai Hospital, can be seen here. Michelle Chen of The Nation has a good article about workers doing several kinds of work ["Your Rent or Your Life: The pandemic is forcing workers to make impossible choices"]. "Time to Deliver Justice to Delivery Workers" (New York Review of Books) focuses on the Mutual Aid groups springing up in NYC [Link]. "'We Will Not Sit Back and Let Transit Workers Be Treated Like Cannon Fodder'," by John Nichols of The Nation, shows how transit workers are using union-power to demand protective equipment for workers and the protection of passengers. The support of the sailors for their fired captain on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt is certainly food for thought, as Capt. Crozier spoke out to protect his crew from the coronavirus, displeasing Trump and his military cabal. Finally, check out this set of sketches by artist/activist Molly Crabapple, "Underpaid, Ignored, and Essential: A Coronavirus Sketchbook" (The Nation).
News Notes
The Centers for Disease Control says that more than 9,100 people had died from the coronavirus as of Sunday. But this useful report from The New York Times says that the true number may be much higher, as the "cause of death" is not always accurately recorded,
The Poor People's Campaign's scheduled "March on Washington" (June 20th) has now become a "digitalized," on-line event. The virus/crisis has dramatized the consequences of income and wealth inequality, and the obscenity of millions of people without enough to eat while the Trump family and their beneficiaries wallow in wealth. Check out this useful report from the Campaign's leaders, Rev. William Barber and Rev. Liz Theoharis, that explains the demands of the Campaign and the reasons why Trump & Co. are the enemies of the poor.
Last week the "Fresh Air" program on National Public Radio interviewed science writer Ed Yong about the virus/crisis – why we failed to stop it and how it might end. Highly recommended by the CFOW medical staff. Check out the (audio) program, "Masks, Vaccines & How Covid-19 Might Eng." [48 minutes].
We can learn some things about the United States by comparing our society's/government's response to the virus/crisis with that of other countries. China may not be a useful comparison, as its government and culture are so different from ours, but Germany may offer some lessons. Check out "A German Exception? Why the Country's Coronavirus Death Rate Is Low," from The New York Times [Link]. [And also check out the example of Norway, under "Featured Essays."]
Finally, in many parts of the world, people confined to their homes are "demonstrating" in support of their front-line medical workers by appearing at their windows and on their balconies at 7 pm to applaud or make noise with pots and pans, etc. I am told that this is happening in many parts of NYC, and I learned this week that some Yonkers residents in the big apartment buildings on Warburton Ave. (the Greystone, etc.) are doing the same thing. Is this happening anywhere in the Rivertowns? Which neighborhood can make the most noise?
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Until shut down by the virus, we have been meeting for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Our leaflet and posters for the rallies are usually about war or the climate crisis, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's immigration policies are often targeted, depending on current events. In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting (by Zoom conference) each Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. If you would like to join our meeting, please send a return email to get the meeting's access code. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. And if you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
For stalwart readers, here are this week's Rewards. "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Lean on Me" are among the many favorites recorded in the 1970s by Bill Withers, who died this week at the age of 81. For some music in a different key, the news site Shadowproof has put up 10 protest songs that are targeted on our times. Check out "God Save the Hungry" by the UK's Grace Petrie, and "Tear It Down" by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. And 8 more. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
THIS WEEK'S FEATURED ESSAYS
The Pandemic is a Portal
By Arundhati Roy,The Financial Times [UK] [April 3 2020]
---- Who can use the term "gone viral" now without shuddering a little? Who can look at anything any more — a door handle, a cardboard carton, a bag of vegetables — without imagining it swarming with those unseeable, undead, unliving blobs dotted with suction pads waiting to fasten themselves on to our lungs? … The number of cases worldwide this week crept over a million. More than 50,000 people have died already. Projections suggest that number will swell to hundreds of thousands, perhaps more. The virus has moved freely along the pathways of trade and international capital, and the terrible illness it has brought in its wake has locked humans down in their countries, their cities and their homes. But unlike the flow of capital, this virus seeks proliferation, not profit, and has, therefore, inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the direction of the flow. It has mocked immigration controls, biometrics, digital surveillance and every other kind of data analytics, and struck hardest — thus far — in the richest, most powerful nations of the world, bringing the engine of capitalism to a juddering halt. Temporarily perhaps, but at least long enough for us to examine its parts, make an assessment and decide whether we want to help fix it, or look for a better engine. [Read More]
The Difference Between America's Coronavirus Response and Norway's
An interview with Ann Jones, by James Carden, The Nation [April 3, 2020]
---- We have a long history of disguising grasping self-interest as the "right to individual freedom." … Norway, on the other hand, created itself as an egalitarian social democracy, and that makes all the difference. In Norway, for the most part, self-interest and the public interest coincide. Like the US, it's a capitalist country. But unlike the US, Norway regulates capitalist ventures and is the major shareholder in some private enterprises of public concern. Wages and working conditions are not dictated by billionaire owners, but negotiated once a year by national confederations of enterprise and labor, for labor retains the power to set the standards of work. To ensure equality—without which democracy is not possible—the government also oversees a universal welfare system. It collects high but fair progressive income taxes to support universal health care, almost-free education from preschool through university, full unemployment compensation, affordable housing, public transport, and the like. The result is one of the most equal, democratic, highly educated, innovative, modern, technically advanced, and happy societies on the planet. [Read More] Also interesting is Ann Jones' earlier essay on Norway, "After I Lived in Norway, America Felt Backward. Here's Why: A crash course in social democracy," The Nation [January 28, 2016] [Link].
The Pandemic Is Turning the Natural World Upside Down
By Marina Koren, The Atlantic [April 2, 2020]
---- The response to the pandemic has unwittingly produced some other large-scale, though less conspicuous, effects. In a bittersweet twist, the surreal slowdown of life as we know it has presented researchers with a rare opportunity to study the modern world under some truly bizarre conditions, and they're scrambling to collect as much data as they can. Here are four ways the pandemic is being felt across land, air, and sea. … The cleaner air could lead to a brief respite in parts of the world with severe air pollution even as they battle the coronavirus. According to an analysis by Marshall Burke, a professor in Stanford's Earth-system science department, a pandemic-related reduction in particulate matter in the atmosphere—the deadliest form of air pollution—likely saved the lives of 4,000 young children and 73,000 elderly adults in China over two months this year. … Quieter conditions, perhaps for several months, might seem like a good thing; it's well established that noise pollution can negatively affect our health, contributing to stress-related ailments, high blood pressure, sleep disruption, and other problems. For some residents, the new soundscape reminds them of the peacefulness of their childhood decades ago, when the city was less built up. For others, it's another source of pandemic-related stress—eerie, like the calm before a storm. [Read More]
The Democratic Party Must Harness the Legitimate Rage of Americans. Otherwise, the Right Will Use It With Horrifying Results.
By Jon Schwarz, The Intercept [April 5, 2020]
---- The political possibilities of this moment are different than anything we have ever experienced. We possess a once in a lifetime opportunity to make the United States a more humane country. But if we fail to seize it, we will face mortal danger from the right. That's not hyperbole. The anger of Americans, once they figure out what's being done to them right now, is going to be volcanic. The fallout from 9/11 and the great recession of 2007-2010 will be imperceptible in comparison. Not long from now, almost everyone will have a family member or friend who died of Covid-19, many of them suffocating in isolation wards with insufficient treatment, perhaps deprived of a ventilator that would have saved their lives. Huge swaths of the country are plummeting into desperate penury, even as they witness large corporations unlock the U.S. Treasury and help themselves to everything inside. … What we know from history is that someone always shows up to harvest this level of ambient rage — but it can go in two directions. If people can be made "angry at the crime," as Steinbeck wrote, there can be huge positive political changes. During the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt and unions organized the anger and used it to create the New Deal and the largest middle class in history. In unluckier countries, like Germany, Italy and Japan, the political left failed. The fury was organized by fascists, and directed at innocents. [Read More]
The Political Scene
We Can Finally See the Real Source of Washington Gridlock
By Adam Serwer, The Atlantic [April 1, 2020]
---- Should Joe Biden defeat Trump in November, he will likely face the challenge of helping the nation recover from another economic catastrophe against similarly implacable GOP opposition. The Republican Party will rediscover its concern for debt once there is no longer a Republican in the White House. The more ideologically diverse Democratic caucus will be vulnerable to splintering and half measures. The crucial obstacle to necessary intervention under such circumstances will not be traditional divides over the role of the state or the size of government. It will be, as it has been for more than a decade, the Republican belief that no one else should be allowed to wield power. [Read More]
Sanctions are terribly cruel during a pandemic: The U.S. should loosen the economic vise against Iran and Venezuela
Daniel KovalikOliver Stone, New York Daily News [April 4, 2020]
---- Some may have seen the beautiful story of Cuba allowing a cruise ship, denied by other countries, to dock in its harbor though some on board had tested positive for COVID-19. … These actions represent the type of international solidarity and show of humanity that the world needs right now. Sadly, the federal government in Washington is demonstrating the very opposite at this time, removing all of its Peace Corps staff from around the world, and, even worse, increasing sanctions against countries like Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and Nicaragua during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak. It is accurate to say that the U.S. is weaponizing the virus against these countries. … It is time for serious moral self-reflection upon this very unpleasant reality, and an immediate change in course before more lives are lost due to our nation's moral folly. [Read More] And an important insight/question: 'Why The Mainstream Media Suggests Lifting Sanctions Against Iran While Not Saying Anything About Venezuela" by Steve Ellner, ZNet [April 5, 2020] [Link].
Politics in New York
Andrew Cuomo Held New York's Health Care Hostage to Undo Criminal Justice Reforms
By Nick Pinto, The Intercept [
---- The day after Monday's convention center press briefing, the New York State legislature was staring down a midnight deadline to pass a budget. The process was complicated by the logistical difficulties of conducting the usual debate, conference, and negotiation with most lawmakers physically absent from the state Capitol. But it was also made immeasurably more difficult by the fact that Cuomo — his calls to transcend politics notwithstanding — was insisting on jamming complicated and contentious policy initiatives into the budget negotiations, daring legislators to hold up a crisis budget if they wouldn't get on board. … Late Tuesday afternoon, Cuomo's top aide, Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa, tightened the screws, issuing a thinly veiled threat: If the legislature couldn't agree on a budget by the end of the night, she said, "State government will shut down — including the Department of Health." The legislature didn't quite manage to meet that deadline, but it did pass a budget Thursday night, handing the governor virtually everything he wanted. Cuomo's wish list — what he was prepared to hold his state's own pandemic response at gunpoint to achieve — was a budget full of perversities. While New York's health system, already hobbled by years of neglect, buckled under the coronavirus outbreak, Cuomo wanted to cut $2.5 billion in state Medicaid funding, even though doing so would mean forfeiting $6.7 billion in federal aid. He wanted to slash state funding for education. As the pandemic eviscerates state revenue, he wanted to avoid any increase in taxes on the ultra-rich and instead balance the books by cutting muscle and bone from critical social services. [Read More]
For more on the politics of the New York budget/legislature – "'We Can't Spend What We Don't Have': Virus Strikes N.Y. Budget" by Luis Ferré-Sadurnà and [Link]; "Cuomo Calls New State Budget 'Robust,' Progressives Call It 'Republican Austerity Warfare'," b[Read More]; and "'I Don't Have an Option': Facing Critical Ventilator Shortage, Cuomo Orders Seizure of Excess Equipment From Private Companies and Hospitals" by [Read More]
Our History
What Endures of the Romance of American Communism
By Vivian Gornick, New York Review of Books [April 3, 2020] [1977]
---- Whatever my shortcomings as an oral historian, and they are many, it seems to me that The Romance of American Communism remains emblematic of a richly extended moment in the history of American politics; a moment that, regrettably enough, speaks directly to our own, since the problems on which the CPUSA focused—racial injustice, economic inequality, the rights of minorities—all remain unresolved to this day. Today, the idea of socialism is peculiarly alive, especially among young people in the United States, in a way it has not been for decades. Yet today, there is no existing model in the world of a socialist society to which a young radical can hitch a star, nor is there a truly international organization to which she or he can pledge allegiance. Socialists today must build their own, unaffiliated version of how to achieve a more just world, from the bottom up. It is my hope that Romance, telling the story of how it was done some sixty or seventy years ago, can act as a guide to those similarly stirred today. [Read More]
