Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
July 3, 2022
Hi All – As we learn more about the attack on the Capitol and Congress on January 6, 2021, it is now evident that President Trump was part of a carefully planned effort to overturn the results of the presidential election and stay in power … somehow.
This week the US Supreme Court tipped its hand, showing that it, too, was on board with the plan to end democracy and install a big business regime in the USA. And so we now open a new chapter in the most dangerous time in US history. And very likely things will get worse. Soon.
The Supreme Court
At the end of June – at the end of its session – the Supreme Court announced a string of decisions on cases it had been considering. The two most important cases – one overturning the Constitutional right to abortion, and one saying that the Environment Protection Agency could not regulate emissions from power plants – were met with outrage and despair.
The end of abortion rights means that women will die, that a right established for half a century is no longer available, and that other "established" protections for personal rights – contraception, gay marriage, etc. – will soon be on the chopping block.
The curtailment of the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency means that the most powerful tools to fight climate disaster are now gone. And like the abortion ruling, the EPA ruling guarantees that many more cases will be brought that will curb the ability of other government agencies to regulate business or protect our health and safety.
The Bigger Picture
What the abortion rights ruling and the EPA ruling have in common is that both are the end result of years of work, and the investment of millions of dollars, by the Far Right in the USA to control who is on the Supreme Court (and other federal courts). Moreover, this investment in time and money had as its purpose to gain control of the national government in order to end the "regulatory state" that had its origins in the New Deal of the 1930s, and which provided a "safety-net" of regulations on business, and which has been supported by both Republicans and Democrats until recently the Reagan era.
Abortion rights and efforts to turn back the gains of women and people of color have always been the spearhead of this rightwing movement, while Big Business has stayed in the shadows. Now the Supreme Court has shown us the larger contours of January 6th, and the slow-motion coup by the Right to seize power has "the Law" on its side.
We are in the opening chapters of a fight to restore democracy and basic rights in the USA. It will last for years. Please get ready. Please join the fight.
Read more about the Supreme Court sharp right turn
"SCOTUS EPA Ruling Signals Court Will Strike Down Rules Limiting Corporate Profit," by Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [July 1, 2022] [Link].
(Video) "Overturning Roe: Slavery, Abortion, Maternal Mortality and the Disparate Effect on Women of Color," from Democracy Now! [June 27, 2022] [Link].
"The Lessons from the Right's 50-Year-Long Crusade to Limit the Freedom of Women," by David Corn, Mother Jones [June 29, 2022] [Link].
"What can best check the Supreme Court's great power?" by David Cole, Los Angeles Times [June 27, 2022] [Link].
News Notes
Candidates on the Left had mixed results in last Tuesday's elections in New York. As measured by the candidates back by the Democratic Socialists and/or the Working Families Party, only one newcomer - Sarahana Shrestha – took a seat from a Democratic incumbent. To our disappointment, Vanessa Agudelo's challenge for the open seat in AD 95 (Peekskill/Ossinging) was not successful. You can read about the left/socialist campaign outcomes here; and read a summary of all the New York races here. All the races were marked by a low turnout; read a county-by-county summary here.
Just to keep some perspective, here is a collection of "protest photographs that have changed the world" from the UK Guardian. [h/t Larry W.]
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 each Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. To learn about our new project, "Beauty as Fuel for Change," go here; and to make a financial contribution to the project, go here. 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. Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. 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!
This has been a tough week for Americans, for humans. Pushing back, here are some songs of resistance that I hope you will like. First up is the Women's Revival Chorus with "Rich Man's House." Next we have our local stalwarts, Hudson Valley Sally, with "Power and the Glory." And finally, from the UN/UNICEF, we have a rendition of my nominee for our new National Anthem, Jon Lennon's "Imagine." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
We Need Racial Solidarity to Restore Abortion Rights
---- The Supreme Court's ruling overturning the right to an abortion is an act of White supremacy. But not in the way you might think…. The restrictions on birth control, sex education, and abortion are about coercing White women into having more babies. The architects of these restrictions are not scheming for more Brown or Black babies to be born. Nothing they've ever done indicates that they care about the survival of Black and Brown children. Instead, their restrictions on abortion, birth control, and sex education are consistently aimed at increasing births among White women, not people of color. Therefore, it is racially consistent and appropriate for it to be White women on the front lines of arguing for abortion rights, because it is White women's wombs and their White children that are the commodities in this fight, as the June 24 Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade makes clear. The Dobbs v. Jackson ruling is the new Dred Scott, but along the axis of gender instead of race, that confers second-class citizenship on specific groups of people in this country, namely women and all people capable of becoming pregnant. [Read More]
The Supreme Court's Shock-and-Awe Judicial Coup
By Naomi Klein, The Intercept [
---- This is it. The moment for President Joe Biden and Congress to challenge the underlying legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court and advance an aggressive climate action agenda. There will be no better moment to take this stand for a transformed court, nor a more fateful one. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right: "We need to reform or do away with the whole thing, for the sake of the planet." Over the last few days, we have witnessed a shock-and-awe judicial coup, from stripping people of the right to terminate pregnancies (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization)…. And now this: a decision that eviscerates the Environmental Protection Agency's power to regulate a major source of the carbon emissions destabilizing our planet. … No issue gives the Democrats a platform for a more powerful or more unifying message than this Supreme Court ruling — both to radically reform the court and to communicate the dire urgency of the climate crisis and the need for bold policy. [Read More] And along the same lines, read "How Charles Koch Purchased the Supreme Court's EPA Decision," by Sharon Lerner, The Intercept [June 30, 2022] [Link].
Arundhati Roy: 'The damage to Indian democracy is not reversible'
From CNN [June 22, 2022]
[FB - Arundhati Roy is the author of "The God of Small Things," which won the Booker Prize in 1997 and "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness," which was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2017. Her collected political writing has been published as "My Seditious Heart" (2018) and "Azadi" (2020). She lives in New Delhi.]
---- "India's tragedy is not that it's the worst place in the world – it's that we are on our way there. We're burning down our house. India is an experiment that is failing dangerously," she told CNN. "Many, many of my beloved friends – poets, writers, professors, lawyers, human rights activists and journalists – are in prison, most of them charged under a dreaded law called the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, all of them for speaking up for minorities, Dalits and forest-dwellers facing displacement and state terror. Among them are people I consider to be India's most important minds. It makes one wonder what living as a free person in the time of fascism means. What does it mean to be a bestselling author when the world is breaking?" writes Roy. In this email interview with CNN Opinion, Roy says Indian politics has something in common with the US Capitol riots, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is stoking hatred, and talks about who the real power in India lies with. [Read More]
The War in Ukraine
(Video) On the causes and consequences of the Ukraine war
A talk by Prof. John Mearsheimer, University of Chicago [June 17, 2022]
---- The political scientist, well known for his realist approach, argued that the United States was principally responsible for causing the Ukraine crisis, even if Putin was the one starting the war and the person responsible for Russia's conduct on the battlefield: "My key point is that the United States pushed forward policies towards Ukraine that Putin and his colleagues see as existential threat to their country […] Specifically I am talking about America's obsession with bringing Ukraine into NATO and making it a Western bulwark on Russia's border." Professor Mearsheimer insisted that Moscow was not interested in making Ukraine part of Russia, but in making sure it would not become a springboard from Western aggression; and that Russia could not feel safe, develop and exist while facing a permanent threat from the territory of today's Ukraine. He insisted that despite the Western narrative about NATO, the determinant aspect to understand the root causes of this conflict is how Moscow sees the alliance's actions. [See the Program] [Prof. Mearsheimer starts speaking at minute 11.]
How Will the War in Ukraine End?
By Rajan Menon, The Nation [June 29, 2022]
---- In the United States, the intrepid Ukrainian resistance and its battlefield successes soon produced a distinctly upbeat narrative of that country as the righteous David defending the rules and norms of the international order against Putin's Russian Goliath. In May, however, things began to change. … Now, at the edge of… well, who knows what, here are three possible scenarios for the ending of this ever more devastating war. [FB - "De Facto Partition," "Neutrality with Sweeteners," and "A New Russia."] … Yes, that war is Europe's biggest in a generation, but it's not Europe's alone. The pain it's producing extends to people in faraway lands already barely surviving and with no way to end it. And sadly enough, no one who matters seems to be thinking about them. The simple fact is that, in 2022, with so much headed in the wrong direction, a major war is the last thing this planet needs. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
Be the Backlash
By Bill McKibben, ZNet [July 3, 2022]
---- A reasonable reaction to the week's Supreme Court rulings, which culminated in Thursday's gutting of the Clean Air Act, would be: we are so screwed. But there's another way to look at it: we can turn the right-wing's wet dream into a nightmare for them if we fight back. If we seize it, we have the best opportunity in many years for reconfiguring American politics. The key thing to understand about these Supreme Court decisions is that they're fantastically unpopular. On guns, on choice, and on climate the Court has taken us places Americans badly do not want to go. By majorities of two-thirds or more Americans detest these opinions; those are majorities large enough to win elections and to shape policy, even in our corroded democracy. The right, after decades of slow and careful and patient nibbling away at rights and norms is suddenly rushing full-tilt. That's dangerous for us, but also for them. The force of that charge can, jiu jitsu-like, be turned against them. [Read More]
The Martyrdom of Julian Assange - Continued
Julian Assange Makes Final Appeal Against US Extradition
By Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams [July 1, 2022]
---- In a last-ditch effort to avoid extradition to the United States, lawyers for jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Friday appealed to the United Kingdom's High Court to block the transfer. Assange's brother, Gabriel Shipton, told Reuters that the Australian publisher's legal team appealed his extradition, which was formally approved by U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel last month. Supporters of Assange held protests ahead of his 51st birthday on Saturday. … Myriad human rights, journalistic, and other groups have condemned Assange's impending extradition and the U.S. government's targeting of a journalist who exposed American war crimes. In a Thursday statement, the Australian Journalists Union said that "the charges against Assange are an affront to journalists everywhere and a threat to press freedom." [Read More].
The State of the Union
A New Sense of Possibility: Starbucks and Amazon Wins Inspire Organizing at Trader Joe's, REI, Target, and Apple
By Dan DiMaggio and Angela Bunay, Labor Notes [June 30, 2022]
---- "The union wave at Starbucks and the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) victory on Staten Island have sparked a new sense of possibility among workers at some of the country's biggest nonunion employers, where unions have struggled for decades to establish any sort of foothold. Since their April win, ALU organizers say they've heard from workers at another 100 Amazon facilities across the country who want to unionize. And in recent months workers have filed for union elections at Trader Joe's stores in Massachusetts and Minneapolis, an REI in Manhattan, a Target in Virginia, and Apple stores in Atlanta and Towson, Maryland. The organizing wave is turning the labor movement's prevailing wisdom on its head. Until now unions have mostly avoided filing for election at single workplaces that are part of big chains, like fast food restaurants or Amazon warehouses, not seeing a viable route to a first contract. But the worker-organizers behind the current upsurge have relied on grassroots organizing to produce a cascading effect. [Read More]
What Would a Real Opposition Party of the People Do?
July 1, 2022]
---- We are currently at the mercy of a cabal of self-righteous Christian zealots with a 6-3 grip on the US Supreme Court and on Congress, thanks to an arcane structure designed by slave-owning wealthy men who handed the power to a Senate dominated by small-state rich people and to their party of Christian fascists and ordinary fascists. If the US were a real democracy, there would be a courageous leftist people's party to resist this grotesque situation. … So let's imagine what a real People's Party and its elected representatives and president would do. Here's my list: [FB – 15 good ideas]. [Read More]
Israel/Palestine
Chomsky on Israeli Apartheid, BDS, and the One-State Solution
By Ramzy Baroud, Common Dreams [July 3, 2022]
[FB – Recently Dr. Ramzy Baroud and others engaged Noam Chomsky in a many-faceted discussion that included many questions about Israel/Palestine and the US role in the region. You can see a portion of the talk that concentrated on Palestinian questions here; and a read a summary of Chomsky's comments here.]
Our History
Heather Cox Richardson
[FB – The daily broadcasts of historian Heather Cox Richardson have gained a very large following. Sometime her programs are just about the past, but more typically they link present-day issues to their historical context. Today, for example, she focused on the 1964 voting-rights campaign called Freedom Summer:
Summer 1964 was known as the "Freedom Summer." Americans, Black and white, southern and northern, eager to defend the right of all Americans to vote, planned to register Black people for the upcoming election. Because only 6.7% of Black Mississippians were registered, Mississippi became a focal point. Under Bob Moses, a New York City teacher who began voting work in Mississippi in 1961, volunteers set out. Just as they were getting underway, on June 21, three voting rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, disappeared near Philadelphia, Mississippi. No one knew where they had gone, but although some white people tried to argue they had chosen to disappear simply to call attention to their cause, no one with a grip on reality in that racially charged era imagined they had gone anywhere good. [And read more]
Last week, following the Supreme Court's decisions on abortion rights and the powers of the federal government to regulate pollution, Richardson broadcast a powerful, hour-long explanation that gave the historical background to the Court's hard right turn and explained why she thinks we are in a Constitutional crisis. You can subscribe to her (free) daily offerings here.
