Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
July 10, 2022
Hello All – In the USA, a "mass shooting" involves the shooting of 4 or more people. The killing of 8 people and injuring of 29 at the 4th of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois was the 313th mass shooting in 2022. Since then there have been 14 more mass shootings, including two today. In all of 2021, there were 692 mass shootings, and 45,034 people were killed by guns, about half of whom were suicides. No other country has this problem!
As Steve Eisenman notes in an article linked below, the profile of the Highland Park shooter was predictable, and predicted, before any of the facts were in. "He will be a 20-something white male, who hunts, goes online in his bedroom, and over excites himself. His mother/grandmother/caretaker, who he hates, does his laundry, and cooks his food. He won't have many friends; past fellow students will say he was a loner. Maybe there's a manifesto, posted online, ripped off from some other moron." Missing from this description/prediction are the facts that he was a Trump fan and purchased his gun – one of several guns he owned – legally, and that he was able to buy guns – no problem – even though he had had significant encounters with the local police and mental health agencies. He also telegraphed, both on-line and elsewhere, his intention to kill people, and he had supposedly tried to kill himself. And he had creepy parents.
America is full of young white men like this. They provide a significant section of what Trump calls "his base," people attracted to white, hyper-masculine authoritarian leaders who rail against "elites," feminists, socialists, people of color, immigrants, Jews, and just about anyone else who can serve as a representative of "the Others" who are keeping down and replacing the white boys who love their country.
We would be mistaken, however, for believing that this group of mass murderers, Proud Boys, Patriot Front people, and other who like to dress alike and march around are more than the tip of the fascist iceberg. Aside from their attachment to Donald Trump – however opportunistic – the American fascist movement doesn't have much of a structure so far. Yet the wealthy and the large corporations that will benefit from right-wing economic deregulation, the Christian Nationalists who mobilize to keep America white and patriarchal, and their enablers in the Supreme Court and the Republican Party are on a roll. Their targets are liberalism and liberal democracy and all who support it. Yes, voting is vital and yes, gun reform is sorely needed, but the threat of fascism to the USA goes deep into our culture, into the murky areas of warped masculinity that saturates this culture, and must be combated on the cultural level as well as by new government regulations. We have a lot to do to save ourselves.
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Baby Julian arrived Saturday morning. My first grandchild. Julian, mom, dad, and extended support team are doing well. For many years, especially in writing about the climate crisis, I have referred to "our grandchildren" as among those for whom we are acting now to protect their futures. Going forward this will have a very different meaning to me. Can we save a world worth living in? We will do our best. Welcome Julian; bon voyage!
News Notes
Aljazeera's premiere journalist in Israel/Palestine, Shireen Abu Akleh, was assassinated by an Israeli army sharpshooter while covering a story on May 11th. Since that time investigations by Aljazeera, the UN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc. have determined that Israel was responsible for the murder. A recent statement by the Biden administration casts doubt on this claim, in effect supporting Israel's denial of responsibility. Last week Shireen's family sent a letter to Biden, demanding a meeting. For some background on the assassination and the importance that Shireen Abu Akleh held in to world of Israel/Palestine journalism, go here.
An interesting article investigates the rate of growth of the world's wealthiest 1 percent and the poorest 50 percent since Joe Biden became President 16 months ago. Also tracked are the wealth of the richest people, the big corporations, etc. It's all in a user-friendly format; read it here.
Hunger is growing: a recent UN report says that about one in ten people – about 828 million people - around the world went hungry last year. This is a dramatic rise (150 million) over the previous year; and we know from daily news reports that the climate crisis and the war in Ukraine have greatly accelerated food shortages or the ability of people to meet rising food prices. The report concludes that one in three people worldwide are "food insecure," lacking the money/ability to get enough nutritious food. That this crisis is unnecessary, and that an end to stupid wars and a modest reduction in military budgets could end this misery, is evident and maddening.
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 edition of the Newsletter was given a boost by a new session by our favorites from New Orleans, "Tuba Skinny." Check it out here. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
The Highland Park Shooting and American Fascism Now
---- Fascism, unlike Covid, can't be diagnosed with a nose swab; but its symptoms are unmistakable and sometimes fatal. It's fair to say it killed seven people in Highland Park and injured 30 others. It was also deadly in El Paso, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Uvalde. Urgent action is needed to stop the proliferation of assault weapons and guns with large magazines. But this essay is not about the need for gun control, or "gun safety", essential as that is. It's about the violence that again struck a U.S. community last week, and the need to resist the Republican far-right – both its corporate and Christian nationalist wings. Until their assault upon our health, safety, bodily autonomy, religious (or irreligious) freedom, and environmental future is stopped, the killing will continue. [Read More]
Women's rights have suffered a grim setback. But history is still on our side
By Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian [UK] [July 3, 2022]
---- You can take away a right through legal means, but you cannot take away the belief in that right so easily. The Supreme Court's Dred Scott and Plessy v Ferguson decisions in the 19th century did not convince Black people that they did not deserve to live as free and equal citizens; it merely prevented them from doing so in practical terms. Women in many US states have lost their access to abortion, but not their belief in their right to it. The uproar in response to the court's decision is a reminder of how unpopular it is, and how hideously it will impact the ability of women to be free and equal under the law. It is a huge loss. It does not exactly return us to the world before Roe v Wade, because in both imaginative and practical terms US society is profoundly different. Women have far more equality under the law, in access to education, employment, and institutions of power, and to political representation. We have far more belief in those rights and a stronger vision of what equality looks like. That the status of women is so radically changed from where it was in, say, 1962, let alone 1797, is evidence that feminism is working. And the Supreme Court's hideous decision confirms that there is still a lot of work to do. [Read More]
What "We Own This City" Gets Wrong about Policing
---- In his latest show, David Simon—creator of The Wire—sees plenty of corruption. The deeper problem is counterinsurgency. With The Wire, Simon taught a generation of cable viewers that the way policing works today is bad for society. He was right. What he got wrong was the root cause of policing's illegitimacy, which he took to be the war on drugs. This conceit runs through We Own This City as well. We get a documentary-like portrayal of the garrison state Goldberg feared; what we don't get is an accurate representation of the forces of racial division that created and sustain it. [Read More]
War & Peace
Biden's NATO Summit Divides the World Into Hostile Camps
By Michael T. Klare, The Nation [July 7, 2022]
---- NATO's defensive role was once largely limited to the European heartland, a legacy of its origins as a Cold War foil to the Soviet military presence in Eastern Europe. After 9/11, however, its reach was extended, [and] now, the alliance is about to undertake its most ambitious expansion of all: extending its strategic reach to Asia and the Pacific in an ambitious, US-led campaign to curb China's rise. … And so, with NATO now committed to an anti-China stance in Asia, we must view the Ukraine conflict as but the opening act in a long-term struggle for global power between the major Western powers and those labeled as "authoritarian actors," notably Russia and China. This will involve competition and conflict in nearly every sphere: economic, diplomatic, technological, and cultural, among others. [Read More] Also of interest – Noam Chomsky (interview), "The 'Historic' NATO Summit in Madrid Shored Up US Militarism," Truthout [July 6, 2022] [Link].
Means of Destruction [The Ukraine War, NATO, and Germany]
By Wolfgang Streeck, New Left Review [UK] [July 2, 2022]
---- The supply of arms to Ukraine, however, is far more than a technical matter and has major strategic implications. One relates to the question of how and when a third country becomes a combatant: an ally of one side who may under international law legitimately be attacked as an enemy by the other. Apparently, there is a threshold here, not easy to define, where support from outside the battlefield turns into participation on the battlefield. Those in charge of manufacturing German public consent pretend that there is no such line, implying that Germany may give Ukraine whatever it demands without legally becoming a Russian target. (Of course, what is called 'Putin' is said by the same sources not to give a damn about international law.) That this may not be so is perhaps one reason why the Scholz government was slower than other governments both in committing itself to sending heavy arms to Ukraine and, once committed, in actually delivering them. After all, of the major NATO powers involved, Germany is located closest to the war theatre and to Russia itself. It also has no nuclear defence, and its transportation of tanks and heavy artillery to Ukraine by land may easily be intercepted by 'Putin' before they reach their destination. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
Extreme Life, Or World War III (IV and V), Climate-Style
By
---- We're talking about parts of this planet potentially becoming uninhabitable and undoubtedly turning hundreds of millions, possibly a billion or more of us into climate refugees on the road to… well, hell. I'm also talking about a country where, in elections this November and in November two years from now, American voters could easily seal not just our own fate, but much of the world's. We could ensure at least six more utterly fossil-fuelized years in which the globe's second-largest greenhouse gas emitter (and, historically, the greatest of all time) would be locked in a Trumpian embrace, similar to the one now enveloping the Supreme Court and all too many lower ones as well, thanks to the former president and Mitch McConnell. We could, in other words, guarantee that nothing — not a single thing — would be done nationally to offset the overheating of this ever more tormented planet of ours. …And here's perhaps the most unnerving thing of all: somehow, in this country, climate change has yet to become a significant part of the national debate or mainstream politics. It's not a subject Democrats seem capable of running successfully on yet. And that couldn't be stranger because, barring a nuclear war, it's our very own apocalyptic future right before our eyes, written not in the stars, but in the very world we're now living in. What could be more convincing? Except, for the fact that, explain it as you will, it isn't. [Read More]
Also of interest – "Heat and Drought Bake the World. Thank Climate Change," b [Link]; and "Our "Normal" Climate Is Dead—Now We Live in an Emergency," by Thom Hartmann, Common Dreams [July 7, 2022] [Link].
The Supreme Court and Reproductive Rights
Democrats' Cowardice and Complicity in the Post-Roe World
By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [
---- It should come as little surprise that the Biden administration and Democratic leadership in Congress are doing hardly anything to protect reproductive rights following the fall of Roe v. Wade. Speaking on "Meet the Press" this Sunday, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra made clear that his agency had little interest in exploring ways to use federal powers to ensure abortions remain available in states that have banned the procedure. … On the Sunday talk show, Becerra rejected the centrist host's suggestion to place temporary clinics on federal lands and force the courts to decide. Instead, the administration is throwing up its hands without even trying. …Thankfully, while establishment Democrats, major nonprofits, and private health care groups act in timid compliance to fascist rule, sites of genuine resistance continue to grow. Collectives and individuals have long been committed to sharing information, support, resources, abortion pills, and services. They understand the need to navigate legal gray areas and work within, outside, and against violent laws. Those who continue to take risks to fight for reproductive justice make clear that real resistance is possible. They clarify, too, that those caving so readily to a fascist status quo are making a choice to stand on the wrong side of history. [Read More]
Also of interest – "After Dobbs, the Path Forward Is Not Through the Courts," by Anthony D. Romero, President, ACLU [June 28, 2022] [Link]; and "The Fight for Abortion Rights Turns to State Constitutions," by Jordan Smith, The Intercept [[Link]. The Boston Review has published many good articles on the Supreme Court/abortion crisis, and they have linked them in a reading list – "Reproductive Justice after Roe" – which you can see here.
And this just in: a White House spokesperson, responding to criticism that President Biden is not active enough in responding to the Supreme Court's ending of abortion rights, says that "Joe Biden's goal in responding to Dobbs is not to satisfy some activists who have been consistently out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party." That would be us and the millions of people protesting over the last two weeks. Read more about this arrogant nonsense here. (h/t AD)
Israel/Palestine
Israeli Apartheid: The power of the frame, the shame of the name
ByJuly 4, 2022]
[FB - Bob Herbst is a resident of Westchester and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.]
---- In the last two years, in a carefully researched and documented confluence of reports, UN, Israeli, regional and international human rights organizations have concluded that the facts on the ground – both in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in the entire land of Israel- Palestine – amount to the crime of apartheid. B'Tselem, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Yesh Din, and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic have all adopted the apartheid name and framing, concluding that Israel is an apartheid regime, committing an international crime and a crime against humanity in its systematic oppression of Palestinians. … This is a testament to the power of the apartheid frame. Because it is widely accepted across the globe that apartheid is an international crime, it is difficult for Israel to do what South Africa did for decades in the 1960's, 70's and 80's — defend apartheid as a legitimate way to order a multiracial or multi-ethnic society. Israel cannot defend apartheid and continue to present itself as a legitimate democracy. The only other response is to say it ain't so, this is not apartheid, but so far that response is also lacking, for the simple reason that the charge of apartheid is virtually impossible to defend on the merits, as a quick legal primer and the apartheid reports set forth above show. [Read More]
15 Years of Failed Experiments: Myths and Facts About the Israeli Siege on Gaza
---- 15 years have passed since Israel imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip, subjecting nearly two million Palestinians to one of the longest and most cruel politically-motivated blockades in history. The Israeli government had then justified its siege as the only way to protect Israel from Palestinian "terrorism and rocket attacks". This remains the official Israeli line until this day. Not many Israelis – certainly not in government, media or even ordinary people – would argue that Israel today is safer than it was prior to June 2007. … What finally culminated in the Israeli Disengagement from Gaza in August-September 2005 was proposed by Sharon in 2003, approved by his government in 2004 and finally adopted by the Knesset in February 2005. The 'disengagement' was an Israeli tactic that aimed at removing a few thousand illegal Jewish settlers out of Gaza – to other illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank – while redeploying the Israeli army from crowded Gaza population centers to the border areas. This was the actual start of the Gaza siege. … Inevitably, Israel's political experiment in Gaza has backfired, and the only way out is for the Gaza siege to be completely lifted and, this time, for good. [Read More]
Our History
Why Are We Still Talking About Black Mountain College?
July 7, 2022]
---- Black Mountain College was the site of a genius cluster, though in the unlikeliest of places: at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Swannanoa Valley, 15 miles east of Asheville and near the small town for which the school was named. There, from 1933 to 1957, a ragtag group of teachers … offered students a liberal arts education with art at its core. … Black Mountain College lives on not just because reading about it and looking at the many images it produced is pleasurable and immensely entertaining, but because it was a uniquely generative institution. It modeled an innovative style of education that would form the paradigm for numerous art and liberal arts schools and arts organizations in America. And it educated a generation of confident, independent, original thinkers — artists of the imagination, if you will, if not necessarily career professionals — to participate in a democratic society. But, above all, it gave rise to a network of artists who would spread its utopian spirit, ideas and vision to various precincts of the contemporary art world. [Read More]
At the Movies
This week I have been watching some old movie favorites. I would like to share one of them – "Salt of the Earth" –with you. A stirring story of a Mexican-American miners' strike, made in 1953 by "blacklisted" Hollywood film people, you can see it free, (if you have a library card) - here. (And you can read some interesting details about the back story and the subsequent fate of the blacklisted film here and here.) Starting about 1960, some of the blacklisted writers and actors were allowed to return to film work, and soon many good historical accounts were written about the McCarthyite attacks on the arts, education, etc., and the damage done to American culture. A user-friendly source for this history is the 1995 documentary, "Blacklist: Hollywood on Trial." Enjoy!
