Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
December 4, 2022
Hello All – We may not be done with the railroad workers' unions and their contract. In the meantime, there are some important lessons to learn from what just went down. Not least of these lessons, which I believe will be taken to heart by broad swathes of USA working people, is that the Democrats are the "party of labor" only sometimes. The entire process by which "the government" presided over labor negotiations that ended up with a contract that did not address the major issues of sick days and leave time showed who owned the government, whose government it was. This lesson may produce some hardening of edges in the intensity of the labor movement momentum now underway: there may be better and worse governments, but at the end of the day, working people can only rely on themselves.
Another lesson is about the importance of the right to strike. The right to strike was written into the National Labor Relations Act, or Wagner Act, of 1935: ""Nothing in this Act shall be construed so as either to interfere with or impede or diminish in any way the right to strike." But adverse court decisions and the coming of union contracts with "no strike clauses" – and finally the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 – essentially ended the right to strike. As the late Staughton Lynd wrote, "The legal precedent, and no strike contracts that labor's leadership devised, remain the major constraints on the right to strike. The best way to overcome them is for labor organizations to refuse to enter into contracts that contain a no-strike clause." And there is room for what might be called "counter-planning on the shop floor." The railroad workers may find ways to loosen the bonds in which their contract wraps them.
A third – and for now, final – lesson from the railroad-workers' contract dispute is that the trend of modern industrial processes is enlarging the premium workers put on the quality of their lives, and not only wages, at the workplace and at rest. As elaborated by the railroad worker in the Democracy Now! program linked below, the conditions of being a railroad worker have become simply unbearable. Small annual raises on a long-term labor contract cannot make up for this. As Karl Marx famously wrote, "Be his payment high or low...," working people are sucked into the maw of an industrial machine that seeks to maximize the value/profit that owners can gain from the workers' time on – and even off - the job. How the railroad workers will respond to their defeat remains to be seen: thousands may quit, and thousands may comply, but other thousands may think of something else.
Some Useful Reading on the Defeat of the Railroad Workers
Betrayal of Railway Workers Ignites Working-Class Fury Toward Biden and Democrats
By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams [December 2, 2022]
---- U.S. rail workers and working-class allies are angry at President Joe Biden—the self-proclaimed "most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history"—and Democratic congressional leaders for betraying them this week. "You can't be 'pro-labor' if you don't stand in solidarity with workers when they decide to strike. Period." Biden on Friday morning signed a congressional resolution that, under the Railway Labor Act of 1926, theoretically averts an economically devastating national strike by forcing workers to accept a White House-brokered tentative agreement—which was backed by eight unions but rejected by the four that represent the majority of the U.S. freight rail workforce. The president is now under pressure to require paid sick leave via executive order. [Read More]
(Video) "Enough Is Enough": Rail Workers Decry Biden's Push to Impose Strike-Breaking Labor Deal
From Democracy Now [November 30, 2022]
---- President Biden is pushing Congress to block a pending nationwide rail strike and push through a contract deal that includes no sick days and is opposed by four of the 12 rail unions. Biden's latest request is an attempt to "legislate us basically back to work, before we've even had a chance to strike," says locomotive engineer and Railroad Workers United organizer Ron Kaminkow. "Workers should have the right to take off work for a reasonable amount for whatever reason they need it," says labor professor Nelson Lichtenstein, who urges the rail workers to strike anyway. [See the Program]
Senate Blocks Sick Days for Rail Workers, Averts Strike by Forcing Biden Agreement
By Daniel Boguslaw and Ryan Grim, The Intercept [December 1, 2022]
---- The Senate showdown came after progressives in the House successfully demanded a vote on the sick days to accompany approval of the tentative agreement. The strategy was criticized by some on the left, who saw it as selling out workers, arguing instead that the contract should have been amended and sent to the Senate as one piece of legislation. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., defended the strategy, saying that unions in her district and nationwide supported the effort to pass additional sick leave in lieu of a viable option to actually sink the proposed tentative agreement. The options available to the unions and to progressives in Congress were extremely limited by the time Biden moved to force the agreement on the workers. The Railway Labor Act allows Congress to enforce collective bargaining agreements in order to avert railway strikes. "Tanking wasn't an option bc of GOP votes," she wrote on Twitter, "we moved to keep sick leave alive." [Read More]
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 (winter schedule) on the first Monday of each month, starting with December 5th, 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. (And for Susan Rutman's video of October 2022 in Vermont, 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. Another Facebook page focuses on the climate crisis. 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 week's Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers honor the arrival of new baby Florence Conway. Lighting the way was music from "Florence and the Machine." I think you will like many of the zillions of their recordings on-line. Here is a sample (and some pretty interesting videos) : "Free," "Hunger," "My Love," and a full album. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
Addressing Climate Change Will Not "Save the Planet"
By Christopher Ketcham, The Intercept [
---- Conservation biology finds itself in a terrifying place today, witness to mass extinction, helpless to stop the march of industrial Homo sapiens, the pillage of habitat, the loss of wildlands, and the impoverishment of ecosystems. Many of its leading figures are in despair. "I'm 40 years into conservation biology and I can tell you we are losing badly, getting our asses kicked," Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Barack Obama, told me recently. "There are almost no reasons to be optimistic. The lie is that if we address the climate crisis, we will also solve the biodiversity crisis." … When it comes to effects on wildlife, climate change is more like a mule, slow and plodding. Yes, a warmed atmosphere is projected to be a significant factor in the extinction crisis in future decades, but what's destroying species today is habitat fragmentation and loss, overhunting and overexploitation, agricultural expansion, pollution, and industrial development. It isn't climate change that caused a 69 percent loss in total wildlife populations between 1970 and 2018, according to a World Wildlife Fund study published this year. The cause is too many people demanding too much from ecosystems, or human overshoot of the biophysical carrying capacity of the Earth. [Read More]
Caryl Churchill's "7 Jewish Children"
FB – One of the UK's leading playwrights, Caryl Churchill was recently awarded the European Playwrights' Award for "her life's work." And then the award was taken away, after (mainly) Jewish organizations protested that her support for Palestinians and BDS made her an antisemite and unworthy of the award. Antisemitism was also allegedly found in some of her plays, including her 10-minute work from 2009 (following Israel's war against Gaza), "7 Jewish Children." In protest against the canceling of the award, a German "Jewish Voice for Peace" group produced a reading of "7 Jewish Children, which I found very powerful and not antisemitic. But judge for yourself. For some background on Caryl Churchill and her "Prophetic Drama," read this interesting article from The New Yorker. For details about the rescission of the award, read "Cancellation of award for playwright Caryl Churchill condemned," from The Guardian [UK] [November 17, 2022]. A similar outcry from Israeli political figures has greeted the appearance on Netflix of the Jordanian film "Farha," which, according to this review "tells the story of an individual tragedy that took place during the 1948 war to create the state of Israel — where Palestinians, who remember the event as the Nakba, or catastrophe, were expelled from their homes by the hundreds of thousands." Check it out.
War & Peace
Eight Reasons Why Now is a Good Time for a Ukraine Ceasefire and Peace Talks
By
---- As the war in Ukraine has dragged on for nine months and a cold winter is setting in, people all over the world are calling for a Christmas truce, harkening back to the inspirational Christmas Truce of 1914. In the midst of World War I, warring soldiers put down their guns and celebrated the holiday together in the no-man's land between their trenches. This spontaneous reconciliation and fraternization has been, over the years, a symbol of hope and courage. Here are eight reasons why this holiday season too offers the potential for peace and a chance to move the conflict in Ukraine from the battlefield to the negotiating table. [Read More[
War Industry Looking Forward to "Multiyear Authority" in Ukraine
By Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept [
---- It is often said that in war there are no winners. But that has never really been true, certainly not in modern U.S. wars. From Vietnam to Korea, and Iraq to Afghanistan, the winner has always been the same. That victor also prevailed in the Cold War and will most certainly do so again throughout this new cold war that is being rapidly ushered into existence. The winner is the war industry. That a powerful U.S. general would suggest that it might be better for the war to end through negotiation rather than prolonging the bloodbath, with Ukrainian civilians paying the highest price, is not an earth-shattering development. But the response to Milley's expression of that sentiment, combined with the ever-intensifying preparations for a protracted war in which the U.S. is the premiere arms dealer, should spur a discussion over whose interests are being served right now. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
What If the U.S. and China Really Cooperated on Climate Change? Imagining a Necessary Future
By
---- As President Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping arrived on the resort island of Bali, Indonesia, for their November 14th "summit," relations between their two countries were on a hair-raising downward spiral, with tensions over Taiwan nearing the boiling point. Diplomats hoped, at best, for a modest reduction in tensions, which, to the relief of many, did occur. No policy breakthroughs were expected, however, and none were achieved. In one vital area, though, there was at least a glimmer of hope: the planet's two largest greenhouse-gas emitters agreed to resume their languishing negotiations on joint efforts to overcome the climate crisis. … Behind that modest gesture there lies a far more momentous question: What if the two countries moved beyond simply talking and started working together to champion the radical lowering of global carbon emissions? What miracles might then be envisioned? To help find answers to that momentous question means revisiting the recent history of the U.S.-Chinese climate collaboration. [Read More]
What Climate Debt Does the North Owe the South?
By November 30, 2022]
---- To keep the planet from overheating, there's just so much more carbon that humans can pump into the atmosphere. From the onset of the Industrial Revolution until today, humanity has used up approximately 83 percent of its "carbon budget"—the amount of carbon the atmosphere can absorb and not exceed the Paris climate agreement's aspirational goal of a 1.5C degree increase in global temperatures since the pre-industrial era. At the current rate of emissions, the budget will be used up within the next decade. … Now, when carbon emissions have to be controlled severely, the north has a historic responsibility to help the south make its own transition to a post-fossil-fuel future. This responsibility is not simply a function of carbon emissions. The extraction and burning of fossil fuels by the Global North during and after the Industrial Revolution went hand in hand with an ongoing process of looting the Global South. The colonial era established an unequal power balance between the north and south, which has continued into the post-independence era. The Global South continues to supply the Global North with natural resources, increasingly to support a "clean energy" transition. The countries of the Global South also remain locked into various forms of debt servitude to the financial institutions of the Global North. [Read More]
Civil Liberties
Major News Outlets Urge U.S. to Drop Its Charges Against Assange
---- The New York Times and four European news organizations called on the United States government on Monday to drop its charges against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, for obtaining and publishing classified diplomatic and military secrets. In a joint open letter, The Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País said the prosecution of Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act "sets a dangerous precedent" that threatened to undermine the First Amendment and the freedom of the press. "Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists," the letter said. "If that work is criminalized, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker."
[Read More] Also of interest is this interview with former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, an Assange supporter, from ZNet [December 4, 2022]
The State of the Union
Pandemic Year 3: Who's Got the Power?
By Gregg Gonsalves, The Nation [December 1, 2022]
---- Here comes our third year of living and dying with Covid-19. We started this 2022 festive season on Thanksgiving with pediatric intensive care beds gobbled up by a triple-demic of SARS-CoV-2, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV); a new set of Covid-19 variants, BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, hobbling the effectiveness of key treatments for the immunocompromised; and only a third of Americans having received a vaccine and the original boosters—and only about 10 percent lining up for the new "bivalent" boosters in the United States. Meanwhile, administration officials continue to talk out of both sides of their mouths, saying we shouldn't worry about Covid-19 this winter, that "we have the tools" to handle the combined whammy of Covid-19, the flu, and RSV, while simultaneously making desperate pleas for more Covid-19 funding from Congress, seemingly baffled that after months of their downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic, no one seems to think Covid-19 is a problem anymore. A dozen Democrats joined Republicans in the Senate in voting to rescind the national emergency declared in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. [Read More]
Israel/Palestine
(Video) The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh
From Aljazeera ["Faultlines"] [December 1, 2022] – 37 minutes
---- On May 11, 2022, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was reporting from the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank when an Israeli soldier shot and killed her. The Israeli military would eventually admit it was "possible" she was killed by their fire. But Abu Akleh was also an American citizen and her killing has brought into sharp focus the United States's handling of her case. In "The Killing of "Shireen Abu Akleh," Fault Lines spoke with witnesses from that day and took questions to the White House and State Department about whether the US will investigate her shooting. [See the Program]. Friday's Democracy Now! included a segment about the film, with an interview with the producer of the Aljazeera documentary and an interview with Shireen's niece, who has been campaigning for justice since May. [See the Program].
Israel lobby's realignment over Ben-Gvir is giving Biden room to criticize
ByNovember 21, 2022]
---- The shocking success of the racist-fascist party Religious Zionism in the Israel election three weeks ago has caused an earthquake inside the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. And that earthquake has allowed Joe Biden to take unprecedented –for him– baby-steps to confront the Israeli government. In fact, the Biden administration appears to be scripted by J Street, which is trying to replace AIPAC in the Israel lobby as the true representative of American Jews. There's a lot to unpack there. Let's review the sequence. … The Israel lobby is clearly in great disarray right now– with a realignment coming. AIPAC and the ADL and the American Jewish Committee will swallow anything. But the center-right and liberal Zionists are in an uproar. [Read More]
Our History
FB – This week we lost Julia Riechert, a pioneering documentary film maker from the 2nd wave of feminism & the New Left generation. Perhaps you have seen her 1976 film "Union Maids." Or more recently, perhaps you saw her film about the (failed) integration of Chinese and USA work cultures in "American Factory." Also available on-line are her very first, 1971 (grad school) film, "Growing Up Female," the first (I believe) to attempt to capture the emerging world of 2nd wave women's liberation. And there is her later portrait of the real lives of communist militants from the 1930s and 1940s, "Seeing Red" (1983). The excellent New York Times obituary published this week tells more about her life and her other films. Julia Reichart: learn about her and what she did.
Salvador Allende Still Speaks to Us Today
By Ariel Dorfman, The Nation [December 2, 2022]
---- Fifty years ago, in late 1972, I was one of a multitude of Chileans who lined the streets of Santiago to support President Salvador Allende as he embarked on a trip abroad to tell the world about how his homeland was advancing toward socialism using democratic means—an unprecedented revolutionary process that was under siege from forces both inside and outside the country. Arrayed against the left-wing government were powerful adversaries: the CIA, Nixon and his éminence noir Henry Kissinger, multinational corporations, international financial institutions, allied with a rabid conservative opposition within Chile itself that was increasingly armed and violent.
Efforts to overthrow the democratically elected president had thus far been unsuccessful. An insurrectionary month-long strike by truck drivers and entrepreneurs in October of 1972 had just been thwarted by the extraordinary mobilization of Chilean workers. But the writing was on the wall. [Read More]
