Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
January 15, 2023
Hello All – Today is Martin Luther King's birthday. When he was killed in 1968, he was only 39 years old. In his short life he had made a journey from the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott to the leadership of the US civil rights movement As he is commemorated tomorrow, this is the life that will be remembered
But in the last year of his life King became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War and a critic of "the madness of militarism." Tomorrow, as his life is remembered, his bravery in rejecting war is likely to be forgotten. Indeed, speaking out against the Vietnam War brought down on him fierce criticism, even from the civil rights movement itself. Yet he persisted. On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his death, King gave his "Beyond Vietnam" speech at Riverside Church in New York. He said:
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
This is the Martin Luther King we remember today - a leader for civil rights AND a fighter for peace. His message is as important today as it was in 1967.
Some reading and video about Martin Luther King, Jr.
Americans Love King Because They Don't Understand Him
By Simon Waxman, Boston Review [January 20, 2015]
By Peter Dreier, Common Dreams [December 25, 2021] [Link]
(Video) Newly Discovered 1964 MLK Speech on Civil Rights, Segregation, Apartheid South Africa
From Democracy Now [January 17, 2017] [Link]
Beauty as Fuel for Change
A new project for CFOW is "Beauty as Fuel for Change." This is an arts project that brings together creators in many media around the theme of Beauty as an essential part of enabling work for positive social change. Several dozen artists are represented, including many Masters School art students. We had our Grand Opening today; and the exhibit will continue until February 17 at the Wenberg Family Art Gallery, Fonseca Center, Masters School, 49 Clinton Ave. in Dobbs Ferry. The exhibit is open Mondays through Fridays from 8:30 am to 4 pm.
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; the next vigil will be February 4th, from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. 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 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 send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
This week's Rewards for stalwart readers reflect the Martin Luther King anniversary with a focus on the Freedom Singers of Albany, Georgia. The "Albany Movement" was not one of King's successful voting-rights campaigns, as he and hundreds of community people were arrested and jailed. Out of this came the Freedom Singers, soon launched on a nationwide publicity and fundraising tour on behalf of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Among their favorite songs were "Woke Up This Morning" and "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize." One of the Freedom Singers, Beatrice Reagon (Johnson) went on to found Sweet Honey in the Rock; check out their "Ballad of the Sit-Ins." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
(Video) Night Raids: Victims of CIA-Backed Afghan Death Squads Known as "Zero Units" Demand Accountability
From Democracy Now! [January 12, 2023]
---- We speak with journalist Lynzy Billing, whose investigation for ProPublica details how CIA-backed death squads, known as Zero Units, have yet to be held accountable for killing hundreds of civilians during the U.S. War in Afghanistan. The Afghan units, which were routinely accompanied by U.S. soldiers, became feared throughout rural Afghanistan for their brutal night raids, often descending upon villagers from helicopters and carrying out summary executions before disappearing. Families of victims continue to demand answers, but since the operations were directed by the CIA rather than the military, there is almost no oversight or disclosure when things go wrong. "Many people I spoke to feel that these operations … were counterproductive and actually had turned their families against the U.S.-backed government in Kabul and against the U.S.," says Billing. [See the Program] For an interesting video interpretation of Billing's journey and research, go here. For the complete report, go here.
What the January 6th Report Is Missing
January 9, 2023]
---- The January 6th Report makes eight criminal referrals, recommending that the Department of Justice prosecute the former President (and in some cases other people) for crimes that include obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and incitement or assistance of insurrection, the charge for which Trump was impeached in January, 2021. Much turns on the reception of this report. As a brief for the prosecution, it's a start. As a book, it's essential if miserable reading. As history, it's a shambles. … In the January 6th Report, Donald Trump acted alone and came out of nowhere. He has no past. Neither does the nation. The rest of the country doesn't even exist. No one dies of Covid, no one loses a job, no one sinks to her knees in grief upon hearing on the radio the news that Americans—Americans—are staging an armed invasion of the Capitol. Among the many reasons this investigation ought to have been conducted by a body independent from the federal government is that there is very little suffering in Congress's January 6th Report, except that of members of Congress running for their lives that day. [Read More]. For a critique of Lepore's essay, read "The Failures of the January 6 Report," by Jeet Heer, The Nation [January 13, 2023] [Link].
Will the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem Be Built on Confiscated Palestinian Land?
[FB - Dr. Khalidi is a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at Columbia.]
---- The Biden administration is doubling down on its predecessor's reckless decision to recognize Israel's claims to Jerusalem as its capital, a break with nearly 70 years of policy. The State Department is advancing plans to erect an embassy building in Jerusalem partly on land stolen by Israel shortly after its establishment from Palestinian refugees, including American citizens. … The majority of the Allenby Barracks site is owned by Palestinians, including parts of it by my family, whose roots in Jerusalem go back more than 1,000 years. My ancestors and many other Jerusalem families rented this land to Britain at the tail end of its rule over Palestine. … Building a U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, on this site or any other, constitutes a legal and moral offense. It would solidify Israel's exclusivist claims to the city, whose permanent status is one that the United States itself and the international community agree remains to be determined. It would essentially greenlight Israel's relentless eviction of Palestinians from their homes and properties in Jerusalem, entrenching Israel's apartheid-like policies in the city, and further isolating East Jerusalem from other Palestinian areas in the West Bank.
War & Peace
Refashioning a new East Asian order
Chas Freeman, Responsible Statecraft [December 26, 2022]
---- When Deng Xiaoping opened China to the world four decades ago, Americans were ready to do what we most enjoy doing – showering foreign countries with insistent, well-meaning advice about how to conduct themselves at home and abroad. Henry Kissinger wryly observed at the time that China had somehow managed to get along without American counsel for 4,000 years before the United States was born. This is a useful reminder that the state system or "order" in East Asia did not spring into being when we Americans arrived there. It has taken many forms over the millennia, only a few of which have involved an American presence – and then only in the past 180 or so years. Now a renewed version of the pre-American dynamic may be in prospect. Geography is the DNA of geopolitics. It has a way of re-expressing familiar patterns that history seemed for a while to have killed off. [Read More]. [Links to parts 2, 3, and 4]. Also of interest is "A Pentagon Report on China Fuels a Military Spending Frenzy in the US," by Michael T. Klare, The Nation [January 12, 2023] [Link[.
How the US Paved the Way to Moscow's Invasion of Ukraine
---- Hindsight is a particularly powerful tool for analyzing the Ukraine war, nearly a year after Russia's invasion. Last February, it sounded at least superficially plausible to characterize Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to send troops and tanks into his neighbor as nothing less than an "unprovoked act of aggression." Putin was either a madman or a megalomaniac, trying to revive the imperial, expansionist agenda of the Soviet Union. Were his invasion to go unchallenged, he would pose a threat to the rest of Europe. Plucky, democratic Ukraine needed the West's unreserved support – and a near-limitless supply of weapons – to hold the line against a rogue dictator. But that narrative looks increasingly threadbare, at least if one reads beyond the establishment media – a media that has never sounded quite so monotone, so determined to beat the drum of war, so amnesiac and so irresponsible. [Read More] Also of interest is this report from Germany, describing the impact of the war on public opinion: "Ukraine and the Eclipse of Pacifism," by Stephen Milder, Boston Review [Link].
The Climate Crisis
Exxon Scientists Predicted Global Warming, Even as Company Cast Doubts, Study Finds
---- In the late 1970s, scientists at Exxon fitted one of the company's supertankers with state-of-the-art equipment to measure carbon dioxide in the ocean and in the air, an early example of substantial research the oil giant conducted into the science of climate change. A new study published Thursday in the journal Science found that over the next decades, Exxon's scientists made remarkably accurate projections of just how much burning fossil fuels would warm the planet. Their projections were as accurate, and sometimes even more so, as those of independent academic and government models. Yet for years, the oil giant publicly cast doubt on climate science, and cautioned against any drastic move away from burning fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change. Exxon also ran a public relations program — including ads that ran in The New York Times — emphasizing uncertainties in the scientific research on global warming. … The new study, from researchers at Harvard University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, builds on reporting showing that for decades, Exxon scientists had warned their executives of "potentially catastrophic" human-caused climate change. [Read More]
Also of interest – "Subpoenaed Fossil Fuel Documents Reveal an Industry Stuck in the Past, by Amy Westervelt, The Intercept [December 24, 2022] [Link]; "Climate Crisis: Oceans heating up as though we were Constantly Blowing up Atomic Bombs in them," by [Link]; and "Climate Crisis: We're Seeing Alarming Changes in the entire Global Water Cycle," by Albert Van Dijk, The Conversation [January 12, 2023] [Link].
Civil Liberties
I survived Guantánamo. Why is it still open 21 years later?
By Mansoor Adayfi, The Guardian [UK] [January 11, 2023]
---- The US prison at Guantánamo Bay opened 21 years ago this Wednesday. For 21 years, the extrajudicial detention facility has held a total of 779 men between eight known camps. In two decades, Guantánamo grew from a small, makeshift camp of chainlink cages into a maximum-security facility of cement bunker-like structures that costs close to $540m a year to operate. … Of those 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo, we know that nine died there; 706 have been released or transferred out; 20 have been recommended for transfer but remain there; 12 have been charged with crimes; two have been convicted; and three will be held in indefinite law-of-war detention until someone demands their release. I was 19 when I was sent to Guantánamo, I arrived on 9 February 2002, blindfolded, hooded, shackled, beaten. When soldiers removed my hood, all I saw were cages filled with orange figures. I had been tortured. I was lost and afraid and confused. I didn't know where I was or why I had been taken there. I didn't know how long I would be imprisoned or what would happen to me. No one knew where I was. I was given a number and became suspended between life and death. [Read More]. Also of interest is "More Than 150 International Organizations Call on Biden to Close Guantánamo on 21st Anniversary" [Link].
The State of the Union
"The Rent Is Too High": Warren, Bowman Ask Biden to Fight Crushing Housing Costs
By
---- A group of 50 Democrats has urged President Joe Biden to take aggressive action to ensure that renters are able to stay housed as rent and house prices have soared across the U.S. with little to no mitigation in recent years, creating a major housing crisis with no end in sight. In a letter sent Monday, spearheaded by Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), the lawmakers asked Biden to mobilize his administration in order to address rent costs and what they say is "price gouging" at the expense of the working class. Without robust action to combat skyrocketing rents, they warned, more and more people will be pushed into experiencing homelessness. … "Simply put, the rent is too high and millions of people across this country are struggling to stay stably housed as a result," they continued. [Read More] Also of interest is "Housing Unaffordable for Half of US Renters" from Human Rights Watch.
NYC Nurses' Deal Is Just a Start — Health Care Advocates Demand Major Reforms
By
---- Over 7,000 nurses, represented by the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) and employed by two major hospitals in New York City, ended their strike in the wee hours this week on January 12. Management had returned to the negotiating table to meet the nurses' primary demands for increased staffing and wage increases. These nurses, from Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai Hospital, were part of the last two bargaining units to settle their contracts in the city. They went back to work bright and early for the 7 am shift. Though the historic strike has ended, its ramifications will continue to be felt across the state. The strike was the largest nursing strike the city has experienced in decades, and experts and advocates agree it was years in the making. [Read More] Also of interest is "Common Dreams.
Israel/Palestine
The Socio-Political Formations behind Israel's Neo-Zionist Government
By Ilan Pappe, Palestine Chronicle [January 6, 2023]
---- Two months after the election of the new government of Israel, the blurred picture is becoming more transparent, and it seems one can offer some more informed insights about its composition, personalities, and possible future policies and reaction to them. It would not be an exaggeration to define Benjamin Netanyahu as the least extreme member of this government, which tells you about the personalities and policies of all the others. There are three major groups in the government, and I am not referring here to various political parties, but rather to socio-political formations. In the first group are the ultra-orthodox Jews, both the European and Arab Jews orthodoxies. What characterizes them is the process of Zionization they underwent since 1948. … In the second group are the national religious Jews, mostly living in colonies, on expropriated Palestinian land in the West Bank, and recently creating "learning centers" of settlers in the midst of mixed Arab-Jews towns in Israel. … But most of the Likud members are part of a third socio-political group: the secular Jews who are also adhering to traditional Jewish practices. They try to distinguish themselves by claiming that economic and political liberalism is still an important pillar in the Likud's political platform. [Read More]. Also of interest is "Designing the Future in Palestine" by Noura Erakat, Boston Review [December 19, 2022] [Link].
Our History
Plowshares into Swords: John Brown and the Poet of Rage - An Appreciation of the Work of Russell Banks
January 14, 2023]
[FB - The novelist Russell Banks died on January 7, 2023. This appreciation of his work first appeared in Race Traitor #10 (Winter 1999).]
---- Until John Brown, most of the men in Russell Banks' work are a sorry lot, steeped in alcohol and violence, prone to runaway obsessions, mired in poverty and powerlessness in the long winters in small New England mill towns where first agriculture and then industry have headed out and gone and the best get away early. ("Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town.") …The central figure in Banks' most recent novel, Cloudsplitter, is John Brown. When asked why he chose to write about Brown, Banks said, "Because he is the one figure whom white Americans universally regard as a madman and black Americans as a hero." Early in the novel, he concludes a discussion of Brown's sanity—the only question that matters—by saying, "For if he was sane, then terrible things about race and human nature, especially here in North America, are true." What terrible truth is revealed by John Brown's sanity? That race and its consequences are evil and must be destroyed and that this is a mission worthy of dedicating one's life to. He alone among the abolitionists of his time believed that the barriers of race could be dissolved and he identified so completely with the slave as to take that cause as his own. For this he was judged mad. What made Brown, among the thousands who agitated against slavery, unique? How did he, alone, come to the conclusion he came to: to engage in bloody acts of war, to be the advance force, to hurl himself into battle when no one else was willing to act? [Read More]
This week we lost two exemplary stalwarts for peace and justice. Casey Hayden died at age 85. From Austin Texas, she was one of the first white women to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and with them became an organizer in Mississippi, helping to launch Freedom Summer in 1964. Married to Tom Hayden, she became one of the founders of the Students for Democratic Society. While in SNCC, she and Mary King wrote a conference paper later titled "Sex and Caste," comparing the issues raised by Black liberation to the situation of women, one of the founding documents of the 2nd wave women's liberation movement. [Learn more here and here.]
Last week we also lost Norm Fruchter, hit/killed by a car at age 85. In a nice appreciation by The Nation's Alix Kates Shulman, Fruchter "was a civil rights activist, community organizer, novelist, filmmaker, and for over five decades a giant in the education equity movement." As Shulman recounts, Fruchter was an important early link with the British "new left" in 1960, and with Tom Hayden and others, he was a founder of the Newark Community Union Project, one of the first such efforts growing out of SDS. For he main work, that of an educator, read more here.
