Concerned Families of Westchester
May 1, 2017
Hello All – The vast assemblies for the March for Science, the People's Climate March, and today's May Day demonstrations show that the Resistance to the Trump Agenda is alive and well. The May Day demonstrations were especially important for the leading role played by immigrant organizations and labor unions, a combo which must be strong and active if we are to save ourselves. The People's Climate March(es) around the country showed that there is a broad understanding of our crisis, not only of the facts of climate change and global warming, but also that our dysfunctional state and federal legislatures are unable to provide much help, captured as so many of them are by the fossil fuel industries. We are on our own, and in-the-streets action is our main hope for stopping that other great march of our era, the March to Self-Destruction.
Many towns, cities, and counties across the country have declared themselves "sanctuaries," maintaining that they will not cooperate with the Border Patrol or the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in detaining or rounding up immigrants. Several towns and cities in Westchester have declared themselves to be "sanctuaries," and the Westchester County Council is working on a resolution that would deny county assistance to ICE. A few days ago, an article in the New York Daily News stated that ICE has asked to use space in the Westchester County Jail (Valhalla) to detain immigrants they pick up in Westchester. Last Wednesday, the Westchester Board of Legislators issued a statement demanding that the County not agree to the ICE request; and as of today, County Executive Astorino has not responded to the ICE. Those objecting to the use of the county jail to house ICE detainees might want to let their county legislators know their views.
All Out for May Day!
May Day, of course, is American as apple pie. It began with a workers' demonstration for an 8-hour day (still a goal for many) in Chicago in 1886, and was subsequently continued as a socialist – and later a communist – day of marching, protest, and celebration throughout the world. Scanning Google news, it looks like there were hundreds of marches and demonstrations today in US towns and cities, and of course around the globe. Tomorrow's edition of Democracy Now! should have a good round-up. Ahead of the marches, many useful articles about the protest participants were published in the progressive media: "May Day Breaks Through As an Essential Day for Protest" [Link]; "'Quiet No More': Hundreds of Thousands Ready to Strike on May Day" [Link]; and "Monday's May Day Marches Could Be the Biggest in Years" [Link]. A strong theme for many marches around the country were immigrants and immigrant rights. We'll post some links and pictures on the CFOW Facebook page tomorrow.
News Notes
As night follows day, Puerto Rico's debt crisis – engineered by hedge funds and enabled by congressional imperialism – has led to austerity and cutbacks in social services. This useful article from The Nation illuminates some of the dynamics of the crisis and highlights the role of university students in fighting back.
For those who could not spend hours each day trying to decode the Wrong-Way Armada mystery, the New Yorker's Amy Davidson has written a useful primer on "Donald Trump, North Korea, and the Case of the Phantom Armada."
Coming Attractions
Ongoing – It's sign-up time for the Hastings Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). This project is managed by CFOW stalwart Elisa Zazzera. From June to November you can pick up a weekly bundle of in-season and just-picked fruits and vegetables. For more info, go here, or email Elisa at zazzera.elisa@gmail.com.
Saturday, May 6th – CFOW's weekly antiwar/pro-peace vigil/protest will take place in Hastings, at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) from 12 to 1. Please join us!
Saturday, May 6th – The 6th annual "River Sweep" – organized by the Riverkeeper – will include 90 cleanups and tree planting projects from NYC to Albany. Last year, Over 2,200 volunteers removed 49 tons of debris from the Hudson River Estuary. To learn more, and to get hooked up with local projects in Yonkers, Hastings, Dobbs, Irvington, etc., go here.
Sunday, May 7th – CFOW's monthly meeting will be held at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 7 to 9 p.m. Please join us as we review the past month's events and make plans for next month.
Wednesday, May 10th – Our friends at Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) invite everyone to join the "Unite for Parole and Prison Justice" day of advocacy in Albany. The SURJ bus from NYC will stop in Westchester. For more info about the event and the bus pickup, email surjwestchester@gmail.com and/or see the event Facebook page.
Saturday, May 20th – CFOW will be one of the organizations participating in the Westchester Social Forum, at the New Rochelle High School, starting at 10 a.m. For more information, go here.
Sunday, May 21st – The CFOW working group on election integrity and stolen elections will show the excellent film "I Voted?" at the Irvington library at 2 p.m. To learn about this film, which explores the many ways that electronic voting systems can be/are corrupted, go here.
Saturday, June 3rd – CFOW will once again lead off the River Arts Music Tour. As those with working memories will recall, for the last two years we kicked off the Music Tour in Hastings with some peace and justice songs, starting at 12 and going to 1 pm, under the leadership/direction of Jenny Murphy. So we're signed up for this again. Please start vocalizing and get ready to join our Stalwart Chorus.
Contributions to CFOW
If you are able to contribute to CFOW work, we would appreciate it very much. Please send your check to Concerned Families of Westchester, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
For readers who buckled down and read all the way to here, you have some rewards coming. First up is an interesting version/video of "The Thrill is Gone," with B.B. King and Tracy Chapman. And next up is Randy Newman with "Louisiana" (1927). Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
OUR CLIMATE & THE PEOPLE'S CLIMATE MARCH
FB – Last Saturday's People's Climate March brought about 200,000 people to Washington, D.C., and thousands more to many, many events around the country, including one in White Plains. The sweltering heat in Washington underscored the bad news that 2017 may surpass 2017 as the hottest year in human history. Today's Democracy Now! news program had a very good segment on the march in DC; and they also broadcast a useful interview with Bill McKibben the day before the march. Use these links to see video of the climate march/rally in White Plains and Erik McGregor's photos of the rally/march on Long Island. For The New York Times' coverage of the DC march/rally, go here. And here are two useful articles to give some context to the People's Climate March:
Water Protectors from Polluted Communities Lead People's Climate March
By Alleen Brown, The Intercept [April 29, 2017]
---- Thousands of people will gather in Washington, D.C., Saturday for a march to demand action on climate change and rejecting the Trump administration's promise to overturn or scale back the federal efforts on climate. The People's Climate March comes one day after President Donald Trump announced yet another executive giveaway to the fossil fuel industry, an order that will begin a legally contentious attempt to cancel President Barack Obama's bans on offshore drilling in the Arctic and off the Atlantic coast. … Climate march attendees from centers of fossil fuel production, transportation, and processing tell a different story. They come from places where creeks run orange, where the air smells like tar, where a depleted water table causes the land to crack and cave in. [Read MOre]
The March to Save the Planet
By Audrea Lim, The Nation [April 2017]
---- Washington, D.C. was sweltering on the hundredth day of the Trump presidency, but that didn't stop 200,000-some people from crowding the streets of Capitol Hill for the Peoples Climate March this Saturday. Indigenous water protectors led the way, announcing the arrival of the March with hand drums, songs and Leonardo DiCaprio at their side. Activists, nurses, veterans, students and science wonks trailed behind for blocks. Adorned with colorful costumes and puppets, they swayed to the brass bands, bhangra and spontaneous outbursts of "We Shall Overcome" puncturing the crowd. The March was the big tent of the climate movement, populated by both anti-capitalist activists who had blocked pipelines with their bodies, and Hillary Clinton supporters offering legislative solutions for combating climate change. [Read More]
FEATURED ESSAYS
Making Sense of the Deportation Debate
By Aviva Chomsky, Tom Dispatch [April 2017]
By Aviva Chomsky, Tom Dispatch [April 2017]
---- In many ways, Donald Trump is only reiterating, with more bombast, ideas and policies pioneered under Clinton, that then became a basic part of Barack Obama's approach to immigration. Those policies drew directly on racist tough-on-crime and anti-terrorism police tactics that also helped foment white racial fears. … Both the mainstream media and social media have highlighted what appear to be extreme cases of the arrest of DACA ("deferred action for childhood arrivals") youth, also known as "Dreamers," as well as of individuals appearing for routine check-ins with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, or other arbitrary detentions and deportations. Most of these cases, however, have been far more in line with Obama-era policies than readers of such news might imagine. Then, too, "low-priority immigrants" were swept up surprisingly often in what the New York Times in 2014 called "the net of deportation." [Read More]
Building a Trump-free, fossil-free future
By Jeremy Brecher, Waging Nonviolence [April 27, 2017]
---- A single march, no matter how large, is not going to force President Trump and his administration of fossil-fuel company executives and climate-change deniers to reverse course. They have already cancelled the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan, authorized drilling and mining on public lands, and gutted regulations that protect local people and environments against the extraction of fossil fuels. He has cleared the way for the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. His allies in Congress are whetting their knives to gut the Clean Air, Clean Water and Environmental Policy Acts. The fossil fuel industry is lining up for permits to build new infrastructure that will accelerate global warming and threaten local environments to boot. The unintended consequence of these actions has been to isolate Trump and his allies from the American people. [Read More]
When Communism Inspired Americans
By Vivian Gornick, New York Times [April 29, 2017]
---- My parents were working-class socialists. I grew up in the late 1940s and early '50s thinking of them and their friends as what they themselves called "progressives." The sociology of the progressive world was complex. At its center were full-time organizers for the Communist Party, at the periphery left-wing sympathizers, and at various points in between everything from rank-and-file party card holders to respected fellow travelers. In my childhood, these distinctions did not exist for me. The people who came to our Bronx apartment or were present at the fund-raising parties we attended, the rallies we went to, and the May Day parades we marched in were all simply progressives. At the kitchen table they drank tea, ate black bread and herring, and talked "issues." I understood nothing of what they said, but I was always excited by the richness of their rhetoric, the intensity of their arguments, the urgency and longing behind that hot river of words that came pouring ceaselessly from them. [Read More]
Where Is the Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders of Foreign Policy?
By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor of The Nation [April 25, 2017]
---- When President Trump decided to drop 59 cruise missiles on Syria in response to purported use of chemical weapons, there was more debate about the attack among Republicans than among Democrats.
The Democratic establishment's record on foreign policy has been disastrous. Most Democratic leaders supported the war of choice in Iraq, the largest foreign policy debacle since Vietnam. They cheered the "humanitarian intervention" in Libya that has ended in the humanitarian horror of a ruined country, racked by violent conflicts, where the Islamic State is consolidating a backup caliphate. They applauded President Barack Obama's surge in Afghanistan even as that war dragged on year after year. They touted the United States as the "indispensable nation," demonstrating a predilection for military intervention and regime change that rivals that of Republican neoconservatives. … With Democrats in the political wilderness, having lost the White House and both houses of Congress, this is the time for fundamental debate and reassessment. A challenge to the failed doctrines of the Democratic foreign policy establishment is long overdue. Cries for unity or attempts to police the boundaries of conventional wisdom should be seen for what they are: an attempt to evade responsibility for calamitous failures.
The need for a new course is clear. [Read More]
A march through time: Historical perspective on the March for Science
By Ingrid Ockert, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [April 2017]
---- I stood amid a forest of scientists. It was still early on Saturday morning. Crowds of protesters gathered in large clumps on the lawn surrounding the Washington Monument. The mood was mellow, eased by the upbeat jazz music blasting from loudspeakers. But dark clouds were gathering above us. What I hoped would remain a light drizzle had transitioned into a persistent patter. Ill-prepared protesters held their soaked signs. … As I listened to the speakers on the main stage, I wondered about the relationship between scientists and public protests. I am professionally and personally interested in this subject because I study the history of science communication in the 20th century. A few months ago, I decided that I wanted to learn more about the history of scientific activism. Two books have proved particularly helpful to me: Peter J. Kuznick's Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activists in 1930s America and Alice Kimball Smith's A Peril and A Hope: The Scientists' Movement in America 1945–47. Both have made me think about how people of the future might view the scientist-activists of 2017. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
America's New Nuclear Missile Endangers the World
---- At a time of growing tensions between nuclear powers—Russia and NATO in Europe, and the U.S., North Korea and China in Asia—Washington has quietly upgraded its nuclear weapons arsenal to create, according to three leading American scientists, "exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike." Writing in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project of the American Federation of Scientists, Matthew McKinzie of the National Resources Defense Council, and physicist and ballistic missile expert Theodore Postol, conclude that "Under the veil of an otherwise-legitimate warhead life-extension program," the U.S. military has vastly expanded the "killing power" of its warheads such that it can "now destroy all of Russia's ICBM silos." [Read More] And asking some useful questions is Lawrence Wittner, our leading historian of antiwar movements: "Why Is There So Little Popular Protest Against Today's Threats of Nuclear War?" Antiwar.com [April 25, 2017] [Link]
After His First 100 Days, We Should Fear Trump More Than Ever
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent [UK] [April 29, 2017]
---- The Trump administration should be more feared as a danger to world peace at the end of his first 100 days in office than it was at the beginning. This is because Trump in the White House empowers many of those who, so far from being "a safe pair of hands", have led the US into a series of disastrous wars in the Middle East in the post 9/11 era. There is no reason to think that they have changed their ways or learned from past mistakes. This point is understood better in the Middle East than in it is in the US and Europe. … Trump campaigned as an isolationist, which should protect him from foreign misadventures, but he has never had many isolationists around him. The architects of America's failed military interventions since Afghanistan are still in business. Strip Trump of his isolationism and what you have left is largely jingoistic bravado and bragging about a return of American greatness. In future crises, both these impulses will make compromise more difficult and war more likely. [Read More]
War Tensions with Russia
Mounting Incitements to War With Russia
By Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation [April 26, 2017]
---- Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com). This installment expands upon last week's, which focused on several highly questionable Washington narratives that imply the necessity of war with Russia. When later asked which of these allegations was the most dangerous, Cohen responds, in this installment, that their number is increasing and with them the risk of war. He itemizes the Cold War narratives, or allegations, now propounded by the US political-media establishment: [Read More]
War against North Korea?
Fearing Korean Nuclear War, Women of 40 Nations Urge Trump to Seek Peace
---- As the White House prepared to brief members of the Senate on North Korea on Wednesday, female activists from more than 40 countries, including North and South Korea, urged President Trump to defuse military tensions and start negotiating for peace to prevent war from erupting on the Korean Peninsula. They said they feared that the rapidly escalating tensions on the peninsula, if left unchecked, could engulf the region in nuclear war. "We are united by our belief that diplomacy is the only way to resolve the nuclear crisis and threat of war now facing the Korean Peninsula," said their letter to Mr. Trump, dated Wednesday. "Peace is the most powerful deterrent of all." A copy of the letter, signed by hundreds of female leaders, was made available in advance. It was also being sent to several senators who will be visiting the White House for the briefing on Wednesday, said Christine Ahn, international coordinator for Women Cross DMZ, a group of female peace activists that helped organize the letter campaign. [Read More] Several years ago, Christine Ahn co-authored a useful analysis of North Korea's internal disasters and their relation to North Korea's nuclear program: "Improve North Korean Human Rights By Ending War" Inter Press Service [[December 2, 2014] [Link]. The website ZoominKorea interviewed several Korean-American activists and scholars about the situation in Korea here.
The War in Yemen
The Shame of Killing Innocent People
By Kathy Kelly, Waging Creative Nonviolence [April 29, 2017]
---- The U.S. Congress could put an end to US complicity in the crimes against humanity being committed by military forces in Yemen. Congress could insist that the US stop supplying the Saudi led coalition with weapons, stop helping Saudi jets to refuel, end diplomatic cover for Saudi Arabia, and stop providing the Saudis with intelligence support. And perhaps the US Congress would move in this direction if elected representatives believed that their constituents care deeply about these issues. In today's political climate, public pressure has become vital. [Read More]
The Wars in Somalia/Africa
America's War-Fighting Footprint in Africa [US military bases in Africa]
By Nick Turse, Tom Dispatch [April 2017]
By Nick Turse, Tom Dispatch [April 2017]
---- While the U.S. maintains a vast empire of military installations around the world, with huge -- and hard to miss -- complexes throughout Europe and Asia, bases in Africa have been far better hidden. And if you listened only to AFRICOM officials, you might even assume that the U.S. military's footprint in Africa will soon be eclipsed by that of the Chinese or the Russians. … A set of previously secret documents, obtained by TomDispatch via the Freedom of Information Act, offers clear evidence of a remarkable, far-ranging, and expanding network of outposts strung across the continent. In official plans for operations in 2015 that were drafted and issued the year before, Africa Command lists 36 U.S. outposts scattered across 24 African countries. These include low-profile locations -- from Kenya to South Sudan to a shadowy Libyan airfield -- that have never previously been mentioned in published reports. Today, according to an AFRICOM spokesperson, the number of these sites has actually swelled to 46, including "15 enduring locations." [Read More]
U.S. Signals Possible Airstrikes in Somalia by Asking Aid Groups for Their Locations
By Samuel Oakford, The Intercept [
---- U.S. officials this week requested the geographic coordinates of aid groups working in Somalia, according to a document obtained by The Intercept — a move that could indicate an escalation of military action against the Shabab. The notice to NGOs comes a month after President Trump declared portions of the country an "area of active hostilities," giving the military wider scope to launch strikes that could potentially kill more civilians. … But for Somalia, such an encompassing request is novel. Taken with Trump's declaration of active hostilities, the note suggests that it's a question not of if, but when, more airstrikes will take place. … Somalia is already in the throes of a dire humanitarian crisis; 6.2 million people are in need of assistance and the United Nations says it risks famine in 2017. The country is only five years removed from a famine that left more than a quarter million people dead, half of them children under the age of 5. [Read More] For more on the famines killing thousands, see this interview with the former Director of Greenpeace, Kumi Naidoo: (Video) "As Africa Burns, Why Is U.S. Refusing to Help Stop Catastrophic Climate Change?" from Democracy Now! [May 1, 2017] [Link].
More Questions about the Syrian Chemical Tragedy
[Secretary of Defense] Mattis' Politicized Intelligence on Syrian Chemical Claim
[FB - Two dozen former U.S. intelligence professionals are urging the American people to demand clear evidence that the Syrian government was behind the April 4 chemical incident before President Trump dives deeper into another war.]
By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, [April 29, 2017]
---- One would think that the CIA would operate using the adage of "once bitten, twice shy" when assessing inspector-driven doubt; U.N. inspectors in Iraq, driven by a combination of the positive sampling combined with unverifiable Iraqi explanations, created an atmosphere of doubt about the veracity of Iraqi declarations that all chemical weapons had been destroyed. The CIA embraced the U.N. inspectors' conclusions, and discounted the Iraqi version of events; as it turned out, Iraq was telling the truth. While the jury is still out about whether or not Syria is, like Iraq, telling the truth, or whether the suspicions of inspectors are well founded, one thing is clear: a reasonable person would do well to withhold final judgment until all the facts are in. [Read More]
CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING
Poisoning the River of Grass [Florida Everglades]
From The Intercept [April 29, 2017]
---- Construction of a new natural gas project in Florida, the Sabal Trail pipeline, is nearing completion as the Trump administration threatens to eliminate federal Everglades restoration and water protection programs. The pipeline will transfer natural gas from a pipeline hub in Alabama to a hub in Central Florida. From there another pipeline, the Southeast Connection, scheduled to finish construction in 2019, will bring the gas to new power plants in South Florida. The Everglades region will become the end of the line for gas extracted via hydraulic fracturing as far north as Pennsylvania. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES/"THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR"
The CIA director is waging war on truth-tellers like WikiLeaks
[FB – Julian Assange is the editor of WikiLeaks.]
---- Mike Pompeo, in his first speech as director of the CIA, chose to declare war on free speech rather than on the United States' actual adversaries. He went after WikiLeaks, where I serve as editor, as a "non-state hostile intelligence service." In Pompeo's worldview, telling the truth about the administration can be a crime — as Attorney General Jeff Sessions quickly underscored when he described my arrest as a "priority." News organizations reported that federal prosecutors are weighing whether to bring charges against members of WikiLeaks, possibly including conspiracy, theft of government property and violating the Espionage Act. All this speech to stifle speech comes in reaction to the first publication in the start of WikiLeaks' "Vault 7" series. Vault 7 has begun publishing evidence of remarkable CIA incompetence and other shortcomings. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
American Media Continues to Ignore Historic Hunger Strike Underway
By Vijay Prashad, AlterNet [April 25, 2017]
---- Since April 17, over 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners have been on hunger strike. Each time the political prisoners declare their intention to strike, Israeli authorities put them into solitary confinement. Attorneys for Addameer, a prisoner support organization, visited the Nafha, Hadarim and Asqlan prisons on April 25. Thabet al-Mardawi, a prisoner at Hadarim, told attorney Mona Naddaf that the Israeli prison guards had transferred prisoners into isolation. Nothing is more perilous to the human spirit than isolation. The hope is that isolation will break their spirits and detach the detainees from the outside world. … This strike, the largest such demonstration inside Israel's colonial prisons, is called the Freedom and Dignity hunger strike. It suggests that the people who sit in cold, lonely cells remain confident of their cause and of their victory. Dignity is important. It is the opposite of occupation. [Read More] For a view from Israel, read Amjad Iraqi, "How the hunger strike could bring Palestinian prisoners back to the fore," 972 Magazine [April 20, 2017] [Link].
