Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
October 7, 2019
Hello All – The start of impeachment proceedings against President Trump is long overdue. Almost since Day One of his presidency he has engaged in "high crimes and misdemeanors" that have injured thousands and thousands of people and brought disgrace on this country. For the welfare of humanity, he should be removed from office as soon as possible.
Questions arise, however, about how or though what means President Trump should be impeached. Are US war crimes during his tenure "impeachable offenses," or are the crimes committed against future generations by his actions on global warming a sufficient "misdemeanor" to impeach him? Back in 2017, for example, Texas Rep. Al Green called for Trump's impeachment, and he continued to do so, on the grounds of Trump's racism and bigotry. Or must impeachment rest on a violation of a specific legal or Constitutional provision, such as the allegations connected with Trump's phone call to the president of Ukraine. Scholars differ. We/CFOW have generally agitated for "impeach the Trump Agenda," but the Democrats have committed to the narrower strategy. While there is no sense in bickering with the Democrats over how they will frame Articles of Impeachment, we think that Trump's racism, his fanning the flames of climate chaos, and his contempt for international treaties and international law such as those that apply to e.g. the War in Yemen or the horror at our southern border must be constantly on our minds. Just as Richard Nixon was not charged with "high crimes and misdemeanors" for the War against Vietnam or the bombing of Cambodia, Donald Trump will not be held accountable for the real damage he has done to the world. But Impeach We Must.
It is unlikely that the Democrats will be able to contain "the impeachment process" in a neat, orderly box. Already President Trump has announced his non-cooperation, thus a la Nixon expanding the range of "abuses of power" that may eventually bring him down. And we note the dependence of the impeachment process on the FBI and especially the CIA, two institutions that stalwarts of a certain age know to have their own political agenda, ones not always in the National Interest. (And we note the irony of the mantles of heroism being placed on CIA "whistleblowers," while real whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden linger in prison or exile.) Finally, we think we need to take seriously Trump's threats to not go quietly (again, a la Nixon) into disgrace and exile, hinting at civil war and becoming president for life. The Interesting Times continue.
The Climate Crisis and the Extinction Rebellion
Though the mainstream media has moved on, the climate crisis and the worldwide uprising to stop it continue. Today (Monday) marked the beginning of a month of worldwide protests, many of them linked to the direct-action group Extinction Rebellion. The Extinction Rebellion comes to us from the UK, but over the last year has become implanted in the USA. In NYC today the protests were centered on Wall St., where "blood" was sprayed on the Wall St. bull statue, while protesters engaged in a "die-in," representing the future that awaits us if the Reign of Fossil Fuels is not stopped asap. About 90 people were arrested on this first day of the NYC protest. Protests also took place in London, Amsterdam, Melbourne, and many other cities. In London, 280 people were arrested by evening, including two in their 80s who were arrested for spray-painting a government building with "Life, not death for my grandchildren." For more information about this week's events, go here.
And in Hastings, last Friday a middle-school student began a "school strike for climate," following in the footsteps of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. The student says she will strike each Friday from 12:30 to 3:15 pm, taking her stand for the climate in front of the Hastings Village Hall. If you see her, drop by to wish her well; and let us hope that she is soon joined by many other students.
Save the Hastings VFW Park
For the second week in a row we passed out leaflets at our Saturday vigil with some information about the Village of Hastings' plan to do major renovation on the park, renovations that we fear will eliminate the Plaza on which CFOW has held 500 Saturday events over the past decade, and which has also been used by many others – including the Village itself – to host gatherings and speak out to the public. The project is premised on receiving $200,000 in federal block-grant money. The grant application, detailing the goals and scope of the proposed project, can be found on the Hastings Village website. The architect's site plan can be found on page 45 of the grant application. While the Mayor and the Downtown Working Group state that the site plan is only a "placeholder," it is consistent with the intention of the project to spend $400,000 (of which $200K is Hastings' match) for major changes in the park. CFOW, which most values the Plaza as a unique example of a public space for speaking and performances, proposes instead that the Park be repaired and maintained, not dug-up and replaced. If you have comments or questions about this project, you can email the Downtown Working Group.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Our leaflet and posters for our rallies are usually about war or the climate crisis, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's immigration policies are often targeted, depending on current events. We (usually) meet on the first Sunday of each month, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. And 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!
That's it for this week.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
GOOD READING/FEATURED ESSAYS
(Video) From Trump to Nixon: "Watergate" Film Explains "How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President"
From Democracy Now [October 4, 2019]
---- President Donald Trump called openly Thursday for the leaders of Ukraine and China to investigate Trump's campaign rival Joe Biden and Biden's son Hunter for corruption. Trump's explicit remarks during a press conference came as leaders of the Democratic-led House pushed ahead rapidly with their impeachment investigation. … We spend the hour looking at back at the Watergate scandal, which led to Nixon's resignation in 1974 and is the focus of a documentary titled "Watergate — Or: How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President." Drawing on 3,400 hours of audiotapes, archival footage and declassified documents, the film chronicles the dramatic events surrounding the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in 1972, which precipitated Nixon's eventual resignation two years later under threat of impeachment. We play clips from the film and speak with its director, Charles Ferguson, who won an Academy Award for his documentary "Inside Job." [See the Program]
Rojava ["the Syrian Kurds"] in the Crosshairs of Turkey's Dictator Erdogan
[FB] – This morning's New York Times announces: "In a major shift in United States military policy in Syria, the White House said on Sunday that President Trump had given his endorsement for a Turkish military operation that would sweep away American-backed Kurdish forces near the border in Syria." The Times forgets to note that these "American-backed Kurdish forces" have established the remarkable state and society of Rojava, a de facto self-governing unity of some two million Kurds. While to the Trump administration they were only useful fighters against ISIS who can now be betrayed and discarded in the interests of US policy towards Turkey, the Kurds have built a new world for themselves around the principles of anarchism and eco-feminism, based in large part by the Kurds' jailed leader having discovered the writings of the American anarchist and environmentalist Murry Bookchin while in prison. Learn about these remarkable people and their amazing efforts at self-organization (in wartime) via some of the good/useful readings below. Long Live Rojava!
(Video) "A Shakespearean Act of Betrayal": Trump Agrees to Let Turkey Invade Kurdish-Controlled Syrian Area
From Democracy Now! [October 7, 2019]
---- U.S. troops have begun withdrawing from northeast Syria as Turkey prepares to invade Kurdish-controlled areas of the country. For years, the Kurds have been close allies to the United States in the fight against ISIS. On Sunday, however, the White House released a statement that surprised many in the region, announcing that Turkey would be "moving forward with its long-planned operation in Northern Syria," following a phone call between President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in that operation, and the United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial 'Caliphate,' will no longer be in the immediate area," the statement said. The announcement marks a major shift in U.S. policy, since as recently as January President Trump threatened to "devastate Turkey economically" if it attacked Kurdish forces in Syria. Meanwhile, in neighboring Iraq, the death toll continues to rise as police and soldiers fire on people defying a government-imposed curfew in mass anti-government protests. For more on events in the region, we speak with Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper. [See the Program] In the latter part of this interview, Cockburn speaks about the massive uprising now underway in Iraq. For more on this, recommended are Cockburn's recent article, "The Iraqi people are in revolt," The Independent [UK] [October 7, 2019] [Link]; and "Iraqi Gov't Teeters as Protest Death toll Rises to 100, with 4,000 Wounded," by [Link].
For more on Rojava and how it works – "Experiment in Self-Rule in Rojava," Le Monde diplomatique [September 2017] [Link]; "Report from Rojava: What the West Owes its Best Ally Against ISIS," by Debbie Bookchin, New York Review of Books [April 4, 2019] [Link]; and for a useful video, "Rojava - Northern Syria: The Kurds between Conflict and Democracy," from Deutsche Welle
[Link]. Old friend Meredith Tax wrote a book about the women of Rojava: A Road Unforeseen: Women fight the Islamic State; you can read a good review here.
(Podcast and Text) The Silencing of Kashmir: Arundhati Roy on India, Modi, and Fascism
From The Intercept [October 3, 2019]
---- [Kashmir] is the most militarized place on earth. And perhaps right now there are more Indian troops, and have been more Indian security forces there since 1990, more than probably were deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan by the U.S., you know, and that is a valley that has been locked down. If you follow, for example, there's the Jammu and Kashmir civil service, JKCCS it's called. There's a report, a torture report, which is so chilling to read. I mean, what happened in Abu Ghraib, all these kinds of forms of torture, and variations of it have been commonly practiced there, you know. So, according to the Associated Press 70,000 people have been killed in this conflict. It's a valley covered with graveyards. Every village has its own graveyard. The gravestones grew out of the ground like young children's teeth there, you know. It's a place where you have had people fighting for self determination for 70 years. And that fight became militant because of the repression from 1990 onwards. India's moral position on Kashmir has never, ever been a moral position. It is a kind of moral corrosion that has corroded all of us. And now, now the world is looking at it. [Read More/Hear the Podcast]
Five Years Later, Do Black Lives Matter?
By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Jacobin [October 2019]
----In the five years since Mike Brown Jr was murdered and the streets of Ferguson, Missouri erupted, police across the United States have killed more than four thousand people, a quarter of them African American. Five years later, do Black Lives Matter? Confronted by an array of internal and external obstacles, "the movement" has stalled even as a white supremacist rules from the White House. … Recognizing the stubborn duration of police abuse and violence is less about pessimism than it is about sobriety. There is no quick fix to police brutality. The police are so difficult to transform because the bipartisan political establishment needs them, especially when it decides it has nothing left to give us. … But what is the value of protecting the "rule of law" when the law itself prioritizes what is valued by the elite, while ignoring what is valued by most of us? In other words, neither the law nor law enforcement is on our side, and that ultimately makes the movement to reform either extremely difficult. [Read More]
Hypersonic Weapons and National (In)security
By Rajan Menon, LobeLog [October 6, 2019]
---- Hypersonic weapons close in on their targets at a minimum speed of Mach 5, five times the speed of sound or 3,836.4 miles an hour. They are among the latest entrants in an arms competition that has embroiled the United States for generations, first with the Soviet Union, today with China and Russia. Pentagon officials tout the potential of such weaponry and the largest arms manufacturers are totally gung-ho on the subject. No surprise there. They stand to make staggering sums from building them, especially given the chronic "cost overruns" of such defense contracts — $163 billion in the far-from-rare case of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Voices within the military-industrial complex — the Defense Department; mega-defense companies like Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, and Raytheon; hawkish armchair strategists in Washington-based think tanks and universities; and legislators from places that depend on arms production for jobs — insist that these are must-have weapons. Their refrain: unless we build and deploy them soon we could suffer a devastating attack from Russia and China.
The opposition to this powerful ensemble's doomsday logic is, as always, feeble. [Read More]
Bernie's Heart. And Ours.
By Norman Solomon, ZNet [October 6, 2019]
---- Along with being where all blood goes, the heart is an enduring metaphor. As Bernie Sanders recovers from a heart attack, now might be a good time to consider some literal and symbolic meanings.
---- Along with being where all blood goes, the heart is an enduring metaphor. As Bernie Sanders recovers from a heart attack, now might be a good time to consider some literal and symbolic meanings.
Bernie immediately used his heart trouble to advance a central mission. From the hospital, he tweeted: "I'm fortunate to have good health care and great doctors and nurses helping me to recover. None of us know when a medical emergency might affect us. And no one should fear going bankrupt if it occurs. Medicare for All!" That's the kind of being "on message" we so badly need. It's fully consistent with Bernie's campaign and his public life. ("Not me. Us.") He has never been a glad-hander or much of a showman. He's always been much more interested in ending people's pain than proclaiming that he feels it. … That's where the heart as metaphor is apt. Bernie has a huge and eternally healthy heart, filled with the lifeblood of empathy and dedication. In essence, that's what the Bernie 2020 campaign is all about. As he has been the first to say, it's not about him, it's about us. How much compassion and commitment can we find in our hearts? [Read More]
Our History
The Forgotten History of America's Worst Racial Massacre
By Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, The New York Times [September 30, 2019]
---- One hundred years ago this week, one of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history unfolded in Elaine, Ark., a small town in the Mississippi Delta. Details remain difficult to verify. The perpetrators suppressed coverage of the events, and the victims, terrified black families, had no one to turn for help. In fact, local police were complicit in the killing of untold numbers of African-Americans. The Elaine massacre was among the worst instances of racial violence in American history, and it took place in a region, the Delta, that defined itself by its violence and oppression. One African-American, William Pickens, described the Mississippi Delta as "the American Congo." Elaine, though an isolated plantation region, was part of the broader social upheaval following World War I that came in the form of massive strikes and racial confrontations, both at home and abroad. … Americans have yet to reckon with this horrible past. Elaine was probably the largest massacre of black people in post-Civil War history, yet no federal investigation was ever conducted. This neglect by the government came in the face of people who merely sought to exercise their basic rights to secure a lawyer to defend their property. America cannot address the inequality, poverty, inadequate education, the racially biased criminal justice system, and the limited life chances of black people that define contemporary society until the nation confronts and acknowledges this history. The obligations of the past weigh heavily upon the present. [Read More]
