Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
June 15, 2020
Hello All – We are living in one of those all-too-rare moments when so much that seemed solid yesterday is now up for grabs. We owe an enormous debt to the millions of protesters in the USA and around the world who have given us "another chance" to right our world. Those of us who recall the upsurge in 1968 rejoice that the time has come again to talk about and act on how we might live differently. And one of the differences between now and 1968, in my view, is the feeling that the current upsurge may be more sustainable, based as it is on material needs, not just symbolic gestures.
The movements of 1968, taking place during the Vietnam War, were motivated to a great extent by hatred of the war, but they were also buoyed by the relative prosperity that the war economy provided. The movements were also part of a broader youth rebellion, against conformism and stupid authority; but the other side of this coin was the absence of radical organizations of an older generation, which had been destroyed in an era of McCarthyism or turned into instruments of the Cold War. The radicalism of today, on the other hand, emerges in a world an economic crisis and a pandemic, and engages a broad cross-section of society in terms of age, race, and class.
Moreover, the movements that fought for a better/different world in 1968 had little intellectual heritage or institutional structure on which to draw. In part, this was a strength, the excitement of making all things anew. Today's upsurge, by contrast, rests on the shoulders of a decade or more of serious work by thousands of organizers and hundreds of organizations. I especially recommend this Democracy Now! segment from earlier this week, in which one of our great historians, Robin D. G. Kelley, describes in some detail how much the current upsurge benefits from the work of those who were in the trenches in the last decade and more.
We have now come to the moment when the national and local power elites negotiate with the Uprising to restore Order. The front-burner formulation of these negotiations is "police reform." Last week the Democrats in Congress and the legislature in Albany proposed or passed a series of reforms that would regulate police behavior. These concessions reflect the recognition by elites that "something" must be done; and it is to the great credit of the movements in the street that the first draft of a "reform" package has been rejected, with the street demanding instead "defunding" the police, or perhaps even "abolition." Whether more sweeping concessions can be extracted depends on the ability of the Upheaval to sustain itself; at the moment I am optimistic.
News Notes
On Saturday, CFOW hosted a rally in support of Black Lives Matter and in support of Jamaal Bowman for Congress in the 16th CD. Here is a video of Jamaal Bowman's speech at the rally, in which he describes his own first encounter with police violence at the ago of 11. (Thanks to Allison Waldron for the video.) For two useful articles about the congressional race in the 16th CD, read "The battle over Israel within the Democratic party runs through New York's 16th district" byJune 12, 2020] [Link], and "'Dark Money' Groups Back Engel Against Progressive Challenger Bowman" [Link].
WESPAC is Westchester's flagship peace and justice organization, formed in 1975. On Saturday they held (via Zoom) their annual awards dinner. With keynote speaker Vanessa Agudelo, you can see the event here.
The demographics for protests in the Rivertowns have been greatly changed with the return of so many students and young people. While most colleges will be re-opening in the fall, the Boston Globe reports that 350 colleges consider themselves "in peril" because of under-enrollment for the 2020-21 academic year. "Students and Staff Oppose COVI-inspired Disaster Capitalism on US Campuses" provides a useful overview of this new territory for higher education. [Link]
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Until shut down by the virus, we have been meeting for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting (by Zoom conference) each Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. If you would like to join our meeting, please send a return email to get the meeting's access code. 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!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
(Video) Uprising & Abolition: Angela Davis on Movement Building, "Defund the Police" & Where We Go from Here
From Democracy Now! [June 12, 2020]
---- The uprising against police brutality and anti-Black racism continues to sweep across the United States and countries around the world, forcing a reckoning in the halls of power and on the streets. The mass protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 have dramatically shifted public opinion on policing and systemic racism, as "defund the police" becomes a rallying cry of the movement. We discuss the historic moment with legendary scholar and activist Angela Davis. "One never knows when conditions may give rise to a conjuncture such as the current one that rapidly shifts popular consciousness and suddenly allows us to move in the direction of radical change," she says. "The intensity of these current demonstrations cannot be sustained over time, but we will have to be ready to shift gears and address these issues in different arenas." [See the Program] This is the first segment of a five-part program. In other segments, Angela Davis speaks about Confederate statues, Trump's plan for a Tulsa rally, why we must vote Trump out, and abolition and the defunding of the police. See them all!
An American Spring of Reckoning
b, The New Yorker [June 14, 2020]
---- Consider for a moment how the events of May 25th through June 9th—the days of democratic bedlam in the streets, bracketed by the death and the burial of George Floyd—would appear had they occurred in some distant nation that most Americans have heard of but might not be able to find on a map. Consider that, in the midst of a pandemic whose toll was magnified by government incompetence, a member of a long-exploited ethnic minority was killed by the state, in an act defined by its casual sadism. Demonstrators pour into the streets near the site of the killing, in a scene that is soon repeated in city after city. The police arrest members of the media reporting the story. The President cites a threat to law and order, and federal agents are dispatched to disrupt protests in the nation's capital, using tear gas and a military helicopter. These acts further erode his already tenuous position, prompting church leaders to rebuke him, and decorated generals to question his fitness for office. In such a scenario, the lines of conflict gain new clarity, the abuses more unqualified horror. American commentators would compare the successive nights of protests to the Iranian uprisings of 2009 and the Arab Spring of 2011. The U.S. State Department, depending on its allegiances, might surreptitiously aid the protesters. We would all recognize the moment as the product of a traumatized society. [Read More]
How Trump brought US Racist Policing and Racist Foreign Policy Together on D.C. Streets
---- Just as we are exposing the rot in U.S. police forces and calling for defunding the police, so we must expose the rot in U.S. foreign policy and call for defunding the Pentagon. U.S. wars on people in other countries are driven by the same racism and ruling class economic interests as the war against African-Americans in our cities. For too long, we have let cynical politicians and business leaders divide and rule us, funding police and the Pentagon over real human needs, pitting us against each other at home and leading us off to wars against our neighbors abroad. The double standard that sanctifies the lives of U.S. troops over those of the people whose countries they bomb and invade is as cynical and deadly as the one that values white lives over black ones in America. As we chant "Black Lives Matter," we should include the lives of black and brown people dying every day from U.S. sanctions in Venezuela, the lives of black and brown people being blown up by U.S. bombs in Yemen and Afghanistan, the lives of people of color in Palestine who are tear-gassed, beaten and shot with Israeli weapons funded by U.S-taxpayers. We must be ready to show solidarity with people defending themselves against U.S.-sponsored violence whether in Minneapolis, New York and Los Angeles, or Afghanistan, Gaza and Iran. [Read More]
A Full-Blown Cold War With China Could Be Disastrous
By Michael T. Klare, ZNet [June 12, 2020]
---- America's pundits and politicians have largely concluded that a new Cold War with China – a period of intense hostility and competition falling just short of armed combat – has started. "Rift Threatens US Cold War Against China," as a New York Times headline put it on May 15th, citing recent clashes over trade, technology, and responsibility for the spread of Covid-19. Beijing's decision to subject Hong Kong to tough new security laws has only further heightened such tensions. President Trump promptly threatened to eliminate that city-state's special economic relationship with this country, while imposing new sanctions on Chinese leaders. Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans in Congress are working together to devise tough anti-Chinese sanctions of their own. For anyone who can remember the original Cold War, the latest developments may seem eerily familiar. They bring to mind what occurred soon after America's World War II collaboration with the Soviets collapsed in acrimony as the Russians became ever more heavy-handed in their treatment of Eastern Europe. In those days, distrust only grew, while Washington decided to launch a global drive to contain and defeat the USSR. We seem to be approaching such a situation today. Though China and the US continue to maintain trade, scientific, and educational ties, the leaders of both countries are threatening to sever those links and undertake a wide range of hostile moves. [Read More]
THE UPRISING AND THE POLICE
The Beginning of the End for Unearned Authority
---- At last glance it looks like we are up to almost 600 documented episodes of police violence during the George Floyd protests. An attorney and mathematician have compiled a Google doc titled "GeorgeFloyd Protest" – police brutality videos on Twitter". … Undeniable and powerful, there is no room left for anyone sane and decent to deny this is happening. This is the resource to provide to any dim stragglers, those claiming ignorance or any of the other forms of denial some older white Americans seem keen to continue with. A haunting fact being this is simply what has been caught on video—the violence stretches like grains of sand in our culture—unending and vast. [Read More]
More good essays on the uprising and police violence – For an excellent photo essay on the spread & extent of the BLM demonstrations, go here. And for some background on the history of police violence in the USA, read "The Violence Didn't Start With the Protests" by Kali Holloway, The Nation [June 12, 2020] [Link].
Police Reform Won't Fix a System That Was Built to Abuse Power
By Stuart Schrader, The Nation [June 12, 2020]
---- Police reform is supposed to help police improve their technical capabilities to ensure order and disarm critics who charge that governments do not care about abuse. It is intended to increase police legitimacy, shoring up public support for the government. But by earning this support at home, police leaders have transformed their agencies into a power unto themselves. Greater police legitimacy means greater ability to shape governing priorities. The result is today's larger, technologically sophisticated police department, which gobbles up increasing shares of budgets and seem to answer to no one. When police commit an outrage, reformers step in to reject calls for reducing police power. They offer reform as a way to maintain it. Congressional Democrats have long supported police reformism. Their latest bill, the Justice in Policing Act, does not deviate sharply from business as usual, offering bans on choke holds and a "national police misconduct registry," among other technical fixes. [Read More]
For other perspectives on "reform" - "As Calls to Defund the Police Grow Louder, Joe Biden Wants to Give Them More Money" by Alice Speri, The Intercept [[Link]; "Police Budgets, Austerity, and Tax Cuts for the Rich Are Colliding in Democratic States and Cities" by David Segal and Astra Taylor, The Intercept [[Link]; "The Central Issue Is Police Repression, Not Police Unions" by Bill Fletcher, Jr., In These Time [June 12, 2020] [Link]; and (Video) "Out of Options in Terms of Reform": Khalil Gibran Muhammad on the Racist History of Police in U.S." from Democracy Now! [June 10, 2020] [Link].
The History of the "Riot" Report: How government commissions became alibis for inaction.
June 15, 2020]
---- There's a limit to the relevance of the so-called race riots of the nineteen-sixties to the protests of the moment. But the tragedy is: they're not irrelevant. Nor is the history that came before. The language changes, from "insurrection" to "uprising" to the bureaucratic "civil disorder," terms used to describe everything from organized resistance to mayhem. But, nearly always, they leave a bloody trail in the historical record, in the form of government reports. … In a 1977 study, "Commission Politics: The Processing of Racial Crisis in America," Michael Lipsky and David J. Olson reported that, between 1917 and 1943, at least twenty-one commissions were appointed to investigate race riots, and, however sincerely their members might have been interested in structural change, none of the commissions led to any. The point of a race-riot commission, Lipsky and Olson argue, is for the government that appoints it to appear to be doing something, while actually doing nothing. [Read More].
OUR HISTORY
Karl Marx Fought for Freedom
By Kevin B. Anderson, Jacobin Magazine [June 2020]
---- Last year marked the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia. Although this grim event is now being discussed in profound and penetrating ways, few in the mainstream media are noting the particularly capitalist character of the New World's modern form of slavery — a theme that runs through Marx's critique of capital and his extensive discussions of capitalism and slavery. Marx did not view the large-scale enslavement of Africans by Europeans, which began in the early sixteenth century in the Caribbean, as a repeat of Roman or Arab slavery, but as something new. It combined ancient forms of brutality with the quintessentially modern social form of value production. Slavery, he wrote in a draft for Capital, reaches "its most hateful form … in a situation of capitalist production," where "exchange value becomes the determining element of production." This leads to the extension of the workday beyond all limit, literally working enslaved people to death. Whether in South America, the Caribbean, or the plantations of the southern United States, slavery was not a peripheral but a central part of modern capitalism. [Read More]
Echoes of the 1917 East St. Louis "Race Riot" in Today's Uprisings
By Keisha N. Blain, The Intercept [
---- John Sullivan was only 10 years old when he was killed by an act of racist violence during the summer of 1917. His mother, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon — an African American woman from Louisiana — had only recently relocated to East St. Louis, Illinois, in hopes of finding better job opportunities. What Gordon learned that summer was that although she could escape the Jim Crow South, she could never escape white supremacy. Though the specific details are unclear, a white mob had beaten John in East St. Louis. He succumbed to his injuries a few months after the attack. The incident is just one of hundreds of tragic stories that emerge from the 1917 East St. Louis "Race Riot." The events that unfolded that summer are lesser known than other historical developments, such as the Red Summer of 1919 and the 1968 rebellions following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. [Read More]
