Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
December 13, 2020
Hello All – On Friday the Supreme Court brought to an end President Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election. But it is clear that Trump and Trumpism is not dead, and that a powerful rightwing movement will remain a danger to our country for many years. The danger starts now. Until he is out of office on January 20th, Trump still has time to start a war against Iran, to sabotage federal agencies, to wage a war on immigrants and refugees, and to fail to do anything to stop the Covid pandemic. Even out of office, in exile at his estate in Florida, Trump will remain an evil presence. For years, the Republicans' hope to rule depended on an alliance of big business, Christian fundamentalists, and white supremacists. Big business can't win elections by itself. Yet going forward, Trump and his new media connections are likely to retain the loyalty of the bulk of the 70 million people who voted for him.
In an essay linked below, Walden Bello warns that what we are entering now might one day be viewed as an "Interregnum," a pause (4 years of Biden) in the sustained ascent of fascism in the United States. And Bello and many other writers in this Newsletter warn that if the Biden administration insists on returning to the failed parameters of Neo-liberal economics and a militaristic foreign policy, this could pave the way for a return of Trumpism. Those of us working for peace and justice need to remain mobilized, not only to press the new Biden administration towards progressive policies, but also to Fight the Right that would kill democracy.
Helping out in Georgia
Both Democrats and Republicans are raising zillions of dollars and phoning Georgia residents on the hour to win the two run-off races for Senate, which will be held on January 5th. The ability of the national Democrats to enact their legislative program depends on winning both elections, and it is for this reason that the Republicans want to stop them. To help out, you can send money directly to the candidates, Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. The organization Reclaim Our Vote uses phone-banking and postcards to contact low-income voters of color who may have been removed from the voting rolls. After she was cheated out of the Georgia governorship a few years ago, Stacey Abrams formed "Fair Fight," now a leading force in taking the Senate for the Georgia Democrats. And at CFOW, some of us are donating to the Southwest Georgia Project, a 60-year-old community-based project with roots in the Civil Rights era. In a conference call with black community organizers last week, the project's director, Shirley Sherrod, stressed the importance of voter mobilization in poor, rural parts of southwest Georgia, generally neglected by Atlanta-based organizations and the Democratic Party leadership, but now a target of GOP big money. The corrupt Republican organizing the January elections have illegally purged nearly 200,000 voters from the rolls, according to the investigative work of Greg Palast and the ACLU. Read more about this here.
News Notes
A recent Newsletter highlighted the crisis of food and food insecurity in the USA, now suffered by 54 million people, including millions of children. On Democracy Now! this week a leading food specialist explained how this was not because of a food shortage, or the whims of the "free market; instead he called "a deliberate choice by those in power." [Link] The speaker, Ricardo Salvador, is also the author of a recent piece in The New York Times, "Goodbye, U.S.D.A., Hello, Department of Food and Well-Being," [Link]. I learned a lot from it.
Thinking locally, the Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry, located in South Presbyterian Church, is one of the places in the Rivertowns where those without food can get some help. From their website (December 3): "Yesterday we served 113 families, consisting of 215 adults, 150 children and 39 seniors, for a total of 404 people. The day before Thanksgiving we served 157 families, and I have a feeling we'll hit those numbers this month also, especially since we'll be giving out Stop & Shop gift cards on December 16 and 23. We delivered food to 30 families yesterday. Our beloved delivery people were hard at work." Please check out their website to learn how they help others, and please send them as much money as you can. Thanks!
Whatever you want, we can't afford it. That's the default response of federal, state, and local governments to most new ideas that would improve our lives. But just in time comes a new report from the Americans for Tax Fairness: "New Research Shows 'Pandemic Profits' of Billionaires Could Fully Fund $3,000 Stimulus Checks for Every Person in US." And the billionaires would still be richer than they were at the beginning of the pandemic. Inequality, Inc.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Taking the Covid Crisis into account, we meet (with safe distancing) for a protest/rally on Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Another vigil takes place on the first Monday of the month (January 4th, etc.), from 5 to 5:30 pm, in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting by Zoom conference; if you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, Tuesday and Thursday at noon and/or Saturday at 4 pm, please send a return email. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. 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
THE COVID CRISIS
So When Can I Get the Covid Vaccine? And why do I still have to wear a mask?
By Gregg Gonsalves, The Nation [December 11, 2020]
---- Vaccines don't save lives; vaccinations save lives. The point here is that in clinical trials vaccines are evaluated in controlled settings, which are never reencountered in the real world. With vaccines, context is king (or queen). … The main take-home message to all of us? Keep stocked up on masks, keep up the social distancing, and refrain from indoor gatherings. Why do we need to do this still, if a vaccine is being handed out across the country? It's because in the context of a raging pandemic—lots of transmission in the community—even a vaccine that looks spectacular in clinical trials will have trouble competing with the force of infection that an uncontrolled epidemic of a highly infectious pathogen presents. … While we have had an Operation Warp Speed for vaccine research and development, we need one now (actually, we needed it yesterday) for vaccination. Vaccination campaigns are run by the states—and they've been warning for months that they simply do not have the resources to do this successfully. The failure of Congress and the Trump administration to provide these needed resources even now that vaccines are on the verge of FDA authorization is kneecapping states just when we have an opportunity to start to put this pandemic behind us. [Read More]
(Video) People's Vaccine: Calls Grow for Equal Access to Coronavirus Vaccine as Rich Countries Hoard Supply
From Democracy Now! [December 9, 2020]
----While the United States, Britain and other wealthy countries race to vaccinate their populations against the coronavirus, a new report finds that as much as 90% of the population in dozens of poorer countries could be forced to wait until at least 2022 because wealthy countries are hoarding so much of the vaccine supply. A growing movement is calling for the development of a people's vaccine and the suspension of intellectual property rights to expand access. We speak with Dr. Mohga Kamal-Yanni, a policy adviser to the People's Vaccine Alliance, and Achal Prabhala, a public health advocate and coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines in India, Brazil and South Africa. [See the Program]
PROSPECTS FOR THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION
The Biden Presidency: A New Era, or a Fragile Interregnum?
By , [December 13, 2020]
---- In sum, a centrist economic policy will soften the hard edges of neoliberalism largely via Keynesian monetary manipulation, but not dissipate the overriding neoliberal policy orientation carried by the Democratic Party establishment. Maintaining the profitability of U.S. capitalism will be a central concern of Biden's economic pragmatists, owing partly to the influence of Big Tech and Wall Street on the Democratic Party establishment. … The coming Biden era may well be a mere interregnum in a political trajectory of the far right's rise to power. Or it can be the antechamber to a new era in progressive politics, an outcome that will depend on whether the left can mobilize the Democratic Party's base of workers, progressives, and minorities to seize the initiative from a center that is devoid of both ideas and courage to break with the past. [Read More] Also insightful/useful: "Can Progressives Save Biden From Disastrous Economic Policies? b [Read More]
By Glenn Greenwald [December 9, 2020]
---- Joe Biden's pick to be the next Secretary of Defense is recently retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin, III. The choice of Gen. Austin further erodes the once-sacred American norm that military officials will be barred from exercising control over the Pentagon until substantial time has passed after leaving active-duty military service. Before Gen. Austin can be confirmed, Biden will need a special waiver from Congress under the National Security Act of 1947. That law, a cornerstone of the post-World War II national security state, provides that "a person who has within ten years been on active duty as a commissioned officer in a Regular component of the armed services shall not be eligible for appointment as Secretary of Defense." … Over the last four years, Democrats and establishment liberals militarized themsleves and became far more jingoistic in their rhetoric and far more reverential of the military and intelligence establishments, to the point where they even filled their newsrooms with former Pentagon, FBI and CIA operatives. For that reason, it is unsurprising to see Biden relying at least as heavily on Generals and intelligence officials as Trump did, including doing exactly that which Democrats vowed in 2017 would not happen again: choosing a recently retired General — one on the Board of Raytheon, no less — to run the Pentagon. But that lack of surprise should not obscure the dangerous and anti-democratic threats posed by these ongoing trends. [Read More]
FEATURED ESSAYS
Births of a Nation, Redux - Surveying Trumpland
By Robin D. G. Kelley, Boston Review [November 5, 2020]
---- We keep telling ourselves that Trump was elected as a backlash to a Black president, but really he was elected as a backlash to a Black movement. President Obama presided during the killing of Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Tanisha Anderson, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland—ad infinitum. It was the mass rebellion against the lawlessness of the state—in Ferguson, in Baltimore, in Chicago, in Dallas, in Baton Rouge, in New York, in Los Angeles, and elsewhere—that prompted Trumpian backlash. Fear and racism feed off of insecurity. The massive vote for Trump and his fascist law-and-order rhetoric should also be seen as a backlash to a movement. Some of us believed Black Spring rebellion in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmad Arbery signaled a national reckoning around racial justice. But rather than reverse the rewhitening of America, our struggles catalyzed and concretized the racial regime's explicit embrace of white power. [Read More]
Fighting From Federal Death Row in My Friend Brandon Bernard's Memory
By Billie Allen, The Nation [December 11, 2020]
Last night: Brandon Bernard
Today: Alfred Bourgeois
January 12: Lisa Montgomery
January 14: Cory Johnson
January 15: Dustin Higgs
These are the names of the humans on federal death row and the dates on which the Trump administration intends to kill them before leaving office. Eight federal prisoners had already been executed. Last night, Brandon Bernard became nine. More names could still be added. This federal killing spree was already unprecedented when it began in July, after a 17-year hiatus. It's even more egregious that the Department of Justice added five more names after the elections. As I sat in my cell on federal death row, the clock ticking closer to Brandon Bernard's execution, my mind lingered on the person killed here on federal death row before Brandon: His name was Orlando Hall, executed on November 19, and he was a close friend of mine—as was Brandon. … I am fighting in Brandon's memory, I'm fighting for Alfred, Lisa, Cory, Dustin. I am fighting for all those who may still be given an execution date in the waning days of the Trump presidency. I am fighting to walk free myself. [Read More] For more on this horror, read "'Abolish the death penalty': Brandon Bernard execution prompts wave of anger" by Tim McCarthy, The Guardian [UK] [December 11, 2020] [Link]
In Weymouth [Mass.], A Brute Lesson in Power Politics
By Mike Stanton, The Boston Globe [December 12, 2020]
[FB – This story is connected to our own story of some years ago, when people tried to stop the Spectra Corporation from building a high-pressure gas pipeline across the Hudson and next to the Indian Point nuclear plan. Many were arrested, included 3 CFOW stalwarts; but we failed to stop the pipeline. Our experience with the so-called regulating agencies was duplicated further north – in Weymouth, Mass., south of Boston – where the pipeline's gas transmission was boosted by a huge compressor station, located in a residential area. We learned lots of (unpleasant) lessons about democracy and the lack of it. Check out this excellent story.]
---- For six years, Alice Arena has battled federal regulators and Governor Charlie Baker's administration to stop one of North America's biggest pipeline companies from constructing a natural gas compressor station in her South Shore neighborhood. The 7,700-horsepower compressor would pump gas under high pressure to speed it on its journey north, as far away as Nova Scotia. This has been an epic battle over a crucial piece of the natural gas energy system — featuring a hunger strike, lawsuits, arrests, and big money lobbyists. The battle was especially fierce in Weymouth, both because of its history of pollution and its dense population — and also because Massachusetts has seen the tragedy that can come when natural gas pipelines fail: the Merrimack Valley explosions of 2018. That hazard — as well as fears of cancer-causing pollutants — has mobilized Arena and her citizens group, one of the longest-running in the state opposing a major energy project. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
A Very Trumpian Christmas Surprise? Signs Point to a Possible US Attack on Iran
By Michael T. Klare, The Nation [December 10, 2020]
---- It is entirely conceivable that [Trump] will give the go-ahead for an attack now that his legal options for preventing Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20 appear to be vanishing and he gropes for a way to create pandemonium at home or, at the very least, punish his enemies abroad. … Plans for such a desperate move may have been set in motion as early as November 18, when Secretary Pompeo arrived in Israel for a three-day visit to US allies in the region. While in Jerusalem, Pompeo met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with Iran a major topic of conversation. By this point, Israeli plans to assassinate Iran's top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, on November 27—nine days later—must have been well developed. Given the bond between the two and their shared hatred of the Iranian leadership, it is reasonable to assume that Netanyahu informed Pompeo of the planned strike and that the two then discussed how their countries would respond to any Iranian retaliation. … In the days following Pompeo's visit to Israel and Gulf kingdoms, a series of subsequent events suggest further planning for US (or US/Israeli) military action against Iran…. [Read More]
US sanctions have caused Iranians untold misery - and achieved nothing
By Negar Mortazavi and Sina Toossi, Middle East Eye [December 7, 2020]
---- The assassination of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is the latest in a long-running pressure campaign against Iran by the US and its allies such as Israel. However, in the case of sanctions, it is ordinary Iranians who are paying the biggest price. The onslaught of sanctions and covert actions on Iran during the Trump era has not elicited concessions from the Iranian government, but it has caused immense pain inside Iran. Today, Iran's population is being crushed by the twofold blows of US sanctions and the Covid-19 crisis, all while under the yoke of an increasingly repressive government. … The outcome of this policy has harmed Iran's most vulnerable, especially patients suffering from chronic and rare diseases such as multiple sclerosis, haemophilia, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, and cancers. For many Iranians, their lives now depend on scrounging for increasingly scarce medicine. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
The Biden Climate Plan: Part 2: An Arena of Struggle
By Jeremy Brecher, Labor Network for Sustainability [
[FB - The climate plan released by Joe Biden in August presents a wide-ranging program for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The previous commentary, "The Biden Climate Plan: Part 1: What It Proposes" summarizes that plan. This commentary identifies the points of conflict on climate policy and related social policies that are likely to emerge within a Biden administration.]
[FB - The climate plan released by Joe Biden in August presents a wide-ranging program for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The previous commentary, "The Biden Climate Plan: Part 1: What It Proposes" summarizes that plan. This commentary identifies the points of conflict on climate policy and related social policies that are likely to emerge within a Biden administration.]
---- The Biden climate plan could lay the groundwork for significant climate-protecting reductions in the burning of GHG-producing fossil fuels. But because it is often quite vague, it could also lay the basis for environmental, economic, and social regression. Which elements of that plan should be supported and which opposed? How can a Biden administration be held accountable to the pledges it has made for effective and job-creating climate policies? … Despite their limitations, the measures proposed in the Biden plan would likely make the already-threatened fossil fuel industry unprofitable and put much of it into bankruptcy. Any serious effort to implement such measures will therefore have to take into account the pushback from the industry, the fear and actuality of broader social disruption the measures may bring, and the likely need to take over and run the bankrupt fossil fuel industry with a managed decline until full replacement by clean energy is accomplished. While it is hard to think of historical comparisons on this scale, the abolition of slavery and prohibition of the sale of alcohol come to mind. For the fossil fuel industry this will be a life-and-death struggle. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
A Dangerous Move to Crack Down on Protests Against Israel
By Stephen Zunes, The Progressive [December 4, 2020]
---- Late last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. government finds the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign to be inherently "anti-Semitic." He pledged to "immediately take steps to identify organizations that engage in hateful BDS conduct and withdraw U.S. government support for such groups" and urged all nations to "recognize the BDS movement for the cancer that it is." … Unlike some of the recent unilateral initiatives by the Trump Administration, Pompeo's designation of BDS as anti-Semitic is something that Biden could revoke with the stroke of a pen. However, it is far from certain that he will do so. …The bipartisan effort to label the BDS campaign as inherently anti-Semitic and the punitive nature of such a designation, suggests that the actual motivation is to discourage campaigns for corporate responsibility and nonviolent advocacy overall, such as those targeting other corporations backing other repressive governments allied with the United States, major carbon emitters and other polluters, arms manufacturers, sweatshop owners, union busters, and others. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
John Lennon and the Politics of the New Left
By Jon Wiener, Jacobin Magazine [December 2020]
---- When John Lennon was murdered forty years ago, on December 8, 1980, we believed Richard Nixon had been the worst president ever — because of the war in Vietnam, because of the repression that he called "law and order" and the racism of the Southern Strategy, and also because of his treatment of Lennon. Nixon had tried to deport Lennon in 1972 when the former Beatle made plans to lead an election-year effort to challenge the Republican president's reelection with a campaign to register young people to vote. In the end, of course, Lennon stayed in the United States and Nixon left the White House in disgrace. But the seemingly endless battle in the immigration courts ruined his life for the next few years. To recover, in 1975 he left Los Angeles, where he'd been living apart from Yoko Ono in a kind of exile, and returned to New York and the Dakota. He and Yoko had a son, and he declared himself a househusband. He stayed out of sight for five years, then returned to music and public life with a new album, which opened with the glorious song "Starting Over." Then he was shot and killed by a deranged fan. Of course, Lennon will always be remembered as part of the '60s. He wrote and recorded "Give Peace a Chance"; on November 15, 1969, as they gathered at the Washington Monument to oppose the Vietnam War, half a million people sang Lennon's song, while Nixon sat alone in the White House, watching football on TV. That was one of the best days of the '60s. Lennon's politics developed through several distinct stages, each marked by a new song. And "Give Peace a Chance" was not the beginning of Lennon's life with the Left. [Read More]
(Video)The Colonization of Haiti in 1915
[December 10, 2020]
---- Haiti is near the United States with fertile land and cheap labor that American business tycoons find attractive. In November 1914, the US Navy Department drew up a proposal called: "Plan for Landing and Occupying the City of Port-au-Prince" that outlined measures to take control of the capital of Haiti; and also set forth an official public rationale to invade: "solely for the establishment of law and order." That rationale sufficed for immediate intervention, which American President Woodrow Wilson soon ordered without consulting Congress. With European powers busy with World War I, the American empire dispatched US Marines to invade Haiti and seize control. The American colonization of Haiti succeeded, but at the cost of thousands of Haitian lives while military records list 146 US Marines killed during their 19-year occupation. [Read More]
