CFOW Newsletter - Focus on ending US support for Israel's war against Gaza & the Palestinians

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

May 16, 2021

 

Hello All – While the Biden administration chants that "Israel has a right to defend itself," the horrible conflict in Israel/Palestine marches on.  Despite growing international outcry against Israel's assault on Gaza and its terror against Palestinians in the West Bank, E. Jerusalem, and what is called '48 Israel, it is clear that only stern orders from the USA can stop the slaughter.  How can we make that come about?

 

During the George Bush the First government, stern orders to stop Israeli settlement expansion were obeyed.  During the first days of the Obama government, stern orders to stop Israeli's war against Gaza were obeyed.  Obedience will not follow from soft-peddled wishes that violence "on both sides" must somehow go away.  The US has in its power to deploy threats (and the actuality) to cut military aid to Israel, and to refrain from giving it diplomatic protection in the United Nations and elsewhere.  The realistic target of international pressure and protests in the United States is not somehow to appeal to Netanyahu's "good sense," but to force the Biden administration to see that its own interests are threatened by Israel's continued assault on Gaza and the Palestinians.

 

Threats to cut military aid to Israel have significant leverage. Except for the war in Afghanistan, the US gives Israel more military aid each year than any other country.  And we have promised to give Israel $3.8 billion per year for years to come, more per capita that any other country. US financial support is vital to Israel's apartheid regime. Yet despite laws that regulate the use of US aid, we do not threaten to reduce US aid when Israel uses the aid to commit war crimes or maintain apartheid.

 

A bill now in Congress would start to change that.  Introduced by Minnesota congresswoman Betty McCollum, the bill is called the "Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act." Supported by 15 members of the House, including Rep. Jamaal Bowman, the bill (H.R.2590) would ensure that U.S. financial assistance provided to Israel is not used to support holding Palestinian children in Israeli military detention or prosecuting them in a military court. It also restricts aid use for the unlawful seizure, appropriation and destruction of Palestinian property and forcible transfer of civilians in the West Bank, as well as further Israeli annexation of Palestinian land.

 

As long as Israel's settler-colonial governments deny the human and civil rights of Palestinians living under their Occupation, pro-Palestinian actions in the USA must keep our eyes on the target that can actually do something to relieve Palestinians: the uncritical support, military and otherwise, given by the United States to Israel. As Noam Chomsky argued at length in a discussion with Prof. Noura Erakat last month, what is at issue is not principle so much as tactics, and we need to measure our pro-Palestinian work in terms of how our tactics might bring pressure on our own government to change course.

 

Some useful reading on Israel's war against Palestinians

 

This isn't a civil war, it is settler-colonial brutality

By Lana Tatour, Mondoweiss [May 13, 2021]

---- The civil war narrative is misleading and plays into Israel's hands. It masks settler-colonial power relations, settler-colonial violence and Jewish supremacist violence. What we are witnessing are      not "clashes," or between two equal sides, but rather the Israeli settler state together with Zionist militias declaring a war on its colonized "citizens," who need to protect their lives, homes, and families themselves. [Read More]

 

A Nightmare of Terror Across the Landscape of Palestine

By Yousef Munayyer, The Nation [May 13, 2021]

---- The origins of this moment are as obvious as they are painful, but they bear explaining and re-explaining for a world that too often fails—in fact, refuses—to see the true terms of Palestinian suffering.  To understand how we've arrived at this moment, it is essential to start with the story of Sheikh Jarrah. That small Jerusalem enclave, from which several Palestinian families have been under threat of expulsion, is perhaps, the most immediate proximate cause of this latest crisis. It is also just the latest targeted dispossession of Palestinians by Israel, which has been part of a more than 70-year process. [Read More]

 

Can Palestinian Lives Matter?

By Sarah Aziza, The Intercept [May 13 2021]

---- Palestinians, as a people, are visible but rarely seen. We do not "exist" as others do; we have neither a formal country nor any economic or military power to speak of. We have a history and culture, but these are eroded and appropriated more with every passing year. Mostly, we are collectively obscured by what people think they know, what they think we are: threats, troublemakers, terrorists. This is how we can be in so many headlines and yet die such endless deaths. We die, in part, because that is what the world expects of us. Our name is invoked only in connection to brutality and strife, which are presented as inevitable, our natural state. [Read More]

 

Some Items of Interest

Saturday, May 15^th, was the anniversary of the Nakba, the events in 1948 whereby some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes by the Israeli army, a foundational step in creating the state of Israel.  Over the last decade, debates about the outcome of the 1967 war and the Occupied Territories have been supplemented by paying attention to this earlier Israeli crime, the Nakba.  Last week the Foundation for Middle East Peace held an informative webinar, "The Palestinian Nakba: What Happened in 1948 and Why It Still Matters, that featured US congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, Prof. Rashid Khalidi, and other excellent speakers.  See it here.

 

I think Prof. Noura Erakat is one of the most articulate and knowledgeable spokespeople for the Palestinian cause. She has appeared on several Democacy Now! programs, and she is the author of an imo outstanding book, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. Last week she was interviewed at length on the program "Majority Report," where she placed the ongoing Palestinian protests in context and refuted Israeli talking points about the conflict in Israel-Palestine.  See the Program here.

 

In "Art Against Drones," peace activist Kathy Kelly announces an interesting new project that will install a replica of a US military Predator drone will be installed on the newly re-opened High Line elevated park in Lower Manhattan's West Side.  Though it will be unarmed (no Hellfire missiles or a surveillance camera), it is bound to start discussions about today's American Way of Death.  Read about this here. To learn more, go to www.bankillerdrones.org.

 

Finally, this week I saw a broadcast of the 1966 docudrama The War Game. Commissioned by the BBC, the film dramatized what happens shortly before and during a nuclear attack on the town of Rochester, England, struck by a one megaton Soviet bomb.  The BBC cancelled the scheduled broadcast, saying "the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting." (The film was eventually shown in theaters, won many prizes, etc.)  At that time I was interested in "peace messaging": was it better to talk about the beauties of peace or the horrors of war, in order to move an audience to action.  The film, in all its 1966 clunkiness, frightened a nation's elite, determined to keep up with the Yanks as a "nuclear power."  Check it out here.

 

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.)  A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6 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 Sunday at 7 pm., please send a return email. Our 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!

 

Rewards!

Tomorrow, May 17^th, is Income Tax Day.  Good luck to all you people out there with incomes.  This week's Rewards consider different musical views of taxes.  Starting out with Gene Autry and the (1942) wartime view about taxes, we have "I paid my income taxes today." By 1965 things had become contested, as witnessed by Joni Mitchell's "Tax Free."  Ry Cooder speaks for Middle America (1972) in "Taxes on the Farmer Feeds us All." And Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings bring it home (2006) with a message to George Bush: "What if we all stopped paying taxes"  Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

914-478-3848

 

CFOW WEEKLY READER

 

Chomsky: Without US Aid, Israel Wouldn't Be Killing Palestinians En Masse

By C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout [May 12, 2021]

---- Israel has been a highly valued client since the demonstration of its mastery of violence in 1967. Law is no impediment. U.S. governments have always had a cavalier attitude to U.S. law, adhering to standard imperial practice. Take what is arguably the major example: The U.S. Constitution declares that treaties entered into by the U.S. government are the "supreme law of the land." The major postwar treaty is the UN Charter, which bars "the threat or use of force" in international affairs (with exceptions that are not relevant in real cases). Can you think of a president who hasn't violated this provision of the supreme law of the land with abandon? For example, by proclaiming that all options are open if Iran disobeys U.S. orders — let alone such textbook examples of the "supreme international crime" (the Nuremberg judgment) as the invasion of Iraq.  The substantial Israeli nuclear arsenal should, under U.S. law, raise serious questions about the legality of military and economic aid to Israel. That difficulty is overcome by not recognizing its existence, an unconcealed farce, and a highly consequential one, as we've discussed elsewhere. U.S. military aid to Israel also violates the Leahy Law, which bans military aid to units engaged in systematic human rights violations. The Israeli armed forces provide many candidates. Congresswoman Betty McCollum has taken the lead in pursuing this initiative. Carrying it further should be a prime commitment for those concerned with U.S. support for the terrible Israeli crimes against Palestinians. Even a threat to the huge flow of aid could have a dramatic impact. [Read More]

 

The State of the Union

(Video) Can the Criminal Justice System Be Reformed? PBS Series "Philly D.A." Follows Larry Krasner's Efforts

From Democracy Now! [May 12, 2021]

[FB – The election and then the work of Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner illuminates many aspects of criminal "justice" reform demanded by BLM and the "defund the police" movements this year.  The Philadelphia Democratic primary – tantamount to the election – will take place on Tuesday, and Krasner has a strong challenger from the "law & order" side of policing.  As John Nichols puts it in an article in The Nation, "Tuesday's Democratic primary, is a political test that has local and national ramifications. If Krasner wins the primary, … the assessment will be that this movement is here to stay."  Here is a useful perspective on grassroots views of Krasner and the election from the Philadelphia Inquirer.]

---- Four years ago, the longtime civil rights attorney Larry Krasner shocked the political establishment in Philadelphia by being elected district attorney. Now he faces a tough reelection next week. We delve into his record as captured in a new eight-part series by PBS "Independent Lens" that follows how Krasner, who had sued the Philadelphia Police Department 75 times during his career, ran on a platform of ending mass incarceration and has fought to overhaul the DA's Office. "Is change possible in an institution like this?" asks series co-creator Ted Passon. "Why or why not?" We also speak with co-creator Nicole Salazar about how the series explores "the tensions between the new guard, between Krasner's team and the existing prosecutors in the office." [See the Program]. The PBS program site has some useful background material about both the issues and the making of the film.

 

Israel/Palestine

Palestinian Refugees Deserve to Return Home. Jews Should Understand.

By Peter Beinart, New York Times [May 12, 2021]

[FB – Saturday, May 15^th, was celebrated in Palestine and around the world as the anniversary of the Nakba, in Arabic, "the catastrophe," marking the 1948 expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their home in the newly created state of Israel.  Beinart's article, and it publication in the New York Times, is important in part because it reflects the leftward movement – more critical of Zionism – in both the liberal Jewish mainstream and in the elite media.]

---- Why has the impending eviction of six Palestinian families in East Jerusalem drawn Israelis and Palestinians into a conflict that appears to be spiraling toward yet another war? Because of a word that in the American Jewish community remains largely taboo: the Nakba. The Nakba, or "catastrophe" in Arabic, need not refer only to the more than 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled or fled in terror during Israel's founding. It can also evoke the many expulsions that have occurred since: the about 300,000 Palestinians whom Israel displaced when it conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967; the roughly 250,000 Palestinians who could not return to the West Bank and Gaza after Israel revoked their residency rights between 1967 and 1994; the hundreds of Palestinians whose homes Israel demolished in 2020 alone. The East Jerusalem evictions are so combustible because they continue a pattern of expulsion that is as old as Israel itself. … The crimes of the past, when left unaddressed, do not remain in the past. That's also the lesson of the evictions that have set Israel-Palestine aflame. More than seven decades ago, Palestinians were expelled to create a Jewish state. Now they are being expelled to make Jerusalem a Jewish city. By refusing to face the Nakba of 1948, the Israeli government and its American Jewish allies ensure that the Nakba continues. [Read More]

 

Our History

When Queers Fought the State and Won

By Hugh Ryan, Boston Review [May 11, 2021]

[FB – This is a review of Sarah Schulman's new book, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993.  Among the reasons for the book's importance is that ACT UP was one of the most successful direct-action movements in our era. Many lessons to learn from ACT Up and this book looks like the place to start.]

---- Let the Record Show, Sarah Schulman's monumental new history of ACT UP New York, is a war chronicle in which the teller is both scribe and veteran. Schulman joined the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP) a few months after it was founded in 1987. At that point, six years into the crisis, there were an estimated 500,000 people living with HIV in the United States alone, there were still no effective medical treatments, and the U.S. government's anemic response to the pandemic was a toxic cocktail of homophobia and hysteria. ACT UP was most effective when it had the broadest coalition of members. As such, its story cannot be accurately told in a traditional narrative format that focused on a few "heroes" and their journey. ACT UP burst onto this scene determined to confront apathy and create change on every level, from getting new drugs approved to creating alternative media through which to disseminate accurate information about the crisis. As the founding chapter, ACT UP New York was "the mother ship," but 148 other chapters, all acting autonomously, have since sprung up around the globe. Unquestionably, they have been one of the most effective activist movements in modern U.S. history—though as Schulman chronicles, their successes did not come without great costs. In fact, Let the Record Show is in part a grand accounting, tallying up what was won, what was lost, and the process through which those battles were fought. Only by this kind of rigorous analysis can the lessons of ACT UP be passed on to current and future activists. [Read More]

Statement by Rep. Jamaal Bowman on the current situation in Israel/Palestine

May 11, 2021

 

Hi All – On Monday night Rep. Jamaal Bowman issued a statement regarding the many theaters of violence in the world, with special attention to what is happening in Israel/Palestine. Please read and, if in agreement, please send him a "thank you" for his courageous statement and stand.  Jamaal has been under attack for supporting a bill in support of Palestinian children, and he will undoubtedly be criticized by some for making the statement below.  So – we have his back on this issue.  Please express your thoughts via this link.

 

Thanks,

Frank Brodhead

914-478-3848

 

"There's so much we're dealing with within our own borders that it's often difficult for Americans to turn our attention to the problems of people overseas, but it's hard at this moment not to be struck by the extent of suffering around the world. Whether it's the infringement of human and civil rights of Palestinians living in Sheikh Jarrah, the violence against those praying in the Al-Aqsa mosque during the holy month of Ramadan in East Jerusalem, police violence against Colombians, a military coup in Myanmar, an ignored genocide in Ethiopia, or the ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs in China, my heart is breaking for people around the world experiencing oppression and hurt.

"With regard to the quickly escalating tensions in East Jerusalem, the United States must step in and rapidly broker a ceasefire to de-escalate and bring us closer to a two state solution. The very name Jerusalem means City of Peace. Violently evicting families from their homes in which generations have lived is not an act of peace.

 

A show of strong force during prayer is not an act of peace. Destroying holy sites is not an act of peace. Hamas rocket attacks are not an act of peace. Israeli government airstrikes are not an act of peace.

"At the end of the day, it is imperative that the United States have an even handed approach and ensure our nation is not complicit in stoking the flames of conflict through continued settlement expansion and home demolitions that undermine the two-state solution, perpetuate endless occupation, and threaten the long-term security of both Israelis and Palestinians.

"This is a unique moment with multiple mounting global crises, and the United States has the responsibility to lead. Our foreign aid to other nations should never be used to harm. I urge the Biden Administration to do all it can to assist in de-escalating these tensions around the world."

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on the pandemic vaccines and the curse of "property rights"

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

May 9, 2021

 

Hello All – While the United States and other wealthy countries are on a path to vaccinate most of their people, other countries are not, and low-income countries have little hope of vaccinating all their people in the near future, One cause of this is the rules of the World Trade Organization that protects patents, including the patents that Big Pharma companies have on vaccines, thus limiting production.  Millions will die if this doesn't change.

 

Last week President Biden surprised Corporate America by stating that the USA supports waiving these patent rights so that more corporations could make vaccines. If the WTO agrees to this waiver, all countries may hope that their populations will be vaccinated soon.  In addition to protecting many more people, universal vaccination will limit the number of virus mutations, thus protecting people in rich countries from re-infection and ending the pandemic. Several good/useful articles pasted in below address the economic and medical implications of sharing or not sharing the vaccines.

 

This patent waiver may or may not be successful; already objections from Germany and hesitation by many European countries show the hard road ahead. But the pandemic itself, along with the collapse of healthcare systems world wide and the problems in sharing existing medical solutions, illustrates our larger dilemma.  We/the world stand on the brink of several crises, each one of which could severely damage our civilization or even do us in.  Most salient of these crises are the climate crisis and the danger of nuclear war, but the dangers of fascism, a more virulent pandemic, or the collapse of our financial and economic systems are close behind. 

 

Focusing just on the climate crisis, we know that it has many facets – and many of these are addressed in an article linked below by the Green Party's Howie Hawkins – but the crisis can be summarized by simple arithmetic. The world emits so many billions of tons of greenhouse gases each year, each year slightly warming the planet, and before too many years go by we will have reached a "tipping point" beyond which the possibilities to prevent runaway warming will be lost.  As Greta Thunberg warned before Biden's recent Earth Day Climate Summit, "We can keep cheating in order to pretend that these targets are in line with what is needed, but while we can fool others, and even ourselves, we cannot fool nature and physics… Let's call out their bullshit."

 

Like the pandemic and vaccine problem, the climate crisis illustrates the need to use political action to overcome the corporate roadblocks that prevent the world from using science and the understanding it gives us from solving life-and-death issues facing humanity. The reigning neo-liberal order, which dictates that all problems can be solved through the magic of the market, has been codified into law – and thus the power of the state and the police – to protect the "rights" of the property owners who stand between human survival and horrible death. These so-called "rights" must be challenged and overcome quickly, or else.

 

News Notes

It is clear that drones – for surveillance and killing – are the coming way of war in much of the world.  The Pentagon, for example, has already made it clear that after US troops leave Afghanistan drones will continue to give the USA a strong military role in the country.  A new website, www.bankillerdrones.org, explains, monitors, and combats these developments.  On Sunday, May 16^th, at 11 a.m., a "Ban Killer Drones" webinar will address drone proliferation, border surveillance, and the persecution of drone whistle blower Daniel Hale.  Last week the website was launched with an excellent video webinar that gave an overview of weaponized drones and surveillance drones.

 

Last week Code Pink's Medea Benjamin took the floor at the annual meeting of military manufacturer General Dynamics to question the morality of the company's billion-dollar weapon sales to Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes such as the UAE and Bahrain.  She also questioned the moral values of the company's CEO Phebe Novakovic for "personally making $21 million a year through a business model that thrives on conflict, death, and destruction." Ms. Novakovic then had a brief dialogue with Medea.  Watch the video here.

 

As a college student and newbie peacenik some 60 years ago, I heard a talk by Albert Bigelow, a Quaker peace activist who in 1958 attempted to sail his ship the "Golden Rule" into a Pacific Nuclear test site – the Marshall Islands – to stop the test. Needless to say, he did not succeed in this and he and his crew were arrested; but much publicity about the tests themselves resulted from his action. Last week the refurbished "Golden Rule" renewed its peace mission, setting sail from Hawai'i to California with a crew organized by Veterans for Peace and protesting against the continuing threat of nuclear war. Read the story here.

 

Things to Do/How to Help

CFOW supports Smart Elections, a website and action-organization whose mission it to protect our elections, with a focus on banning voting machines that can be easily hacked and/or do not produce a reliable paper trail.  In NYS, the focus is on passing bills in the Assembly (A1115) and Senate (S309) that will do this. As the legislative session has only a month to go, pressure to get the bills to the floor is urgent; otherwise, we will be voting on hackable machines next fall.  To learn more about Smart Elections and the problem with voting machines that will be used in Westchester if they are not stopped, go here; and to join their meeting next Friday noon, register here.

CFOW is supporting RAPP (Release Aging People in Prison) in an effort to have the NYS legislature pass two bills – "Elder Parole" and "Fair and Timely Parole."  To learn what these are about, go here; but in a nutshell, 20 percent of people now in state prisons are over 55; and as for people from Westchester, about two-thirds of the older prisoners are people of color.  The goal of these two bills is to give older prisoners with long sentences an opportunity for a parole hearing, and to direct the Parole Board to consider what kind of person the prisoner has become, rather than simply considering the nature of the crime committed long ago. Assemblyman Tom Abinanti has not indicated support for "Elder Parole"; please call him at 518-455-5753 and ask him to support bill A3475A.  Thanks.

 

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.)  A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6 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 10:30 a.m., please send a return email. Our 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!

 

Rewards!

This week's Reward for stalwart readers is a terrific short animated film called "White Fatigue."  I think it hits the nail on the head.  As the film makers say, "Watch the film in full here to learn the history of white supremacy and understand how passive racism perpetuated via white fatigue is the biggest challenge in the fight against racism today."  If you like this, please share.

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

914-478-3848

 

CFOW WEEKLY READER

 

(Video) "Millions of Lives Are at Stake": Pressure Grows on Biden to Back WTO Waiver on Vaccine Technology

From Democracy Now! [May 5, 2021]

[FB – This Democracy Now! segment interviews Lori Wallach of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.  The interview took place the day before a meeting of the World Trade Organization where President Biden, to the surprise of many, voted against the demands of Big Pharma and for a temporary waiver on intellectual property rights for COVID-related medicines and vaccines. Lori Wallach told Democracy Now!: "The big problem is simply not enough vaccines are being produced. The world needs 10 to 15 billion doses to reach herd immunity, and right now all of the global production together is on track to make 6 billion doses this year." [See the Program].  Lori Wallach recently co-authored an op-ed in the Washington Post with Nobel-Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, "Preserving intellectual property barriers to covid-19 vaccines is morally wrong and foolish."  Also of interest is "The West Has Been Hoarding More Than Vaccines" by Walden Bello, New York Times [May 3, 2021] [Link].

 

The Climate Crisis

Biden's Climate Pledge Is a Promise He Cannot Keep

By Howie Hawkins, Green Party Presidential Candidate [May 4, 2021]

---- President Biden's Earth Day pledge to cut carbon emissions by 50% to 52% by 2030 is a promise he cannot keep. The White House Fact Sheet released with Biden's pledge added nothing to the climate actions in his American Jobs Plan announced on March 31. The 12,000-word White House Fact Sheet on the American Jobs Plan hardly mentions the climate. The plan is presented as a jobs through infrastructure program with only a fraction of it impacting carbon emissions. The climate emergency demands a radical and rapid decarbonization of the U.S. economy with numerical goals and timetables to transform all productive sectors.… Biden provided no explanation for how the U.S. will get to the precisely stated range of "50% to 52%." [Read More]  Also of interest is "The Future of Fracking" by Willa Glickman, New York Review of Books [May 5, 2021] [Link].

 

Israel/Palestine

Why Human Rights Watch Designating Israel's Crimes as Apartheid Is a Very Big Deal

By Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies [May 5, 2021]

---- Human Rights Watch is the best-known and arguably the most influential among Washington elites of any of the many human rights organizations in the United States. So when HRW issues an unsparing, 200-plus page legal and factual report concluding that Israeli government authorities are guilty of the crime of apartheid, it is a very big deal. …The report reflects the power of decades of work in defense of Palestinian rights. It hasn't ever been easy, and it won't be easy now. It surprised no one that White House press secretary Jen Psaki, asked about the report, responded that it "is not the view of this administration." But the report will make it much more difficult for reluctant mainstream Democrats to ignore Palestinian rights, and much easier for progressive Democrats, looking for evidence of broadening support for those rights, to take a stand. It will significantly strengthen our work to change US policy: winning support for the Palestinian Children and Families Act in Congress, moving forward on conditioning and eventually ending military aid to Israel, and mobilizing BDS campaigns against the kinds of corporations HRW calls on to stop supporting Israeli apartheid.  [Read More]

 

Our History

(Video) "Exterminate All the Brutes": Filmmaker Raoul Peck Explores Colonialism & Origins of White Supremacy

From Democracy Now! [May 4, 2021]

---- A new four-part documentary series, "Exterminate All the Brutes," delves deeply into the legacy of European colonialism from the Americas to Africa. It has been described as an unflinching narrative of genocide and exploitation, beginning with the colonizing of Indigenous land that is now called the United States. The documentary series seeks to counter "the type of lies, the type of propaganda, the type of abuse, that we have been subject to all of these years," says director and Haitian-born filmmaker Raoul Peck. "We have the means to tell the real story, and that's exactly what I decided to do," Peck says. "Everything is on the table, has been on the table for a long time, except that it was in little bits everywhere. … We lost the wider perspective." [Read More]

 

 

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on War & Peace and Biden's First 100 Days

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

May 2, 2021

 

Hello All – President Biden's speech last Friday rolling out his "America's Families Plan" and marking his first 100 days in office has been greeted enthusiastically by much of the policy and media elite, and by Democrats and Independents alike. Coming on the heels of the "American Recovery Plan" and the "American Jobs Plan," President Biden has put $6 billion in play in an effort to recover from the lost years of Trump and move forward from there.  One could almost hear the nation breathing a sigh of relief that sanity had been restored to government.  Certainly much remains to be done even if the Biden program were to become law.  This was made clear in an interview with Rep. Jamaal Bowman appearing in the current issue of The Nation: needed reforms in immigration policy, healthcare, higher education financing and much else are barely touched by the programs announced by Biden so far.  There is still much to do.

 

And yet … foreign policy – our wars and efforts for ending them – presents a very different picture and have been largely ignored by the liberal media.  The USA is not really leaving Afghanistan, not really moving to end the suffering of people in Yemen, not really pulling troops out of Iraq and Syria, and not really pursuing a successful strategy to restore the Iran Nuclear Agreement.  The USA remains committed to Israel's apartheid policy towards Palestinians and Trump's sponsorship of a faux president in Venezuela.  The use of drones for surveillance and assassinations is poised for an upswing, and President Obama's ill-conceived program of "nuclear modernization" ($1 trillion) will continue, as will the Obama-Trump policy of playing with nuclear war by aggressively engaging with Russia.  And most ominously, President Biden appears ready to implement President Obama's "pivot toward Asia," threatening war – "accidental" or not – with China, now our Main Enemy and the Main Danger.  These dangers and miscalculations are off the Agenda as far as the mainstream media and political elite are concerned.  Peace groups have our work cut out for us.

 

Finally, for a useful perspective on the chameleon-like war/peace politics of Joe Biden over the past half-century, I highly recommend Jeremy Scahill's "Empire Politician" project in The Intercept.  Scahill also presented his findings on Friday's Democracy Now!  Check it out.

 

News Note – Rally in Support of Older People in Prison

Yesterday, CFOW, RAPP (Release Aging People in Prison), and Decarcerate the Hudson Valley held a rally in support of two pieces of legislation that would give older prisoners (now about 20 percent of the prison population) an opportunity for a parole hearing, and would direct Parole Boards to consider "the person the prisoner had become," and not simply that nature of the crime committed long ago.  To learn about the issues, go here.  Susan Rutman posted some good pictures on our Facebook page, and Rep. Jamaal Bowman made an inspiring speech. Steve Siebert told us that more than two-thirds of prisoners from Westchester serving life sentences are people of color. To help these critical bills in the NYS legislature pass, please call your state legislators – in the Rivertowns, that's Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins (518-455-2585) and Assemblyman Tom Abinanti (518-455-5753) and ask that they support "Elder Parole" and "Fair and Timely Parole."  Thanks!

 

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.)  A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6 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 5 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!

 

Rewards!

This week's Rewards for stalwart Newsletter readers feature some of Bessie Smith's "PG-rated" songs, part of her classic oeuvre but not played too often on NPR, etc. Perhaps you will enjoy her "Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl,"   "Kitchen Man," and "Wild About That Thing."  And there's lots more on line.

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

OUR WEEKLY READER

 

India's Covid catastrophe: 'We are witnessing a crime against humanity'

By Arundhati Roy, The Guardian [April 28, 2021]

---- It's hard to convey the full depth and range of the trauma, the chaos and the indignity that people are being subjected to. As this epic catastrophe plays out on our Modi-aligned Indian television channels, you'll notice how they all speak in one tutored voice. The "system" has collapsed, they say, again and again. The virus has overwhelmed India's health care "system".

The system has not collapsed. The "system" barely existed. The government – this one, as well as the Congress government that preceded it – deliberately dismantled what little medical infrastructure there was. This is what happens when a pandemic hits a country with an almost nonexistent public healthcare system. … The system hasn't collapsed. The government has failed. Perhaps "failed" is an inaccurate word, because what we are witnessing is not criminal negligence, but an outright crime against humanity. … My friends and I have agreed to call each other every day just to mark ourselves present, like roll call in our school classrooms. We speak to those we love in tears, and with trepidation, not knowing if we will ever see each other again. We write, we work, not knowing if we will live to finish what we started. Not knowing what horror and humiliation awaits us. The indignity of it all. That is what breaks us. [Read More]

 

The White Republic and the Struggle for Racial Justice

By Bob Wing, Organizing Upgrade [April 29. 2021]

[FB – I admire Bob Wing's work very much.  In this essay he sets out the evolution of Our "white republic" in the framework of "racial capitalism," imo a compelling adaptation of the Marxist framework for the development of capitalism that squares with the legacy of centuries of slavery and racism that has shaped the USA.]

---- Far from recoiling at Trump's failed coup of January 6, the GOP is avidly regrouping around him and launching an even more ruthless campaign of voter disenfranchisement to seize power. The polarization between racist authoritarianism and a multiracial democracy is white-hot. There are many things that progressives need to do to win this historic fight. One of the less obvious, yet crucial, projects is to sharpen the conceptual understandings that guide our work. For example, the Black Lives Matter movement, flanked by immigrant and Native struggles, has energized public appreciation of "systemic racism" and renewed Black-led antiracist activism. Among progressives, "racial capitalism" has won an enthusiastic audience as more people realize that U.S. capitalism and racism are inseparable. … I also believe that our movement needs to more thoroughly digest and strategically act upon the harsh reality that racism is, first and foremost, imposed by white racist political power. In particular, the fight against racism is choked if it does not target white power and its constituent political institutions, especially the institutions that embody and exercise the power of the state. To help capture this, I will highlight the concept of the "white republic" and discuss its historical basis and strategic implications. By calling the U.S. a "white republic," I mean that the U.S. government was, from the very beginning, built by and for whites and as a dictatorship over Black and Native peoples. (It could also be called a "racist state," which is less provocative but has the same meaning, and I will use them interchangeably.) This is why, for centuries, "American" was nearly synonymous with "white," while African Americans were bereft "strangers in their own homeland." [Read More]

 

No Legal Objection, Per Se [Assassination Drones]

By E.M. Liddick, War on the Rocks [April 21, 2021]

---- The commander turns to me. "Any issues, Eric?" I am the legal advisor to a special operations task force conducting counter-terrorism operations. Our mission: locate and capture — or kill — terrorists. … The reports began surfacing almost a decade into the "Global War on Terror": Drone pilots operating from within the safety of the United States were beginning to show signs of post-traumatic stress. … Much has been written about the invisible wounds of combat, injuries suffered by, among others, infantry soldiers, medics, drone pilots, interrogators, special operations forces, and even journalists. Their wounds seem easy to comprehend, with their proximity to the action or direct causal link between the push of a button and manufactured death. But no one speaks about the potential for these wounds to affect others, like judge advocates, who find themselves far removed from the physical danger or the direct causal link. Yet, I feel these wounds within me. [Read More] To learn more about what war will be like in our very near future, read "Worried about the autonomous weapons of the future? Look at what's already gone wrong" by Ingvild Bode and Tom Watts, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [April 21, 2021]. [Link].

 

(Video) "A Threshold Crossed": Israel Is Guilty of Apartheid, Human Rights Watch Says for First Time

From Democracy Now! [April 30, 2021]

---- A major new report by Human Rights Watch says for the first time that Israel is committing crimes of apartheid and persecution in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The international human rights group says Israeli authorities dispossessed, confined and forcibly separated Palestinians. "For years, prominent voices have warned that apartheid lurked just around the corner. But it's very clear that that threshold has been crossed," says Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. "It's time for the international community to recognize the reality on the ground for what it is — apartheid and persecution — and take the steps necessary to end a situation of this gravity." [See the Program]  To read the Human Rights Watch report, go here. For some good commentaries and analysis, read "Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, rights group says" by Oliver Holmes, The Guardian [April 27, 2021] [Link] and "Israel is an Apartheid State seeking Systemic Domination of Palestinians: Human Rights Watch" by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [April 28, 2021] [Link].

 

Alice Neel: People Come First

By Ben Davis, Artnet News [April 15, 2021]

[FB – The Metropolitan Museum of Art – "The Met" – has until August 1^st an exhibit of American artist Alice Neel's paintings. Knowing little about Neel, I was unaware of her deep involvement in US left-wing politics; and this is also downplayed in the Museum's descriptions of her work.  This interesting article sets the record straight and encourages a visit to The Met to see for myself.]

---- Alice Neel painted "the human comedy." It's a phrase she repeated often in interviews and in text, throughout her life. It is the title of one of the sections of "Alice Neel: People Come First," her outstanding and moving retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In one sense, what she meant is obvious. Memorable and interesting characters abound in her paintings, running from her many lovers to the luminaries of New York's Depression-era political and literary Left; from art celebrities like Andy Warhol to her acquaintances in the East Harlem neighborhood where she toiled in obscurity for decades; from the feminist activists and critics who championed her work in the '60s and '70s to her own self, shown naked, at 80, paintbrush in hand and gazing skeptically out at the viewer as if sizing them up—one of the most indelible of all 20th-century self-portraits. … Rather than trying to fit Neel into the framework of a rose-colored contemporary progressivism, it seems much more interesting—and more accurate—to consider how the artist's actual, passionately felt, difficult allegiances shaped her: the sacrifices she made in her life; the specifics of her art; and her relation to the New Left feminist movements of the 1960s and '70s that pulled her from obscurity, and that now probably overdetermine the reading of her work still. [Read More]

 

 

 

Please join us for a rally in Hastings Saturday noon - Campaign for Parole Justice

Hi All - Please join us TOMORROW, Saturday, to support this important cause.  We meet at noon at the VFW Plaza in Hastings.  For more information about this issue, see the website of RAPP - "Release Aging People in Prison" - https://rappcampaign.com/

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on releasing aging people in prison

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

April 25, 2021

 

Hello All – Next Saturday – May Day! – CFOW will hold a rally in Hastings to demand New York legislature action on pending bills that would allow older prisoners to obtain parole hearings.  In this we will partner with RAPP (Release Aging People in Prison).  Please join us at the VFW Plaza at noon.

 

Just over 1.8 million people were in US prisons and jails in 2020.  In New York, prisons and jails held just under 49,000.  Both numbers have declined significantly since 2008, largely the result of the release of prisoners because of the Covid epidemic. However, while the NY prison population has declined, the number of prisoners age 50 and over has shown a slight increase.  Thus, while about 10 percent of the the prison population was 50+ in 2007, by 2021 it was about 20 percent.  And so the question is asked, if prison is supposed to be about rehabilitation, as well as about punishment and incarceration, what public good is served by confining elderly prisoners, often needing serious medical attention, to prison for the remainder of their lives?

 

Our partner at next Saturday's event, RAPP, "works to end mass incarceration and promote racial justice through the release from prison of older and aging people and those serving long and life sentences." They are one of more than a dozen NY organizations united in the  Parole Justice Campaign.  Our rally next Saturday will be in support of Fair and Timely Parole (S1415/A.4231) and Elder Parole (S15/A.3475). 

 

·    Fair and Timely Parole "would provide more meaningful parole reviews for incarcerated people who are already parole eligible.  The bill would change the standard of parole by centering release not on the original crime but on the person's rehabilitation while incarcerated. In other words, parole commissioners would no longer be able to deny release based solely on the crime for which the person is convicted."

 

·    Elder Parole "would allow incarcerated people aged 55 and older who have already served 15 or more years a chance to go before the Parole Board for a hearing. Roughly 1,000 people would immediately become eligible for parole with the passage of Elder Parole, and thousands more people would ultimately benefit in years to come. The Elder Parole bill does not provide automatic release but instead a meaningful review and evaluation by the Parole Board."

 

Even with a supermajority in the state legislature, the Democratic Party leadership in Albany is moving too slowing to bring these bills to a vote before the legislature wraps up business in June. Rivertown residents can support these bills by calling Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins at (518) 455-2585 and telling her staff you want Sen. Cousins to work for the passage of Elder Parole and Fair and Timely Parole. Please also make calls to AssemblymanTom Abinanti (Rivertowns - 518-455-5753) or Assemblyman Nader J. Sayegh (Yonkers - 518 455 3662). (And more legislators' contact info is found here.)

 

And please join us next Saturday for this righteous campaign!

 

News Notes

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (CD 16) is under attack by AIPAC for his support – one of 14 co-sponsors – of HR 2590, "Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act."  The bill, introduced by Rep. Betty McCollum, would prohibit US military aid to Israel ($3.8 billion) from being used to detain Palestinian children, demolish Palestinian homes, or annex Palestinian lands. (Read more about the bill here.)  Jamaal is under attack by the AIPAC people in Westchester, and by congressional "supporters of Israel" in Congress, for being "anti-Israel".  Let's show Jamaal that we have his back on this issue.  Email him here.

 

The largest anti-pipeline action since Standing Rock is going on in Minnesota, where activists celebrated Earth Day by blocking the "Line 3 replacement project" by locking themselves into concrete barrels at the entrance of an oil pumping station.  The protests are led by "Indigenous groups who see the project and the risk of a spill as a violation of treaty rights, as the project endangers wild rice lakes in treaty territories where the Anishinaabe have the right to hunt, fish, and gather."  For more on this evolving story/struggle, go here.

 

This week marks the 175^th anniversary of the US invasion of Mexico (1845-48), which resulted in seizing about half of Mexico, annexing California and much else.  As David Vine points out in this useful article, this was one of 10 invasions of Mexico.  Indeed, the US has invaded Latin America more than 70 times, leaving occupying armies for months, years, and in some cases decades.  While the US political elite wails about the "invasion" of the US by desperate refugees from Central America, we might pause to consider whether our nation has contributed to the distress of people fleeing poverty and violence.

 

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.)  A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6 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 5 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!

 

Rewards!

With a focus on prison and (someday) prison abolition, it seems only right that this week's Rewards come from Johnnie Cash's album at Folsom Prison (1968).  For samples, here are "Folsom Prison Blues,"  "The Long Black Veil," and "Jackson."  Or listen to the whole thing here.

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

OUR WEEKLY READER

 

War & Peace

The U.S. Could Have Left Afghanistan Years Ago, Sparing Many Lives

By Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept [April 16 2021]

---- President Joe Biden's decision to withdraw most U.S. troops from Afghanistan marks a significant reduction in America's participation in the war. But it is unlikely to mean peace for Afghans themselves, who remain caught between a weak and corrupt central government long propped up by U.S. military might and a resurgent Taliban movement that is stronger than at any time since the United States invaded. The question of timing hung heavily over Biden's announcement Wednesday that America's "forever war" in Afghanistan would soon come to an end, with the remaining 2,500 American troops in the country scheduled to come home on the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The violent disintegration of Afghan society began with the 1979 Soviet invasion of the country, but the decision in the early years of this century to occupy Afghanistan and try to transform it into a liberal democracy at great cost in lives and resources has made America a key force in Afghanistan's fate. … After 20 years, the U.S. is leaving Afghanistan in favor of a minimal counterterrorism footprint. Many haunting questions remain, including why this change in America's approach wasn't made decades ago, what has been accomplished by the huge loss of life and resources, and who is responsible for the ultimate failure of the U.S. project in Afghanistan. [Read More] For lots of statistics, read "The War in Afghanistan Has Cost Over $2.26 Trillion" from Brown University [April 20, 2021] [Link].

 

The Climate Crisis

Biden Is All About Zero Emissions, but Who Do You Think Has Been Fueling Them?

By Kate Aronoff, The New York Times [April 22, 2021]

[FB - Kate Aronoff is the author of "Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet — And How We Fight Back."]

---- "We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil … preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft," Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in 1965. That ethos would inspire a generation of environmentalists to see the fates of this planet's inhabitants as intertwined. By contrast, the ecologist Garrett Hardin, who was labeled a white nationalist by the Southern Poverty Law Center, in 1974 urged a "lifeboat ethics": for rich countries to be "on our guard against boarding parties" from predominantly nonwhite countries whose residents he saw as an intolerable strain on the planet's resources. Racked by ever-worsening fires and floods, our little craft is not doing well. This week, the White House is welcoming world leaders to a virtual summit on curbing climate destruction. Countries will present their plans to meet the goal inscribed in the Paris Agreement to cap warming at "well below" 2 degrees Celsius. President Biden has pledged to cut emissions at least in half from 2005 levels by 2030, aiming for "net zero" emissions by 2050. But accounting for the United States' outsize responsibility for the climate crisis requires much bolder action, according to a recent recommendation from several groups, including Friends of the Earth U.S. and ActionAid USA: "a reduction of at least 195 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions" compared with 2005 levels by 2030 — 70 percent cuts within U.S. borders and "the equivalent of a further 125 percent reduction" by providing support for emissions reductions abroad. The question, then: Does the White House want to helm a spaceship or a lifeboat? [Read More]  On Friday, Kate Aronoff was a guest on Democracy Now! to talk about Biden's pledge at the virtual Climate Summit to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions to 50% below the 2005 level:  "This is well, well below what the United States really owes the rest of the world," she said, "based on its historical responsibility for causing the climate crisis and the massive, massive resources this country has to transition very quickly off of fossil fuels."

 

Israel/Palestine

The Reorientations of Edward Said

By Pankaj Mishra, The New Yorker [April 19, 2021]

---- "Professor of Terror" was the headline on the cover of the August, 1989, issue of Commentary. Inside, an article described Edward Said, then a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, as a mouthpiece for Palestinian terrorists and a confidant of Yasir Arafat. "Eduardo Said" was how he was referred to in the F.B.I.'s two-hundred-and-thirty-eight-page file on him—perhaps on the assumption that a terrorist was likely to have a Latin name. V. S. Naipaul willfully mispronounced "Said" to rhyme with "head," and asserted that he was "an Egyptian who got lost in the world." Said, an Arab Christian who was frequently taken to be Muslim, recognized the great risks of being misidentified and misunderstood. In "Orientalism" (1978), the book that made him famous, he set out to answer the question of, as he wrote in the introduction, "what one really is." The question was pressing for a man who was, simultaneously, a literary theorist, a classical pianist, a music critic, arguably New York's most famous public intellectual after Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag, and America's most prominent advocate for Palestinian rights. … Said had pushed for negotiation with Israel and for a two-state solution long before Arafat accepted both, in 1988. This major compromise by the Palestinian leader, which Said helped draft in Algiers, implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist and cleared the way for the peace process that led, in 1993, to the first Oslo Accord. However, by the time that Arafat and the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin hesitantly shook hands on the South Lawn of the White House, Said was denouncing the accord as "an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles." In his view, an old, exhausted, and increasingly venal Palestinian leadership had succumbed to American and Israeli blandishments and pressure. Palestinian leaders, ignorant about facts on the ground created by Zionist settlers in the West Bank and Gaza—Arafat hadn't even seen the occupied territories since his departure in 1967—had consented to a new and quasi-permanent form of occupation. [Read More]

 

Our History

Slave Rebellions and Mutinies Shaped the Age of Revolution

By Steven Hahn, Boston Review [April 23, 2021]

[FB – This essay reviews three new books: The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution, by Julius S. Scott; Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War, by Vincent Brown; and The Bloody Flag: Mutiny in the Age of Atlantic Revolution, by Niklas Frykman.]
---- The Age of Revolution (1770–1850), bookended by the American and French Revolutions on the one side and the Revolutions of 1848 on the other, is widely viewed as the progenitor of the modern Euro-Atlantic world. Its intellectual energy fused the liberal and republican ideas of John Locke with the ideals of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment; its political energy fed off the struggles between the bourgeois and their aristocratic enemies. Although visionary hopes could meet crushing defeats—as they did during the popular risings of 1848—by the end, there were new parliamentary regimes, emerging nation-states, declarations of rights, and the eruption of an industrial age. Until recently, Caribbean slave rebellions have been treated as sidebars to the Age of Revolution. In part this is because of a Eurocentrism that has long diminished the role of Black people in shaping history. But equally, enslaved people didn't fit the image of political actors. And yet, this classic narrative leaves out the most radical of the revolutions that exploded neither in continental Europe nor in North or South America, but in the Caribbean, on the island the French called Saint-Domingue and the victorious rebels would call Haiti (Ayiti), after its indigenous name. [Read More]