Concerned Families of Westchester
June 13, 2022
Hello All – The first two sessions of the congressional hearings on the January 6th assault on the Capitol, and on the conspiracies surrounding the November 2020 election, have established beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump instigated and led an attempted coup, with the objective of remaining in power. Watching the hearings – video and testimony – so far, it is easy to imagine how the chaos of January 6th could have resulted in a failure to certify the election victory of presidential candidate Joe Biden. Whether Trump's retention of office could have been sustained, and whether Congress could/would have forcibly removed him, are among the unknowns that might have followed the success of the January 6th project to prevent the certification of the election results. But as some of the articles linked below firmly argue, the fact that there was an attempted coup on January 6th has been well established by the opening sessions of the congressional committee.
Going forward, I hope that the congressional hearings will broaden the net of co-conspirators to include political leaders, media personalities, and the social elite who sustained, financed, and guided this attempted coup. A great amount of investigation and research has, imo, confirmed beyond doubt that the events of January 6th were the tip of a spear launched by a broad-based US fascist movement, based in White Supremacy and guided by dubious doctrines such as the "replacement theory," according to which white American dominance was under attack by immigrants, people of color, feminists, and "the Left." This movement has deep roots in American history. It will not be ended by indicting a few people, or even the entire Trump entourage. Saving and rehabilitating American democracy will require the participation of far more people than are now enrolled in progressive social movements. Whether the Right can be defeated in next fall's elections will be a temperature-check on the prospects to contain the fascist tide. This is not the time to be a by-stander.
Some useful reading on the January 6th congressional hearings
"What did the President Know and When did He Know it? Trump's 7-Part Plan and the Insurrection," b[Link].
"Jan. 6 Hearings Seek to Remind a Forgetful Nation About the Day Donald Trump Almost Engineered a Coup," by James Risen, The Intercept [June 10, 2022] [Link].
"Jan. 6 Hearings Offer Damning Evidence of 'Culmination of an Attempted Coup'," by William Rivers Pitt, Truthout [June 10, 2022] [Link].
"Coup! Coup! Coup!" by John Nichols, The Nation [June 10, 2022] [Link].
"Regardless of seditious conspiracy charges' outcome, right-wing groups like Proud Boys seek to build a white nation," bBy Matthew Valasik and Shannon Reid, The Conversation [June 9, 2022] [Link].
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting, we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil is held each Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. To learn about our new project, "Beauty as Fuel for Change," go here; and to make a financial contribution to the project, go here. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. 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!
The rewards for stalwart readers this week come from the oeuvre of the unjustly neglected Roy Orbison, whose golden voice illuminated the era of Elvis Pressley. Among Roy's songs was a galaxy of odes to failed romance and really bad dates. Get acquainted with "Only the Lonely"; "In Dreams"; and "Crying." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
Breaking the Cold War Ice
By E.P. Thompson, Coordinator, European Nuclear Disarmament Movement [July 10, 1982]
[FB – Historian and peace activist E. P. Thompson wrote this essay in 1982, just as the "nuclear freeze" movement was mounting its historic million-person march and rally in NYC's Central Park (see below, "Our History"). The anti-nuclear movement in Europe included representatives from the Soviet Bloc, and Thompson foresaw the possibility of a breakdown of the East-West division of the world, with a united movement for peace and justice. His magnificent essay, originally published in The Nation and linked in this shorter piece reprinted on the anniversary of the "nuclear freeze" rally, is still very relevant to our situation today, indicating what has been gained and lost over the last four decades in light of today's US-Russian proxy war in Ukraine.]
---- What, we must ask as we proceed into the 1980s, is the cold war all about? It is about itself. The cold war may be seen as a show put on by two rival entrepreneurs. The show has grown bigger and bigger; the entrepreneurs have lost control of it, as it has thrown up its own managers, administrators, producers and a huge supporting cast, all of whom have a direct interest in its continuance, in its enlargement. Whatever happens, the show must go on. The cold war has become a habit, an addiction, supported by very powerful material interests in each bloc. Yet a contradiction has arisen. Today's military confrontation has been protracted long after the reasons for it have vanished into history. If the cold war is at once obsolete and inexorable—an ongoing, self-reproducing road show that has become necessary to ruling groups on both sides—can we find, within that contradiction, any resolution short of war? … We did not choose to live in this time. But there is no way of getting out of it. And it has given us as significant a cause as has ever been known, a moment of opportunity which might never be renewed. The opportunity is now, when there is already an enhanced consciousness of danger informing millions. We can match this crisis only by a summoning of resources to a height like that attained by the greatest religious or political movements of Europe's past. I think of 1944 and of the crest of the Resistance. There must be that kind of spirit abroad once more. But this time it must arise not in the wake of war and repression, but before these take place. Five minutes afterward, and it will be too late. Humankind must at last grow up. [Read More]
Who Will Remember the Horrors of Ukraine?
, New York Times [June 13, 2022]
---- For many, Babyn Yar symbolizes the horror that largely preceded the gas chambers, the local Holocaust in which victims were shot at close range. Before the Nazis retreated, they had the corpses exhumed from the ravine and burned, an attempt to destroy the evidence of their crimes. The remains of their victims were dispersed throughout the land, mingling with the air, earth and groundwater. The full story of what happened to them went untold for decades, submerged and banned by Soviet authorities… The current war in Ukraine is so oversaturated with historical meaning; it is unfolding on soil that has absorbed wave after wave of the dead, where soldiers do not always have to dig trenches in the forest because the old ones remain. In this environment, we cling to the images and ironies that remind us that the past is always present, that we are not so very far removed from its ravages. [Read More]
A Country Armed to the Teeth: And Strutting Toward the Apocalypse
By Robert Lipsyte, TomDispatch [June 13, 2022]
[FB – Robert Lipsyte is a former sports and city columnist for the New York Times. His books include SportsWorld: An American Dreamland and An Accidental Sportswriter: A Memoir.]
[FB – Robert Lipsyte is a former sports and city columnist for the New York Times. His books include SportsWorld: An American Dreamland and An Accidental Sportswriter: A Memoir.]
---- Back in civilian life, writing sports stories for the New York Times in the early 1960s, I discovered that my manhood credentials were unassailable, especially to the guys I now think of as the Bystander Boys. Those were the everyday dudes who genuflect to alpha males, especially the sports heroes they assumed I drank with. Those were specious creds, although it would take me years more to figure that out. Back then, I wasn't yet paying attention to the various kinds of faux manhood that were around me everywhere. Quite the opposite, I was living my own version of it. Especially when I got my beautiful little Beretta. … So went my weaponized imagination then. I felt primed for action. I was daring the world, strolling through New York with what I took to be the pigeon-toed rolling swagger of that classic star of so many cowboy and war movies, John Wayne. I even began to fancy that I projected a dangerous aura that would intimidate anyone with bad intentions toward me. Soon enough, I knew, that feeling of invulnerability would have to be tested. The emotional weight of that gun seemed to demand it. I would have to use it and it wouldn't be on a rabbit this time. [Read More] Also of interest is "Time to Launch 'Dads Demand Action to Raise Healthy Boys,'" by [Link].
War & Peace
Biden Refuses to Mention the Worsening Dangers of Nuclear War. Media and Congress Enable His Silence
----- I've just finished going through the more than 60 presidential statements, documents and communiqués about the war in Ukraine that the White House has released and posted on its website since Joe Biden's State of the Union address in early March. They all share with that speech one stunning characteristic – the complete absence of any mention of nuclear weapons or nuclear war dangers. Yet we're now living in a time when those dangers are the worst they've been since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. … A leader interested in informing the American people rather than infantilizing them would have something to say about the need to prevent nuclear war at a time of escalating tensions between the world's two nuclear superpowers. [Read More]
Biden Works To Prolong Ukraine War
[June 10, 2022]
---- There was a sea change two weeks ago when Ukraine shifted to a public stance that it would cede no territory at all in a peace deal. On 21 May, Zelensky's office stated that "The war must end with the complete restoration of Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty." Previously while they had been emphatic that no territory in "the East" would be ceded, there had been studied ambiguity about whether that referred to Donbass alone or also the Crimea. The new Ukrainian stance, that there will be no peace deal without recovering the Crimea, has ended for now any hopes of an early ceasefire. It appears to be a militarily unachievable objective – I cannot think of any scenario in which Russia de facto loses Crimea, without the serious possibility of worldwide nuclear war. This blow to the peace process was a setback in Ankara, and I should say that every source I spoke with believed the Ukrainians were acting on instructions conveyed from Washington to Zelensky by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who openly stated he wanted the war to wear down Russian defense capabilities. [Read More]
Also of interest – "On Ukraine, 'progressive' proxy warriors spell disaster," by Aaron Maté [June 7, 2022] [Link]; "Why Russian intellectuals are hardening support for war in Ukraine," b Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft [June 6, 2022] [Link]; and "US Military Spending Is Undebatable Because It's Indefensible," b[Link].
The Climate Crisis
'Open Your Hearts': The Movements Taking Climate Action Where Leaders and Media Won't
By [June 7, 2022]
---- Media, politicians, and policymakers tend to focus on the most visible issues. The attention the war in Ukraine has received in the first half of 2022, for example, is unrivaled in the United States at least since the shock of 9/11 in 2001. The war has been highly visible because of the capacity to obtain compelling photographs and videos, which can be shared quickly through social media — and also, perhaps, because the featured protagonists, victims, and voices in this European war are white, in contrast to past and present wars in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. The gut-wrenching suffering in Ukraine deserves coverage, context, and resolution. But meanwhile, other global issues — pandemics, rising economic inequality, the climate crisis, and more — have faded into the background. The backsliding on climate action is a clear example of the damage done. … Fortunately, many climate activists are recognizing that, as in a host of other crises, it is both necessary and possible to focus on more immediate targets — from state and local governments to fossil-fuel giants that can be confronted with disinvestment as well as physical blockages of pipelines and other climate-destroying projects. Such actions, if multiplied around the world, have the potential for their own cumulative impact as well as for catalyzing action by national governments. [Read More]
The State of the Union
At March for Our Lives, A Call for a Nationwide Strike of Schools
From Common Dreams [June 11, 2022]
---- Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in over 450 protests across the country Saturday demanding lawmakers take action on gun control laws in the wake of recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York. March for Our Lives, the youth-led organization created by students who survived the mass shooting at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, organized Saturday's rallies. [Read More] On Saturday there was a small rally in Hastings and a larger rally in Peekskill.
Socialism Spreads Upstate, One Door Knock at a Time
By Theodore Hamm, The Indypendent [June 2022]
---- As the June 28 primary nears, the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America is expanding its geographic reach. In addition to defending four assembly incumbents and running candidates for three other seats in the city, NYC-DSA is backing candidates in northern Westchester County and the Hudson Valley. In Assembly District 95 in Peekskill-Ossining, the DSA's Vanessa Agudelo is vying for a seat vacated by a 30-year officeholder. And up in Assembly District 103 in New Paltz-Kingston, DSA activist Sarahana Shrestha is trying to topple a 12-term incumbent. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed the entire DSA slate. Agudelo also has the support of the Working Families Party and Cynthia Nixon. [Read More]
Israel/Palestine
The ADL, Progressives and White Nationalists
, Counterpunch [June 10, 2022]
---- We shall state our position at the outset: The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) does not speak for all Jews, it certainly does not speak for us—the daughters of Holocaust survivors and refugees—and increasingly, it does not speak for anyone who cares about justice and human rights. Despite some laudable activism historically, the ADL is losing credibility as a civil rights organization and with good reason. In remarks made to the ADL Virtual National Leadership Summit, ADL's CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, engaged in a range of misconceptions and distortions that are beyond the scope of this short piece to address. Early in his presentation, he equated antizionism with antisemitism, a strategy now used to deflect criticism of Israel's gross violations of Palestinian human rights, shielding Israel from any accountability. However, perhaps most disgraceful was the false moral equivalence he drew between antizionism—which he regards as a form of extremism—and white nationalism. … We believe that the best way to fight antisemitism is for Jews to join with other groups that are fighting racism and the rise of white supremacy. Especially now, when minority rights in particular are under siege on so many fronts, attacking justice organizations in the name of Jewish safety makes us all less safe. Throwing charges of antisemitism at anti-racist organizations weakens what should be a common struggle. [Read More]
Our History
Why the Spirit of June 12, 1982, Matters
By Leslie Cagan, The Nation [June 10, 2022]
---- June 12, 1982, stands out not only for its size but also for the collective energy and strength of the message, for the power we exerted that day—and the impetus it gave to the work for years to come. To be clear: We did not abolish nuclear weapons, and we did not move the money out of militarism and into our communities. But we helped move the needle on nuclear disarmament by nurturing this movement. It would be three more years before Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met and laid the groundwork for what would become the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This was the first time the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to reduce their nuclear stockpiles, abolish a whole category of nuclear weapons, and allow on-site inspections. Many factors led to that agreement, but without a doubt the June 12 mobilization was one of them. The longer-lasting value came from the organizing over the months leading up to June 12. Not just selling bus tickets: Educational work, local media work, helping people understand the threat and the urgent need for action—all were central to the organizing. People need to believe that what they do makes a difference, that their participation is central to securing change. [Read More] On the 20th anniversary of the June 12th rally, The Nation published a balance sheet of the efforts to end the threat of nuclear war, "The Growing Nuclear Peril, by Jonathan Schell [June 6, 2002].
