Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
January 8, 2018
Hello All – Today the Trump Administration announced that 200,000 Salvadorans, now in the United States as part of an emergency program called Temporary Protective Status (TPS), will be deported. A spokesperson for Amnesty International said, "By returning TPS recipients to El Salvador, the United States could be sending people to their deaths. Mothers, fathers, and children could face extortion, kidnapping, coerced service to gangs, and sexual violence" [Link].
This latest act of wonton cruelty against immigrants in the United States cannot be allowed to stand. The 200,000 people from El Salvador will join 2,500 from Nicaragua and 59,000 from Haiti who lost TPS last year. Some 86,000 people from Honduras also have TPS; how soon will their ax fall? How can we protect them? How can we help?
In addition to the sadistic cruelty embodied in this administrative action – addressing no known problem – the ending of TPS status for Haitians and Central Americans also rejects any consideration that the United States has some responsibility for the conditions in these countries that caused hundreds of thousands to flee, seeking protection. Yet the century of US occupation and destruction in Haiti, the illegal support given to the fascist regimes in Central America in the 1980s, and the neo-liberal economic policies of our Very Wealthy are at the root of the emergencies these countries face.
In light of next weekend's events in the Rivertowns that will celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., it is useful to try to see what is being done to our immigrant neighbors through his eyes. Often forgotten amidst the celebration of King's commitment to nonviolence and racial desegregation is his opposition to war and his commitment to social and economic justice for all peoples, black and white. King viewed America's role in the world, and particularly in its program for military conquest and imperial domination, as "madness." In his famous 1967 speech "Beyond Vietnam" he spoke of war as "but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit." He called for "a true revolution of values." "America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values," he continued. "There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood."
The re-molding of our status quo, the fashioning of it into a brotherhood, will take a tremendous effort. In effect it will be a revolutionary effort, the "revolution in values" that King called for. At the simplest level, we can begin this work by overcoming our fear and speaking up. As Dr. King said a half-century ago, "a time comes when silence is betrayal." That time is clearly now.
News Notes
Two years ago, students at Fordham University (Lincoln Center) organized a chapter of the national organization Students for Justine in Palestine. Although the organization received unanimous approval from the student council, this was overruled by the dean of students, who claimed that the group would "stir up controversy" and be "polarizing." Now SJP has taken Fordham to court, asking a judge to reinstate the student government's approval. A student and the group's lawyer appeared on Democracy Now! this week; you can see the program here.
Old friend and prize-winning historian Linda Gordon has written a timely book on the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. The revived Klan has millions of members outside the South, targeting Catholics and Jews as well as Blacks. A review of the book was included in a recent newsletter. Recently Linda was interviewed by The Nation magazine, where she speaks about her book and about Fred Trump, the President's father, who was arrested at a Klan rally in New York City. Woody Guthrie, who lived in Fred Trump's neighborhood, wrote a song about this. The bigger picture, of course, is that organized, populist racism has been and still is a national, not just a regional, phenomenon.
Linked below (Israel/Palestine) is an update on the story of Ahed Tamimi, the Palestine teenager is remains under arrest for slapping an Israeli soldier. Photographer Eric McGregor, who is always where the action is, gives us a trove of photos of a large rally in Grand Central Station in support of Tamimi.
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Wednesday, January 10th – On this day we are asked to make calls to our congressional representatives in support of HR 4391, the "Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act." (You can read about this act here.) So please give a call to Nita Lowey (202-225-6506) and Eliot Engel (202-225-2464). Thanks!
Saturday, January 13th – Weather permitting, CFOW will hold a rally in Hastings from 12 to 1 that will focus on the peace advocacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday is on Monday, January 15th. Please join us at the VFW Plaza, Warburton Ave. and Spring St. Our leaflet and posters will channel Dr. King's protests against the Vietnam War and against the "madness" of the US imperial operations.
Wednesday, January 17th – Our friends at the Justice for Farmworkers Campaign urge us to join them in Albany to support "A Farmworker Fair Labor Hearing: An Inquiry into the Ethical Treatment of Farmworkers in the State of New York." More information about the event and the issue can be found on the website of the organization. (I believe that a bus will be available from Westchester; more information when I get it.)
Saturday, January 20th – On the first anniversary of the inauguration of President Trump, there will be a "Women's March" in both Washington, D.C. and NYC in protest against the Trump Agenda. In NYC the day will begin with a rally at Columbus Circle at 11 a.m., followed by a march to Bryant Park. The CFOW contingent will take the MetroNorth train that runs through the Rivertowns around 10:20 a.m. As of now, many stalwarts will have signs focused on the need to protect DACA Dreamers and immigrants targeted for removal by the Trump Agenda. The website for the march promises a great day, with hundreds of events and millions of marchers across the country.
This Newsletter
Articles linked in the CFOW newsletter are intended to illuminate some of the main action-issues about which we are concerned. Coming mostly from the "dissenting media," they provide an alternative to the perspectives of the mainstream media. In addition to the excellent "Featured Essays," please check out the CFOW "Report for 2017," posted at the very end of this newsletter, that summarizes the many things that our stalwarts did last year. Also of great interest, imo, are the sets of articles giving some context and illumination to the US conflicts with Iran, Russia/Ukraine, and North Korea. Also of interest are the Democracy Now! interview with former New York Times writer James Risen, about The Times' attempt to keep state secrets secret; Louis Proyect's article on Trump's electoral "psyops" campaign; and an update on the on-going tragedy in Puerto Rico.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Our leaflet and posters for our rallies are usually about war or climate change, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's tax cut legislation are often targeted, depending on current events. We meet on the first Sunday of each month, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. If you would like to make a financial contribution to our work, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
For readers who would like to pause and catch their breath before plunging into the chaos of our world, we have set up a "Rewards" section to offer Something Completely Different. First up this week is a short video about one of the great historians of our time. You can watch "A Life of Dissent: The Life and Work of E. P. Thompson" here. And much of this newsletter was composed while listening to favorites from jazz great Dave Brubeck. I hope you enjoy it also.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Seeing Our Wars for the First Time: 76 Countries Are Now Involved in Washington's War on Terror
By Tom Engelhardt, Tom Dispatch [January 5, 2018]
----- It was hard even to map its component parts and when you did – as in an August New York Times map of territories controlled by the Taliban in Afghanistan – the imagery was complex and of limited impact. Generally, however, we, the people, have been demobilized in almost every imaginable way in these years, even when it comes to simply following the endless set of wars and conflicts that go under the rubric of the war on terror. Let me repeat this mantra: once, almost seventeen years ago, there was one; now, the count is 76 and rising. Meanwhile, great cities have been turned into rubble; tens of millions of human beings have been displaced from their homes; refugees by the millions continue to cross borders, unsettling ever more lands; terror groups have become brand names across significant parts of the planet; and our American world continues to be militarized. [Read More]
No More Worshiping of the Military
---- I think it's past time that we on the anti-war left started making it clear that this glorification of American wars, the thanking of people in uniform for their "service," and the blind acceptance of the prevailing argument that everyone in the military is "defending our freedom," has to be challenged at every opportunity. Look at the map of the globe … troops are fighting in the Pentagon's Special Operations Command, US Special Forces are stationed in 177 countries, and on any given day are conducting missions — actual or training missions — in 80-90 of them. As well, US troops are fighting hot wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria, most of them completely illegal, like most of the Special Operations actions, and the drone wars in a host of other countries from Pakistan and Yemen to Somalia, Sudan and, of course, Syria again. Not a single one of those operations involve anything that remotely threatens the security of the United States, nor are those troops — regular or Special Forces — in any way "defending our freedom," which is not under serious threat by any country in the world which cannot be addressed by foreign and domestic police and the FBI. [Read More]
Food sovereignty is need of the hour
By Vandana Shiva, ZNet [January 5, 2018]
---- The last three decades of my work have been shaped by creating democratic and just alternatives to unfair and undemocratic rules of GATT/WTO, which were written by the corporations, for creating monopolies over our seed and food. Every rule of WTO that affects our daily bread was written by the Poison Cartel including Monsanto, the Merchants of Grain led by Cargill, and the junk food industry led by Pepsi, Coca Cola and Nestle. … The ecological crisis, the agrarian crisis, the food crisis, the health and nutrition crisis, the crisis of democracy and sovereignty are not separate crisis. They are one. And they are connected through food. As the Taitreya Upanishad tells us "everything is food". The web of life is a food web. When it is ruptured by chemicals and poisons that come from war, and rules of "free trade" that is a war declared by corporations against the earth and humanity, biodiversity is wiped out, farmers are killed through debt, and people die either because of hunger or because of cancer, diabetes, heart problems, hypertension and other environment and food related chronic diseases. Everyone is paying a very high price for corporate greed and dictatorship and collusion of corporate states to spread the toxic empire of corporations in the name of "reforms". [Read More]
---- The last three decades of my work have been shaped by creating democratic and just alternatives to unfair and undemocratic rules of GATT/WTO, which were written by the corporations, for creating monopolies over our seed and food. Every rule of WTO that affects our daily bread was written by the Poison Cartel including Monsanto, the Merchants of Grain led by Cargill, and the junk food industry led by Pepsi, Coca Cola and Nestle. … The ecological crisis, the agrarian crisis, the food crisis, the health and nutrition crisis, the crisis of democracy and sovereignty are not separate crisis. They are one. And they are connected through food. As the Taitreya Upanishad tells us "everything is food". The web of life is a food web. When it is ruptured by chemicals and poisons that come from war, and rules of "free trade" that is a war declared by corporations against the earth and humanity, biodiversity is wiped out, farmers are killed through debt, and people die either because of hunger or because of cancer, diabetes, heart problems, hypertension and other environment and food related chronic diseases. Everyone is paying a very high price for corporate greed and dictatorship and collusion of corporate states to spread the toxic empire of corporations in the name of "reforms". [Read More]
The Visionless Society
By Chris Hedges and Ralph Nader, Truth Dig [December 31, 2017]
---- Imagine yourself in early 2019. The Democrats, despite never articulating a political vision other than not being Donald Trump and refusing to roll back Republican legislation such as the 2017 tax bill, have regained the House of Representatives by a slim majority. They vote articles of impeachment. The Senate Republicans, pressured by many within their own party to abandon Trump because of his ineptitude, increasingly erratic behavior and corruption, call on the president to resign. Trump refuses. He uses the megaphone of his office to incite violence by his small, fanatic base. The military, whose deployment as a domestic police force is authorized by Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, is called into the streets to quell unrest. The United States, by the time the violence is snuffed out, is a de facto military dictatorship. That such a scenario is plausible to public figures such as Ralph Nader is a sign of the deep decay of democratic institutions. The two major political parties lack a coherent vision. They are subservient to corporate power. They have abandoned the common good. They have turned politics into burlesque. They have rendered the citizenry impotent. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
2017 Was a Banner Year for the Arms Industry
By , Foreign Policy in Focus [December 19, 2017]
---- The top 100 learned in July that their annual revenues amounted to a healthy $364.8 billion, with American companies — as usual — dominating. While the military itself has suffered several calamities — the apparent murder of a Green Beret by two Navy SEALs in Mali in June, the deadly crash of the U.S.S. John McCain near Malaysia in August, the killing of four Special Forces troops in Niger in October, — the contractors have thrived. The author of The Art of the Deal has helped. $110 billion from Saudi Arabia, $2.4 billion from austerity-ravaged Greece, $1.4 billion from Taiwan — all these deals have been set in motion by the Trump White House. Even if they're not completely fulfilled, as can often be the case in such an opaque and unpredictable market, the financial outlook for America's arms companies will keep making other (less lethal) industries look like mom-and-pop stores. [Read More]
US counter terror air strikes double in Trump's first year
From The Bureau of Investigation [December 19, 2017]
---- The number of US air strikes jumped in Yemen and Somalia in 2017, pointing to an escalation of the global war on terror. President Donald Trump inherited the framework allowing US aircraft to hit suspected terrorists outside of declared battlefields from his predecessor, Barack Obama. Bar some tinkering, his administration has largely stuck within the framework set by the previous one. However, the quantity of operations has shot up under President Trump. Strikes doubled in Somalia and tripled in Yemen. In Afghanistan, where the Bureau has been monitoring US airstrikes since it was officially declared a noncombat mission at the end of 2014, the number of weapons dropped is now approaching levels last seen during the 2009-2012 surge. Meanwhile, there are signs that the drone war may be returning to Pakistan, where attacks were also up, compared with 2016. [Read More]
What's Happening in Iran?
These Are the Real Causes of the Iran Protests
By Trita Parsi, The Nation [January 4, 2018]
---- There is no evidence that the protesters in Iran are taking their cues from Trump—or even paying attention to him. Unlike the 2009 protests, when some of the demonstrators called on Barack Obama to speak out against the Iranian government's brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters, no chants have been heard in Iran calling on Trump to do or say anything at all. Nor has any evidence emerged to substantiate the accusation that the protests were orchestrated from abroad. … Mindful of the ongoing political repression in Iran, the widespread discontent with lack of political and social freedoms, and the deep frustration and anger over corruption, economic mismanagement, and inequality, the question that analysts wrestle with is: Why now? Clearly there have been decades of pent-up anger. But that still doesn't explain why emotions boiled over now, and not a year ago. The answer appears to lie in a few factors that have all come to a head in the past few weeks. Trump has figured prominently in the first factor: the economic dividends of the nuclear deal. … The never-ending drama about whether Trump will or will not kill the deal has been designed to achieve exactly this: create uncertainty about the deal's future in order to deter investors from entering the Iranian market. This absence of investment, in turn, has contributed to growing unemployment and unmet expectations about the direction of the Iranian economy—an underlying cause of these protests. [Read More] For additional overviews, read John Feffer, "Exploiting a Movement They Know Nothing About," Foreign Policy in Focus [January 5, 2018] [Link]; Shireen Hunter, "Iranian Leadership: Heed Warning Signs and Change Priorities," LobeLog [January 2, 2018] [Link]; and from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR], "Think Tank-Addicted Media" [January 2018] [ink].
Iran and the Left: a Dissenting View
Reza Fiyouzat, Counterpunch [January 5, 2018]
[FB – Looking at the situation in Iran solely through the lenses of "What's in it for the USA?" misses some of the root causes of the uprising in Iran. Like other economies in the neo-liberal world, here distorted by a theocratic regime with non-market priorities, Iran has many of the same problems that other countries do in providing an equitable standard of living and giving hope to young people that they have a future.]
---- Starting on Thursday, December 28, spontaneous demonstrations broke out in different towns and cities across Iran. The protests broke out over economic issues such as high inflation and high youth unemployment, with the trigger being the sudden hike in the price of eggs and chicken. The protesters, however, soon took up more politically oriented slogans, attacking the leaders of the regime with slogans such as, "People are begging and Mullahs rule like they're gods!" Regardless of how long these protests last and what the outcomes may be, these protests have proven once again that the Iranian regime is fundamentally incapable of addressing people's most basic social and economic needs, and that is why for forty years it has depended on brute force to control the population. But, rule by brute force alone cannot last forever. Deep-structure poverty has once again pushed the population over the edge. This uprising did not just happen out of the blue, though; it is the culmination of many smaller and more localized protests over a variety of social issues that have sent people to the streets in the past year. [Read More] For more on the internal, economic roots of Iran's uprisings, read Murtaza Hussain, "Protests in Iran Took Many By Surprise — But Not Iranian Labor Activists," The Intercept [January 6, 2018] [Link]
Russia, the United States, NATO, and Ukraine
[FB – While recognizing Russia as a repressive and authoritarian state, we are also aware that it is a nuclear weapons state, and that a nuclear war involving the United States and Russia would probably destroy the possibilities for human civilization worldwide. Therefore, diplomatic caution is in order, just as it was during the Cold War, and the growing rhetorical recklessness within the US political and media elite towards Russia is a reason for great alarm. Russo-phobia has existed in the USA since the Russian Revolution of November 1917. One source of the current round of Russo-phobia is the Russian intervention in the Ukraine in 2014 and the subsequent annexation (or "re-annexation") of the Crimea. In an effort at clarification, linked below is a summary of a recent radio broadcast by historian Stephen F. Cohen, associated with The Nation magazine and one of our leading scholars on developments in Russia. – Among informed commentators, Cohen stands practically alone in arguing that Russian diplomacy towards Ukraine and NATO is primarily defensive, responding to what it sees as military encirclement from NATO and an imminent national security threat.]
Four Years of Ukraine and the Myths of Maidan
By Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation [January 3, 2018]
---- Cohen argues that the Ukrainian crisis, which unfolded in late 2013 and early 2014 and which led to Crimea's annexation by (or "reunification with") Russia and to the still ongoing US-Russian proxy war in eastern Ukraine, is a seminal event of the 21st century. It militarized and moved the new Cold War to Russia's borders—in the form of a civil and proxy shooting war—indeed to inside a civilization shared for centuries by Russia and large parts of Ukraine. It implanted a toxic and dangerous political element in US, Russian, Ukrainian, and European politics, perhaps for at least a generation. And it has left Ukraine in near-economic ruin, with thousands of citizens dead and millions displaced and many more struggling to regain the quality of life they had before 2014. The events of 2014 also led to the ongoing NATO buildup on Russia's western border in the Baltic region, yet another new Cold War front fraught with the possibility of hot war. Making things only worse, in late 2017, the Trump administration announced that it would supply the Kiev government with more, and more sophisticated, weapons, a step that even the Obama administration, which played a major detrimental role in the crisis, declined to take. Two conflicting narratives of the Ukrainian crisis have been a major factor in preventing its resolution. One, promoted by Washington and the US-backed government in Kiev, blames only "aggression" by the Kremlin and specifically by Russian President Putin. The other, promoted by Moscow and rebel forces in eastern Ukraine, which it supports, blames "aggression" by the European Union and NATO, both inspired by Washington. Cohen sees enough bad intent, misconceptions, and misperceptions to go around, but on balance thinks Moscow's narrative, almost entirely deleted from US mass media, is closer to the historical realities of 2013–2014: [Read More]
War with North Korea?
South Korea Proposes Border Talks With North Korea After Kim's Overture
---- South Korea on Tuesday proposed holding high-level talks with North Korea on their border next week, a day after North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, suggested inter-Korean dialogue to discuss easing military tensions and his country's participation in the Winter Olympics in the South. Cho Myoung-gyon, the South's point man on the North, proposed that the two Korean governments hold their meeting next Tuesday in Panmunjom, a village straddling the inter-Korean border north of Seoul, the South Korean capital. We hope the two sides sit down for frank talks," Mr. Cho, the unification minister, said in a news conference.If the North responds positively, it will set in motion the first official dialogue between the two Koreas in two years. [Read More]
For some background on the US and North Korea – Bruce Cumings, "This Is What's Really Behind North Korea's Nuclear Provocations," The Nation [March 23, 2017] [Link]. Cumings was also interviewed on Democracy Now! this week. [Link]. Also useful is "Kim Jong-un's Overture Could Drive a Wedge Between South Korea and the U.S.," New York Times [January 1, 2018] [Link].
GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE BREAKDOWN
Trump's offshore drilling plan
By Sue Sturgis, Facing South [January 6, 2018]
---- The Trump administration unveiled its draft five-year plan for offshore drilling this week to replace the Obama administration plan that went into effect last year. Trump is proposing to open to oil and gas development vast untouched areas of coastal waters including the Atlantic and the eastern Gulf of Mexico — part of his administration's stated quest to make the U.S. the world's "strongest energy superpower." How vast is the area targeted for drilling? While the current federal offshore drilling program crafted by the Obama administration bars leasing to private drilling companies in 94 percent of the outer continental shelf, the Trump plan would open more than 90 percent of the OCS to potential future oil and gas development. It proposes 19 lease sales off Alaska, 12 in the Gulf of Mexico, nine in the Atlantic (three each for the Mid- and South Atlantic, two for the North Atlantic, and one for the Straits of Florida), and seven in the Pacific. Among the areas now being considered for drilling are the waters off the coasts of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina — even though governors of those states have expressed opposition amid widespread concern about the impacts in coastal communities. [Read More]
---- The Trump administration unveiled its draft five-year plan for offshore drilling this week to replace the Obama administration plan that went into effect last year. Trump is proposing to open to oil and gas development vast untouched areas of coastal waters including the Atlantic and the eastern Gulf of Mexico — part of his administration's stated quest to make the U.S. the world's "strongest energy superpower." How vast is the area targeted for drilling? While the current federal offshore drilling program crafted by the Obama administration bars leasing to private drilling companies in 94 percent of the outer continental shelf, the Trump plan would open more than 90 percent of the OCS to potential future oil and gas development. It proposes 19 lease sales off Alaska, 12 in the Gulf of Mexico, nine in the Atlantic (three each for the Mid- and South Atlantic, two for the North Atlantic, and one for the Straits of Florida), and seven in the Pacific. Among the areas now being considered for drilling are the waters off the coasts of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina — even though governors of those states have expressed opposition amid widespread concern about the impacts in coastal communities. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES/"THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR"
(Video) The Biggest Secret: James Risen on Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror
From Democracy Now! [January 5, 2018]
---- We spend the hour with former New York Times reporter James Risen, who left the paper in August to join The Intercept as senior national security correspondent. This week, he published a 15,000-word story headlined "The Biggest Secret: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror." The explosive piece describes his struggles to publish major national security stories in the post-9/11 period and how both the government and his own editors at The New York Times suppressed his reporting, including reports on the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program, for which he would later win the Pulitzer Prize. Risen describes meetings between key Times editors and top officials at the CIA and the White House. His refusal to name a source would take him to the Supreme Court, and he almost wound up in jail, until the Obama administration blinked. [See the Program]. The Democracy Now! interview with Risen was continued on the web here. James Risen's article in The Intercept, "The Biggest Secret: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror," can be read here; and Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept interviews Risen (Video) here. To keep the record in balance, Risen was involved in what turned out to be false accusations that scientist Wen Ho Lee was given important US secrets to China, back in the Clinton administration. You can read about this (illuminating) case study on McCarthyite journalism here.
THE STATE OF THE UNION
How the System Got Trumped: Cambridge Analytica's Electoral Psyops Campaign
---- Available from Cinema Libre Studios, "Trumping Democracy" provides the key to understanding how we have ended up with the most unpopular president in history. Despite the tsunami of reports about Russia meddling with the 2016 elections, this gripping documentary makes the case that it was instead the result of a combination of Robert Mercer's funding and the computer-based Psyops his Cambridge Analytica firm exploited. This one-two punch produced a president that Gary Cohn described, according to Michael Wolff's new bombshell book, Fire and Fury, as a "An idiot surrounded by clowns." … The real question is not whether the ads made the difference. It is instead what kind of society we are living in, where Psyops begin to be used routinely. [Read More]
Maria's Bodies [Puerto Rico Update]
---- On that first day, when Hurricane Maria still raged with apocalyptic force, the destruction wrought by the storm was gruesome — and also familiar to anyone who had seen a tornado shuck the roofs off an Oklahoma town or watched Houston flood only a few weeks earlier. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, more than 1,800 died, many by drowning, as levees and flood walls failed and the city's poorest neighborhoods were submerged. Puerto Rico has fewer low-lying areas, so the immediate death toll from Maria was substantially smaller. But Puerto Rico's population of 3.4 million is more vulnerable, and its infrastructure weaker, than anywhere on the mainland. The island's per capita income is $11,688, roughly half as much as the poorest of the 50 states. Its government has let its roads, emergency services, and electrical grid decay as it struggles under massive debt obligations and federally imposed austerity measures. These two factors — poverty and rotting infrastructure — combined with the storm to trigger a second disaster, this one entirely man-made and far more deadly than the storm itself.
December 29 will mark 100 days since the storm ravaged the island, and it appears that at least half of Puerto Rico's population is still without electricity. [Read More] And see this video: "After Maria, a New Crisis in Puerto Rico: Mental Health," New York Times [January 2018].
The Trump Administration's Attack on Immigrants
Senators and Trump Inch Toward DACA Deal, but a Wall Divides Them
---- Democrats want to shield young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children from deportation and offer them a path to citizenship, and could accept what they call "reasonable border security" provisions, such as electronic surveillance, including drones and drug detection equipment, and rebuilding roads across the border. Mr. Trump and Republicans would like to expand the measure so that it sharply limits what he calls "chain migration," the longstanding policy that allows one family member to sponsor another to come to the United States, and ends the so-called visa lottery, which aims to diversify the immigrant population by selecting applicants randomly from countries with low rates of immigration. Mr. Trump called the lottery "a disaster." … An estimated 780,000 immigrants were covered under the Obama-era program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Participants were required to register with the government and pass background checks, in exchange for two-year renewable permits that allowed them to work or attend school. Immigration advocates say 14,000 of them have already lost their protected status because they have been unable to renew permits issued more than two years ago. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
The Story Behind Ahed Tamimi's Slap: Her Cousin's Head Shattered by Israeli Soldier's Bullet
By Gideon Levy and Alex Levac, Haaretz [Israel] [January 6, 2018]
---- Just before Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi slapped one of the soldiers who'd invaded her yard, she learned that her 15-year-old cousin Mohammed had been shot in the head at close range. The left side of his face is twisted, swollen, fragmented, scarred; there's congealed blood by his nose, stitches in his face; one eye is shut, a seam line stretches across his whole scalp. A boy's face turned scar-face. Some of his skull bones were removed in surgery and won't be returned to their place for another six months. Mohammed Tamimi, just 15, and he is already a disabled shooting victim and a released prisoner. That's life under the occupation in Nabi Saleh, where people are occupied with the struggle. About an hour after Mohammed was shot in the head at short range by an Israel Defense Forces soldier (or a Border Policeman), his now-better-known cousin, Ahed Tamimi, went to the yard of her house and tried to forcibly expel the two soldiers who had invaded her turf, while the camera rolled. It's a reasonable assumption that she tried to vent her wrath on the soldiers in part because of the shooting of her cousin an hour earlier. [Read More] Also very interesting is Amira Hass, Haaretz's [Israel] correspondent in Ramallah (West Bank), "Unlike in Iran" [January 1, 2018] [Link].
Who's Afraid of BDS?
By Mitchell Plitnick, Lobe Log [January 8, 2018]
---- On Saturday, Israel released a blacklist of groups that are part of the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement (BDS). Twenty groups appear on the list, including Palestinian diaspora and solidarity groups, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), Code Pink, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and, notably, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). The response was swift. The blacklisted groups responded as one might expect. But so did others who have been very clear in their opposition to BDS. … There has been a long-term effort to establish the premise that solidarity with the Palestinian cause is not just anti-Israel but anti-Semitic and that it is committed much more to destroying Israel than to getting Palestinians the rights to which they are entitled. In recent years, this idea has been expanded to protect not only Israel proper but its settlements throughout the West Bank. The umbrella term "de-legitimization" is used to tar all pro-Palestinian efforts as really being about destroying Israel. … This framing has met with some significant success outside of Israel. The wave of legislation in the United States that seeks to stifle the right to boycott Israel, normally protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, is a prime example. And within Israel, anti-BDS feeling is overwhelming.. [Read More]
CFOW LOOKS BACK ON 2017
As some of us have failing memories, we put together this CFOW Annual Report for our Holiday Party. Who knew we did so much in 2017! Please join us for some action in 2018; there's a lot to do!
January
A week before Trump's inauguration, CFOW organized a forum, "Resist the Trump Agenda." About 75 people attended this first Rivertowns gathering of "the Resistance." The day after the Inauguration, Women's Marches brought several million people to protest in hundreds of cities; we attended the marches in DC and NYC. At the end of the month, Trump's first order banning immigrants from Muslim countries brought thousands of people to airports, protesting the ban. On January 28th, CFOW and other groups organized a "No Deportations" rally in Hastings that drew 200 people. Also in January, some old business was finished up with the sentencing of the 'Montrose 9," including three CFOW stalwarts, who had blocked construction of the Spectra pipeline.
February
On February 5th we organized our second Resistance Forum, this one at the Hastings Community Center. Its focus was on Trump's executive order banning immigrants, and how we might fight back. About 90 people attended the forum. And a week later we joined with Hastings RISE to support their demonstration in response to "white supremacy" posters found near the Hastings schools. Out of these activities two working groups emerged: an environmental committee with a focus on stopping the Coast Guard's plan to anchor oil tankers in the Hudson, and the other with a focus on single-payer healthcare, looking especially to the possibility of state legislation.
March
Our weekly protests and leaflets focused on immigrants. Our healthcare committee organized a rally in Hastings on single-payer.
April
As the state legislature drew towards it close, on April 8th we held a rally in support of "Improved Medicare for All" that targeted the legislation being debated in Albany. April 15th was "Income Tax Day." Our Saturday protest focused on taxes and the huge slice of our taxes that pay for war. On April 17th we headlined the White Plains "Justice Monday" with a similar protest against wars and war taxes.
May
The annual May Day demonstrations were sizeable this year, and CFOW stalwarts participated in the NYC demo. On May 4th the Cuomo government approved the final permits for the Spectra pipeline near Indian Point, thus effectively ending the protest to stop this consruction. And on May 6th, as the state legislature's deadline grew closer, we focused our Saturday rallly in Hastings on "Improved Medicare for All." On May 20th some CFOW stalwarts participated in the Westchester Social Forum, held in New Rochelle; and on the following day our "Voter Integrity" working group showed the film, "I Voted?" in Irvington. At the end of the month, with CD 16 Indivisible, we sponsored a forum in Yonkers on single payer healthcare.
June
In what is now a tradition, CFOW kicked off the annual River Arts Music Tour with a chorus of labor and freedom songs, thankfully led by Jenny Murphy. And on June 10th we partnered with Hastings RISE and the Greenburgh Human Rights Council to protest the white supremacy rallies organized that weekend by ACT for America. This was a tough month for us. On June 6th the Hastings Board of Trustees approved a resolution making Hastings a "Purple Heart Village," despite our attempts to have language glorifying war as "protecting our freedoms" removed from the Resolution. And on June 19th, despite much protest from many Westchester groups, the County Board of Legislators approved a terrible Resolution denouncing the BDS (Boycott, Divestment,and Sanctions) Movement. Also in June, the Montrose 9 were back in court for the last time, with Andy Ryan, Linda Snider, and Susan Rutman forced to pay a large fine and do "community service." As if they hadn't done enough already!
July
We started the month with a 4th of July fundraising party at Susan Rutman's house on the Hudson, saying good-bye to this fabulous spot that had hosted so many CFOW gatherings. (Thanks, Susan!) On July 15th our rally celebrated the vote establishing a UN ban on nuclear weapons, and the following week we rallied against the moves in Congress to outlaw the BDS movement. Throughout the month we were concerned about the clamor for sanctions against Russia, aggravating a tense stand-off between two nuclear weapons states
August
We began the month with our annual rally against the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and our rally the following week focused on the danger of war with North Korea. On August 19th we joined with other groups in protesting the neo-Nazi murder and demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia. The rally was attended by about 100 people. At the end of the month many stalwarts attended the NYC march in support of DACA immigrants. And Trump announced his troop/war escalation in Afghanistan.
September
CFOW jumped back into action after Labor Day with a September 9th rally protesting Trump's actions to end the DACA program; and the next week, following two disastrous hurricanes, our Saturday rally focused on global warming and climate breakdown. Trump opened the next UN session with a threat to "totally destroy" North Korea, and we protested this war crime on September 23rd. Also this month, we joined with 100 organizations to demand that Congress defeat the anti-BDS legislation then under discussion.
October
October 6th is the anniversary of the Afghanistan war, and this year's annual protest took place, under the direction of Nick Mottern, at the Trump Tower in White Plains, with some good media coverage. Following the devastation of Puerto Rico by two hurricanes, our leaflets and newsletter contained a lot of information about the role of hedge funds in Puerto Rico's debt crisis, now aggravated by the hurricanes. On October 21st we marched to the Hastings home of billionaire David Shaw, whose hedge fund owns millions in Puerto Rico debt, demanding that he forgive the debt. Some good media coverage resulted.
Also in October, Trump "decertified" the Iran Nuclear Agreement and our October 28th rally focused on "Stop the War Machine!"
November
The US political elite feigned surprise to learn that we had hundreds of troops in Niger and thousands in Africa. Our November 4th rally focused on this, and on the unending expansion of the US Empiire. Later that month we encouraged phone calls to our elected representatives to stop the bombing and starvation of Yemen. And, in contrast to the official celebrations of Veterans Day, our Veterans Day leaflet described the threat of the Trump administration's cuts for Veterans' healthcare.
December
It was too cold to do much this month. We protested Trump's "tax reform" by encouraging phone calls to politicians and at a rally in White Plains. But mostly we stayed indoors, awaiting our Holiday Party
