Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
May 3, 2020
Hello All – For two months the coronavirus crisis in the United States has been framed by the failures of our government and our for-profit healthcare system, contrasted with the heroic dedication and pushback by medical personnel. And, of course, in the background the antics of President Trump served as wallpaper to remind us that whatever planning role is expected from our government, it is led by a lunatic. But now, I think, the framing of the crisis is about to change: building on top of the failure of our medical system is emerging an intense conflict about what is essentially forced labor in the midst of a deadly pandemic.
The back-to-work or "open the economy" pressures have several sources. People's savings are running dry. Small business owners have fixed expenses and no customers. Federal income-support programs are erratic and not enough. And the frustrations of lockdown (and now with the coming of spring) are understandable. – But the political strength of the open-the-economy pressures are found especially in President Trump's fears that without an economic rebound soon, he may lose the November election. And to this we add the dozens of rightwing and fascist groups that see an opportunity for organizational growth by putting themselves at the head of the large American population, innocent of any understanding of science or medicine, who have been persuaded that Elites and Democrats and Whoever are jerking them around.
Where the rubber hits the road in this reframing of the crisis is found in the problem of producing a work force to "open the economy." At the moment, the states that have scheduled a "reopening" are primarily from the Midwest and the Old Confederacy. These states are much more rural, with a (so far) consequent lower infection/death rate, and have mostly Republican governors. Here there is a positive response to Trump's call to re-open the economy. With federal and state backing, it is likely that workers will be threatened with the loss of not only their jobs, but their current unemployment compensation and other benefits, if they do not return to work when their state and employer "open for business." Yet as workers in the meatpacking industry or in the "essential services" such as Amazon, Walmart, and similar corporations have learned, employers make little or no effort to make working conditions safer, and threaten those who speak out about the hazards.
All this is tinder for an explosion. Who will bear the most weight in this crisis will be determined by the relative power of largely unorganized workers and the alliance of the mob and big business that characterizes the Republican machine. The workers' actions recently, especially around the May Day walkouts, show that the situation is not hopeless. Buy it will take a mighty tide of support to prevent Trump's back-to-work pressures from becoming a deathtrap for thousands of low-paid workers, largely people of color with little support from trade unions or the mainstream political system.
Some suggested reading – Medical people who are based in science, not politics, suggest that we are looking at a virus crisis of at least a year in duration, with likely resurgences of the virus that will be intensified if commonsense precautions are abandoned. Here are some useful observations from epidemic writer/specialist Laurie Garrett, New York Times epidemic writer Donald McNeil, and German coronavirus expert Christian Drosten. How the virus has grown in the USA, compared with other countries, can be seen in this excellent chart/video. (After clicking the link, scroll up a little for the video). This good video from North Carolina dramatizes the fight within the working class over safety vs. "re-opening." And this video, showing a line of many hundreds of people waiting for food donations, made me angry for some reason; perhaps you will feel the same way.
News Notes
Last Monday the two Democratic Election Commissioners canceled the New York State Democratic Presidential Primary, scheduled for June 23rd. Why did they do this? The Commissioners stated that, as Sanders had suspended his campaign and endorsed Biden, the primary was superfluous, a "beauty contest" only. They also said it would save money and protect poll-workers health. (Many thought that the Official Party canceled the primary in order to suppress voter turnout for "down-ballot" races, to the advantage of incumbents.) The Sanders campaign and Sanders supporters protested that the campaign has been suspended with the understanding that the presidential primary elections (about 20 to go) would continue, and that Sanders would continue to add delegates to his 984 total (so far) in order to have a stronger voice in the party platform and other party business. Protests ensued and lawsuits are underway, not only from Sanders' supporters, but from presidential candidate Andrew Yang as well. If the New York delegation to the Convention ends up being appointed by Gov. Cuomo, it is possible that the legitimacy of the delegation will be challenged, as the all-white Mississippi delegation was challenged by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964. Also useful for understanding what's going on is "How New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Is Using the Pandemic to Consolidate Power" by Akela Lacy, The Intercept [[Link]. To sign a petition protesting all of this, go here.
Just a year ago, the United States supported/coordinated an uprising in Venezuela that attempted to replace the incumbent president with opposition leader Juan Guaidó. This operation failed to gather much support and failed; but regime-change efforts continued. An insight into one of these efforts – a mini-Bay of Pigs invasion – was the subject of an in-depth analysis from the Associated Press this week. One of the leaders of the would-be invasion was a former Green Beret. More recently, the United States sent a naval flotilla to Venezuela's off-shore waters on the pretense of "drug interdiction" (most drugs entering the USA from Latin America use the Pacific/Mexico route.) On Saturday, President Trump announced that he was mobilizing reservists for the "anti-drug" operation against Venezuela. Be prepared.
Our friend and CFOW stalwart Andy Ryan, known to many of you as a strong activist for peace and justice, has set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to help his son in Ohio hire a lawyer. Please check out Andy's explanation of the situation here, and make a contribution if you can. Thanks.
Hastings and nearby towns are served each year by a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, now planning to open on June 3 and seeking more households to participate in the weekly "shares" of fresh produce grown locally. For information about how this works, here's the link - www.stoneledge.farm/csa-program/csa.cfm?csaID=11. To contact the local coordinator, email hastingscsa@gmail.com.
Finally, I highly recommend 350.org founder Bill McKibben's new project, a weekly newsletter with "updates from inside the climate movement." To learn more and get on the mailing list, go here.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Until shut down by the virus, we have been meeting for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting (by Zoom conference) each Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. If you would like to join our meeting, please send a return email to get the meeting's access code. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. And if you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
To relieve all the stress generated by this newsletter (and the real world), I recommend some humor from Randy Rainbow and Roy Zimmerman. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
Annals of the Plague Year
Reopening the Economy Will Send Us to Hell
By Mike Davis, Jacobin Magazine [April 2020]
---- As we head into the fifth month of the outbreak millions of working families feel like they have been kidnapped and sent to hell. As unemployment (officially reported) soars toward 30 percent or more, an estimated 20 million more people will fall helplessly below the poverty line. In a recent Pew poll, 60 percent of Latinos reported losing jobs or wages, as did more than half of all workers below the age of thirty. In addition to their jobs, millions will lose everything they had spent their lives working for: homes, pensions, medical coverage, and savings accounts. … People desperately need to go back to work and save what they can of their lives. But heeding the siren call of the MAGA demonstrators, puppets on strings manipulated by hedge funds and billionaire casino owners, to "reopen the economy" would only result in tragedy. … Millions of American workers have been going into battle in hospitals, nursing homes, public transit, and Amazon warehouses without essential protection that costs only pennies to manufacture. Nothing is as emblematic of the Trump administration's total dereliction of duty than the fact that on the same day that the president was bragging of the United States' "unmatched scientific and technological superiority," the New York Times was devoting a page to "How to Sew a Mask at Home." [Read More] Mike Davis, one of our best thinkers/writers, was a subject of a New Yorker profile last week. Read "Mike Davis in the Age of Catastrophe" br, The New Yorker [April 24, 2020] [Link].
The Corporate Right Is Giving Us Two Choices: Go Back to Work, or Starve
By Jon Schwarz, The Intercept [
---- The GOP and its core constituents — conservative corporations — now face two dangers, one in the short term and one in the longer term. They're currently using their standard playbook to smother both. Whether they succeed will determine our lives for decades. The short-term danger is that Americans will resist the push from business to get us back on the job and making money for them. Their plan is simple: Starve us out. They know we can't survive indefinitely without a continuing government bailout focused on regular people's needs. So they're going to stop that bailout from happening. The longer-term danger they face is that we'll make the government work for us in the short term — and then we will realize we could make it work for us all the time by removing the threat of starvation from their arsenal. This would totally change the balance of power in society. This is their deepest fear, one that's consumed them since World War II, the first time in history that everyday people gained consciousness that it was possible for them to use the government to create a world that puts them first, not their bosses. [Read More]
Coronavirus Has Mexico's Workers Pinned Between U.S. Business Interests and Their President's Obsessive Austerity
By Viri Rios, The Intercept [
---- The pandemic shows how easily business interests are placed above the lives of Mexican workers. The U.S. National Association of Manufacturers, weapons makers and U.S. officials have urged the Mexican government to open its economy in order to minimize the disruption of North American supply chains. They need Mexico's labor because final products rely on components produced south of the border. Unfortunately, the pressure seems to be working. … The American public has not been informed of the tremendous failure of the U.S.-Mexico Covid-19 response. Between ludicrous accusations by right-wing columnists that Mexico's president is "using the coronavirus crisis to advance his socialist agenda," and open support for Mexican elites to "press [their plan] upon their president," few U.S. media outlets have shown interest in exposing the critical role that U.S. and Mexican establishments are playing in empowering organized crime, killing workers, and spreading the virus at the border. [Read More]
Featured Essays
An Interview with Noam Chomsky: COVID-19 Has Exposed the US Under Trump as a "Failed State"
---- The label "failed state" has started to fit the U.S. like a glove as the COVID-19 national health crisis continues to reveal the structural flaws and weaknesses of the United States, argues world–renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky in this exclusive interview for Truthout. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to exact a high price in human lives due to its caricaturish but highly dangerous response to the crisis. In the interview that follows, Chomsky also analyzes what's behind Trump's encouragement of the "anti-lockdown" protests, discusses the right-wing determination to destroy the U.S. Postal Service, and lays out his views on the electoral "lesser of two evils" principle. [Read More]
We Can't Afford to Lose the Postal Service
p, The New Yorker [May 2, 2020]
---- I am probably one of the least consequential things my mother has ever delivered. She has two other daughters, for starters—one's a public servant and the other is a special-education teacher. But she's also spent her working life delivering love letters, college acceptances, medications, mortgage papers, divorce filings, gold bars, headstones, ashes, and care packages. In her thirty-eight years as a rural letter carrier with the United States Postal Service, she's delivered just about everything you can legally send through the mail. … The Postal Service provides critical services to every American every day, and is continuing to do so during this current crisis: facilitating the constitutionally mandated national census; distributing a hundred and thirty million copies of the C.D.C. guidelines for coronavirus safety; handling vote-by-mail efforts for primaries around the country (and almost certainly again this fall, for the Presidential election); and, in addition to all the usual mail, delivering groceries, wipes and disinfectants, and millions of prescriptions, including nearly all of those shipped by the Veterans Administration. The Postal Service does this well, a fact that is reflected in the nearly universal admiration it receives: ninety-one per cent of Americans have a favorable view of the U.S.P.S., higher than the approval for any other government agency. Among the populace, if not in Washington, it is seen just as favorably by Republicans as Democrats. us have faith in our public institutions, we can't afford to lose the one we trust the most. [Read More]
The Assassin-in-Chief Comes Home
---- However, the assassin-in-chief may now be coming home, big time, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Little did I imagine that, by 2020, an American president without a lick of empathy for other human beings, even Americans who loved him to death (so to speak), would be targeting not just civilians here in "the homeland" (as it came to become known after the 9/11 attacks), but his most fervent followers. In the age of Donald Trump, the assassin-in-chief now seems to be in the process of transforming himself into a domestic killer-in-chief. … The act of encouraging members of his base to court death is clearly that of a man without an ounce of empathy, even for those who love and admire him most — and so of a stone-cold killer. You couldn't ask for more proof that the only sense of empathy he has lies overwhelmingly in his deep and abiding pity for himself (which matches his staggering sense of self-aggrandizement) and perhaps for his children, other billionaires, and fossil-fuel executives. Them, he would save; the rest of us, his base included, are expendable. He'd sacrifice any of us without a second thought if he imagined that it would benefit him or his reelection in any way. [Read More]
Netanyahu confident Trump will Let him Annex vast Swathes of Palestinian Territory
---- The annexation will certainly result in a huge move in Western civil society to boycott Israel, since the annexation is a clear violation of international law. Ireland is already considering a prohibition on the importation of goods produced on stolen West Bank Palestinian land, and the International Criminal Court is considering taking up Israel's crimes. Netanyahu has reacted to these threats by establishing a cabinet post to combat Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and he has threatened to destroy the International Criminal Court if it dares move against him. [Read More]. And here is a useful question "As Israel moves to annex West Bank territory, how will international community respond?" by Victor Kattan and Andrew Dahdal, South China Morning Post [April 29, 2020] [Link].
Our History – Kent State and Jackson State, 50 years Ago
[FB – Fifty years ago, President Nixon suddenly expanded the Vietnam war by invading Cambodia. Students protested, the Ohio National Guard killed four students during an antiwar protest at Kent State, and the largest student protest in US history unfolded. Here's part of the story.]
Millions Of Students Struck To End A War In Vietnam
By Steve Early, Popular Resistance [April 30, 2020]
---- President Richard M. Nixon prided himself on the accuracy of his political prognostication. Nixon was never more prescient than fifty years ago this month, in a remark made to his secretary, just before delivering a White House address that announced a U.S. military invasion of Cambodia. "It's possible," Nixon told her, "that the campuses are really going to blow up after this speech." Blow up they did, as Nixon's unexpected escalation of an already unpopular war in Vietnam triggered a chain of events culminating in the largest student strike in U.S. history. In May 1970, an estimated 4 million young people joined protests that shutdown classes at 700 colleges, universities, and high schools around the country. Dozens were forced to remain closed for the rest of the spring semester. During this unprecedented campus uprising, about 2,000 students were arrested. After thirty buildings used by the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) were bombed or set on fire, heavily armed National Guardsmen were deployed on 21 campuses in 16 states. At Kent State University in Ohio, Guard members who had just been policing a Teamster wildcat strike, shot and killed four students and wounded nine on May 4. Ten days later, Mississippi State Police opened fire on a women's dormitory at Jackson State, killing two more students. America's costly war in Southeast Asia had finally come home with stunning impact, creating what a later Presidential Commission on Campus Unrest called "an unparalleled crisis" in higher education. [Read More]
Kent State and the War That Never Ended
e April 27, 2020
---- May 4, 1970, the day of that bloodbath, fell on a Monday. The Guardsmen at Kent State started firing not long after noon, while students were crossing campus; there seems to be some chance that they mistook the students spilling out of buildings for an act of aggression, when, actually, they were leaving classes. Bill Schroeder, a sophomore, was an R.O.T.C. student. "He didn't like Vietnam and Cambodia but if he had to go to Vietnam," his roommate said later, "he would have gone." Schroeder was walking to class when he was shot in the back. Jeff Miller, a junior from Plainview, Long Island, hated the war, and went out to join the protest; he was shot in the mouth. Sandy Scheuer had been training to become a speech therapist. Shot in the neck, she bled to death. Allison Krause, a freshman honor student from outside Pittsburgh, was about to transfer. She'd refused to join groups like Students for a Democratic Society, which, by 1969, had become increasingly violent. [Read More]
