Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
March 14, 2021
Hello All – Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the murder in Louisville, KY of Breonna Taylor. In a no-knock raid in the middle of the night, thinking (wrongly) that a drug trafficker was inside, the police burst into her home and shot her. A Grand Jury investigation did not indict any of the police officers. Ten weeks later, police in Minneapolis arrested George Floyd; and while Floyd was handcuffed and pinned to the ground, one of the officers, Derek Chauvin, put his knee on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, killing him. The trial of officer Chauvin began this week.
These killings – two of many, before and since – sparked a wave of protests that became the largest sustained peoples' uprising in US history. To contain the dangers of such a mobilization, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a program of investigation and reform – "Police Reform and Reinvention" – in which all NY municipalities were required to participate. Task Forces were set up in each of Westchester's towns and cities. In Hastings, the Task Force met for several months, and its draft report will be reviewed by the Board of Trustees and a Final Report will be submitted to Albany by April first. (You can read the draft report here.)
The draft Report lies midway between a disappointment and a disaster. It opens by invoking "the police-involved death" [not murder] of George Floyd: a bad beginning. It shows no sign of engagement with the nationwide outrage at racism and police violence, and its recommendations are largely related to enhancing the public relations of the police and suggesting new equipment they should buy. Important questions go unasked and unanswered, such as the racial breakdown of traffic stops, the surveillance and data capabilities of the police and plans to expand this going forward, the training that police receive (not just a description, but links to the videos), etc. There appears to be no consideration given to any kind of police complaint review board composed exclusively of civilians. While it is unlikely that the draft report can be/will be significantly changed before it is sent on to the Governor, it is important that those with suggestions, disagreements, or comments about the report and the process that produced it let the Mayor and the Board of Trustees know what's on our minds. A convenient way to do this is via an "action network" link that you can access here, and which will forward your thoughts to the Mayor and the Trustees.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Taking the Covid Crisis into account, we meet (with safe distancing) for a protest/rally on Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Another vigil takes place on the first Monday of the month (April 4th), from 6 to 6:30 pm, in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting by Zoom conference; if you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, Tuesday and Thursday at noon and/or Saturday at 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!
The Rewards! section of the Newsletter is intended as some light refreshment before starting the slog through the News. In light of the book censorship controversy in Hastings Middle School and the recent "canceling" of several of the lesser Dr. Seuss books, perhaps readers will be interested in seeing (again?) the video version of Dr. Seuss's "Butter Battle" Book, which reinterprets the Cold War in terms of how one butters one's bread. Of course there is a scholarly back story to this (as to all things) which you can read here. And for something completely different, today's Newsletter was written to the accompaniment of pianist Yuja Wang, one of whose performances can be heard here. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
The Great Depression and the Coronavirus Depression
By Jeremy Brecher, Labor Network for Sustainability [March 2021]
---- In the first year of the Coronavirus Pandemic and the ensuing Coronavirus Depression, "people power" played a little-acknowledged but critical role–recounted in the previous commentaries in this series–in protecting health and economic wellbeing. Despite change in the national political context, they are continuing into the Biden era. Movements utilizing people power direct action may be just as important in this era. Indeed, given the sharp divisions within the system of institutionalized political power, such action may play an even more important role. … The history of the original New Deal offers some hints of how this could happen. n the early days of the Great Depression of the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of people participated in hunger marches, unemployed organizations, various forms of self-help mutual aid, street protests, anti-eviction actions, "Farm holiday" blockades, strikes, and occupations of city halls and state capitals. Their purpose was to force local, state, and federal governments and elites to address the needs of those hit by economic catastrophe. [Read More]
The Lockean Roots of White Supremacy in the U.S.
By Walden Bello, Foreign Policy in Focus [March 13, 2021]
---- Ideas count — sometimes, they are even stronger than material interests. This is the case with the legacy of 17th century philosopher John Locke in the United States, which is central to explaining why class solidarity is so weak while white racial solidarity is so strong. Recent events have confirmed the unfortunate fact that there is now in the United States a state of undeclared civil war. Joe Biden's assumption of the presidency has not changed the uncomfortable reality that the elections of 2020 may well be the equivalent of those of 1860, which triggered the secession of the South. Of course, that's not to say that a civil conflict today would take the form of a sectional secession as in 1860. But whatever form it takes, it could involve widespread if not systemic violence. … Transmitted across generations, foundational Lockean ideas had a twofold effect: liberal individualism weakened solidarity based on class even as its unstated but very real racial exclusivity strengthened solidarity based on race. The conflict between weak class solidarity and strong racial solidarity would provide the two poles between which the tortured history of the United States would unfold. [Read More]
We All Move: The science and politics of migration.
By Daniel Immerwahr, The Nation [March 8, 2021]
[FB – This is a review of The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move, by Sonia Shah.]
---- Nearly everywhere European "discoverers" sailed, they met people who had discovered those lands long before them. The Americas had already been discovered; so had Australia and New Zealand and the Arctic North. Even seemingly remote Pacific islands were inhabited by the time Europeans arrived. It's bracing to realize just how few truly empty places European sailors found. How did humans get to all those places? This question tormented European thinkers for centuries. … We find it easy to imagine migrations as one-off accidents: canoes set adrift, Siberian hunters taking a drastically wrong turn at the Bering Strait. We find it far harder to imagine people moving intentionally, regularly, and as part of the natural course of things. This prejudice against motion is the subject of The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
(Video) "Hell on Earth": Yemeni Children Starve to Death as U.S.-Backed Saudi Blockade Devastates Nation
From Democracy Now! [March 12, 2021]
---- The World Food Programme is warning Yemen is headed toward the biggest famine in modern history, with the U.N. agency projecting around 400,000 Yemeni children under the age of 5 could die from acute malnutrition this year as the Saudi war and blockade continues. CNN senior international correspondent Nima Elbagir says Yemen is accurately described as "hell on Earth." Her latest report from inside Yemen details the devastating impact of the conflict on civilians, including widespread fuel shortages affecting all aspects of life. "We were utterly unprepared for what we found when we got there," says Elbagir. [Read More]
10 Problems With Biden's Foreign Policy—and One Solution
By
---- The Biden presidency is still in its early days, but it's not too early to point to areas in the foreign policy realm where we, as progressives, have been disappointed--or even infuriated. … By and large though, Biden's foreign policy already seems stuck in the militarist quagmire of the past twenty years, … from his renewed Cold War against China and Russia to his brutal sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria and dozens of countries around the world, and there is still no word on cuts to a military budget that has grown by 15% since FY2015 (inflation-adjusted). Despite endless Democratic condemnations of Trump, Biden's foreign policy so far shows no substantive change from the policies of the past four years. Here are ten of the lowlights: [Read More]
Day of the Drone: We Need an International Convention on Drones
By March 11, 2021[
----- In his examination of the two major books on drones — Christian Brose's The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare, and Michael Boyle's The Drone Age — analyst Andrew Cockburn points out that the victims of drones are mostly civilians, not soldiers. While drones can take out military targets, they are more commonly used to assassinate people one doesn't approve of. A case in point was former President Trump's drone strike that killed Qasem Solemani, a top Iranian general, a country we are not at war with. In just the first year of his administration, Trump killed more people — including 250 children — with drones in Yemen and Pakistan than President Barack Obama did in eight years. And Obama was no slouch in this department, increasing the use of drone attacks by a factor of 10 over the administration of George W. Bush. Getting a handle on drone — their pluses and minuses and the moral issues such weapons of war raise — is essential if the world wants to hold off yet another round of massive military spending and the tensions and instabilities such a course will create. [Read More]
Leaving Afghanistan by May 1? Alas, Not Likely
---- Will the U.S. military ever leave Afghanistan? The answer appears to be no. The Afghan adventure has so far lasted 20 years and cost two trillion dollars. Afghanistan provides a convenient, imperial base from which to threaten China. The U.S. military, realistically, will never want to give that up. Trump left office with plans in place for the remaining 2500 U.S. troops to depart Afghanistan by May 1. Not a word about the 18,000 contractors, aka mercenaries, who have long outnumbered U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Like those soldiers, these mercenaries' lives are at risk. They are also a geopolitical liability. If one gets killed, as happened not too long ago in Iraq, the U.S. retaliates. That could ignite war at any time. … "The consequences of unilaterally ignoring the May withdrawal deadline will be the dissolution of the U.S.-Taliban agreement, placing U.S. soldiers back in the crosshairs of the Taliban," wrote Adam Weinstein recently in Responsible Statecraft, "and an end to intra-Afghan negotiations." [Read More] To make things more complicated, today we learn in the New York Times that "U.S. Has 1,000 More Troops in Afghanistan Than It Disclosed" [Link].
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Ten years after Fukushima: The experts examine lessons learned and forgotten
By Ali Ahmad, et al., Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [March 11, 2021]
---- A decade later, the footage of the dramatic hydrogen explosions in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, broadcast live on television—and the subsequent disruptions to livelihoods, ecosystems, and economic activities—still reverberate. …. Amid a looming climate crisis and a desperate need to curb emissions, analyzing the costs, risks and benefits of nuclear energy cannot be more timely and relevant. If the global expansion of nuclear energy to address climate change is inevitable, how can we prevent, or at least mitigate, the effects of the next nuclear accident or disaster? If nuclear accidents are no longer unimaginable, can we accept the inevitability of future nuclear accidents and focus our efforts just as much on mitigation as accident prevention? [Read More]
(Video) "A Big Deal": Bill McKibben on Rutgers Fossil Fuel Divestment & the Future of Climate Justice
From Democracy Now! [March 10, 2021]
----- Rutgers University has voted to begin divesting from fossil fuels, following a campaign by the student-organized Endowment Justice Collective that grew out of the Global Climate Strike in 2019. The organizing efforts led to a referendum vote in 2020 in which 90% of students supported divestment. About 5% of Rutgers's $1.6 billion endowment is invested in fossil fuels, and under the terms of the agreement, it will now cease new fossil fuel investment and divest from passive index funds with fossil fuel investments. Author, environmentalist and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben says the Rutgers divestment decision is "a big deal," especially as it happened at one of the oldest universities in the United States. "It's one more sign of just how much the zeitgeist has shifted," he says. [See the Program]
CIVIL LIBERTIES
(Video) "The Mauritanian": Film Tells Story of Innocent Man Held at Guantánamo for 14 Years Without Charge
From Democracy Now! [March 8, 2021]
---- A new feature film, "The Mauritanian," tells the story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian man who was held without charge for 14 years at the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo and repeatedly tortured. We speak with Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who says the film is not just about his struggle. "This is not my movie. This is the movie of so many people," he says. "Some of the people who were kidnapped after 9/11 were tortured to death. They did not have a chance to tell their story." We also speak with Kevin Macdonald, director of "The Mauritanian"; Nancy Hollander, the lead lawyer for Mohamedou Ould Slahi; and actor Tahar Rahim, whose portrayal of Slahi earned him a Golden Globe nomination. [See the Program] This is Part II; for Part I, an interview with Mahamedou Ould Slahi, go here.
THE STATE OF THE UNION
The Acquittal of Derek Chauvin Has Already Begun
By Elie Mystal, The Nation [March 11, 2021]
---- Derek Chauvin is the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd. I don't have to say "allegedly" killed, because I saw it. Floyd was alive, and then, eight minutes and 46 seconds later, he was not, and the only intervening event that happened was Chauvin's knee on his neck. Chauvin's trial started this week, and soon a jury, comprised mainly of white people (of this we can be almost certain), will tell us whether they think killing a Black man should be a crime. In a reasonable world, this trial would be perfunctory. Hell, in a reasonable world, there wouldn't even be a trial: Chauvin would have accepted some kind of plea deal. That's what most people do when they are caught on camera killing someone. But we don't live in a reasonable world—we live in a white one. Chauvin is white, and he's a cop. And his victim was Black. In most situations, that's all you need to get away with murder. [Read More]
Biden's Neoliberal American Rescue Health Plan: Covid-19 Showed us Why we Need Single Payer
---- Although health insurance affordability for the majority of US citizens remains a very large problem, Pres. Biden's latest health insurance plan wants to shift many more dollars into private, Wall Street insurance industry hands. … The highly respected British medical journal, "The Lancet", recently summarized the health insurance situation in the USA: "Although health care expenditure per capita is higher in the USA than in any other country, more than 37 million Americans do not have health insurance, and 41 million more have inadequate access to care. Efforts are ongoing to repeal/revise the Affordable Care Act which would exacerbate health-care inequities. By contrast, a universal system, such as that proposed in the Medicare for All Act, has the potential to transform the availability and efficiency of American health-care services.
… Furthermore, we estimate that ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68 000 lives and 1·73 million life-years every year compared with the status quo." [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Israel's arrest of Palestinian children picking vegetables sparks outrage
Akram Al-Waara in Occupied West Bank, Middle East Eye [March 11, 2021]
---- In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians live under Israeli military law, and when arrested they are charged and tried in military courts that have a conviction rate of over 99 percent against Palestinians. In comparison, Israeli settlers living in the West Bank in contravention of international law are subject to Israeli civilian law, and never come into contact with the military courts. While Israeli military and civilian law stipulates the minimum age of criminal responsibility as 12 years old, rights group Defence for Children International - Palestine (DCIP) says that Israeli forces routinely detain Palestinian children younger than this. According to the group, Israel detains around 700 Palestinian children a year. [Read More - and video] For what happened next, read Haaretz columnist Amira Hass, here. US Congresswoman Betty McCollum, who has fought for many years to get the USA to pay attention to how its money-for-Israel is used to imprison children, addressed these recent events here.
'Engaging the World': The 'Fascinating Story' of Hamas's Political Evolution
March 13, 2021]
---- On February 4, representatives from the Palestinian Movement, Hamas, visited Moscow to inform the Russian government of the latest development on the unity talks between the Islamic Movement and its Palestinian counterparts, especially Fatah. This was not the first time that Hamas's officials traveled to Moscow on similar missions. In fact, Moscow continues to represent an important political breathing space for Hamas, which has been isolated by Israel's Western benefactors. Involved in this isolation are also several Arab governments which, undoubtedly, have done very little to break the Israeli siege on Gaza. … Recently, we interviewed Dr. Daud Abdullah, the author of Engaging the World: The Making of Hamas's Foreign Policy. In this book, Hamas is viewed as a political actor, whose armed resistance is only a component in a complex and far-reaching strategy. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
(Video) The Burglary That Exposed COINTELPRO: Activists Mark 50th Anniversary of Daring FBI Break-in
From Democracy Now! [March 9, 2021]
---- Fifty years ago, on March 8, 1971, a group of eight activists staged one of the most stunning acts of defiance of the Vietnam War era when they broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole every document they found. The activists, calling themselves the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, began leaking shocking details about FBI abuses to the media. The documents exposed COINTELPRO, the FBI's secret Counterintelligence Program, a global, clandestine, unconstitutional practice of surveillance, infiltration and disruption of groups engaged in protest, dissent and social change. …To mark the 50th anniversary, we speak with Bonnie Raines, one of the activists involved in the heist, as well as Paul Coates, the founder and director of Black Classic Press and BCP Digital Printing, who was a target of FBI surveillance as part of COINTELPRO. "We already knew that we were being infiltrated. We knew that provocateurs were all throughout. We knew that the FBI had us under constant surveillance," says Coates. "But I don't think anyone at the time really knew the full extent of the program." [Read More]
