Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
May 2, 2021
Hello All – President Biden's speech last Friday rolling out his "America's Families Plan" and marking his first 100 days in office has been greeted enthusiastically by much of the policy and media elite, and by Democrats and Independents alike. Coming on the heels of the "American Recovery Plan" and the "American Jobs Plan," President Biden has put $6 billion in play in an effort to recover from the lost years of Trump and move forward from there. One could almost hear the nation breathing a sigh of relief that sanity had been restored to government. Certainly much remains to be done even if the Biden program were to become law. This was made clear in an interview with Rep. Jamaal Bowman appearing in the current issue of The Nation: needed reforms in immigration policy, healthcare, higher education financing and much else are barely touched by the programs announced by Biden so far. There is still much to do.
And yet … foreign policy – our wars and efforts for ending them – presents a very different picture and have been largely ignored by the liberal media. The USA is not really leaving Afghanistan, not really moving to end the suffering of people in Yemen, not really pulling troops out of Iraq and Syria, and not really pursuing a successful strategy to restore the Iran Nuclear Agreement. The USA remains committed to Israel's apartheid policy towards Palestinians and Trump's sponsorship of a faux president in Venezuela. The use of drones for surveillance and assassinations is poised for an upswing, and President Obama's ill-conceived program of "nuclear modernization" ($1 trillion) will continue, as will the Obama-Trump policy of playing with nuclear war by aggressively engaging with Russia. And most ominously, President Biden appears ready to implement President Obama's "pivot toward Asia," threatening war – "accidental" or not – with China, now our Main Enemy and the Main Danger. These dangers and miscalculations are off the Agenda as far as the mainstream media and political elite are concerned. Peace groups have our work cut out for us.
Finally, for a useful perspective on the chameleon-like war/peace politics of Joe Biden over the past half-century, I highly recommend Jeremy Scahill's "Empire Politician" project in The Intercept. Scahill also presented his findings on Friday's Democracy Now! Check it out.
News Note – Rally in Support of Older People in Prison
Yesterday, CFOW, RAPP (Release Aging People in Prison), and Decarcerate the Hudson Valley held a rally in support of two pieces of legislation that would give older prisoners (now about 20 percent of the prison population) an opportunity for a parole hearing, and would direct Parole Boards to consider "the person the prisoner had become," and not simply that nature of the crime committed long ago. To learn about the issues, go here. Susan Rutman posted some good pictures on our Facebook page, and Rep. Jamaal Bowman made an inspiring speech. Steve Siebert told us that more than two-thirds of prisoners from Westchester serving life sentences are people of color. To help these critical bills in the NYS legislature pass, please call your state legislators – in the Rivertowns, that's Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins (518-455-2585) and Assemblyman Tom Abinanti (518-455-5753) and ask that they support "Elder Parole" and "Fair and Timely Parole." Thanks!
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Taking the Covid Crisis into account, we meet (with safe distancing) for a protest/rally on Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6 pm, in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting by Zoom conference; if you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, Tuesday and Thursday at noon and/or Saturday at 5 pm, please send a return email. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. If you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
This week's Rewards for stalwart Newsletter readers feature some of Bessie Smith's "PG-rated" songs, part of her classic oeuvre but not played too often on NPR, etc. Perhaps you will enjoy her "Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl," "Kitchen Man," and "Wild About That Thing." And there's lots more on line.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
OUR WEEKLY READER
India's Covid catastrophe: 'We are witnessing a crime against humanity'
By Arundhati Roy, The Guardian [April 28, 2021]
---- It's hard to convey the full depth and range of the trauma, the chaos and the indignity that people are being subjected to. As this epic catastrophe plays out on our Modi-aligned Indian television channels, you'll notice how they all speak in one tutored voice. The "system" has collapsed, they say, again and again. The virus has overwhelmed India's health care "system".
The system has not collapsed. The "system" barely existed. The government – this one, as well as the Congress government that preceded it – deliberately dismantled what little medical infrastructure there was. This is what happens when a pandemic hits a country with an almost nonexistent public healthcare system. … The system hasn't collapsed. The government has failed. Perhaps "failed" is an inaccurate word, because what we are witnessing is not criminal negligence, but an outright crime against humanity. … My friends and I have agreed to call each other every day just to mark ourselves present, like roll call in our school classrooms. We speak to those we love in tears, and with trepidation, not knowing if we will ever see each other again. We write, we work, not knowing if we will live to finish what we started. Not knowing what horror and humiliation awaits us. The indignity of it all. That is what breaks us. [Read More]
The White Republic and the Struggle for Racial Justice
By Bob Wing, Organizing Upgrade [April 29. 2021]
[FB – I admire Bob Wing's work very much. In this essay he sets out the evolution of Our "white republic" in the framework of "racial capitalism," imo a compelling adaptation of the Marxist framework for the development of capitalism that squares with the legacy of centuries of slavery and racism that has shaped the USA.]
---- Far from recoiling at Trump's failed coup of January 6, the GOP is avidly regrouping around him and launching an even more ruthless campaign of voter disenfranchisement to seize power. The polarization between racist authoritarianism and a multiracial democracy is white-hot. There are many things that progressives need to do to win this historic fight. One of the less obvious, yet crucial, projects is to sharpen the conceptual understandings that guide our work. For example, the Black Lives Matter movement, flanked by immigrant and Native struggles, has energized public appreciation of "systemic racism" and renewed Black-led antiracist activism. Among progressives, "racial capitalism" has won an enthusiastic audience as more people realize that U.S. capitalism and racism are inseparable. … I also believe that our movement needs to more thoroughly digest and strategically act upon the harsh reality that racism is, first and foremost, imposed by white racist political power. In particular, the fight against racism is choked if it does not target white power and its constituent political institutions, especially the institutions that embody and exercise the power of the state. To help capture this, I will highlight the concept of the "white republic" and discuss its historical basis and strategic implications. By calling the U.S. a "white republic," I mean that the U.S. government was, from the very beginning, built by and for whites and as a dictatorship over Black and Native peoples. (It could also be called a "racist state," which is less provocative but has the same meaning, and I will use them interchangeably.) This is why, for centuries, "American" was nearly synonymous with "white," while African Americans were bereft "strangers in their own homeland." [Read More]
No Legal Objection, Per Se [Assassination Drones]
By E.M. Liddick, War on the Rocks [April 21, 2021]
---- The commander turns to me. "Any issues, Eric?" I am the legal advisor to a special operations task force conducting counter-terrorism operations. Our mission: locate and capture — or kill — terrorists. … The reports began surfacing almost a decade into the "Global War on Terror": Drone pilots operating from within the safety of the United States were beginning to show signs of post-traumatic stress. … Much has been written about the invisible wounds of combat, injuries suffered by, among others, infantry soldiers, medics, drone pilots, interrogators, special operations forces, and even journalists. Their wounds seem easy to comprehend, with their proximity to the action or direct causal link between the push of a button and manufactured death. But no one speaks about the potential for these wounds to affect others, like judge advocates, who find themselves far removed from the physical danger or the direct causal link. Yet, I feel these wounds within me. [Read More] To learn more about what war will be like in our very near future, read "Worried about the autonomous weapons of the future? Look at what's already gone wrong" by Ingvild Bode and Tom Watts, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [April 21, 2021]. [Link].
(Video) "A Threshold Crossed": Israel Is Guilty of Apartheid, Human Rights Watch Says for First Time
From Democracy Now! [April 30, 2021]
---- A major new report by Human Rights Watch says for the first time that Israel is committing crimes of apartheid and persecution in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The international human rights group says Israeli authorities dispossessed, confined and forcibly separated Palestinians. "For years, prominent voices have warned that apartheid lurked just around the corner. But it's very clear that that threshold has been crossed," says Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. "It's time for the international community to recognize the reality on the ground for what it is — apartheid and persecution — and take the steps necessary to end a situation of this gravity." [See the Program] To read the Human Rights Watch report, go here. For some good commentaries and analysis, read "Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, rights group says" by Oliver Holmes, The Guardian [April 27, 2021] [Link] and "Israel is an Apartheid State seeking Systemic Domination of Palestinians: Human Rights Watch" by [Link].
Alice Neel: People Come First
By Ben Davis, Artnet News [April 15, 2021]
[FB – The Metropolitan Museum of Art – "The Met" – has until August 1st an exhibit of American artist Alice Neel's paintings. Knowing little about Neel, I was unaware of her deep involvement in US left-wing politics; and this is also downplayed in the Museum's descriptions of her work. This interesting article sets the record straight and encourages a visit to The Met to see for myself.]
---- Alice Neel painted "the human comedy." It's a phrase she repeated often in interviews and in text, throughout her life. It is the title of one of the sections of "Alice Neel: People Come First," her outstanding and moving retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In one sense, what she meant is obvious. Memorable and interesting characters abound in her paintings, running from her many lovers to the luminaries of New York's Depression-era political and literary Left; from art celebrities like Andy Warhol to her acquaintances in the East Harlem neighborhood where she toiled in obscurity for decades; from the feminist activists and critics who championed her work in the '60s and '70s to her own self, shown naked, at 80, paintbrush in hand and gazing skeptically out at the viewer as if sizing them up—one of the most indelible of all 20th-century self-portraits. … Rather than trying to fit Neel into the framework of a rose-colored contemporary progressivism, it seems much more interesting—and more accurate—to consider how the artist's actual, passionately felt, difficult allegiances shaped her: the sacrifices she made in her life; the specifics of her art; and her relation to the New Left feminist movements of the 1960s and '70s that pulled her from obscurity, and that now probably overdetermine the reading of her work still. [Read More]
