CFOW Newsletter - Focus on prospects of hope for our future

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

November 7, 2021

 

Hello All – Let's admit it.  Things are not looking great.  A casual scan of the evening news shows the climate summit in Glasgow will not do what's needed to prevent climate disaster; the USA seems determined to intensify a new "Cold War" with China; and at home the Republicans and some conservative Democrats have stymied President Biden's moderately progressive program to move the country forward.  How do we deal with this?

 

For some, though of course not all, the "state of the world" has a significant effect on our feeling of personal well-being. Reports of "depression" among political activists are widespread, and may be true. The possibility of another four years of Trump & his agenda are deeply alarming, perhaps shutting the door on many things we need to do. Under the best of circumstances, we have a titanic struggle ahead of us to save the human species from self-destruction.

 

"Hope," of course, is by definition dealing with an unknown future.  If we knew what was likely to happen, we would be afraid or confident, depending on our knowledge.  But "hope" is a response to what we don't know will happen.  In the face of the Unknown, do we retire from the struggle or continue our efforts to change what we want to change? Noam Chomsky has addressed this personal dilemma often.  For example:

 

"Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it's unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there's a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours."

 

We may consider ourselves fortunate or unlucky that our lives coincide with a moment of great peril for our civilization.  Nevertheless, this is the hand that Life has dealt us.  My hope is that we can continue our efforts to save ourselves, and my further hope is that these efforts will bear fruit. As noted above, the choice is ours.

 

Remembering Andy Ryan

Our stalwart comrade Andy Ryan died last month after a long illness.  Until his last stay in the hospital, Andy was the leafleter at our weekly vigils and struggled to find ways to attend demonstrations in the City, to join his friends from Occupy and Extinction Rebellion, to do what he could to advance peace and justice, to Save the Planet. CFOW's photographer Susan Rutman has assembled a great collection of her pictures of Andy, which you can see on Facebook.  We will hold a memorial gathering for Andy today, at the Dobbs Historical Society; and if you are seeing this Newsletter early enough, you can watch the speaking on Zoom, here.  Andy Ryan, thank you.

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell.  If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email. Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page.  If you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706.  Thanks!

 

Rewards!

As the Rivertowns ties its knickers in knots over the question of whether to allow marijuana dispensaries, one's thoughts turn naturally to the hit TV series "Weeds," which had a great music playlist.  The Rewards this week are taken from that archive: here are "Terrible Things"  by April Smith; "Did You Tell Her?" by Betty; and "F**k Was I" by Jenny Owen Youngs.  "Weeds" was a nice show for the whole family. Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

CFOW Weekly Reader

 

Why does the media keep saying this election was a loss for Democrats? It wasn't

By Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian [November 6, 2021]

---- Pretty much anything that happens to the Democrats is a sign that they're weak and losing and should be worried, according to the storylines into which mainstream media tends to stuff news. Pretty much nothing, including losing, seems to signify that the Republicans are losers. In so habitually and apparently unconsciously fitting a wide array of new and varied facts into familiar old frameworks, the media shape the political landscape at least as much as they report on it. It's in the language. … It is true that the Democratic Party is large and chaotic with a wide array of political positions among its elected officials, which is what happens when you're a coalition imperfectly representing a wide array of voters, by class, race, and position from moderate to radical on the political spectrum. It's also true the US is a two-party system and the alternative at present is the Republican Party, which is currently a venal and utterly corrupt cult bent on many kinds of destruction. It's the party whose last leader, with the help of many Republicans still in Congress, produced a violent coup in an attempt to steal an election. A friend who is an independent Democratic party organizer remarked to me: "Democrats are analyzed completely differently from Republicans, mainly because Democrats try to govern and to enact policies that affect the entire country. The media don't cover the fact that Republicans don't govern and can't seem to report on what a party doesn't do and doesn't talk about." Looming in the background, of course, is the fact that Republicans themselves believe they are losers, because they've hitched their wagon to the shrinking demographic of angry white suburban and rural voters. Their efforts to suppress votes and undermine voting rights, control or replace election officials, gerrymander like crazy and overturn election results are the moves of a party that doesn't believe Republicans can win fair elections. All this is treated as more or less ordinary and mostly not very newsworthy. [Read More]

 

America's Toxic Militarism has left Afghanistan, but Afghan Women are still Living with its Consequences

By Ann Jones, Informed Comment [November 1, 2021]

---- I arrived in Kabul in early 2002 after the bombing had stopped, as a volunteer with a small NGO run by and for women. From my frigid room on the second floor of what had once been a house, I looked down upon a bungalow next door: the windows still painted white to prevent people from staring at the women confined there and to prevent the women from looking out. It seemed, whatever Laura Bush might have imagined, that they had not been set free by America's bombs. In fact, it took both time and courage for women in the capital and other Afghan urban centers to find one another and begin to make common cause. From 2002, I worked with some of those women for years, not so much teaching or leading them, as merely answering questions, offering friendship and assistance as they worked together to make their own way out of those confining burqas and into a new world of greater confidence. They chose their own projects, their own strategies, their own compatriots. Then they entered public life, denouncing violence against women, backing women candidates for the new legislature, and publicizing their work. They developed ways to help widows, child brides, new mothers, rape victims, battered women, incarcerated women, and the raft of girls who had tried and failed to commit suicide by setting themselves on fire. [Read More]

 

America is a Poor Advertisement for Democracy

By John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus [November 3, 2021]

---- In 988, Prince Vladimir was undecided about which of the three great monotheistic religions to bring to his Russian realm. He sent envoys to the lands of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. The envoys returned with stories of the three faiths. According to legend, Vladimir rejected Judaism and Islam because of their dietary restrictions. The envoy who returned from Byzantium, meanwhile, spoke of the beauty and pomp of the services in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. As a result, Vladimir chose what would become Orthodox Christianity and forced his subjects to convert accordingly. Today, more than a thousand years later, Russia remains a predominantly Orthodox nation. Now, imagine that the ruler of a contemporary country must decide on what political system to adopt. She sends envoys to the capitals of three different realms: Washington, Brussels, and Beijing. A month later, the envoys return full of stories. The envoy to Brussels describes the prosperous region of Europe…. [Read More]

 

War & Peace

We've All Pretended About Taiwan for 72 Years. It May Not Work Any Longer.

By Jon Schwarz, The Intercept [November 5, 2021]

---- Recently a Republican college student asked President Joe Biden during a town hall on CNN if he could "vow to protect Taiwan" from China. "Yes," Biden responded. Anderson Cooper, who hosted the town hall, followed up with Biden, asking, "Are you saying that the United States would come to Taiwan's defense if China attacked?" "Yes," Biden said, "we have a commitment to do that." There are several problems with this. First, the U.S. does not, in fact, have a commitment to do that. Second, the policy we do have is deliberately ambiguous, requiring that the U.S., China, and Taiwan pretend that certain aspects of reality do not exist. Third, the lifespan of this delicate situation may be drawing to a close, yet the most sensible way of resolving it will always be opposed by America, since it would crack the foundations of the worldwide U.S. Empire. In other words, the whole morass is one of the most insoluble in international relations, which is saying something. It's also a situation that is genuinely frightening, since it could lead to a large war between China and the U.S., both armed with nuclear weapons. [Read More] Also interesting/useful is "Alternatives to the Pentagon's China Nightmares" by Joseph Gerson, Committee for a SANE US-China Policy [November 6, 2021]

[Link].

 

The Climate Crisis

COP26: Can a Singing, Dancing Rebellion Save the World?

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Code Pink [November 3, 2021]

---- COP Twenty-six! That is how many times the UN has assembled world leaders to try to tackle the climate crisis. But the United States is producing more oil and natural gas than ever; the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere and global temperatures are both still rising; and we are already experiencing the extreme weather and climate chaos that scientists have warned us about for forty years, and which will only get worse and worse without serious climate action. And yet, the planet has so far only warmed 1.2° Celsius (2.2° F) since pre-industrial times. We already have the technology we need to convert our energy systems to clean, renewable energy, and doing so would create millions of good jobs for people all over the world. So, in practical terms, the steps we must take are clear, achievable and urgent. The climate crisis has exposed this system's structural inability to act in the real interests of humanity, even when our very future hangs in the balance. The greatest obstacle to action that we face is our dysfunctional, neoliberal political and economic system and its control by plutocratic and corporate interests, who are determined to keep profiting from fossil fuels even at the cost of destroying the Earth's uniquely livable climate. The climate crisis has exposed this system's structural inability to act in the real interests of humanity, even when our very future hangs in the balance. So what is the answer?  [Read More]

 

Two excellent speeches at COP26 – (Video) Greta Thunberg Accuses World Leaders of 'Pure Madness' for Climate Failures at COP26, by Julia Conley, Common Dreams [November 5, 2021] Link] and (Video) Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley: 2 Degrees of Global Warming Is "Death Sentence" for Millions," from Democracy Now! [November 5, 2021] [Link].

 

The State of the Union

India Walton Lost, but She Started Something That Could Last [Buffalo mayoral election]

By JoAnn Wypijewski, The Nation [November 4, 2021]

---- On November 2, Walton didn't succeed in becoming "the first socialist mayor of a major American city in 100 years"—an idea that was wildly oversold by the progressive press nationally and used as a cudgel locally by Mayor Byron Brown, the putative victor in the mayor's race, who ran as a write-in candidate after suffering a stunning loss to Walton in the Democratic primary last June. What Walton did was galvanize a new electoral coalition in the city—across colors, ethnicities, generations, neighborhoods, classes. It wasn't enough to win, and her official campaign organization was raggedy, but at the watch party, even as the outcome of the vote became clear, Alexandria and other young folk who'd been working with the independent group Our City Action Buffalo, making calls and knocking on doors, talking about the state of things with their neighbors, were dancing. They'd tasted the joy of politics, and they aren't going away. [Read More]

 

Israel/Palestine

"I Would Like to See The New York Times Wash the Blood Off Its Hands"

An interview with Mohammed El-Kurd, by Noura Erakat The Nation [November 5, 2021]

---- Mohammed El-Kurd is a Palestinian poet, writer, and activist who grew up in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. When he was 11 years old, settlers carrying rifles and backpacks, and supported by the Israeli army, took over half his house. This spring, El-Kurd returned to Palestine from the United States, where he was studying for his MFA, to fight a renewed push to expel his family and neighbors from their homes. In the process, he helped spark what has come to be known as the Unity Intifada. He has since been named one of the 100 most influential people of 2021 by Time, and The Nation recently tapped him as our inaugural Palestine correspondent. In October, he published a book of poetry, Rifqa. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. —Noura Erakat [Read More]

 

The Long Arm of Israeli Repression

By Yousef Munayyer, Foreign Policy [November 5, 2021]

---- When the Saudi dissident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated by a team of Saudi regime operatives in Istanbul in 2018, the world reacted with horror at the gruesome crime as well as Riyadh's chilling message of repression to dissenters around the world: We will try to silence you wherever you are. While this led to an increased focus on transnational repression—the effort by various countries to extend their repressive reach beyond their borders—the Israeli government's effort to muzzle its critics has flown largely under the radar. The recent designation of six leading Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations by Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz—which has been dismissed by European governments and recently exposed in the Israeli press as based on dubious evidence—is the most recent and perhaps most high-profile step in a long-running campaign aimed at silencing critics of Israel's human rights abuses around the globe. [Read More]

 

Our History

Ancient History Shows How We Can Create a More Equal World

By David Graeber and David Wengrow, New York Times [November 4, 2021]

[FB – David Graeber was one of the founders of Occupy.  Shortly before he died last year, he and his co-author completed a book, which will be published this week, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Graeber was an academic anthropologist and an anarchist, an interesting combo, which is reflected in this essay adapted from the new book.]

---- Most of human history is irreparably lost to us. Our species, Homo sapiens, has existed for at least 200,000 years, but we have next to no idea what was happening for the majority of that time. In northern Spain, for instance, at the cave of Altamira, paintings and engravings were created over a period of at least 10,000 years, between around 25,000 and 15,000 B.C. Presumably, a lot of dramatic events occurred during that period. We have no way of knowing what most of them were. This is of little consequence to most people, since most people rarely think about the broad sweep of human history anyway. They don't have much reason to. Insofar as the question comes up at all, it's usually when reflecting on why the world seems to be in such a mess and why human beings so often treat each other badly — the reasons for war, greed, exploitation and indifference to others' suffering. Were we always like that, or did something, at some point, go terribly wrong? [Read More]

 

 

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on the Climate Crisis and the COP26 meeting in Glasgow

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

October 31, 2021

 

Hello All – COP26 is in motion.  This is the 26^th meeting of the UN's "Conference of Parties" tasked with finding ways to stop or mitigate our Climate Crisis.  The 25^th meeting, in 2015 in Paris, resulted in an agreement of sorts, with nations pledging reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and other "greenhouse gases."  This is the agreement from which Trump withdrew and Biden rejoined; but even if all the nations of the world honored their pledges, the resulting increase in the Earth's temperature would rise well above the 1.5⁰ Celsius, or 2.7⁰ Fahrenheit, that is considered the maximum increase compatible with a sustainable living environment.

 

Can the meeting in Glasgow next week reverse this trend towards disaster?  It does not look good.  China makes vague promises about something that might happen in 10 or 20 years, and the USA seems unable to implement a "Green New Deal" in the near future.  Many other nations are wedded to coal; and the Captains of Fossil Fuels show no sign of listening to reason.  The Ships of State are piloted by madmen.

 

Needless to say, we have no choice but to keep up the fight. No one with children or grandchildren wants to pass on to them a world that is unlivable. And surely there can no longer be any question of human responsibility for rising world temperatures.  Yet the inertia of the world's governing classes and economic elites is astonishing.  What can we do to change this?

 

Here is some good/useful reading reflecting on our crisis as the Glasgow meeting begins:

 

An Open Letter to the Global Media by Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate

By Greta Thunberg  Vanessa Nakate, Time Magazine [October 30, 2021]

---- Melting glaciers, wildfires, droughts, deadly heatwaves, floods, hurricanes, loss of biodiversity. These are all symptoms of a destabilizing planet, which are happening around us all the time. Those are the kind of things you report about. Sometimes. The climate crisis, however, is much more than just this. If you want to truly cover the climate crisis, you must also report on the fundamental issues of time, holistic thinking and justice. So what does that mean? Let's look at these issues one by one. [Read More] And see this powerful video by Africa's Vanessa Nakate

 

COP26 Pledges Will Fail Unless Pushed by Mass Organizing

An interview with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin, Truthout [October 28, 2021]

---- Outcomes have always been uncertain. Defeatism is not an option; it translates as "species suicide, bringing down much of life on Earth with it." There are steps forward. Crucially, there is widespread understanding of the measures that can be taken, quite realistically, to avert impending disaster and move on to a much better world. It's all there to be acted upon. …There has also been considerable progress since COP21: sharp reduction in cost of sustainable energy, significant steps towards electrification and constant pressure to do more, mostly by the young, those who will have to endure the consequences of our folly and betrayal of their hopes. The recent global climate strike was a noteworthy example. … We're all in this together, not each alone trying to collect as many crumbs as we can for ourselves. That consciousness is essential for survival, at home and abroad. In particular, there must be an end to provocative confrontations with China and a serious rethinking of the alleged "China threat" — experiences we've been through before with dire consequences, now literally a matter of survival. The U.S. and China will cooperate in approaching the urgent crises of today, or we're doomed. The choices before us are stark. They cannot be evaded or ignored [Read More]

 

There's No Cheap Way to Deal With the Climate Crisis

By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica [October 28, 2021]

---- There will be no bargains with an overheating climate. As President Joe Biden takes an unfinished plan for U.S. emissions cuts to a global climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, next week, Congress and the country remain hung up on what that agenda, wrapped in the Build Back Better Act, might cost. The current price tag of nearly $1.9 trillion for climate and other social spending might seem enormous — though less so than the original $3.5 trillion plan. But over the long term, either would be a pittance. By zeroing in on those numbers, the public debate seems to have skipped over the economic ramifications of climate change, which promise to be historically disruptive — and enormously expensive. What we don't spend now will cost us much more later. …. The bills for natural disasters and droughts and power outages are already pouring in. Within a few decades, the total bill will be astronomical, as energy debts surge, global migration swells and industrial upheaval follows. The scale of the threat demands a new way of thinking about spending. Past budgets can no longer guide how governments spend money in the future. [Read More]

 

News Notes

Every 10 years, following the Census, congressional districts are reapportioned, with states gain population getting an additional seat or two in the House of Representatives at the expense of states that lose population.  New York will lose one seat, and preliminary maps from the Redistricting Commission propose to change CD 16 and CD 17 to the detriment of incumbents Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones.  The Redistricting Commission will hold a hearing in White Plains on Monday, November 8th.  CFOW will send out more info soon; but asap please sign up to testify in person or register so that you can testify via mail or email.

 

To counter the BDS movement, in 2016 Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order requiring state agencies to divest from companies that boycott Israel.  Last July, Ben & Jerry's ice cream announced that it will no longer sell its products in the Occupied West Bank.  Under international law, the West Bank and East Jerusalem are occupied territories, and not part of Israel; but last week NYS Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli moved to divest $111 million of state pension funds from Unilever, Ben & Jerry's parent company [Link]. CFOW is part of the NYS Freedom2Boycott Coalition, which sent a letter to the Comptroller arguing that "Your claim that Ben & Jerry's refusal to sell ice cream in Israeli settlements threatens NY state investments is an attack on free speech."

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell.  If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email. Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page.  If you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706.  Thanks!

 

Rewards!

This week's Rewards are inspired by some reading this week about the early Civil Rights Movement. Ella Baker was a critical force in the development of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the southern students who moved from sit-ins to voter registration. Her memory is celebrated in "Ella's Song" by the Resistance Revival Chorus.  In the early 1960s, the student movement was a "singing movement." The Freedom Singers grew out of the massive arrests in Albany, George in 1962; a year later they sang "We Shall Not Be Moved" at the famous March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.  The women from the Freedom Singers went on to form Sweet Honey in the Rock; here they sing "Woke Up The Morning with My Mind Stayed ono Freedom."  There's lots more on-line.  Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

CFOW Weekly Reader

 

How Biden is trying to rebrand the drone war

By Nick Turse, Responsible Statecraft [October 25, 2021]

---- For months, the White House and Pentagon have been touting the efficacy of "over the horizon" warfare — purportedly an accurate and effective targeting of terrorists in nations where the United States has few or no boots on the ground. "Terrorism has metastasized around the world," said President Joe Biden in August. "We have over-the-horizon capability to keep them from going after us." While peddled as innovative, experts say that over-the-horizon warfare is effectively a rebranding of the drone campaign that has been employed for almost 20 years in places like Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. It is also, they told Responsible Statecraft, likely to fail. … The debate regarding over-the-horizon warfare is occurring as the White House attempts to complete its new rules for overseas counterterrorism operations and the Pentagon is doing the same in terms of civilian casualties. All of it comes in the wake of the Taliban victory in Afghanistan and a parting drone strike there that calls the efficacy of remote warfare into question. [Read More]

 

Dangerous Brinkmanship Over Taiwan

By Michael T. Klare, Campaign for a SANE US-China Policy [October 27, 2021]

---- In recent weeks, the airwaves have been full of inflammatory rhetoric over Taiwan, increasing the risk that tensions over the island's status could provide the spark for a military conflict, even a catastrophic war, between the United States and China. … On this side of the Pacific, politicians from both parties were quick to condemn Xi's foreboding threats and to offer support for Tsai's uncompromising posture. Many Republicans demanded an ironclad US commitment to defend Taiwan in the event it was attacked by China, and President Biden, when asked by Anderson Cooper of CNN whether the United States would defend Taiwan under those circumstances, said, "Yes, we have a commitment to do that." [Read More]

 

Recently the Campaign for a SANE US-China Policy sponsored an excellent webinar on the US, China, and Taiwan.  Mike Klare was one of the presenters.  I thought is was very informative, and perhaps you will think so too. Here is the link.  If you need a passcode, it's C%d%4au1.

 

More Problems of War & Peace

Why Biden Should Continue Withdrawing After Afghanistan

By Trita Parsi, et al., The Nation [October 26, 2021]

---- One month after the Afghanistan pullout, it is still unclear whether we witnessed the beginning of a series of military withdrawals—as part of Biden's proclaimed end to the era of regime change wars—or if Afghanistan will remain a mere one-off. While Washington's foreign policy elite was up in arms against Biden's withdrawal, a closer accounting of the political and strategic fallout reveals an opening for Biden to make good on his promise to disentangle the United States from the Forever Wars and begin a broader US withdrawal from the Middle East, starting with Iraq and Syria. The political cost of withdrawing from the Middle East has largely already been paid, and the geopolitical consequences have been strongly positive. … The US military's continued presence in Syria is illegal and serves no vital US interest. After the defeat of ISIS, the Trump administration justified the presence of troops by claiming they were needed to counter Iranian influence. But countering Iranian influence—real or imagined—in Syria is not a vital US interest and Congress never approved such a mission. The same is true for Iraq. [Read More]

 

Top 3 Ways Biden can restore Iran Nuclear Deal if he Really Wants To

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [October 31, 2021]

---- The Biden administration is acting as though the Iran issue is a low priority. The attitude seems to be that if Iran wants to go back into compliance, we'll see what we can do for them. Maybe. Maybe, we'll just screw them over anyway. In actuality, the US is on a war footing with Iran and is strangling its economy with no shred of justification in international law. It is dangerous to back an enemy into a corner that way, and wars have been started by less. Biden is risking conflagration in the Middle East that could spiral out of control at the drop of a hat. [Read More]  Also important for context: "Revealed: Biden rejected way forward in Iran deal talks" by Trita Parsi, Responsible Statecraft  [Link].

 

Civil Liberties

(Video) Wikileaks' Julian Assange Must Not Be Extradited for Exposing War Crimes in Afghanistan

From Democracy Now [October 28, 2021]

---- As an appeals court in London is deciding whether Wikileaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to the United States for publishing classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes, we go to London to speak with British writer and activist Tariq Ali. Assange faces up to 175 years in prison in the U.S. under the Espionage Act for publishing classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ali calls the case "a political trial" and a "punitive attempt by the British government … to try and punish Julian on behalf of the United States." [See the Program]

 

The State of the Union

Another Buffalo Is Possible

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New Yorker [October 29, 2021]

---- In the past year, Buffalo has been back in the national spotlight for two disparate but connected reasons. The first came in the summer of 2020, during a Black Lives Matter protest, when reporters captured footage of a seventy-five-year-old man named Martin Gugino speaking heatedly to police. Apparently provoked by Gugino's remarks, an officer shoved him to the ground, cracking his skull and causing a brain injury that would leave him hospitalized for a month. Two officers were suspended with pay and charged with assault. Almost a year later, a local housing activist, India Walton, stunned Buffalo's Democratic establishment by winning the mayoral primary, defeating the four-term incumbent, Byron Brown. The first African American mayor of the city, Brown has been a favorite of businesses and developers, presiding over a transformation of Buffalo's downtown. Walton would be an unlikely successor. A Black woman who identifies as a democratic socialist, she became a mother at fourteen, as well as a high-school dropout and a welfare recipient. She survived sexual assault and domestic violence. Walton went on to become a nurse, but she left her profession to work as a community organizer. Even in the midst of a general election, she is outspoken about democratic socialism. [Read More]

 

Israel/Palestine

It is the Israeli Occupation of the Stateless Palestinians that is the settler Colonial State, and, yes, Apartheid

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [October 30, 2021]

---- Apologists for Israeli policy have taken umbrage at the characterization of Israel as a settler colonial state that practices Apartheid. … Israel proper, within 1967 borders, most resembles the US, Mexico and Australia in this regard, in organizing the settler population in the European manner with parliamentary rule and uneasily incorporating the indigenous population (American Indians, Mexican Indios, Aboriginals, and Palestinians), giving them an ambiguous and lesser status as a discriminated-against population. The apologists also cover up the 1947-48 expulsion by Jewish immigrants from Europe of over half of the indigenous Palestinians from what became Israel, creating what have today grown to be some 10 million refugees. But it is the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian territories which Israel seized by aggressive invasion in 1967 that most resembles other settler-colonial states.  [Read More]  Also informative is this Democracy Now! segment from last May – "'It Is 'Apartheid': Rights Group B'Tselem on How Israel Advances Jewish Supremacy Over Palestinians," with Noura Erakat [Link].

 

Our History

"If Black Women Were Free": An Oral History of the Combahee River Collective

By Marian Jones, The Nation [October 29, 2021]

---- Last year, fierce protests erupted across the US out of rage against austerity, a botched Covid-19 response, and the brutal murder of George Floyd. Demonstrators blocked traffic, occupied public spaces, and destroyed police property. At the same time, there was an upswell in mutual aid, rent strikes, and labor organizing. This surge of activism and organizing built upon the history and analysis of radical Black feminism, especially the Boston-based Combahee River Collective, who in 1977 authored the landmark Combahee River Collective Statement. The collective recognized the necessity of working across race, gender, sexual orientation, and class while emphasizing the contributions of queer Black feminists to Black liberation and feminism. The group's political strategy was to form coalitions with other activist groups while retaining their independence as Black women. They were socialists who rejected capitalism and imperialism, but wrote in their declaration that they were not convinced that "a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation."They coined the term "identity politics" to describe their unique position as Black women facing a variety of oppressions. The statement emphasized economic, gender, and racial repression and made fighting on all fronts key to its emancipatory politics. [Read More]

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on the Climate Crisis and the need for action

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

October 24, 2021

 

Hello All – Today is UN Day, the 76^th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations.  In Westchester, the United Nations Association is building out on the UN commitment to sustainable development and ending the climate crisis with a program called ""No Time for Plan B on Climate: We Must Act NOW! What Cities, Schools and YOU can do to Help!" UN flags are also flying in Hastings, and in front of the city halls of Mt. Vernon and White Plains. (To learn more about today's program, go here.)

 

As the world prepares for the 26^th Conference of Parties meeting in Glasgow, Scotland to discuss (and act on!) ways to mitigate our climate crisis, grassroots activists around the world are doing what they can to underscore the urgency of this meeting.  At the last climate meeting in Paris in 2015, world leaders cobbled together commitments that would supposedly keep the temperature of the Earth from rising more than 1.5⁰ Celsius, (2.7⁰ Fahrenheit) above our pre-industrial-era temperature. The only way this could be done, it was understood, was by stopping the emission of excessive amounts of carbon dioxide (or similar "greenhouse gases" such as methane). Yet in the last 6 years, little progress has been made, and humans now stand at the brink of a global-warming catastrophe that is irreversible and will drastically change the environment in which we, along with plants and animals, have evolved over millions of years.

 

In the last 50 years, and not least during the current session of Congress, it has become clear that the drivers of rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are the burning of fossil fuels, mainly coal, oil, and gas.  And it has also become clear that, over the last half-century, that the owners and directors of fossil fuel corporations have understood, and have suppressed and fought against public understanding, that to continue to burn fossil fuels is to choose a crisis for human existence.

 

And yet the fossil-fuel Behemoth grinds on, converting the futures of billions of humans into riches to fill the pockets of a favored few.  Somehow, no one can lift their hand to stop this runaway car; it is as if we are, like deer, caught in the headlights of our destruction.  Time and tide – and global warming – wait for no one.  Are we really incapable of organizing ourselves to stop this nightmare?

 

News Notes

In the case of imprisoned journalist Julian Assange, the extradition proceedings – by which the USA hopes to snatch Assange from his Belmarsh prison in London and deposit him for life in a dark hole – resume in London's High Court on Wednesday.  That is, just a short time after revelations that the CIA plotted to kidnap and/or assassinate Assange while he sought political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, President Biden's lawyers will try to persuade the judge that nothing bad could possibly happen to Assange if he were incarcerated in the USA.  To learn more about Assange, the CIA, etc., check out the informative Belmarsh Tribunal, whose witnesses include Jeremy Corbyn, Edward Snowden, and many more.

 

Economic sanctions are often presented as an alternative to war, but they are actually war by other means.  Their purpose is to inflict civilian casualties, following the unlikely theory that an economically devastated people will rise up against their rulers, demanding compliance with whatever the USA wants.  The case of US sanctions against Venezuela was recently investigated by UN Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan. Presenting her findings at the 48th UN Human Rights Council session on September 15, Douhan stated that the wide-reaching sanctions program against Venezuela has had a "devastating" effect on the entire population's living conditions. For more about the effects of sanctions on Venezuela, go here.

 

In NYC an interesting Tribunal is underway, to be concluded tomorrow.  It is called "In the Spirit of Mandela," and in Tribunal fashion it indicts the alleged guilty parties, presents many witnesses who have experienced the mailed fist of white supremacy, and then presents the evidence heard to a jury for a verdict. The first session focused on the experience of political prisoners, in the USA and throughout the world, and included many former Black Panthers and other revolutionaries who have suffered years of imprisonment.  To learn more about this interesting project, check out "'In the Spirit of Mandela': International Tribunal Seeks to Charge U.S. Government with Crimes Against Humanity" by Bob Lederer and Matt Meyer, Covert Action Magazine [October 18, 2021] [LInk].

 

Finally, perhaps you, like me, was once riveted by Frank Herbert's novel Dune. Apparently I completely missed the point of the story back then.  At any rate, historian Juan Cole has written an interesting review of the novel, its context, and its transformation into a major Hollywood film: "At its heart, Dune is a Tragedy, and a Warning against Trumpism." [Link]

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell.  If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email. Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page.  If you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706.  Thanks

 

Rewards!

CFOW's beloved comrade and stalwart Andy Ryan died this week after a long illness.  In his memory, CFOW's photographer Susan Rutman put together a package of pictures of Andy and posted them on our Facebook page.  Covering most of the last decade, Susan's pictures also illuminate some of the things CFOW has done, and the community we've built in doing them. 

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

CFOW Weekly Reader

 

Do You Want a New Cold War?

By David Vine, Tom Dispatch [October 22, 2021]

---- Before it's too late, we need to ask ourselves a crucial question: Do we really — I mean truly — want a new Cold War with China? Because that's just where the Biden administration is clearly taking us. If you need proof, check out last month's announcement of an "AUKUS" (Australia, United Kingdom, U.S.) military alliance in Asia. … If you're too young to have lived through the original Cold War as I did, imagine going to sleep fearing that you might not wake up in the morning, thanks to a nuclear war between the world's two superpowers (in those days, the United States and the Soviet Union). Imagine walking past nuclear fallout shelters, doing "duck and cover" drills under your school desk, and experiencing other regular reminders that, at any moment, a great-power war could end life on Earth. Do we really want a future of fear? Do we want the United States and its supposed enemy to once again squander untold trillions of dollars on military expenditures while neglecting basic human needs, including universal health care, education, food, and housing, not to mention failing to deal adequately with that other looming existential threat, climate change? [Read More]

 

Our Future vs. Neoliberalism

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Code Pink [October 20, 2021]

---- In country after country around the world, people are rising up to challenge entrenched, failing neoliberal political and economic systems, with mixed but sometimes promising results. … In the 1980s, U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher often told the world, "There is no alternative" to the neoliberal order she and President Reagan were unleashing. After only one or two generations, the self-serving insanity they prescribed and the crises it has caused have made it a question of survival for humanity to find alternatives. Around the world, ordinary people are rising up to demand real change. The people of Iraq, Chile and Bolivia have overcome the incredible traumas inflicted on them to take to the streets in the thousands and demand better government. Americans should likewise demand that our government stop wasting trillions of dollars to militarize the world and destroy countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, and start solving our real problems, here and abroad. People around the world understand the nature of the problems we face better than we did a generation or even a decade ago. Now we must overcome demoralization and powerlessness in order to act. It helps to understand that the demoralization and powerlessness we may feel are themselves products of this neoliberal system, and that simply overcoming them is a victory in itself. As we reject the inevitability of neoliberalism and Thatcher's lie that there is no alternative, we must also reject the lie that we are just passive, powerless consumers. As human beings, we have the same collective power that human beings have always had to build a better world for ourselves and our children – and now is the time to harness that power. [Read More]

 

'It's a nightmare I can't shake': The lives robbed by Israel's Gaza assault

By Orly Noy, +972 [Israel] [October 21, 2021]

---- "The horror in the Gaza Strip has been going on for so many years. We have reported on the blockade, the poverty, the wars. We have shared stories of life without water, without electricity, without hope. We have explained what international law requires and what conscience dictates. Now, words fail us." This admission opens the latest report from Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, which features 35 testimonies from Palestinian residents of Gaza who experienced the inferno of Israel's 11-day bombing campaign this past May. For Israeli Jews, May 2021 is remembered as a month of "clashes," primarily in East Jerusalem and some so-called mixed cities. Thanks to the Israeli media's disproportionate coverage of violent acts by Palestinian citizens, the period has been inscribed in their collective memory as a month of Jewish victimization. Israel's deliberate violent escalation is long forgotten; Gaza, as always, vanished from our consciousness the moment the rocket fire stopped. The so-called "Operation Guardian of the Walls" became just another name among a list of grotesque titles Israel has given to its habitual attacks on the strip. Palestinians in Gaza, however, experienced 11 days in which the gates of hell opened once more, suffering one of the deadliest and most destructive assaults on the strip to date. [Read More]

 

The State of the Union

(Video) Meet India Walton: Black Socialist on Democratic Ticket for Buffalo Mayor Snubbed by NY Dem Party

From Democracy Now! [October 20, 2021]

---- As early voting kicks off Saturday in a nationally watched mayoral race in Buffalo, New York, we speak with India Walton, who shocked the Democratic establishment when she defeated four-term Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown in the Democratic primary. Since then, the self-described socialist has faced stiff opposition from within her party, with many top Democrats in the state, including Governor Kathy Hochul and Senator Chuck Schumer, refusing to endorse her. State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs even compared Walton to former KKK leader David Duke in an interview, for which he later apologized. Walton is a Black single mother, a registered nurse and longtime community activist. If elected on November 2, she will be the first mayor of a major American city in decades who identifies as a socialist. Walton says she is "hyper-focused" on her campaign and does not want to take part in the vitriol of her opponents. "I am running for mayor of Buffalo as an expression of love," Walton adds. [See the Program]  For some deeper background on Walton and Buffalo, read "India Walton Didn't Come Out of Nowhere: Buffalo's transformation is the fruit of years of struggle" by JoAnn Wypijewski, The Nation [October 19, 2021] [Link].

 

Israel/Palestine

Palestinian Rights Groups That Document Israeli Abuses Labeled "Terrorists" by Israel

By Robert Mackey, The Intercept [October 22 2021]

---- An order signed by Israel's defense minister on Friday designated six leading Palestinian human rights groups "terror organizations," marking an escalation in Israel's effort to deprive independent agencies that document Israeli military abuses in the occupied territories of funding from U.S. foundations and European nations. Israeli law criminalizes providing funds to groups designated as terrorist organizations and authorizes the police "to prevent activities by or in support of terrorist organizations, including organizing meetings, marches, or training." The rights groups uniformly rejected the charge — made in an unsigned statement from Israel's internal security service and its bureau of counter-terror financing — that all six are secretly run by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out bombings and hijackings starting in the late 1960s. Because the Israeli agencies said the designations were based on secret evidence that was "concealed for security reasons," the rights groups were given no opportunity to rebut an accusation that struck their many international and Israeli partners as transparently false. [Read More]  Also illuminating is "Becoming Typical Mideast Dictatorship, Apartheid Israel Declares Palestinian Human Rights Groups 'Terrorists;" by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [October 23, 2021] [Link].  For the New York Times' account, go here.

 

Our History

Songs of Justice, Songs of Power

By Tom Morello, New York Times [October 22, 2021]

---- Harmonizing and hell-raising, rhythm and rebellion, poetry and politics, singing and striking. The Industrial Workers of the World — the shock troops of the early-20th-century labor movement — virtually invented the protest song for the modern age. The I.W.W. was formed in 1905, advocating a militant revolutionary unionism, a cocktail of socialist, syndicalist and anarchist labor theory put into practice. It was always known as a singing union, and its songs were written by hobos and the homeless, itinerant workers and immigrants. I.W.W. songs — like "The Preacher and the Slave" and "Solidarity Forever" — looked an unjust world square in the eye, sliced it apart with satire, dismantled it with rage and then, with mighty sing-along choruses, raised the roofs of union halls and holding cells, "from San Diego up to Maine, in every mine and mill." … What's the antidote for divide and conquer? Work together, fight together, sing together. [Read More]