| Blog of the Week:
Feature story on Cleveland's Coops That Create Jobs
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Lost Writings of SDS..
Revolutionary Youth the the New Working Class: The Praxis Papers, the Port Authority Statement, the RYM Documents and other Lost Writings of SDS
Edited by Carl Davidson
Changemaker, 273pp, $22.50
For the full contents, click the link and view 'Preview' under the cover graphic.
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Fred Shuttlesworth-- Presente!
An Appreciation written by Charlie Orrock
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By Randy Shannon, CCDS
choice "Everyone has the right to work, to free of employment, to
just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against
unemployment."
- United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948
I. Introduction
The "Great Recession" that began in 2007 has caused the greatest
percent of job losses since the Great Depression of 1929. This crisis is
the end of an era of unrestrained 'neo-liberal' capitalism that became
public policy during the Reagan administration. The crisis marks a new
level of instability with the growth of a global financial elite that
targeted US workers and our trade unions after World War II. |
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Order Our
Full Employment Booklets
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Capitalism may well collapse under its own excesses, but what would one
propose to replace it? Margaret Thatcher's mantra was TINA...There Is No
Alternative. David Schweickart's vision of "Economic Democracy"
proposes a serious alternative. Even more fundamentally, it opens the
door to thinking about alternatives. His may or may not turn out to be
the definitive "successor system," but he is a leader in breaking out of
the box. |
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Quick Links...
CCDS Discussion
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Solidarity Economy:
What It's All About
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Lenin Rediscovered:
What Is To Be Done in Context
By Lars T. Lih
Haymarket Books
880 Pages
$58.95
Why 'What Is To Be Done' Is a Champion of Democracy. Appendix includes a new translation of the original work.
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Tropic of Chaos
By Christian Parenti 
Nation Books $18.95 at Powell's |
Planet of Slums
by Mike Davis
Verso
Paperback
List Price: $19.95
Our Price: $8.00
Buy Now
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Carl Davidson's Latest Book:
New Paths to Socialism
Essays on Mondragon, Marx, Gramsci and the Green and Solidarity Economies |
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An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...
 OWS: Fired up!
Energizer Bunny
for Wider Allies...
We're the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism...Do you have friends who should see this? Pass it on...Do you have a blog of your own? Others you love to read every day? Well, this is a place where you can share access to them with the rest of your comrades. Just pick your greatest hits for the week and send them to us at carld717@gmail.com!
Most of all, it's urgent that you oppose austerity, make solidarity with the Occupy! movement and end the wars! We're doing more than ever, and have big plans. So pay your dues, make a donation and become a sustainer. Do it Now! Check the link at the bottom... |
OWS Inspires Unions to Embrace Bold Tactics
By Steven GreenhouseNew York Times
Nov. 8, 2011 - Organized labor's early flirtation with Occupy Wall Street is starting to get serious.
Union leaders, who were initially cautious in embracing the Occupy movement, have in recent weeks showered the protesters with help - tents, air mattresses, propane heaters and tons of food. The protesters, for their part, have joined in union marches and picket lines across the nation. About 100 protesters from Occupy Wall Street are expected to join a Teamsters picket line at the Sotheby's auction house in Manhattan on Wednesday night to back the union in a bitter contract fight.
Labor unions, marveling at how the protesters have fired up the public on traditional labor issues like income inequality, are also starting to embrace some of the bold tactics and social media skills of the Occupy movement.
Last Wednesday, a union transit worker and a retired Teamster were arrested for civil disobedience inside Sotheby's after sneaking through the entrance to harangue those attending an auction - echoing the lunchtime ruckus that Occupy Wall Street protesters caused weeks earlier at two well-known Manhattan restaurants owned by Danny Meyer, a Sotheby's board member.
Organized labor's public relations staff is also using Twitter, Tumblr and other social media much more aggressively after seeing how the Occupy protesters have used those services to mobilize support by immediately transmitting photos and videos of marches, tear-gassing and arrests. The Teamsters, for example, have beefed up their daily blog and posted many more photos of their battles with BMW, US Foods and Sotheby's on Facebook and Twitter.
"The Occupy movement has changed unions," said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. "You're seeing a lot more unions wanting to be aggressive in their messaging and their activity. You'll see more unions on the street, wanting to tap into the energy of Occupy Wall Street."...(Click title for more)
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Election Day 2011: In State After State, 'Remarkable Wins for Progressive Politics'
Summary by Democracy Now!
Advocates for labor, women's and immigration rights are celebrating a number of key victories in Tuesday's state elections.
In Ohio, voters defeated Republican Gov. John Kasich's controversial limits on the collective bargaining rights of state employees.
In Arizona, Russell Pearce, the architect of the state's controversial anti-immigration law has lost his state senate seat in an unprecedented recall vote.
Meanwhile, in Maine, voters have defeated a Republican measure that barred same-day voter registration on election day. For analysis, we're joined from Ohio by reporter John Nichols of The Nation magazine.
"There were many political consultants, political insiders, who said, 'Oh, don't pick this fight.' You'll note that President Obama and the Washington Democrats stayed clear of this battle in Ohio," Nichols says. "But in Ohio on the ground, this grassroots movement, which put literally thousands and thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, at the doors, turned back a national conservative agenda. That's a big deal."... [Click title for full broadcast, which includes rush transcript]
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2011 Vote: Emerging Front vs Finance Capital
Victories in Ohio, Mississippi, Maine andArizona Provide Seven Key Lessons for 2012
By Robert Creamer
Progressive America Rising via Huffington Post
Nov. 9, 2011 - A year ago the Empire struck back. Right Wing money capitalized on anger at the economic stagnation that their own policies caused just two years before. They brought a halt to the hard-won progressive victories that marked the first two years of Barack Obama's presidency.
Last night the progressive forces tested some of the weapons and tactics they will use in next year's full-blown counter offensive. They worked very, very well.
Progressives won key elections in Ohio, Maine, Mississippi, and Arizona.
The importance of yesterday's labor victory in Ohio cannot be overstated. It could well mark a major turning point in the history of the American labor movement -and the future of the American middle class.
The people of Ohio rejected right wing attempts to destroy public sector unions by an astounding 61% to 39%. Progressives in Ohio won 82 out of 88 counties.
In his "concession," the author of the union-stripping bill, Governor John Kasich, looked like a whipped dog. He was.
Last night's victory will have a direct and immediate impact on the livelihoods of thousands of middle class state employees in Ohio. It will stall similar attempts to destroy unions in other states. It will turbo-charge the campaign to oust Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who jammed a union-stripping measure through his own legislature. And it will massively weaken Kasich and other Republicans in Ohio.
But last night's victory also carried critical lessons for the progressive forces throughout America as we prepare for the crossroads, defining battle of 2012.
Lesson #1: Creating a Movement. The industrial state labor battles that culminated in last night's overwhelming Ohio success transformed the image of unions from a large bureaucratic "special interest" that negotiates for workers and are part of the "establishment" -- into a movement to protect the interests of the American Middle Class.
The Republican Governors who began these battles hoped to make a bold move to destroy union power. In fact, they have succeeded in creating their worst nightmare -- the rebirth of a labor movement.
That is critically important for the future of unions - which by any measure provide the foundation of progressive political power in the United States. It also provides an important lesson for every element of the Progressive community. .... (Click title for more)
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Nonviolence, Trashing Property and Street Tactics
Open Letter to the Occupy Movement:
Why We Need Agreements
From the Alliance of Community Trainers, ACT
The Occupy movement has had enormous successes in the short time since September when activists took over a square near Wall Street. It has attracted hundreds of thousands of active participants, spawned occupations in cities and towns all over North America, changed the national dialogue and garnered enormous public support. It's even, on occasion, gotten good press!
Now we are wrestling with the question that arises again and again in movements for social justice-how to struggle. Do we embrace nonviolence, or a 'diversity of tactics?' If we are a nonviolent movement, how do we define nonviolence? Is breaking a window violent?
We write as a trainers' collective with decades of experience, from the anti-Vietnam protests of the sixties through the strictly nonviolent antinuclear blockades of the seventies, in feminist, environmental and anti-intervention movements and the global justice mobilizations of the late '90s and early '00s.
We embrace many labels, including feminist, anti-racist, eco-feminist and anarchist. We have many times stood shoulder to shoulder with black blocs in the face of the riot cops, and we've been tear-gassed, stun-gunned, pepper sprayed, clubbed, and arrested,
While we've participated in many actions organized with a diversity of tactics, we do not believe that framework is workable for the Occupy Movement.
Setting aside questions of morality or definitions of 'violence' and 'nonviolence' - for no two people define 'violence' in the same way - we ask the question:...(Click title for more)
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OWS Think Piece: An Opening to Worker-Occupation of Factories & Enterprises in the U.S.
By Peter Ranis
MRZine.org
The Social and Solidarity Economy Context
The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has clearly expressed the hopes and great potentialities of the working class both in the U.S. and globally. The 99 percent are speaking up and saying that they will no longer do the bidding of the 1 percent.
In essence it is the revolt of the masses, the underclass in their many guises. People in NYC's Zuccotti Park are doing incredible things autonomously and with purpose. They are developing an island of political and economic autonomy that draws attention to what people can do on their own and for themselves. From many walks of life they are standing up and speaking with measured purpose and being heard.
This is a valuable lesson for the American working class and their right to stand up and defend their jobs in factories and enterprises from being "disappeared."
The crash and recession of 2008 only heightened the concerns that we have about the capacity and willingness of liberal capital to provide for justice and equity for the overwhelming majority of Americans. The lack of societal concern by the large hierarchical capitalist firms and financial institutions has never been so clearly manifested. OWS represents a momentous breakthrough that demonstrates that we can indeed come together at this crucial time as workers, social movements, intellectuals, and labor unions, and use this critical opening to move forward to confront capital-labor relations throughout America.
The U.N. has declared 2012 the International Year of Cooperatives. This only adds to the imperative for exploring the many ways that worker-managed factories and enterprises can be seen as an alternative to traditional capitalist firms and companies.
Cooperatives as worker-managed enterprises, for a number of institutional and societal reasons, represent alternative productive vehicles attempting to override the impact of deindustrialization, globalization, and the neoliberal ideological offensive.
The social economy and solidarity relationships, represented by worker-managed enterprises, need to be examined as focal points for working-class and middle-class capacities to sustain the possibilities of a productive worker-centered culture. This has become ever more urgent given the shrinkage of labor union density, especially the decline of private-sector organized workers. Worker-managed factories and enterprises are called for particularly at this moment with the declining industrial base of the American working class. Perhaps upward of 25% of the American industrial heartland lies idle with the potential for unemployed workers to create cooperatives and other self-managed enterprises to fill that vacuum. But they need not be limited to laborers. ...(Click title for more)
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Book Review: All the Single (Black) Ladies
Ralph Richard Banks dares to wonder
Is Marriage for White People?
By Steven Thrasher
The Village Voice
Few books will get as many raised eyebrows from your fellow straphangers as reading Is Marriage for White People? on the subway will. The title alone draws you in, though author Ralph Richard Banks, a Stanford Law professor in town last week for an event at Cardozo Law School, admits that the original name was "totally boring" when he began writing the book as an academic work about a decade ago.
Banks lays down a hard reality: Black people simply are marrying each other a whole lot less than white people are. Regardless of income, class, and education, African-American marriage rates have been plummeting for decades. Black women, three times more likely than white women to never marry, are the least-married demographic in the nation.
Writing about this honestly has meant airing some dirty laundry for Banks, which has gotten both positive and queasy reactions from readers.
"A professional black woman came up to me at a recent event," he says, "and sighed, and said, 'Thank you for saying this out loud.'" She was referring to some hard truths: that there's a dearth of black men available in the general population because of high rates of incarceration; that on college campuses, there are two black women for every black man; and that because black men are so much more likely to intermarry racially, many black women end up alone....(Click title for more)
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Vietnam in HD - 3 Night Event on History Channel Featured Veterans Telling their Own Stories
From the History Channel
It's not the war you know. It's the war they fought.
Two years after the release of its landmark Emmy-winning series WWII in HD, HISTORY shifts its focus to a new generation and one of the most controversial chapters in American history, the Vietnam War. Vietnam in HD will immerse viewers in the sights, the sounds and the stories of the Vietnam War as it has never before been seen. Thousands of hours of uncensored footage--much of it shot by soldiers in action--will detail every critical chapter of the conflict. The war will unfold onscreen through the gripping firsthand accounts of 13 brave men and women who were forever changed by their experience in Vietnam.
Viewers will meet Karl Marlantes, a Marine whose unit saw some of the fiercest fighting of the war, and whose 2010 novel Matterhorn is considered one of the finest books written about the Vietnam War; Arthur Wiknik, a draftee who led his squad to safety during the 10-day assault on "Hamburger Hill"; Bob Clewell, a pilot in the Comancheros assault helicopter battalion who barely survived an ill-fated mission into Laos; Charles Brown, an African-American Army sergeant who led missions through the deadly jungles of Pleiku and Dak To; Elizabeth Allen, an Army nurse who insisted on frontline duty and valiantly saved lives during the Tet Offensive; Joe Galloway, a United Press International reporter who was awarded a Bronze Star with V for Valor for rescuing wounded soldiers under fire at Ia Drang; Anne Purcell, wife of the highest-ranking Army officer to be held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam; and Barry Romo, an Army infantryman who was transformed from a gung-ho patriot and war hero to staunch anti-war activist.
This six-hour series is narrated by Golden Globe Award winner Michael C. Hall and voiced by some of Hollywood's top talents:
Adrian Grenier as Barry Romo
Edward Burns as Joe Galloway
Kevin Connolly as Keith Connolly
Blair Underwood as Charles Brown
Tempestt Bledsoe as Elizabeth Allen
Jerry Ferrara as Raymond Torres
Zachary Levi as Karl Marlantes
James Marsden as Arthur Wiknik
Jennifer Love Hewitt as Anne Purcell
Glenn Howerton as Donald DeVore
Armie Hammer as Gary Benedetti
Dylan McDermott as Jim Anderson
Dean Cain as Bob Clewell
(Click title for more)
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Become a CCDS member today!
 The
time is long past for 'Lone Rangers'. Being a socialist by your self is
no fun and doesn't help much. Join CCDS today--$36 regular, $48
household and $18 youth.
Better yet, beome a sustainer at $20 per month,
and we'll send you a copy of Jack O'Dell's new book, 'Climbing Jacobs
Ladder,' drawing on the lessons of the movement in the South in the
1950s and 1960s.
Solidarity, Carl Davidson, CCDS |
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