Rare Oglesby Speech: Summing up the World, the U.S. and Ourselves
90 minutes of an archived speech at Antioch College from the 1960s, now in mp3s
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Blog of theWeeK:
Ideas and Strategies from young workers trying to solve old and new problems
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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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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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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 Courage in the
Face of Evictions...
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... |
Inside the Student Movement: Undeterred by Crackdown, Activists Gear Up for Bigger Actions
 One week after arrests and beatings of students at CUNY and pepper-spraying at UC Davis, students plan bigger actions to fight tuition hikes and policing of education.
By Manissa McCleave Maharawal Alternet.org
Nov. 27, 2011 - Today, Monday, is not only a day of action against university budget cuts in New York City but also around the country, at places like UC-Davis, where last week students were violently pepper sprayed during a peaceful protest. Here these same students are courageously calling for a student strike that will shut down the campus and in which rallies and teach-ins about budget cuts, police brutality and non-violent action will replace normal campus activities.
At UCLA there are planned protests at the Board of Regents meeting in order to force that body to change their agenda to better reflect student concerns like increasing tuition and decreased funding for the entire UC system. These actions will be done with the solidarity and support of students around the country, from Tufts University in Massachusetts to the rural Kentucky-based Owensboro Community and Technical College.
These actions also occur in the context of a global student movement: for weeks in Chile protesters, spearheaded by students demanding more affordable education, have been expressing dissent against President Pinera's capital market reforms. In solidarity with these protests students around Latin America, in Argentina, Columbia, and Peru have come together to demand education reforms and stand in support of the Chilian students. Earlier this month, students in Ireland, Italy and the Phillipines staged massive protests and walk-outs over increased tuition.
Let me start by being very clear about who I am and what I do: I am a graduate student at the City University of New York in the Anthropology Department and I teach Anthropology 101 at Baruch College twice a week on Monday and Wednesday evenings.
My students are younger than me and older than me. They are impressively diverse, they are mostly women of color, they work all day long and then come to class in the evening. They are tired by the time they sit down in my class and I respect this tiredness, I respect and understand that many of them have to leave early or get there late because of their job or their family and because I, just like them, am a student and a worker in a public university system.
The public university system that we are in is the third largest in the country and one that has had values of free education, accessibility and inclusivity in its inception and embedded in its history. I want to be very clear about this because in many ways our histories create our visions for the future and the history of CUNY is a history of struggle that gets to the core of what we think higher education is as well as who we think higher education should be for. ...(Click title for more)
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Cart Before the Horse: Do They Really Want 'Specific Demands' from the Occupiers?
By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On
I'm getting fed up with pompous pundits lecturing the 'Occupy!' movement for not having a set of specific demands.
A case in point: New York Time financial columnist Joe Nocera quoted at length in a story by Phoebe Mitchell in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on Nov 29. He was in town to speak at the Amherst Political Union, a debate club at UMass Amherst.
Nocera starts off with the now usual tipping of the hat to the protestors:
"Nocera believes the anger caused by income inequality, a divisive issue across the country in this prolonged economic downturn, is the fuel for both popular uprisings. 'If we lived in a country that had a growing economy and where the middle class felt that they could make a good living and had a chance for advancement and a decent life, there would be no tea party or Occupy Wall Street,' he said."
But we don't live in such times, and the more interesting story is that OWS and its trade union allies are displacing the Tea Party, and energizing the progressive grassroots. Nocera, however, makes OWS the target.
"He believes that for the Occupy Movement to be successful, it must frame clear demands that outline a plan for creating jobs and refashioning Wall Street to benefit the entire country and not just a select few wealthy investors. Without a solid plan for moving forward, he said, the Occupy protestors will be continued to be viewed by Wall Street supporters as little more than "a gnat that needs to be flicked from its shoulder blades."
A 'gnat' indeed. In due time, a progressive majority may well come to view our dubious 'Masters of the Universe' on Wall St as bothersome gnats to be flicked away.
But to get to the main point, Nocero knows perfectly well that there is any number of short, sweet and to the point sets of demands aimed at Wall Street finance capital and the Congress it works to keep under its thumb. Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO has been hammering away at his six-point jobs program-one point of which is a financial transaction tax of Wall Street as a source of massive new revenues to fund the other five.
The United Steel Worker's Leo Gerard has been tireless for years working for a new clean energy and green manufacturing industrial policy that could create millions of new jobs and get us out of the crisis in a progressive way.
So what happens when these demands are put forward? With our Wall Street lobbyists working behind the scene, the best politicians money can buy declare them 'off the table.' Nocera and others of like mind in punditocracy put the cart before the horse. OWS arose as a result of a long train of abuses, year after year of sensible, rational, progressive demands and programs swept off of Congress's agenda like so many bread crumbs from a dining table. Not even brought to a vote. OWS and a lot of other people are fed up with being dismissed.
The pundits should watch what they wish for. The demands and packages of structural reforms will be back, much sharper and clearer, and with the ante upped by hundreds of thousands in the streets, as well as millions turning out for the polls. In fact, the solutions have always been there for anyone with ears to hear. We'll see if our voices are loud enough to crack the ceiling at the top, and let some light shine through.
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No More Special Than Anyone Else:
OWS and 'American Deceptionalism
Under the growing influence of the 1 per cent, American exceptionalism has become American deceptionalism.
By Paul Rosenberg
Progressive America Rising via Al-Jazeera
From the dawn of the colonial era, long before they even had a national identity, Americans have always felt they had a special role in the world, though the exact nature of American exceptionalism has always been a matter of some dispute.
Many have taken it to be a special religious destiny, but Alexis de Tocqueville, the first to consider it systematically, affirmed the exact opposite: "a thousand special causes ... have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects." Ironically enough, the exact term "American exceptionalism" was first used by Joseph Stalin, in order to reject it.
And yet, for 70 years American exceptionalism has been most prominently and consistently associated with imperialism ("benevolent", of course!), via the phrase "the American Century". It was coined by Time-Life publisher Henry Luce in February, 1941, 10 months before Japan's Pearl Harbour attack drew the US into World War II. The history of Luce's coinage provides a depth of resonance for a recent twist: a not uncommon, but particularly telling juxtaposition of four Time magazine covers from around the world this week.
In three editions - Europe, Asia and South Pacific - Time magazine's visually hot, tumultuous cover featured a gasmask-protected Egyptian protester, upraised fist overhead with a chaotic street background behind. The headline: "Revolution Redux". Not so in the exceptional American edition. There, the visually cool, wanna-be New Yorker-ish cover was a text-dominated cartoon against a light gray background: "Why Anxiety is Good For You."
Clearly, Time is whistling past the graveyard. As mostly Democratic mayors clamp down hard on Occupy Wall Street outposts across the land, it's obvious that the US' political class is having none of it. They do not believe that anxiety is good for them and they are doing their darnedest to keep a lid on things. Agitated citizens out in the streets are bad enough. Pictures of agitated citizens are simply too much. ... (Click title for more)
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Two Videos: Chicago Police:An Ongoing
Record of Crimes Against Humanity  | | Ronald Kitchen: Tortured, Framed, Then Sentenced to Death |
 | | Michael Tillman: His Torture & Wrongful Conviction |
Thanks to flint Taylor and the Peoples Law Office
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When Men Are Deciding What Women
Are Entitled to, It's Time to Occupy
By Rebecca Sive
Progressive America Rising via Huffpost
No. 30, 2011 - So, what have we got in this latest reproductive rights crisis? The one where the Catholic bishops and the president are debating and deciding what rights we American women will have? Well, sadly, ad nauseum, and once again, what we've got is no woman sitting at the decision-making table.
What year is this? Oh, you say it's almost 2012? Yikes. If I were an ostrich, I'd bury my head in the sand. But I'm not. I'm an organizer. And, I never say "die." So, I'm thinking it's time to head for the hills with a group of girlfriends, and figure out the next occupy movement. Maybe it's OPA, Occupy Pennsylvania Avenue, or maybe it's OC, Occupy Churches. Whadaya you think, girlfriends?
This situation is patently ridiculous. Really.
You want proof? Just consider the alternate scenario: Say, all the bishops were women, and the president were a woman. Would that group be conjuring up ways to limit the ability of their sisters to control the number of children they have, or when they have them, or with whom? Nope. Not a chance: In fact, this alternate scenario is impossible to imagine as anything but a spoof.
Speaking of spoofs, here's who those bishops really are: Thugs. (No one explained it better than Monty Python.)
Yes, I know, movies about thugs can be good, and, sometimes, they can even be funny (like this Monty Python one). But politics by thugs is an all together different thing; a thing that's never funny, for thugs aren't supposed to get to make the decisions in a democracy.
Thoughtful people of goodwill are.
But denying women birth control is no kind of goodwill. Not by a long shot. No matter how it's couched. No matter if the male who makes that decision (trying to cover up his true feelings about women's equality -- not) talks about "conscience," or "morality," or "ethics," say. Nope, not hardly.
Girlfriends: Grab your pocketbook when you hear those words; the thugs are about to hit you over the head with their scepters (see above), and you'll need your pocketbook to hit them back. ...(Click title for more)
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Pakistan, Russia and the Threat to the Afghan War
Photo: Troop supplies backed up over bombing outrage
By George Friedman
Stratfor Global Intelligence
[Editor's Caveat: Strator is a private intellience agency primarily serving the energy industries]
Nov 30, 2011 - Days after the Pakistanis closed their borders to the passage of fuel and supplies for the NATO-led war effort in Afghanistan, for very different reasons the Russians threatened to close the alternative Russia-controlled Northern Distribution Network (NDN). The dual threats are significant even if they don't materialize. If both routes are cut, supplying Western forces operating in Afghanistan becomes impossible. Simply raising the possibility of cutting supply lines forces NATO and the United States to recalculate their position in Afghanistan.
The possibility of insufficient lines of supply puts NATO's current course in Afghanistan in even more jeopardy. It also could make Western troops more vulnerable by possibly requiring significant alterations to operations in a supply-constrained scenario. While the supply lines in Pakistan most likely will reopen eventually and the NDN likely will remain open, the gap between likely and certain is vast.
The Pakistani Outpost Attack
The Pakistani decision to close the border crossings at Torkham near the Khyber Pass and Chaman followed a U.S. attack on a Pakistani position inside Pakistan's tribal areas near the Afghan border that killed some two-dozen Pakistani soldiers. The Pakistanis have been increasingly opposed to U.S. operations inside Pakistani territory. This most recent incident took an unprecedented toll, and triggered an extreme response. The precise circumstances of the attack are unclear, with details few, contradictory and disputed. The Pakistanis have insisted it was an unprovoked attack and a violation of their sovereign territory. In response, Islamabad closed the border to NATO; ordered the United States out of Shamsi air base in Balochistan, used by the CIA; and is reviewing military and intelligence cooperation with the United States and NATO.
The proximate reason for the reaction is obvious; the ultimate reason for the suspension also is relatively simple. The Pakistani government believes NATO, and the United States in particular, will fail to bring the war in Afghanistan to a successful conclusion. It follows that the United States and other NATO countries at some point will withdraw....(Click title for more)
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| Book Review: The Forgotten Palestinians
By Rod Such
Beaver County Peace Links
Ilan Pappé's The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (2011) is an important new addition to the growing literature about the Israeli government's treatment of its own Palestinian Arab citizens.
Most people are unaware that Palestinian Arabs now represent 20 percent of Israel's population, a larger minority group than African Americans who make up 11 percent of the U.S. population. Israel's Palestinian Arab population is made up of those Palestinians who remained in Israel after its founding in 1948 and their descendants. Pappé's
The Forgotten Palestinians focuses on the history of this group of people from the period just prior to Israel's formation to the present. It also discusses current conditions facing Israeli Palestinians and their political consciousness and development. For those who want a more detailed understanding of current conditions, however, The Forgotten Palestinians should probably be read in conjunction with Israel's Palestinians: The Conflict Within (Cambridge University Press, 2011) by Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman.
Pappé is one of Israel's so-called "new historians," a group that includes among others Benny Morris, Tom Segev, and Avi Shlaim. The difference between these historians and all previous histories by Israeli authors is that the new historians-all Israeli Jews--were the first to have access to official Israeli, U.S., and British documents. In this sense, Segev suggests, they should be known as Israel's "first historians" because they were the first to be able to write authoritative history based in large part on actual government and military documents that had previously been classified secret.
No longer having to rely solely on newspaper accounts, memoirs, and other sources, these historians could help verify accounts and uncover new information by examining official documents that were declassified in the 1980s. Many of the documents were found in the archives of the Haganah, the precursor of today's Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which continues to keep other information from the period secret, such as photographs from the Deir Yassein massacre.
Together, the first Israeli historians demolished many of the foundational myths about Israel's creation, some of which are still widely believed today, and in doing so, confirmed what many Palestinian historians and writers had been saying all along. The chief myth was that the Palestinians left their homes voluntarily in 1947 and 1948 on instructions from Palestinian leaders and those Arab governments that opposed the United Nations partition of Palestine....(Click title for more)
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Kerouac's 'lost' debut novel is published 70 years after its conception at sea
 Beat generation author Kerouac shows signs of future rebellion in 158-page maritime tale published by Penguin
By Stephen Bates
Guardian.co.uk
Nov 25 2011 - The American beat generation author Jack Kerouac is said to have spent just eight days on active service in the US merchant marines on board the SS Dorchester in 1942; but his short stay furnished him with notes for his first novel and, after nearly 70 years, it has now been published for the first time.
The 158-page The Sea is my Brother, a tale of two young men serving on a voyage from Boston to Greenland, has been known about for some time, but is being described by Penguin, its publisher, as "a unique insight into the young Kerouac and the formation of his genius".
The author himself apparently noted: "It's a crock [of shit] as literature."
Literary critics appeared inclined to agree with the author that the text, although showing signs of Kerouac's future style, is raw and juvenile, as well it might be, given that he was 20 when he wrote it.
The literary critic Stuart Evers said: "It is not a great work of literature. It would never be published today if it wasn't by Kerouac, but it is fascinating as an insight into him as a writer ... He was just jotting down ideas that he would explore with much more gusto in his later work. There is no real narrative, not much happens, but there are flashes of his later work."....(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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