Dec. 10: NYC March for Voting Rights Begins at Koch Industries
Where and when:
Saturday, Dec. 10
10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.: Assemble 61st Street and Madison Avenue, Koch Industries New York City office.
11:30 a.m.: March from 61st Street and Madison Avenue to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at 47th Street and 2nd Avenue
12:30 p.m.: Rally at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, across from the United Nations building
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Blog of theWeeK:
New OWS Journal
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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
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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 Digs In,
Spreads Out...
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... |
Who Is Winning the Political War on Wall Street?
By Danny Schechter
Mediachannel.org
Dec. 5, 2011 - Wall Street has become a battleground, defended by a battalion of New York cops, and under surveillance around the clock. There's a war under way after months of protests and assaults by the nonviolent warriors of Occupy Wall Street.
So, who's winning?
On the surface, despite major layoffs and economic setbacks, you would have to say that the epicenter of our financial markets is alive, if not well. The exchanges and banks remain open for business, even if their costs for security are up, and their long-term optimism is way down.
Attempts by occupiers and activists to "shut it down" have so far failed, but they have slowed it down and forced its defenders on the defensive. A sharp critique of out-of-control capitalism that was barely heard in the media before the movement began. It is now everywhere. The movement has changed the national conversation.
The gluttons of greed are, at least temporarily, on the defensive.
But, is the movement forcing reforms or restraint?. Not yet. Europe's pain so far seems to be America's gain, as bailouts there drive stock prices here higher.
Also, as we are learning, there is not much that the Federal Reserve won't do behind the scenes to keep big banks flourishing. We just found out, 3 years after the fact, that they pumped a whopping $7.7 TRILLION in no interest money into the coffers of financial institutions whose lobbyists and media decry big government intervention and socialism.
Down, the street, the Occupiers are winning a moral victory just by surviving. Their slogan du jour is now "It's So Not Over," even as they lost the park that was their base and have suffered setbacks across the country by what seems like a coordinated municipal counter-offensive.
Public opinion seems to turn against protesters when there's violence or conduct considered outrageous, but the New York Times reports, "The Occupy Wall Street protests continue to spread around the country, highlighting grievances some Americans have about banks, income inequality and a sense that the poor and middle class have been disenfranchised. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that almost half of the public thinks the sentiments at the root of the movement generally reflect the views of most Americans."... (Click title for more)
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Washington Post Commentary:
By Carl Bloice
BlackCommentator.com
Dec. 1, 2011 - Wherever Stacey Patton lives she might consider moving because, judging from what she wrote in the Washington Post last Saturday ("Why African Americans aren't embracing Occupy Wall Street"), she's been listening to the wrong people. She's taken to citing someone's dubious and quite dated headcount and finding only limited black faces at some of the Occupy protest sites and boldly concluded that African Americans don't support the new movement.
Patten draws her conclusion from a report she read on the webpage Fast Company, citing as its source one Harrison Schultz whom MSNBC's Al Sharpton once introduced as an "organizer" of Occupy Wall Street.
It seems over a month ago Fast Company writer Sean Captain reported on an email, received from Schultz about the demographics of the original Occupy encampment in Lower Manhattan, "And so far, according to the survey, Occupy Wall Street would qualify as stuff white people like," wrote Captain. "The sample of non-white people, according to Schultz, is too small to even analyze. One thing he noticed, however, is that some people identify with nationality, rather than race -- another item to keep in mind for target marketing. And in the vein, the organizers have been discussing doing a `non-white media day,' in which everyone who speaks to the media is of another ethnic background. They have also discussed doing an over-40 day."
"On a personal note, I have noticed plenty of both at the park and the marches," added Captain.
On that Patten hung her tale.
(Aside: as a black senior I can attest: not too many of us are into sleeping on the ground.)
Clearly, what Patton has written doesn't reflect the situation around here where the protests do indeed, "resonate" with the African American Community, where most folks are cheering them on. I had to check myself; could it be West Coast exceptionalism? So I called friends in New York and Chicago. Same there.
Yes, the proportion of African Americans and Latinos taking part in the daily actions of the occupiers is not equal to our proportion in the population as a whole. As Patten notes, progressives in minority communities -- like Occupy the Hood -- are working hard to connect the issues and draw more support. And succeeding.
I have no way of knowing whether the words Patton cites are full reflections of the views of her interviewees but I was intrigued by the opinion ascribed to Leslie Wilson, a professor of African American history at Montclair State University. "Occupy Wall Street cannot produce enough change to encourage certain types of black participation," Wilson told her. "The church cannot get enough blacks out on the streets. Some students will go, but not the masses."
Didn't he notice that the white "masses" aren't setting up tents either?...(Click title for more)
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Occupy Production: OWS and Worker Control
By Richard D. Wolff
MRZine.org
As the Occupy movement keeps developing, it seeks solutions for the economic and political dysfunctions it exposes and opposes. For many, the capitalist economic system itself is the basic problem. They want change to another system, but not to the traditional socialist alternative (e.g., USSR or China). That system too seems to require basic change.
The common solution these activists propose is to change both systems' production arrangements from the ground up. Every enterprise should be democratized. Workers should occupy their enterprise by collectively functioning as its board of directors. That would abolish the capitalist exploitative system (employer versus employee) much as our historical predecessors abolished the parallel exploitative systems of slavery (master versus slave) and feudalism (lord versus serf).
In workers' self-directed enterprises, those who do the work also design and direct it and dispose of its profits: no exploitation of workers by others. Workers participate equally in making all enterprise decisions. The old capitalist elite -- the major corporate shareholders and the boards of directors they choose -- would no longer decide what, how, and where to produce and how to use enterprise profits. Instead, workers -- in partnership with residential communities interdependent with their enterprises -- would make all those decisions democratically.
Only then could we avoid repeating yet again the capitalist cycle: (1) economic boom bursting into crisis, followed by (2) mass movements for social welfare reforms and economic regulations, followed by (3) capitalists using their profits to undo achieved reforms and regulations, followed by (1) again, the next capitalist boom, bust, and crisis. US capitalism since the crash of 1929 displays this 3-step cycle.
In democratized enterprises, the workers who most need and benefit from reforms would dispose of the profits of enterprise. No separate class of employers would exist and use enterprise profits to undo the reforms and regulations workers achieved. Quite the contrary, self-directing workers would pay taxes only if the state secures those reforms and regulations. Democratized enterprises would not permit the inequalities of income and wealth (and therefore of power and cultural access) now typical across the capitalist world....(Click title for more)
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Cuba's Health-Care Miracle in Haiti
Interview with Dr Jorge Balseiro Estevez, of the Henry Reeve Cuban Internationalist Medical Brigade
By Roger Annis
Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal
October 30, 2011 -- Canada Haiti Action Network -- Dr Jorge Balseiro Estevez is director of the University Hospital of Psychiatry in the city of Camaguey, Cuba. He is a specialist in psychiatry and health administration and auxiliary professor of medical sciences at the university. He is a member of the Henry Reeve Cuban Internationalist Medical Brigade[1] and a director of the brigade's field hospital in the city of Leogāne, Haiti. Leogane was the epicentre of the earthquake of January 12, 2010.
Estevez was invited to Canada on a speaking tour to some 15 cities across Canada in October and November 2011. The tour was organised by the Canadian Network on Cuba and its local affiliates, with sponsorship from a broad range of trade unions, health professionals and Haiti solidarity groups.
Roger Annis of the Canada Haiti Action Network sat down with Estevez on October 30 in Vancouver for an interview about the Cuban medical mission's accomplishments in Haiti and the challenges that lie ahead.
Could you describe the origin of Cuba's medical brigade to Haiti?
Dr Jorge Balseiro Estevez: It began in 1998. Following the devastation of Hurricane George that year, Fidel Castro announced to the Cuban people that the country would undertake a commitment to deliver important health services to the Haitian people in the form of a volunteer, internationalist medical brigade. A bilateral agreement was signed between the governments of Cuba and Haiti.
The Ministry of Public Health and Population of the Haitian government decided where the brigade's services were most needed. As much as possible, it would make use of existing medical services and infrastructure. The first Cuban doctor arrived in Port au Prince in December of that first year. In 1999, 63 family medicine and specialist doctors arrived.
That same year, the two governments began to plan Haiti's first ever medical school.
And since that first year?
The numbers of doctors increased. In 2001, a faculty of health sciences opened at the State University in Port au Prince. Unfortunately, the school was closed down by the coup d'etat of 2004. We were obliged to move the students to Cuba if they wished to continue to study. Three hundred and twenty one of them moved to the campus of the Latin America School of Medicine in Santiago de Cuba. Seventy students per year continued to enrol in the school.
Notwithstanding the coup, Cuba brought "Operation Miracle" to Haiti in 2005. This is the joint eye-care program with the government of Venezuela that has improved or restored eyesight to nearly 2 million people in Latin America, notably through cataract surgery. We opened three ophthalmology clinics in Haiti that year-in Port au Prince, Acquin (southwest) and Trou du Nord (northeast).
In December, 2006, we signed an agreement with the government of Haiti, and in cooperation with Venezuela, to establish 10 comprehensive diagnostic centres. The first one to be completed was in Cite Soleil in February 2007. These centres were also to be used for training of Haitian medical students.
Please describe what happened following the earthquake.
At the time of the earthquake, there were 367 Cuban doctors, health workers and technicians serving in Haiti. Within hours of the earthquake, airplanes from Cuba were bringing complete field hospitals and 1500 more medical personnel. I arrived five days following the earthquake.
Other medical personnel then followed, including 361 graduates of the Latin American School of Medicine from other countries in Latin America and fifth year Haitian medical students and Haitian resident doctors in Cuba.
There were five comprehensive diagnostic centres in operation in the earthquake zone, plus our brigade personnel went to work in Haitian institutions. We quickly established six field hospitals.
The first of those additional, 1500 medical personnel were those who had already worked in Haiti. All of our doctors were paired up with the Haitian students, as much as possible.
How many Haitians have been served by Cuba's medical mission?
According to my most recent statistics from several weeks ago, since 1998, the Henry Reeve Cuban Internationalist Medical Brigade has treated more than 18 million cases in Haiti. We have performed 304,577 surgeries and vaccinated 1,501,076 people. We estimate the number of lives we have saved is 284,239.
Since the earthquake, we have treated 347,601 people and performed 8870 surgeries. We have delivered 1631 babies and vaccinated 74,493 people....(Click title for more)
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The Sick Social Darwinism Driving Today's GOP
As a country, we've rejected the notion that each of us is on his or her own in a competitive contest for survival. Republicans want to bring Social Darwinism back.
By Robert Reich
Alternet.org
Dec. 6, 2011 - What kind of society, exactly, do modern Republicans want? I've been listening to Republican candidates in an effort to discern an overall philosophy, a broadly-shared vision, an ideal picture of America.
They say they want a smaller government but that can't be it. Most seek a larger national defense and more muscular homeland security. Almost all want to widen the government's powers of search and surveillance inside the United States - eradicating possible terrorists, expunging undocumented immigrants, "securing" the nation's borders. They want stiffer criminal sentences, including broader application of the death penalty. Many also want government to intrude on the most intimate aspects of private life.
They call themselves conservatives but that's not it, either. They don't want to conserve what we now have. They'd rather take the country backwards - before the 1960s and 1970s, and the Environmental Protection Act, Medicare, and Medicaid; before the New Deal, and its provision for Social Security, unemployment insurance, the forty-hour workweek, and official recognition of trade unions; even before the Progressive Era, and the first national income tax, antitrust laws, and Federal Reserve.
They're not conservatives. They're regressives. And the America they seek is the one we had in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century.
It was an era when the nation was mesmerized by the doctrine of free enterprise, but few Americans actually enjoyed much freedom. Robber barons like the financier Jay Gould, the railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, controlled much of American industry; the gap between rich and poor had turned into a chasm; urban slums festered; women couldn't vote and black Americans were subject to Jim Crow; and the lackeys of rich literally deposited sacks of money on desks of pliant legislators.
Most tellingly, it was a time when the ideas of William Graham Sumner, a professor of political and social science at Yale, dominated American social thought. Sumner brought Charles Darwin to America and twisted him into a theory to fit the times.... (Click title for more)
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Book Review: Your Chitlin' Heart
 The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road to Rock 'n' Roll By Preston Lauterbach
Reviewed by Stephen M Duesner
Paste Magazine
Elvis Presley, goes the myth, invented rock 'n' roll at Sun Studios, around the time he recorded Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "That's All Right" in 1954. Without dismissing Presley's considerable accomplishments-not to mention those of Sam Phillips, Bill Black, and Scotty Moore-the truth of R&R's origins is much more complicated ... and thornier.
Rock 'n' roll, vital 'n' powerful, could not have been created out of thin air. Instead, generations of black (and later white) musicians who worked in traveling pop orchestras cultivated it, emphasizing melodic volatility and onstage excitability as they went. They blazed through the network of black-owned nightclubs and venues around the South and Midwest known as the Chitlin' Circuit, honing their chops, paring down their rosters, and upping the ante with each show. Presley's debut single itself developed on the Chitlin' Circuit nearly a decade before the man who would be the King released it.
If the music played in Chitlin' Circuit clubs, which ranged from fire-hazard structures outside small towns to opulent stages in larger cities, proved essential to the creation of rock 'n' roll, it stands the test of time in its own right. It's far from simply a waystation to a largely white idiom.
Even so, the Chitlin' Circuit remains largely unexamined and unheralded, its very definition somewhat vague-there's nothing resembling official membership and little documentation of goings-on in venues. All this makes The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road to Rock and Roll crucial to our understanding of late-20th-century pop music and all the more impressive for its exhaustive research. Preston Lauterbach's book-spirited, studious, surprising, occasionally hilarious-is absolutely persuasive on its subject.
Who got a start on the Chitlin' Circuit? It might be more expedient to ask who didn't. Lauterbach follows the travels and travails of Joe Turner, Louis Jordan, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Wynonie Harris, Little Richard, and James Brown, among many. Some memorable personalities, however, have largely and perhaps unfairly been forgotten, even after exerting an indelible influence on subsequent generations. Jimmie Lunceford may not be a household name, but he routinely performed at Memphis high schools in the 1940s and 1950s. He helped establish an atmosphere, if not a curriculum, that inspired Isaac Hayes, Willie Mitchell, Booker T. Jones, and many other '60s musicians.
...(Click title for more)
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Music Review: John Prine's 'Innocent Days'
By Holly Gleason
Paste Magazine
Blame the wife.
"Fiona made me clean out the garage," John Prine confesses with a chuckle that's equal parts warm breeze, cold beer and fried chicken. "I cursed her every day... But she was firm. She said she wasn't moving the stuff to the new house.
 "She got a dumpster-and sent me to the garage. Boxes from my first marriage, boxes from my second marriage... boxes from before I moved to Tennessee. Boxes and boxes and boxes... and in one of them..."
...were several reel-to-reel tapes, long forgotten but dating back before the iconic American songwriter was discovered by Kris Kristofferson and signed by Jerry Wexler to Atlantic Records in New York. One set of recordings were made after an interview with Studs Terkel at WFMT; the other was an early show at Chicago's Fifth Peg, where the man still walking a mail route in Chicago would sing his songs three nights a week.
"All those years, I'd wished I had something from the Fifth Peg... Because I know how those nights felt, but to be able to listen to it, to hear it? I'd've given an arm to have even had a cassette of a night there; then there it was on reel to reel tape in pristine shape even before we had them treated."
The wonder in Prine's voice is palpable. The quality of the music is striking.
"Hello In There." "Paradise." "Angel From Montgomery." "Great Society Conflict Veteran's Blues" (later known as "Sam Stone")."Illegal Smile." "Spanish Pipedream." "Blue Umbrella." "Souvenirs." They're all there on his new retrospective album The Singing Mailman Delivers-fully formed, but infused with both a wide-eyed soul-searching and a folkiness that is equal parts bluegrass and Bob Dylan....(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
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1950s and 1960s.
Solidarity, Carl Davidson, CCDS |
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