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December 16, 2011
In This Issue
Full Employment
End of Iraq War
Times' 'Protester'
OWS and Elite Media
Port Shutdowns
Naomi Klein on Climate
White Workers
Alabama Shakes
WVA Mine Wars
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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.
 New Fall Issue of the CCDS Mobilizer is Out!
Fred Shuttlesworth-- Presente!

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An Appreciation written by Charlie Orrock   

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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 Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Revolution

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A Political Biography
By David S. G. Goodman
Routledge Press
Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary

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By Giuseppe Fiori
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Carl Davidson's Latest Book:
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Essays on Mondragon, Marx, Gramsci and the Green and Solidarity Economies
An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...

Tina at AFL-CIOIraq War Over,
Next Afghanistan...


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 [email protected]!

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...
Obama Marks Coming End of US War in Iraq

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President welcomes home troops and declares end to conflict he once called a "dumb war" as Iraqis in Fallujah celebrate.


By Al-Jazeera
Dec 15, 2011

Barack Obama, the President of the United States, has welcomed home some of the last US troops from Iraq in a ceremony to mark the coming end of his country's near-nine-year military campaign since a 2003 US-led invasion.

The US president paid tribute to about 3,000 soldiers gathered at the Fort Bragg military station in North Carolina on Wednesday, saying he was proud to welcome them home after what he called an "extraordinary achievement".

"I want to speak to you about the end of the war in Iraq," he said, as hundreds of soldiers cheered in appreciation.

"Over the last few months, the final work of leaving Iraq has been done. Dozens of bases ... that house American troops have been closed down or turned over to the Iraqis.

Obama said those US troops still stationed in the country would soon "move south on desert sands, and then they will cross the border out of Iraq with their heads held high". ....(Click title for more)

The Protester: Time's 'Person of the Year'

Tina at AFL-CIOBy Kurt Anderson
Time Magazine

...Massive and effective street protest" was a global oxymoron until - suddenly, shockingly - starting exactly a year ago, it became the defining trope of our times. And the protester once again became a maker of history.

Prelude to the Revolutions

It began in Tunisia, where the dictator's power grabbing and high living crossed a line of shamelessness, and a commonplace bit of government callousness against an ordinary citizen - a 26-year-old street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi - became the final straw. Bouazizi lived in the charmless Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, 125 miles south of Tunis. On a Friday morning almost exactly a year ago, he set out for work, selling produce from a cart. Police had hassled Bouazizi routinely for years, his family says, fining him, making him jump through bureaucratic hoops. On Dec. 17, 2010, a cop started giving him grief yet again. She confiscated his scale and allegedly slapped him. He walked straight to the provincial-capital building to complain and got no response. At the gate, he drenched himself in paint thinner and lit a match. (See pictures of Sidi Bouzid.)

"My son set himself on fire for dignity," Mannoubia Bouazizi told me when I visited her.

"In Tunisia," added her 16-year-old daughter Basma, "dignity is more important than bread."

In Egypt the incitements were a preposterously fraudulent 2010 national election and, as in Tunisia, a not uncommon act of unforgivable brutality by security agents. In the U.S., three acute and overlapping money crises - tanked economy, systemic financial recklessness, gigantic public debt - along with ongoing revelations of double dealing by banks, new state laws making certain public-employee-union demands illegal and the refusal of Congress to consider even slightly higher taxes on the very highest incomes mobilized Occupy Wall Street and its millions of supporters. In Russia it was the realization that another six (or 12) years of Vladimir Putin might not lead to greater prosperity and democratic normality.

In Sidi Bouzid and Tunis, in Alexandria and Cairo; in Arab cities and towns across the 6,000 miles from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean; in Madrid and Athens and London and Tel Aviv; in Mexico and India and Chile, where citizens mobilized against crime and corruption; in New York and Moscow and dozens of other U.S. and Russian cities, the loathing and anger at governments and their cronies became uncontainable and fed on itself.

The stakes are very different in different places. In North America and most of Europe, there are no dictators, and dissidents don't get tortured. Any day that Tunisians, Egyptians or Syrians occupy streets and squares, they know that some of them might be beaten or shot, not just pepper-sprayed or flex-cuffed. The protesters in the Middle East and North Africa are literally dying to get political systems that roughly resemble the ones that seem intolerably undemocratic to protesters in Madrid, Athens, London and New York City. "I think other parts of the world," says Frank Castro, 53, a Teamster who drives a cement mixer for a living and helped occupy Oakland, Calif., "have more balls than we do."... (Click title for more)


How Elite Media Strategies Marginalize OWS

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By Jackie Smith

CommonDreams.org

I took the decision by Foreign Affairs to report on the Occupy Wall Street protests as a sign that the movement was having some success. Not surprisingly, however, this favorite journal of foreign policy pundits offers "expert" commentary that reinforces a theme that has dominated corporate media coverage of the OWS movement. Rory McVeigh's online essay, "How Occupy Wall Street Works" presents a highly misleading image of OWS protests that reinforces the mainstream media representation of most left-wing political protests as disorganized, violence-prone mobs. Despite the writer's scholarly credentials, the account neglects a large body of relevant research.

Despite popular and media images, extensive research documents the fact that mass movements are by and large nonviolent in nature. Some, such as the Indian Nationalist movement and the U.S. Civil Rights movement embraced nonviolent principles for moral and spiritual reasons, while many others are largely pragmatic. Also, most research on protest shows that when violence occurs, it is virtually always initiated by authorities. While McVeigh is correct that often individuals or small groups take advantage of mass protests and initiate violence, it is important to recognize that activists themselves-including those in the Occupy Wall Street movement-- have developed and advanced strategies to minimize risks of violence and to isolate individuals using such tactics. There are accounts of this being done in protests ranging from the 1999 anti-WTO protests to the recent protests ofindignados in Spain. Activists in the Occupy Wall Street movement have engaged in extensive discussions of their nonviolence principles and have been developing methods to enforce them at actions and in the camps.

McVeigh also claims that the 1999 anti-WTO protest in Seattle was unsuccessful, and that this failure is because protesters "failed to effectively manage violence." As someone who has researched and written on this protest and the larger global justice movement of which it is part, I think it is crucial to set the record straight here. First, the claim regarding the "success" of the anti-WTO protests is debatable on several fronts....Click title for more)
Ecosocialism Rising: Capitalism vs. Climate

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By Naomi Klein

The Nation

Nov 9, 2011 - There is a question from a gentleman in the fourth row.

He introduces himself as Richard Rothschild. He tells the crowd that he ran for county commissioner in Maryland's Carroll County because he had come to the conclusion that policies to combat global warming were actually "an attack on middle-class American capitalism." His question for the panelists, gathered in a Washington, DC, Marriott Hotel in late June, is this: "To what extent is this entire movement simply a green Trojan horse, whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic doctrine?"

Tina at AFL-CIOHere at the Heartland Institute's Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, the premier gathering for those dedicated to denying the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet, this qualifies as a rhetorical question. Like asking a meeting of German central bankers if Greeks are untrustworthy. Still, the panelists aren't going to pass up an opportunity to tell the questioner just how right he is.

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who specializes in harassing climate scientists with nuisance lawsuits and Freedom of Information fishing expeditions, angles the table mic over to his mouth. "You can believe this is about the climate," he says darkly, "and many people do, but it's not a reasonable belief." Horner, whose prematurely silver hair makes him look like a right-wing Anderson Cooper, likes to invoke Saul Alinsky: "The issue isn't the issue." The issue, apparently, is that "no free society would do to itself what this agenda requires.... The first step to that is to remove these nagging freedoms that keep getting in the way."

Claiming that climate change is a plot to steal American freedom is rather tame by Heartland standards. Over the course of this two-day conference, I will learn that Obama's campaign promise to support locally owned biofuels refineries was really about "green communitarianism," akin to the "Maoist" scheme to put "a pig iron furnace in everybody's backyard" (the Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels). That climate change is "a stalking horse for National Socialism" (former Republican senator and retired astronaut Harrison Schmitt). And that environmentalists are like Aztec priests, sacrificing countless people to appease the gods and change the weather (Marc Morano, editor of the denialists' go-to website, ClimateDepot.com).

Most of all, however, I will hear versions of the opinion expressed by the county commissioner in the fourth row: that climate change is a Trojan horse designed to abolish capitalism and replace it with some kind of eco-socialism. As conference speaker Larry Bell succinctly puts it in his new book Climate of Corruption, climate change "has little to do with the state of the environment and much to do with shackling capitalism and transforming the American way of life in the interests of global wealth redistribution." (Click title for more)
The Diversity of the White Working Class

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By Jack Metzgar

Chicago Center for Working-Class Studies

Dec 12, 2011 - The recent firestorm of debate stirred by Thomas Edsall's New York Times report of a behind-the-scenes plan by "Democratic operatives" to "explicitly abandon the white working class" reveals more about the degraded state of political journalism than it does about either Democratic operatives or the working class.

Edsall is a highly respected member of the political punditry who has made a good living covering and analyzing American politics for more than 30 years.  So you'd think he'd know that three items in his lead paragraph are spectacularly false:

--The "Democratic operatives" referred to as hatching the abandonment plan, Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin, are not employed by the Democratic Party and are, in fact, part of a diverse group of independent Democratic analysts who are seeking to influence the party's, and especially President Obama's, 2012 election campaign.  They are influential, but their views are countered by many others, most of whom pay no attention whatsoever to a "working class."

--Teixeira's and Halpin's new paper, The Path to 270: Demographics versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election, not only does not advocate that the Dems abandon the white working class, but systematically weighs the importance of the white working-class vote in the 12 most important battleground states in next year's election.  Indeed, as Edsall must surely know, Teixeira, writing with various co-authors over the past decade, has done more than any other political analyst to call attention to the existence of a "working class" in our supposedly "middle-class society."

--Finally, there is this howler: "For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters." How could Edsall not know how wrong that is? According to his own newspaper's comprehensive report of exit polls since 1972, while us white folks have been strongly Republican in presidential elections for decades, we are substantially less so than we used to be.  From 1972 through 1992, for example, whites voted for Democratic presidential candidates only 36% on average, but from 1996 through 2004 the average was 42%, and Obama got 43% in 2008.  Indeed, in the ten presidential elections from 1968 through 2004 white men (the most Republican of demographic groups) on average voted 35% for Dems, but gave Obama 41% of their vote in 2008. Continuous electoral losses for sure, but the opposite of "increasingly severe."

These are all pretty big mistakes for a political pro.  Edsall's misreading and mischaracterization of Teixeira and Halpin is probably willful - in order to argue against a straw man or, cable-news style, simply to get attention.  The confusion about white voters, on the other hand, is likely the result of sheer ignorance shared by many in his craft. (Click title for more)
Music- Alabama Shakes: New Band For Fans
of Janis Joplin, Otis Redding and Led Zepplin

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By Bonnie Stiernberg

Paste Magazine

Hometown: Athens, Ala. Members: Brittany Howard, Heath Fogg, Zac Cockrell, Steve Johnson Album: Alabama Shakes EP For fans of: Janis Joplin, Sharon Jones, Led Zeppelin, Otis Redding

To call the ascent of The Alabama Shakes meteoric might be a little hyberbolic, so let's just stick to the facts: Two months ago, they set CMJ abuzz, their name on the lips of seemingly every journalist, publicist and all-around industry type in search of the "next big thing" at the festival. Now, despite having only a four-track EP to their name, the Athens, Ala. group's song "You Ain't Alone" can be heard in a Zale's holiday jewelry commercial. They recently signed to ATO Records. On Feb. 22, they'll cross the pond and make their London debut. The show is already sold out.

In short, it's a lot for a band whose members held day jobs as recently as a week before I caught up with them on the phone.

"It's been kind of like a dream, because everything's happened so fast," frontwoman Brittany Howard says. "It's not like you have time to assess what's going on around you."

"I still don't fully comprehend that I'm doing this as a career now," drummer Steve Johnson adds, laughing. "I just quit my job recently, and I feel unemployed. People ask me what I do, and I feel embarrassed to tell them I'm unemployed."...(Click title for more)
Gun Thugs, Rednecks and Radicals:

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Editor: David Alan Corbin

Publisher: PM Press

Strikes and union battles occurred throughout American industry during the early part of the twentieth century, but none of these stories compare to the West Virginia Mine Wars of 1912 and 1921. These two workers' rebellions quickly drew national attention to an area known principally for its "black gold," the coal that was vital for U.S. factories, power plants, and warships of that age.

In 1912, miners struck against the harsh conditions in the work camps of Paint and Cabin Creeks and coal operators responded with force. The ensuing battles caused the West Virginia governor to declare martial law, prompting Samuel Gompers to dub the state "Russianized West Virginia [where] the people can be naught but serfs."

There was little improvement in working conditions by 1921, when another army-thousands of union miners-went up against similar numbers of state police, local deputies, and paid company guards. The weeklong Battle of Blair Mountain ended only after President Warren Harding sent 2,000 U.S. troops and a small unit of bombers to pacify the region.

Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals tells the story of these union battles as seen by the leaders, rank-and-file participants, and the journalists who came to West Virginia to cover them for papers including The Nation and the New York Times.

Union leaders like Gompers, Frank Keeney, Fred Mooney, Bill Blizzard, and Mother Jones discuss the lives and struggles of the miners for their union. The book also contains articles, speeches, and personal testimony heard by two U.S. Senate committees sent to investigate West Virginia's labor problems. In this testimony, miners and their family members describe life and work in the coal camps, telling why they participated in these violent episodes in West Virginia history.

Special attention is given to the role of Huntington's own radical newspaper, The Socialist and Labor Star, a forgotten monument in the history of American heresy and radicalism.

About the Editor: Dr. David A. Corbin, a native West Virginian, received his AB and MA degrees in history from Marshall University, and his PhD from the University of Maryland. He has taught history at the University of Maryland and has published extensively on West Virginia coal miners, including Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields (U. of Illinois). Dr. Corbin has received state, regional, and national awards for his writings on coal mining history, and has appeared on public television, C-Span, and in documentary films discussing the history of West Virginia coal miners.

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