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Dialogue & Initiative 2012 The new annual edition of our journal of discussion and analysis is now out. More than 130 pages, it includes 13 articles related to the Occupy! movement, as well as seven others vital to study in this election year. Cost is $10 plus shipping. Or get one by becoming a new member or sustainer. Click the title to buy it directly.
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Blog of the Week:
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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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By Randy Shannon, CCDS
"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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...In a new and updated 2nd Edition
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 |
Sex and the Automobile in the Jazz Age
By Peter Ling in History Today: 'Brothels on wheels' thundered the moralists but Peter Ling argues the advent of mass motoring in the 1920s was only one of the changes in social and group relationships that made easier the pursuit of carnal desire.
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Carl Davidson's Latest Book:
New Paths to Socialism
Essays on Mondragon, Marx, Gramsci and the Green and Solidarity Economies |
Solidarity Economy:What It's All About
Edited by Jenna Allard, Carl Davidson and Julie Matthaei
Buy it here...
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An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...
 Organizing as the Central Task Ahead!
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...
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'No More Stop-and-Frisk!' Huge Multiracial Father's Day Message to NYC Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD
By Kristen Gwynne
AlterNet.org
June 18, 2012 - A Father's Day crowd that some estimated to be as large as 50,000 marched in silent protest on Sunday afternoon in NYC, letting Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly know, in no uncertain terms, that they've had enough of the NYPD's policy of stop-and-frisk, a racial profiling tactic that has resulted in the illegal arrests of tens of thousands of young black and Latino men.
While the movement to end stop-and-frisk has been growing, many were amazed at the size of the crowd Sunday. The march included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the 1199 Service Employees International Union, and the National Action Network, as well as community organizing from groups like VOCAL-NY, the grassroots stop-and-frisk coalition and LGBT-rights groups. Organizer Leslie Cagan told AlterNet that more than 300 groups endorsed the march. The outpouring of solidarity, she said, shows that, "The people are ready, and the time has come."
The march, led by luminaries like Ben Jealous, head of the NAACP, and Al Sharpton, included families of all races and stretched from East Harlem, the sixth highest neighborhood for stop-and-frisk, all the way down 5th Avenue to East 79th St., close to Mayor Bloomberg's townhouse. At the end of the march a rowdy group gathered near the Bloomberg residence and some scuffles erupted between protesters and police. The NYPD made a handful of arrests.
Stop-and-frisk most often targets young men, and the Father's Day march was full of dads who wanted to protect their children from the degradation of a suspicionless stop.
New Yorker Derek Perkinson told AlterNet he marched with his young children to help them build an understanding of social justice. "I want them to know what's going on, to know the truth despite the propaganda we see on TV," said Perkinson, who said he knows firsthand what a stop-and-frisk feels like. "I've been stopped and frisked many a time," he said, "and it feels like a violation, it feels embarrassing. They still treat you like a criminal, even after they find nothing on you."
"My kids are black," Perkinson added, "So they probably will get stopped and frisked one day, but maybe we can do something positive before that happens."
Stop-and-frisk has risen 600 percent since Bloomberg took office and the NYPD is on track to stop 800,000 people this year. Media attention surrounding the stunning increase of stop-and-frisk and overwhelming data that the tactic does not effectively meet its goal of uncovering guns, has pushed public opinion toward reform. ...(Click title for more)
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Unions Must Change to Survive & Grow
By KEITH CHROSTOWSKI
The Kansas City Star
After the Wisconsin beat-down, an existential wail arose from shattered union leaders, members and their friends.
Ritual moaning about the array of forces aligned against labor accompanied second-guessing over tactics and strategy.
And why oh why, many cried, did almost four out of 10 members of union families vote for Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker?
(The labor split extends beyond Wisconsin: In a Gallup Poll released last week, 35 percent of union members favored Mitt Romney for president.)
We all know private-sector unions are suffering a relentless decline while public-worker unions have been growing. But now public union ranks too could start thinning drastically.
In part, blame fiscal realities. Even in Democratic-run California and New York, taxpayers are trying to balance the need for services against earlier commitments to public workers on pay and pensions.
But instead of reining in pay and pension obligations at the bargaining table, Walker and other GOP governors are ruthlessly blowing up the foundations of unionism - curtailing collective bargaining rights and automatic dues collection.
You can argue whether public unions should have strong collective bargaining rights in the first place. Even FDR thought they shouldn't.
But in some states - not Missouri and Kansas by the way - public unions have won such strong rights and want to keep them.
Losing in Wisconsin makes it ever more important for labor to intensify its fight for survival.
Talk to labor experts and leaders, and you'll find a couple of different viewpoints, diverging over "business unionism" and a more aggressive "socially conscious unionism." ...(Click title for more)
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Why Conservatives Sell Their Wildly
Destructive Ideology Better Than Democrats
2012: Will the Best 'Framers' Win?
By George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling
Progressive America Rising via AlterNet
June 18, 2012 -Framing is (or should be) about moral values, deep truths, and the policies that flow from them.
As of their kickoff speeches in Ohio, Romney and Obama have both chosen economics as their major campaign theme. And thus the question of how they frame the economy will be crucial throughout the campaign. Their two speeches could not be more different.
Where Romney talks morality (conservative style), Obama mainly talks policy. Where Romney reframes Obama, Obama does not reframe Romney. In fact, he reinforces Romney's frames in the first part of his speech by repeating Romney's language word for word -- without spelling out his own values explicitly.
Where Romney's framing is moral, simple and straightforward, Obama's is policy-oriented, filled with numbers, details, and so many proposals that they challenge ordinary understanding.
Where Obama talks mainly about economic fairness, Romney reframes it as economic freedom.
As the authors of Authors of The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic, here's a discussion of Obama's speech....(Click title for more)
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The Murders That Turned a Generation into Revolutionaries: Democracy Now! Looks Back on 1960s Mississippi
 | | After Over Four Decades, Justice Still Eludes Family of 3 Civil Rights Workers 5 |
As the Justice Department announces it has closed nearly half of its investigations into unresolved killings from the civil rights era, we look back at the 1964 murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the subject of the new documentary Neshoba: The Price of Freedom. Although dozens of white men are believed to have been involved in the murders and cover-up, only one man, a Baptist preacher named Edgar Ray Killen, is behind bars today. Four suspects are still alive in the case.
We play excerpts of Neshoba and speak with its co-director, Micki Dickoff. We're also joined by the brothers of two of the victims, Ben Chaney and David Goodman.
And we speak with award-winning Mississippi-based journalist Jerry Mitchell of the Clarion-Ledger, who's spent the past twenty years investigating unresolved civil rights murder cases, as well as Bruce Watson, author of the new book Freedom Summer: The Savage Season that Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy...(Click title for more)
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Armed with Pig's Head, 'Bible Believer'
Rightists Confront Michigan Muslims
By Leah Nelson
HateWatch
June 18, 2012 - Muslims in Dearborn, Mich., were once again targeted for their beliefs on Friday when a group of protesters calling themselves the "Bible Believers" confronted celebrants at the city's annual Arab International Festival with a pig's head on a spike and signs decrying Islam as a false religion, the Detroit Free Press reports.
In addition to the pig's head - presumably intended to offend observant Muslims, who do not eat pork - Bible Believers reportedly carried signs calling Islam "a religion of blood and murder" and describing the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a "liar," "false prophet," "murderer" and "child molesting pervert."
Dearborn, which has the nation's highest concentration of Arab-Americans and whose population is one-third Muslim, has in recent years become a favorite destination for anti-Muslim activists seeking the spotlight. Pamela Geller of Stop Islamization of American (SIOA) staged an ersatz "human rights conference" there in April, and Koran-burning pastor Terry Jones, who runs the anti-gay, anti-Muslim Dove World Outreach Center, visited last April to tell a few dozen supporters - and an estimated 600 counter-protestors - that Islam is "of the devil."
This year marked the Bible Believers' second appearance at Dearborn's Arab International Festival. In 2011, several counter-protesters were arrested for throwing water bottles, trash and shoes at the group while its members - bearing signs calling Islam a "religion of murder" and calling on Muslims to "repent" - stood in the festival's free speech zone. No arrests were made this year, the Dearborn Patch reports, though two festival attendees were detained and cited for disorderly contact.
Bible Believers is headed by Ruben Israel Chavez, a self-described "street preacher" from Los Angeles who runs the website Official Street Preachers, on which he rails against "homo sex," Mormons, "drunkards," Mardi Gras, "Pot Smoking Devils," Billy Graham, and Oprah Winfrey, among others.
On the site, Chavez describes himself and like-minded preachers as God's mouthpieces and "vessels to the public." He writes, "When I preach it will offend people and that does not concern me in the lest [sic], for my goal in life, my core reason of why I do what I do, is not to offend a holy God."...(Click title for more)
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Little Richard: 'I Am the Architect of Rock & Roll!'
By Patrick Doyle
Rolling Stone
Sitting on a golden throne at his piano last night at Washington, D.C.'s Howard Theatre, Little Richard began his set by telling the crowd he was in pain.
"I got sick and I had surgery," he said. "And the hip broke inside of me. And you know they've never been able to get that hip out of me yet? It's been in me almost three years and it hurts day and night. I'm in pain 24 hours a day. I never let them cut nothing out of me."
Despite his health problems, Little Richard proved during his hour-and-a-half set (one of only a handful he's played in the last four years) that he's still full of fire, still a master showman, his voice still loaded with deep gospel and raunchy power.
 | | Little Richard perfoming Lucille on Motown Live |
Wearing a royal blue suit with rhinestones and a sparkly silver shirt, he began by running his fingers up and down the piano. "Isn't that wonderful?" he asked with a grin, launching into a slow, soulful "Blueberry Hill," growling over heavy saxophones. "You know I'll be eighty years old this year?" he said afterward to applause. "I'm a Sagittarius. I just made 79!"
From the obscure set list to the stage banter, the night was full of spontaneous moments. "What was that song I sang on the bus today?" he asked the band early on, and began singing Big Mama Thornton's "I Smell a Rat" as the band found their footing. "You can't tell me where you been / whiskey running all down your chin / I smell a rat babe," Richard sang repeatedly, sometimes a-capella, sometimes accompanied by just guitar. It lasted for more than six minutes. "Play it with that low-down funky bass from years ago!" Richard shouted to his band, adding excitedly, "Somebody should record that! That's a hit record!"
He continued with a raucous take on 1970's "Bama Lama Bama Loo." During a twelve-bar jam, Richard's guitarist bent down, appearing to urge him to sing, but he just kept pounding away. Later, Little Richard requested a band member's son - who Richard said he'd known since he was a boy - to come onstage and give him a hug. "He's a big one!" Richard said as the kid took the stage. "He's a big one. You don't find many big ones today!" The crowd roared. "You all got the wrong idea!" Richard added. Soon, the band's guitarist appeared to whisper in Richard's ear to tuck in his shirt. "Everyone's talking about my stomach," he said. "I got to lose weight. I ain't ashamed of nothing. I been here a long time and I made up my mind!"...(Click title for more)
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Sectarianism Versus Ecumenism: From Splits to Electoral Alliances - The Case of V.I. Lenin
 By Roland Boer
MRZine
Was Lenin, as the standard interpretations would have it, a sectarian who sought to destroy all who disagreed with him? Or did he also display ecumenist tendencies alongside, or in tension with, his sectarian bent? Is there perhaps a deeper relation between sectarianism and ecumenism in his work?
The material from the time, especially before the October Revolution, is full to overflowing with evidence of Lenin's sectarianism, and the list of the various groups and individuals he opposed over the years is long indeed -- Narodniks, Mensheviks, God-builders, Bundists, liquidationists, otzovists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and on and on.
Over against these groups, he urged that the 'purity of revolutionary Social-Democracy is dearer' than party unity.1 For this reason, he was opposed to blocs with other left-wing or liberal parties in the limited Dumas (1905-17). He was opposed to the 'conciliators', led by Trotsky, who sought to bring together the warring factions among the Social-Democrats. He even managed to argue that these conciliators, in cooperation with all manner of opponents, were actually aggravating splits.2 Why? The outcome would only ever be compromise, a dilution of the socialist task. In light of all this, his opponents certainly felt he was a factional player, doctrinaire and unforgiving. And they did their best to lay all the blame for differences, splits, and acrimonious polemics at his feet, to the extent of persuading those in the international socialist movement, such as Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg, let alone subsequent scholars.3 Indeed, far from being an invention by comrades after the October Revolution, 'Leninist' was initially a term of abuse from opponents, an accusation of splitting.4
However, a closer reading of the material reveals a constant pattern of bitter polemical struggles with opponents and then simultaneous drives to unity. The most telling example concerns the Bolshevik-Menshevik split, which emerged to the dismay of many in the Social-Democratic Party after the Second Congress. Yet, with the era of the Dumas upon them from 1905, they agreed to have a joint conference, the landmark unity congress of 1906.5 The congress documents are full of statements such as, 'The Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. has been held. The split no longer exists'.6 Even more, the agreement included Polish and Lettish Social-Democrats as well as the Bund. But just as the drive to unity gained strength, the sectarian tendency manifested itself once again. So we find accusations of vote rigging and devious machinations, both during and after the congress.7 Once again, the various factions drifted apart . . . only to attempt a unified project once again a few years later.8 It seems as though centripetal and centrifugal forces were constantly in struggle, pushing apart in the very act of coming together.
A similar tension emerged during the same period of the Dumas, when the Social-Democrats often considered alliances with other socialist parties, such as the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and more liberal parties like the Trudoviks and Cadets. Lenin's text, 'The Social-Democrats and Electoral Agreements',9 embodies this tension very nicely. On the one hand, it is absolutely vital to remain faithful to the cause and not compromise by making any deals with any other political party, not make any blocs or alliances or joint tickets.10 ...(Click title for more)
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Become a CCDS member today!
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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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