Port Huron at 50 
Gathering in Ann Arbor, Oct 31-Nov2University of Michigan alums Tom Hayden, Al Haber and other co-founders of the 1960s activist group Student for a Democratic Society will speak at "A New Insurgency: The Port Huron Statement in Its Time and Ours," a three-day conference that will explore the significance of the statement and the social, cultural and political history of the New Left.
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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 sustainer. Click the title to buy it directly.
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Blog of the Week:
Bringing together university and community to share, learn, and develop strategies for "justainable" cities
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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
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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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 A Memoir of the 1960s by Paul KrehbielAutumn Leaf Press, $25.64 | | Shades of Justice Video: Bringing Down a President, Ending a War |
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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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Voices from the Underground Press of the 1960s, Part 2- Foreword by Susan Brownmiller
- Preface by Ken Wachsberger
$37.50 + $6 shipping
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Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement
By Don Hamerquist
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An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...
 Obama's Secret Weapon: Mitt with His Hair Down
Most of all, it's urgent that you defend voter rights, get out the vote, 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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A new study busts harmful myths about white working class men and women.
By Joan Walsh
Alternet.Org
September 20, 2012 - What is "the white working class," that much discussed, often criticized demographic group that many say will decide this election? You know them: They're "bitter" and "cling" to "guns and religion," in the (otherwise sympathetic) words of 2008 candidate Barack Obama. Many are members of "the 47 percent" of Americans dependent on government derided by Mitt Romney, who the republican insists will vote for Obama - except many don't know they're in that moocher class, and plan to vote for Romney.
Just in time comes a study by the public religion research institute, which confounds most stereotypes of the white working class, while confirming a couple. It may force us to give up our caricature of the last group of Americans it's still politically safe to caricature. They're less conservative than most political analysts give them credit for - if you leave out the south.
First, a few definitional ground rules. As someone whose book is often described as being "about" the white working class, and why it left the democratic party, I'm painfully aware of the limitations of data and definitions of that much-discussed group. This study defines them as "non-Hispanic white Americans without a four-year college degree who hold non-salaried jobs." Some polls define the white working class by income, but increasingly the more politically unique group - and the most politically troublesome for democrats - is those without college degrees. Also: This is a new study and it doesn't track the same group over election cycles, so we can't know if their opinions have changed in the age of Obama, but it's fascinating and useful nonetheless.
As most analysts have asserted, they are, as a group, trouble for Obama - in mid-august Romney led 48-35 - but there were interesting regional differences. Romney led Obama by a staggering 40 points in the south (62-22) while Obama actually led Romney 44-38 in the Midwest (hello, auto industry rescue?), And the two candidates were nearly tied in the west and northeast. White working-class protestants favor Romney 2-1, while Catholics are evenly split. Likewise, Romney clobbers Obama with men, but the candidates are tied for the votes of women. And younger white working-class voters support Obama.
A pattern emerges: Obama is doing surprisingly well with white working-class voters - but he may have to write off most older, southern, white working-class protestant men....(Click title for more)
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By Carl Bloice
BlackCommentator.com
The part I liked most about Romney's Florida address to campaign donors, where he wrote off nearly half the country's population as lazy ingrates, was the part about the house. It came right after he declared that the "biggest surprise that I have is that young people will vote for Democrats," when he suddenly segued in with a stern warning for those gathered there, "It's like, I mean, there won't be any houses like this if we stay on the road we're on."
Not all Republicans are comfortable with Romney's sermon at the mansion
I guess he was impressed by the house, which is saying something for someone who has eight of his own. But this one is 15,000 square feet and reports are that the "Spanish style oceanfront villa" the Romneys are redoing in Southern California will have only 11,000. The mansion where the Presidential candidate was speaking belongs to fellow capitalist, Marc Leder, who also owns multiple dwellings, one of which has reportedly been the scene of some wild U.S.-style bunga bunga parties.
It seems it was Romney who turned Leder on to the promise of private equity dealing and Leder has donated over $200,000 to his mentor's campaign.
"From his perch high atop the class structure, Romney offered an analysis of political motivations that even Marxists would regard as excessively materialistic," wrote Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. the other day. That's actually a bit of a slur on Marxists who don't reduce everything to personal acquisition and spend a lot of time promoting social justice and a sense of collectivity. But Dionne was right about one thing. The words Romney spoke that day in Boca Raton "reinforce a narrative that he is an out-of-touch elitist who doesn't care about the plight of the average American, and that his allegiance is primarily to his class rather than to his country."
Romney is actually a bit of a Marxist. He understands the relationship between capital and labor and the tension between the two and he is resolute in standing up for the interest of the former. As the servants passed the canapés, he was actually engaging a frank discussion with fellow members of the capitalist vanguard alliance about the time of day and the way forward. "If it looks like I'm going to win, the markets will be happy," he said. "If it looks like the president's going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. It depends, of course, which markets you're talking about, which types of commodities and so forth, but my own view is, if we win on November 6th there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We'll see capital come back, and we'll see - without actually doing anything - we'll actually get a boost in the economy."
He feared for the nation's future if Latinos continued a tendency to push the same ballot levers black people do.
Some people have had fun with the "without actually doing anything," part, which is a kind of astonishing thing to say. But I find more intriguing and revealing the assertion that "We'll see capital come back." Back from where? Certainly he doesn't mean capital as in money. The stock market is up and the people he was addressing are lining their pockets quite well - and building big houses. No, he means capital as in the two categories "capital" and "labor." In that sense, his other remarks and policies being put forward by his campaign and his party are aimed at ensuring capital's "advance."
The man from Bain, who took in $13.7 million last year, was actually having a frank discussion with his fellow capitalist vanguardists at the a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser, especially those from the system's financial sector, about the time of day and the road ahead....(Click title for more)
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By Elizabeth Drew
New York Review of Books
Sept 21, 2012 - Voters make their choices at voting booths set up on the stage of the auditorium at East High School, in Cleveland, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004.
The Republicans' plan is that if they can't buy the 2012 election they will steal it.
The plan, long in the making and now well into its execution, is to raise great gobs of money-in newly limitless amounts-so that they and their allies could outspend the president's forces; and they would also place obstacles in the way of large swaths of citizens who traditionally support the Democrats and want to exercise their right to vote. The plan would disproportionately affect blacks, who were guaranteed the right to vote in 1870 by the Fifteenth Amendment; but then that right was negated by southern state legislatures; and after people marched, were beaten, and died in the civil rights movement, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now various state legislatures are coming up with new ways to try once again to nullify that right.
In a close election, the Republican plan could call into question the legitimacy of the next president. An election conducted on this basis could lead to turbulence on election day and possibly an extended period of lawsuits contesting the outcome in various states. Bush v. Gore would seem to have been a pleasant summer afternoon. The fact that their party's nominee is currently stumbling about, his candidacy widely deemed to be in crisis mode, hasn't lessened their determination to prevent as many Democratic supporters as they can from voting in November.
This national effort to tilt the 2012 election is being carried out on the pretext that the country's voting system is under threat from widespread "voter fraud." the fact that no significant fraud has been found doesn't deter the people pursuing this plan. Myths are convenient in politics. Want to fix an election? No problem. Just make up a story that the other side is trying to rig the election-and meanwhile try to rig the election. (Jon Stewart recently concluded a searing segment about the imagined voter fraud by saying: "Next, leashes for unicorns.")
The Republicans have been making particularly strenuous efforts to tilt the outcomes-in most of the "swing states": Florida, Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin. The Republican leader of the House in Pennsylvania, previously considered a swing state, was careless enough to admit publicly that the state's strict new Voter ID law would assure a Romney victory in November. In fact a state document submitted in court offered no evidence of voter fraud. On September 18, Pennsylvania's supreme court sharply rebuked a lower court's approval of the law, questioning whether the law could be fairly applied by the time of the election. This battle continues despite the fact that the Romney campaign in mid-September suspended its efforts in Pennsylvania because polls show that Obama was substantially ahead. Even if the state's electoral votes are not in question the outcome could still decide whether a great many people will be allowed to vote in November, and could also affect the popular vote. ,,,(Click title for more)
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Jihadi veterans of Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan join callow foreign idealists on frontline of Aleppo
By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Aleppo
The Guardian, 23 September 2012
Soldiers! Soldiers!" The man hissed his warning as he hurried past, two bullets from a government sniper kicking up dust from the dirt road behind him.
It was enough for Abu Omar al-Chechen. His ragtag band of foreign fighters, known as "muhajiroun brothers", was huddled in the doorway of a burned-out apartment building in the university district of Aleppo. One of the brothers - a Turk - lay dead in the road around the corner and a second brother lay next to him, badly wounded and unable to move. They had been unable to rescue him because of the sniper.
Abu Omar gave an order in Arabic, which was translated into a babble of different languages - Chechen, Tajik, Turkish, French, Saudi dialect, Urdu - and the men retreated in orderly single file, picking their way between piles of smouldering rubbish and twisted plastic bottles toward a house behind the front line where other fighters had gathered.
Their Syrian handler stood alone in the street clutching two radios: one blared in Chechen and the other in Arabic. Two men volunteered to stay and try to fetch the young injured man.
The fighters sat outside the house in the shade of the trees, clutching their guns and discussing the war. Among them was a thin Saudi, dressed in a dirty black T-shirt and a prayer cap, who conversed in perfect English with a Turk sitting next to him. He had arrived the week before and was curious about how the jihad was being reported abroad.
"What do the foreign news organisations and the outside world say about us?" he asked. "Do they know about the fighting in Aleppo? Do they know that we are here?"
Hundreds of international fighters have flocked to Syria to join the war against Bashar al-Assad's government. Some are fresh-faced idealists driven by a romantic notion of revolution or a hatred for the Assads. Others are jihadi veterans of Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan.
To reach the wars in those countries, foreign fighters had to cross borders with forged passports and dodge secret services. The frontline in Syria is easier to reach via a comfortable flight to southern Turkey and a hike across the border....(Click title for more)
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If groups like Working America can build an awareness of economic issues among swing voters, it could be a game-changer.
By Sarah Jaffe
Alternet.org
September 16, 2012 - I am in a nice suburban neighborhood, walking down a cul-de-sac with a notebook in my hand, watching as a canvasser with an iPad and a stack of leaflets knocks on doors and chats pleasantly with families about jobs, corporate accountability, education and retirement.
I could be anywhere in America; these people could be voters in any community. But this is Ohio, and these voters are the most canvassed, scrutinized, obsessed over in the nation, as their "swing" state could well decide a presidency. And the canvasser I'm following is a field director for Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO. They work to organize non-union households around the issues that matter to all working people.
Theresa Bruskin, the field director taking me around, tells each person who answers a door she knocks on that, "Our strategy is strength in numbers." She's asking them to sign up as a member with Working America, which simply means giving her a phone number and email address to match the street address she already has. She also asks for a donation, either a monthly contribution or a few dollars on the spot, to keep Working America going. We go to every home but the union homes -- it doesn't matter whether there are registered voters, Democrats, Republicans, whomever. Everyone gets a knock.
Jack, a stocky grey-haired man sitting outside his house smoking a pipe, tells us he's a former cop, and that he'd been canvassed earlier by someone selling something. "Didn't like him. Ran him off," he says. But he lets Bruskin talk to him about the issues, takes the iPad, nods at "campaign donations" but says the issue that most concerns him is a secure retirement. He gives Bruskin his contact info but no money, although he does ask for an envelope and says he'll send it later.
The first donation comes from a couple who say corporate accountability is their top concern. An occupational therapist and a nurse, they recognize Working America's name right away. "You guys do good work," they say.
"It's nice somebody takes time for other people," one woman says, handing over a few dollars and putting Bruskin over her fundraising goal for the evening-with hours left to go on her canvass. ...(Click title for more)
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How progressives can learn from The Boss.
By Michael Bader
Alternet.org
September 18, 2012 - Others have written about the complicated ways that Bruce Springsteen weaves together the personal and the political and how this interweaving has developed over time. I'll mention some of these themes but won't spend a lot of time exploring or illustrating them:
1) First and foremost, the healing and transcendent power of love and community . This is, perhaps, one of the most central concerns of his life. His songs are full of it. The ecstatic sense of abandon, fusion and joy at his concerts feature it. Wrecking Ball is a good example of this.
2) Mutual recognition and embrace of the Other : Springsteen's songs are full of images of people making the choice to-in the end-see their commonality rather than their difference. The Ghost of Tom Joad is full of stories like this.
3) Confronting the survivor guilt facing his generation as they became parents and achieved economic security and success. Perhaps the best line in all of Springsteen's music about this is from Lucky Town where he complains that "it's a sad funny ending, when you find yourself pretending, a rich man in a poor man's shirt."
4) The insistent search for meaning and purpose in the face of alienation, loneliness, and the mundane repetitive rhythms of everyday life, whether that be through leaving home, rock-and-roll, love, or the redemptive courage shown in a song like "Into the Fire" in The Rising.
5) Outrage at the breakdown of our society's social safety net and promise of collective responsibility along with a call to not only restore it but relentlessly offering up example after example of small acts in which this is manifested.
Each of these themes could be elaborated in great detail. I'm not going to focus here, however. ...(Click title for more)
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 Marshall "Major" Taylor
in 1900.
By Gilbert King
The Smithsonian
Sept. 12, 2012 - At the dawn of the 20th century, cycling was the most popular sport in both America and Europe, with tens of thousands of spectators drawn to arenas and velodromes to see highly dangerous and even deadly affairs that bore little semblance to bicycle racing today. In brutal six-day races of endurance, well-paid competitors often turned to cocaine, strychnine and nitroglycerine for stimulation and suffered from sleep deprivation, delusions and hallucinations along with falls from their bicycles. In motor-paced racing, cyclists would draft behind motorcycles, reaching speeds of 60 miles per hour on cement-banked tracks, where blown bicycle tires routinely led to spectacular crashes and deaths.
Yet one of the first sports superstars emerged from this curious and sordid world. Marshall W. Taylor was just a teenager when he turned professional and began winning races on the world stage, and President Theodore Roosevelt became one of his greatest admirers. But it was not Taylor's youth that cycling fans first noticed when he edged his wheels to the starting line. Nicknamed "the Black Cyclone," he would burst to fame as the world champion of his sport almost a decade before the African-American heavyweight Jack Johnson won his world title. And as with Johnson, Taylor's crossing of the color line was not without complication, especially in the United States, where he often had no choice but to ride ahead of his white competitors to avoid being pulled or jostled from his bicycle at high speeds.
Taylor was born into poverty in Indianapolis in 1878, one of eight children in his family. His father, Gilbert, the son of a Kentucky slave, fought for the Union in the Civil War and then worked as a coachman for the Southards, a well-to-do family in Indiana. Young Marshall often accompanied his father to work to help exercise some of the horses, and he became close friends with Dan Southard, the son of his father's employer. By the time Marshall was 8, the Southards had for all intents and purposes adopted him into their home, where he was educated by private tutors and virtually lived the same life of privilege as his friend Dan.
When Marshall was about 13, the Southards moved to Chicago. Marshall's mother "could not bear the idea of parting with me," he would write in his autobiography. Instead, "I was dropped from the happy life of a 'millionaire kid' to that of a common errand boy, all within a few weeks."
Aside from the education, the Southards also gave Taylor a bicycle, and the young man was soon earning money as a paperboy, delivering newspapers and riding barefoot for miles a day. In his spare time, he practiced tricks and caught the attention of someone at the Hay and Willits bicycle shop, which paid Marshall to hang around the front of the store, dressed in a military uniform, doing trick mounts and stunts to attract business. A new bicycle and a raise enabled Marshall to quit delivering newspapers and work for the shop full-time. His uniform won him the nickname "Major," which stuck....(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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