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:
The 'Precariat' and the Elections
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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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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...
 Gender Gap, Enthusiasm Gap & Electoral College: Our Odd, Strange Politics
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 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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By Carl Bloice
Black Commentator
Progressives must be resolute in defending such critical things as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. By the time these words go out into the internet there will be about 10 days left before the election.
So, it doesn't seem worthwhile taking the time to address the proverbial question on the Left: who to vote for or whether to vote at all? Some readers will be out actually working to re-elect President Obama. I assume others are beating the bushes for either Jill Stein of the Green Party, Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party. James Harris of the Socialist Workers Party, Stewart Alexander of the Socialist Party, Libertarian Party presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, or Constitution Party nominee Virgil Goode. I suspect few are pushing Mitt Romney.
Most people reading this column regularly can have little doubt about who I'm voting for. But, hey, this is California; the Obama-Biden ticket can assume it has our electoral votes sewed up. I'll be rushing off to the polls with urgency because we've got some critical state measures before us (don't we always?). The big money, buy-elections people are trying to strangle union and progressive expression with one measure (Prop. 32). Insurance moguls are spending millions of dollars on a proposal to sock it to working class drivers (Prop. 33). Liberals and progressives are trying to insure that any genetically engineered frankenfoods sold at the supermarket are labeled as such (Prop. 37). And, while it doesn't go as far as most of us on the Left would like, there's a proposal that would mean more resources for our state's underfunded schools (Prop. 30). Also, I think affordable housing activist, Christina Olague, is the best choice to represent our inner-city district on the San Francisco City - County Board of Supervisors.
I don't vote absentee unless I have to; I like going to the polls and seeing my neighbors there and having them see me and wearing the little badge reading "I voted" on my lapel as I shop or enter the neighborhood bar.
Carrying the fight to the mat would have been the correct response to the opposition's intransigence. The fundamental question in this campaign, I believe, is the country's future economic policy. As begrudging and inconsistent as it is, the Obama policy is generally in favor of a neo-Keynesian direction of further investment in the economy to increase consumer demand, while the Romney-Ryan approach is tax cuts for the rich and regulatory deregulation. The difference between these two policies is not inconsequential. Tenaciously high unemployment and growing poverty is a reality. For millions of working people, decisions made over the next four years will have a direct impact on their daily lives. The same, I think, can be said about immigration policy, reproductive rights, and LGBT equal rights.
Yea, I've heard the argument. For every negative thing that can be said about the GOP there's something awful to cite about the other party; for every positive thing the Obama Administration may have accomplished there is something it did that is grossly offensive. One Left commentator wrote last week that he hoped Obama is reelected because his future failures will further radicalize us. That's just another version of the tired old, and morally dubious, worse-the-better argument.
Not that the Administration hasn't done some outrageous and indefensible things. For instance, supposedly "leading from behind," the Obama Administration has joined the European former colonial powers in creating another Somalia in Libya. That's the real scandal. Of course, the Republicans won't say so because, having embraced the neo-conservative warhawks from the Bush Administration, they are now agitating to create another one in Syria. And U.S. policy toward Latin America sucks big time. One thing I find particularly galling is that having put forward a rather modest proposal to alleviate the jobless crisis, which continues to hit the African American community particularly hard, the President dropped the ball, when carrying the fight to the mat would have been the correct response to the opposition's intransigence.
There can be no question of the meaning of the election for labor. The anti-labor intent of the Republican Party is spelled out clearly in the party platform and is underscored by the action of the party in state after state over the past few years.
For millions of working people, decisions made over the next four years will have a direct impact on their daily lives.There are, I believe, two other issues that are forefront in this period. The first is racism, and there can be no doubt that it is a major element in the campaigns. Something akin to the "southern strategy" is at play and I suspect it will intensify in the coming two weeks. The other is the threat to democracy. This is reflected in the conscious and deliberate voter suppression drive and efforts to rig the system to give financial advantage to capital over labor in politics. For all the talk on the Left about the need for electoral and campaign finance reform, I don't think there has been sufficient acknowledgement of the fact that things are actually moving in the opposite direction. While I don't endorse the notion of an imminent "fascist" threat, I think the danger of the assault on democracy is real.
This latest well-financed and deceptive effort to restrict labor's ability to influence political decision-making in California and the nation are not unrelated to the coordinated efforts to smash public sector unions, the Citizens United decision, and the ongoing voter repression conspiracy. The plutocrats and the Right-wingers have seen the handwriting on the wall in terms of political and demographic trends in the country and they are determined to reshape politics in the interest of the one-percent by curtailing democratic decision-making. As Leonard McNeil, the vice mayor of San Pablo, Ca. put it, these are efforts to "curtail and stifle the voices of working people" and "a frontal assault on democratic pluralism to advance the agenda of corporations and the wealthy."
Which brings me to the next question: what happens after the election?
I like going to the polls and seeing my neighbors there and having them see me and wearing the little badge reading "I voted" on my lapel as I shop or enter the neighborhood bar.If the Right-wingers win the presidency, liberals, Leftists and progressives will have their backs against the wall, especially if the Right ends up in control of Congress. But whatever the results are, a real danger lurks. While we sleep, plotters are at work aiming to construct a "grand bargain" that will have only negative consequences for working people and the poor. Behind the slogans of "shared sacrifices" and the threat of a "fiscal cliff," the economic and political elite are working on a "bipartisan" deal that will shift much of the burden of the current crisis of capitalism onto the backs of working people. The gains made in social welfare and economic security, won through struggle over a century, will be put at risk. Think of that every time you hear the words "Simpson-Bowles."
No matter who wins, when the election is over the critical political struggle will continue in earnest....(Click title for more)
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By Jill Filipovic
The Guardian, UK
October 25, 2012
Dear GOP candidates and party members,
I'm going to give you some free campaign advice: stop talking about rape [3].
The latest Republican rape [4] commentary comes from Romney-endorsedIndiana [5] senatorial candidate Richard Mourdock, who tells us:
"I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."
Cue outrage, then cue "apology" from Mourdock - not for his comments, but for "any interpretation other than what I intended". National Republican senatorial committee chairman John Cornyn voiced his support for Mourdock and added that he also believes "life is a gift from God."
I would hate for Mr Mourdock to think I'm misinterpreting him here, so let's be clear about what he said: he did not say that rape is a gift from God. He did say that an unwanted pregnancy is a post-rape goodie bag from the Lord. And that the Lord intended it to happen that way.
Perhaps God should rethink his delivery system. And perhaps Mourdock should rethink his interpretation of divine will.
What this umpteenth rape comment tells us isn't that the Republican party has a handful of unhinged members who sometimes flub their talking points. It reveals the real agendas and beliefs of the GOP as a whole.
These incidents aren't isolated [6], and they aren't rare. Sharron Angle, who ran for a US Senate seat out of Nevada, said she would tell a young girl wanting an abortion [7] after being raped and impregnated by her father that "two wrongs don't make a right" and that she should make a "lemon situation into lemonade [8]". Todd Akin [9] said victims of "legitimate rape [10]" don't get pregnant - an especially confusing talking point, if God is giving rape victims the gift of pregnancy. Maybe God only gives that gift to victims of illegitimate rape?
Wisconsin state representative Roger Rivard asserted:
"Some girls rape easy [11]."
Douglas Henry, a Tennessee state senator, told his colleagues:
"Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse."
Republican activist Phyllis Schlafly [12] declared that marital rape doesn't exist, because when you get married you sign up to be sexually available to your husband at all times. And when asked a few years back about what kind of rape victim should be allowed to have an abortion, South Dakota Republican Bill Napoli answered:
"A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life."
Rape lemonade. Legitimate rape. The sodomized virgin exception [13]. A rape gift from God.
Some Republicans [14], like Mitt Romney [15], have tried to distance themselves from their party's rhetorical obsession with sexual violation. What they're hoping we won't notice is the fact that their party is politically committed to sexual violation....(Click title for more)
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By Steve Kornacki
Salon.com
Oct 25, 2012 - There's a real chance, as you've probably heard, that there'll be a split popular vote/Electoral College decision on November 6.
As of this writing, the Real Clear Politics polling average [3] has Mitt Romney leading by 0.7 points in the national horserace, whileHuffPost Pollster [4] puts the GOP nominee up by 0.4. The electoral map is more decisive, though, at least for now, with Obama ahead in all of his must-win states, and well-positioned to pick off a couple of Romney's. If the election were held this minute, the odds are very good that Obama would win the Electoral College, and decent that he'd lose the popular vote.
This would officially be the fifth time in history this has happened, after 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000 (although Sean Trende made a strong case [5] last week that it also happened in 1960). The question is where the disconnect is coming from - why is Obama apparently performing better in swing states than he is elsewhere?
Many reflexively argue that this is a product of Southern and Appalachian antipathy toward the president. He's faring so terribly in these areas, the logic goes, that it's dragging down his standing in the national polls (and elevating Romney's) by a point or two.
On the surface, this makes sense. In a wide swath of territory extending from Oklahoma up through West Virginia, Obama actually found himself losing dozens of rural counties [6] to fringe challengers in this year's Democratic primaries - something that didn't happen outside that region. So if he's facing that much Southern/Appalachian trouble within his own party, then imagine how bad is plight is with all voters there. Obama's campaign itself made this argument a few months ago, as John Heilemann relayed [7]back in the spring:
[Obama campaign manager Jim Messina] doesn't give a whit about national polling, in which Obama's numbers are dragged down by his horrific performance in the Deep South and Appalachia - but is obsessed with the president's standing in battleground states.
This view was reinforced a few weeks ago when Markos Moulitsas flagged [8] regional subsample data from Gallup's weekly poll which showed Obama running 4-6 points ahead in the East, Midwest and West - and 22 points behind in the South. So that settles it, right?
Actually, no.
First, as Nate Cohn has documented [9], the Gallup regional numbers are at odds with what most other pollsters are finding. In six other national polls, Obama trailed in the South on average by 7.5 points, which is actually a tick better than the nine-point loss he suffered in the region to John McCain four years ago. Of course, take all of this with a grain of salt; the polls that this data was drawn from are national in nature and aren't necessarily designed to show the state of the race region by region.
Still, when you think about it, it makes sense that the South/Appalachia wouldn't really be Obama's trouble spot, because it's an area that never liked him to begin with. Don't forget, this is the part of the country where in many counties Obama actually fared worse in 2008 than John Kerry did in 2004. Even before his popularity began dropping with voters elsewhere, voters in this area had already turned on him. So while he's not doing well in the South, he's probably not doing that much worse than he did in '08.
Patrick Murray, who runs the Monmouth University poll, suggests that a more helpful way of understanding why Obama's national support is lagging is to divide the country into three types of states - red, blue, and competitive - and to compare Obama's showing in these states to how he's doing now. Using the '08 results and Monmouth's latest numbers [10], here's what Murray came up with:
Competitive states
Obama '08: +7
Obama '12: -5
Red States
Obama '08: -15
Obama '12: -15
Blue states
Obama '08: + 24
Obama '12: +11
It's not surprising that Obama's standing has declined in competitive states, but what jumps out is that he's not doing any worse in red states now than he was in '08 - but that he has suffered a huge drop in blue state America....(Click title for more)
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Plutocracy: Bill Moyers on Rule by the One Percent
 | Excellent One Hour 'Kick Back and Watch' Video: with Matt Tabibi and Chrystia Freeland
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 "Pillars of Society." Painting by militantly anti-Nazi German Dadaist George Grosz, 1926, during the Weimar Republic. Image from Alpha History.
"Whether or not the U.S. is at a 'Weimar moment,' those who are concerned about such a possibility should not be accused of needlessly worrying that "the sky is falling."
By Jay D. Jurie
The Rag Blog
Oct 25, 2012
"When and if fascism comes to America...it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, 'Americanism.'" -- Prof. Halford E. Luccock, Yale University Divinity School, quoted in The New York Times, September 12, 1938.
"...fascism will come to America in the name of national security." --Jim Garrison, Playboy magazine interview, October 1967
Is fascism imminent in the United States? This is a not a new question, it has been debated for decades. For more than 100 years it's been argued that a serious crisis threatening the political and economic order may well lead to a right-wing takeover.
When such a crisis reaches a prospective tipping point, the question becomes: will society pull back at the last minute, or will it take the plunge into authoritarianism? This potential tipping point is sometimes referred to as a "Weimar" moment, after the German republic that led up to Hitler and the Nazis.
Even before the term fascism was coined, an authoritarian takeover in the U.S. was the inspiration for Jack London's 1908 novel The Iron Heel. When fascism did come about in Europe, the fictional theme was picked up by Sinclair Lewis in his 1935 It Can't Happen Here, and in 1962 it even found its way into science fiction, with Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. Perhaps sensing a rekindled interest in this subject, in 2004 Phillip Roth wrote of a fascist electoral victory in his The Plot Against America.
Whether or not fascism or authoritarianism is at hand has also been of interest to social researchers, historians, and other non-fiction writers, as in Herbert Marcuse's 1972 Counterrevolution in Revolt, Bertram Gross's 1980 landmark Friendly Fascism, and Sheldon S. Wolin's 2008 Democracy Inc.
Reportedly, a plot was hatched in 1934 against the "New Deal" government of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Quoted in a 2005 Daily Kos article, U.S. Ambassador to Germany William Dodd wrote that
a clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government...a prominent executive of one of the largest corporations told me point blank that he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism into America if President Roosevelt continued his progressive policies. Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy.
How and when such a takeover might occur is often framed with a comparison of the current U.S. experience with the Republic of 1919-1933, named Weimar after the town where it was formed. In one final desperate bid for a World War I victory, Germany's naval high command decided in October 1918 to attack the blockading British fleet. Influenced by the Soviet revolution the preceding year, having already had enough of the war, and viewing the proposed attack as suicidal, the sailors of the German fleet anchored at Kiel revolted.
On November 7, a popular revolt against the war and in favor of a popular government to replace the monarchy of Wilhelm II broke out in Munich. These revolts, combined with a destitute economy and exhausted population, left Germany with little choice but to sue for peace. An armistice, the Versailles Treaty, was imposed that was very favorable toward the victorious Allies and was widely viewed as a humiliation within Germany. Although both revolts were crushed, on November 9 the monarchy of William II was brought down.
From the beginning Weimar was unpopular. According to historian Louis Snyder, its initial leaders were held responsible for ending the war on unfavorable terms, while the monarchy and military escaped blame for the disaster that had befallen the country. A split within the ruling Social Democratic Party soon ensued, with the minority Spartacist faction under the leadership of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg forming the Communist Party of Germany. In factional fighting that broke out on January 11, 1919, Liebknecht and Luxemburg were murdered by right-wing troops with whom the majority had sided. ...(Click title for more)
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By Barry Sheppard
Green Left Weekly
Oct 14, 2012 - There is a statue in revolutionary Havana of Don Quixote, the literary creation of 17th century Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, who fought for his principles, even if he was crazy. I know I'm a bit crazy.
With less than a month to go before the US presidential elections, the farce we have been living through for more than a year becomes even more grotesque. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on advertisements for US President Barack Obama or Republican Party candidate Mitt Romney. Money has never been so awash in an election before.
The racial divide is stark. Romney has the white racist vote sewed up. He is likely to win a majority of white voters, especially white men. African Americans will vote overwhelmingly, well over 90%, for Obama. Polls predict he will get two-thirds of the Latino vote.
Both candidates incessantly talk about creating jobs, and defending the middle class. Neither wants to mention the working class. And yet, by middle class they mean workers with relatively better wages and working conditions - who are losing both.
It was trade unions that won those better wages and conditions in past struggles. Now union power has shrunk, with less than 7% of workers in the private sector in unions and with public workers under incessant attack.
Neither capitalist party mentions unions except to disparage them.
Neither candidate has a program to defend workers from the ravages of the depression we are living through, just rhetoric and hot air.
What program?
In this bleak landscape, I have asked myself the question: "What if we had something like SYRIZA, the left coalition in Greece? It would put forward an emergency program to counter the crisis. What might such a program look like in the US?"
Perhaps if we sketch out such an emergency program, it would help throw light on the current direction of the US ruling class by presenting a stark contrast.
I have some ideas, not complete or fully worked out, that such an emergency economic program could address. It could call to nationalize the banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions. While guaranteeing deposits, a government could use the assets of these institutions to halt foreclosures of working people's homes.
Where possible, it could restore homes to families who have already been foreclosed and guarantee new homes to the rest. Mortgages could be renegotiated to drastically cut loans and interest rates to no more than 10% of income.
One consequence of nationalizing insurance companies would be the immediate implementation of national health insurance for all.
The program could include launching an immediate public works program to rebuild infrastructure that is crumbling, such as bridges and roads. It could tear down all the decaying abandoned factories, boarded up homes and other facilities that blight vast sections of US cities and towns....(Click title for more)
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Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet,
by John G. Turner (2012:
Belknap Press, Harvard Univ);
Hardcover; 512 pp; $35.
History of Utah Radicalism:
Startling, Socialistic, and Decidedly Revolutionary,
by John S. McCormick and John R.
Sillito (2011: Utah State University Press);
Hardcover; 456 pp; $39.95
The image of the Red Cavalry going into battle with the Book of Mormon in their saddlebags is quite a stretch; most of us, on the contrary, would probably vote for Mormon 'socialism' as the ultimate oxymoron.
 By Mike Davis
The Rag Blog
Oct 24, 2012
In 1884 the journalist Edward Bellamy, struggling with an idea for a utopian novel, visited the only actually-existing communist society on earth: Utah. More precisely he spent a week in Brigham City, seat of Box Elder County, where Apostle Lorenzo Snow, who would later become the fifth LDS president (and the last to have personally known Joseph Smith), showed him the workings of a dynamic community based on pooled wealth, producer and consumer cooperatives, and the use of labor scrip instead of money.
Bellamy, like many previous Gentile visitors, was greatly impressed by the Mormon gift for disciplined cooperation. A decade earlier the celebrated explorer-scientist, John Wesley Powell, had championed the Mormon principle of communal water-management in his landmark but controversial Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States. But Bellamy -- like Lincoln Steffens returning from Russia in 1921 -- was even more enthusiastic: he had seen the future and it worked.
Looking Backward (1888), Bellamy's portrait of a prosperous but authoritarian socialist America in the year 2000, became a bestseller and seeded the "Nationalist" club movement that was an immediate precursor of the Socialist Party of America. (The iconic Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles was built by a wealthy Bellamy supporter as an anticipation of the architecture of that socialist future.)
The similarities between Bellamy's collective commonwealth and the Mormon ideal of "consecrated" community, as well his "Industrial Army" and the semi-military organization of Young's Deseret, have ignited controversy for more than a century. Indeed one rabidly anti-Mormon website currently makes the claim that as Brigham City influenced Looking Backward, so did Bellamy's novel influence Bolshevism, thus implicating the Romneys through their church in "the horrors of communism."
But the image of the Red Cavalry going into battle with the Book of Mormon in their saddlebags is quite a stretch; most of us, on the contrary, would probably vote for Mormon "socialism" as the ultimate oxymoron. But millenarian ideologies -- whether the Sermon on the Mound, the revelations of Joseph Smith, or the ideas of Karl Marx -- have an unfortunate tendency to be coopted by advocates of antithetical values.
John G. Turner's new biography of Brigham Young -- a scholarly and judicious book that is unlikely to be burned in Temple Square -- portrays a social experiment, the most ambitious in American history, that until Young's death in 1877 explicitly rejected the core values of Victorian capitalism: possessive individualism and Darwinian competition.
He emphasizes, for instance, that while "the nexus of American evangelicalism was individual salvation, Young's theology, like that of Joseph Smith, centered around extended families." "For Brigham Young, like Joseph Smith, the chief end of humankind was eternal fellowship and familial glory. '[If] men are not saved together, they cannot be saved at all.'" And Smith famously vowed that he would rather go to hell with the Saints than to heaven without them. [161]
Moreover classical Mormonism, like Pentecostalism in the twentieth century, was a religion of the poor and the ruined: hard-scrabble farmers, rural laborers, artisans and downwardly mobile craftsmen, failed small businessmen, and, most strikingly, an army of refugees from England's Satanic mills that Young and others led to America.
Dickensian England was the major target of early Mormon proselytism. Young arrived in Manchester, capital of the Industrial Revolution, in 1840 in time to witness the formation of the National Charter Association, the first working-class political party, amidst epic social turmoil.
Like Friedrich Engels two years later, Young was appalled by the living and working conditions of the factory working class as well as the servility of the poor. Lancashire, Turner tells us, was already over-run with itinerant preachers and tiny sects broken from Methodism, but Young and his companions were more eloquent egalitarians, offering economic as well as spiritual solutions to proletarian misery.
"Mormon missionaries focused on evangelicalism rather than on politics or socioeconomic analysis, but with no ties to British elites or the established order they unflinchingly lamented the poverty of the labouring, classes, denounced the monarchy's conspicuous consumption, and promised their converts land and employment in Illinois." [70]
After the exodus to the Great Basin and the establishment of the briefly independent state of Deseret, Young tirelessly preached the impossibility of coexistence between the communitarian values of Zion and the greed-driven capitalism of Babylon (the United States). Indeed even before the Saints' wagons had reached Salt Lake City he had repulsed mutineers who wanted to keep going to fat valleys and gold fields of California, straight into the open maw of Mammon.
The driving of the Golden Spike in 1869, however, flooded Utah with cheap Eastern goods as well as outlaws, mineral prospectors, and Gentile immigrants. A few years later the Crash of 1873 demonstrated that Utah was no long insulated from what Young denounced as "the oppression of monied monopolies."...(Click title for more)
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Producer Melissa Young
By Anca Voinea
Co-operative News
October 18, 2012 - The world premiere of Shift Change: Putting Democracy to Work, an inspirational documentary about successful co-operatives from North America and Basque region of Spain took place October 18 in Oakland, California.
The documentary produced by veteran award-winning filmmakers Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin aims to encourage support for employee ownership, and provide on-the-ground experience from a variety of enterprises and locations.
Stories in the film include: Mondragon Co-operative, Evergreen Co-operative, Arizmendi Association of Co-operatives, Cooperatives of immigrant workers, Isthmus Engineering and Manufacturing in Madison and Equal Exchange.
 | Shiftchange Trailer
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Producer Melissa Young said the idea of creating a documentary about the co-operative ownership model came in the context of the current economic crisis.
"With the loss of dignified work, and beyond that, loss of hope about the future, disillusionment with big banks and big business, we wanted to explore this model of worker owned and managed enterprises as one of the ways that people and communities can begin to build a different kind of more sustainable economy.
"We need to see where we can go, what is already happening, and build on that. My co-producer Mark Dworkin and I had known about Mondragon for years, and a colleague suggested it might be time for a new film about that 50+ year old network of successful co-operatives."
Ms Young explained how through 'Shift Change' some of the misconceptions regarding co-operatives will also be addressed. "In the U.S. at least, most people think of co-ops as small, marginal businesses, although of course millions belong to consumer co-ops of various sorts. Our goal is to publicise the worker co-operative model, to show some of its benefits and challenges, and to encourage people to support them, and to create more.
"This model can be adapted to many types of work, the internal organization varies, and the businesses are subject to the market forces any business experiences. One big challenge for such businesses in North America is to create regional networks that can help develop and support this type of business where people have both a stake and a say."
The world premiere of Shift Change occurs during national Co-op Month (October) and the UNs International Year of Cooperatives. The film's producers will be joined by workers from Arizmendi and WAGES, along with public officials and other special guests for this gala screening.
The event is presented by One PacificCoast Foundation, and co-sponsored by the Network of Bay Area Worker Coops (NoBAWC), US Federation of Worker Coops, East Bay Express, Sustainable Business Alliance, Oakland Grown, Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union, Arizmendi Lakeshore, Shoe Shine Wines, and Inkworks Press.
To find out more check shiftchange.org or like the movie's Facebook page.
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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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