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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New Issue of Mobilizer
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Blog of the Week: Z Magazine  The 1400-strong 'Facing Race' Conference in Baltimore
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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...
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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 Liberalism vs. Neoliberalism 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 defend voter rights, plan for 2014 races now, 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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Chicagoans cheering Obama's inauguration
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
BlackCommentator.com
Jan 24, 2013 - Obama is definitely a great and compelling speaker, certainly by mainstream political standards.
But that is not what I was pondering in listening to the Inaugural Address on January 21st. Rather, what struck me was that this was both a proclamation of the existence of a bloc of forces in this country that made it possible for him to win re-election, and at the same time, it was an unusual call to action.
Listening to Obama, he named names. He spoke of different segments of the population that have been historically oppressed and marginalized. African Americans, immigrants, women, LGBTQ, etc., were all named. He spoke of inequality and the growing gap between the haves and have-nots. He spoke of climate change, as well as the need to end perpetual war. In other words, he spoke about and to those who constitute a bloc for progress in this country.
He also challenged his listeners with what I believe was a call to action, a call to action that includes taking on the irrationalism and anti-governmental fervent of the political Right.
So, it was quite a speech. But what does it mean?
Obama's speeches have a tendency to confuse the listener, not at the moment, but in the aftermath. On the one hand, he regularly delivers powerful and thoughtful oration that is quite progressive. This takes place while he is also conducting the affairs of government in a manner that runs counter to those words. For those reasons, it is critical that we reiterate that there is Obama-the-individual and Obama-the-administration. The first is interesting, but not so important. The second is of critical importance.
The Obama administration is more than one person. It represents a governing body led by President Obama but not led as if by a Roman emperor. It is something of a hive mind that has various components with their overall objective being to strengthen the dominant role of the USA on the world-scale and to ensure the stability and growth of global capitalism. Obama is not a figurehead but he is equally not an absolute monarch. He, to borrow from Star Trek: First Contact, brings order to chaos. He is the ultimate decision-maker, but in making those decisions, myriad considerations and interests are factored.
For this reason Obama's Inaugural Address should be understood as very important but not representing a promise of direction. The Address is important in that it publicly recognizes his constituency and also helps his constituency, much of which is the mass base for a progressive bloc in this country, gain awareness of their own existence as being more than just isolated pockets. Such recognition by the President, along with the growing self-recognition, lays the foundation for progressive action that can supersede the limitations of the President....(Click title for more)
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By John Cassidy
The New Yorker
Jan 22, 2013 - From the front pages of the nation's biggest newspapers to the Web sites of conservative magazines, to the headline on my own post-apologies for its lack of originality-the reaction was uniform: President Obama delivered the most liberal inaugural address in decades, or possibly ever.
"President Barack Obama began his second term Monday with an unapologetically liberal vision," wrote Todd J. Gillman, of the Dallas Morning News. "In effect, Mr. Obama endorsed the entire liberal agenda as the guiding star of his next four years in the White House," Fred Barnes opined for the Wall Street Journal.
Well, that's settled then. But what sort of "liberal" is Obama? And is he really one at all? If he is, he represents a curious blend of liberal intent and conservative instincts, insisted über-blogger Andrew Sullivan. "But beneath all of it is a Toryism of sentiment, a Burkean and Niebuhrian understanding of liberal progress, a president with a grasp that tragedy and paradox stalk the human experience," Sullivan wrote on Monday, "...a fusion of that great conservative insight into human affairs with that great liberal passion for a better future for more and more human beings: something perfectible, but never perfect."
I'm not sure what this highfalutin passage means-has any President ever served four years without realizing that the world isn't perfectible?-but it demonstrates an old truth about Obama, which he acknowledged during the 2008 campaign: people see in him what they want to see. Critics on the right see a radical socialist. Critics on the left see a smooth-talking sellout. Some more centrist Obama supporters see a great, and greatly underappreciated, progressive leader.
These versions of Obama are all caricatures. Even some conservatives recognize that Obama is no tribune of the left. "Goldman Sachs doesn't appear to have anything to worry about," Daniel McCarthy, the editor of The American Conservative, noted on Monday. "Obama is not a socialist, and even his view of government power employed to foster creativity and commerce is not much to the left of a 19th-century Whig, or the average Cold War Republican president." That's not to mention his counterterror philosophy: he has left in place-and, indeed, even expanded-many of the illiberal policies he inherited from George W. Bush. (Even while Obama was speaking, U.S. drone attacks continued in Yemen.)
Like most Democrats, Obama is basically a New Deal liberal. He believes in capitalism restrained by regulation, and a proper social safety net. In establishing the principle of universal medical insurance, he registered his historic claim of having completed the work of Franklin D. Roosevelt (Social Security) and Lyndon Johnson (Medicare and Medicaid). Similarly, with the Dodd-Frank Act, he and his fellow Democrats acknowledged the fact, obscured for thirty years, that market liberalization can have negative effects as well as positive ones. Still, Obama is no F.D.R.; nor is he another Johnson. If he were the operator of a brewery, his brand of interventionism would be sold as "New Deal Lite" or "Great Society Lite"....(Click title for more)
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Editors Note: The key phrase below is 'potential backers of low-carbon projects.' From the left, there is no reason these can't be public ownership projects or worker-owned coops-but it will take a fight.
Davos Call for $14 Trillion 'Greening' of Global Economy Political and business leaders warned of need to ensure sustainable growth
By Tom Bawden
SolidarityEconomy.net via The Independent - UK
Jan 22 2013 - An unprecedented $14trn (£8.8trn) greening of the global economy is the only way to ensure long-term sustainable growth, according to a stark warning delivered to political and business leaders as they descended on the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday.
Only a sustained and dramatic shift to infrastructure and industrial practices using low-carbon technology can save the world and its economy from devastating global warming, according to a Davos-commissioned alliance led by the former Mexican President, Felipe Calderon, in the most dramatic call so far to fight climate change on business grounds.
This includes everything from power generation, transport, and buildings to industry, forestry, water and agriculture, according to the Green Growth Action Alliance, created at last year's Davos meeting in Mexico.
The extra spending amounts to roughly $700bn a year until 2030 and would provide a much-needed economic stimulus as well as reduce the costs associated with global warming further down the line, said Mr Calderon, who leads the alliance.
It is better to try to pre-empt events like Hurricane Sandy, which cost $50bn, by keeping a lid on global warming, concluded the report, researched by the Accenture consultancy.
Mr Calderon, whose six-year term as Mexican President ended in November, said: "It is clear that we are facing a climate crisis with potentially devastating impacts on the global economy.
"Greening global economic growth is the only way to satisfy the needs of today's population and up to 9 billion people by 2050, driving development and wellbeing while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing natural resource productivity."
He added: "Economic growth and sustainability are inter-dependent, you cannot have one without the other, and greening investment is the pre-requisite to realising both goals".
Mr Calderon is calling on the UK Government and other members of the G20 to unleash a wave of private investment in green infrastructure by giving potential backers of low-carbon projects the confidence and incentives to step up their spending.
The alliance, which includes the World Bank, Deutsche Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, proposes that governments use public money to give guarantees, insurance and incentives to potential low-carbon investors at the same time as phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.
The investment is needed to stimulate spending on everything from low-emission crop practices with reduced chemical and fertiliser use to renewable power generation and energy-efficient buildings and transport.
In addition to the need for an extra $14trn of extra spending, a substantial part of the $5trn-a-year that has been earmarked worldwide for investment in traditional, fossil-fuel heavy infrastructure by 2020 will need to be diverted to greener alternatives "to avoid locking in less-efficient, emissions-intensive technologies for decades to come".
The report acknowledges that an extra $700bn is a lot of extra cash to find each year, but says that the money could be raised with an increase in global public spending of a relatively small $36bn a year, if it was targeted effectively through the right measures to support private investment.
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Dirty Wars: New Film Exposes Covert Warfare
 | Dirty Wars: Democracy Now! on Jeremy Scahill & Rick Rowley's New Film
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An Interview with Chicago Teachers
Union President Karen Lewis By Jody Sokolower
Rethinking Schools
Four years ago, Karen Lewis was a chemistry teacher, one of eight Chicago teachers who formed the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) to fight school closings (see "A Cauldron of Opposition in Duncan's Hometown: Rank-and-File Teachers Score Huge Victory").
This September, as president of a transformed, democratic Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), she led the 30,000-member union in a successful strike in the city that has been a launch pad for the neoliberal education strategy. The collective and collaborative nature of the teachers' union, and the breadth of parental, student, and community support for the strike, make understanding the CTU's perspective and strategy critical for all of us interested in social justice unionism.
Jody Sokolower for RS: Set the scene for us: What were the issues that led to the Chicago teachers' strike this fall?
Karen Lewis: The strike was a result of 15 to 25 years of anger about being blamed for conditions that are beyond our control. That's part of it. The other part was a clear rebuke to the mayor and his friends about the top-down "reform" agenda and how it absolutely does not address the needs in the schools.
As soon as Rahm Emanuel [President Obama's former chief of staff] came to town to run for mayor, he had as his education advisor the head of a charter school network, Juan Rangel. We knew from the very beginning this was going to be an ugly, bitter fight. Once Emanuel won the primary, before the general election, he was already heavily dabbling in Springfield and insisting that we not have the right to strike. Working hand in hand with Jonah Edelman from what I call "Stand on Children" [Stand for Children], he tried to raise the bar so high that we would have our right to strike theoretically, but wouldn't have it in reality. They got legislation passed that meant we need 75 percent of our entire membership-not our voting membership-to authorize a strike.
Our membership was incensed; this was a law carved out just for Chicago. My response was: "Brothers and sisters, if we don't have 75 percent of our members in favor of a strike, we shouldn't strike. A strike is not something you do lightly." Then we spent more than a year talking to members about the contract, getting them involved in the contract fight, getting their wishes and desires as part of the proposal that we presented to the board.
Once he was elected, Emanuel was so enamored of a longer school day that last year-in the middle of our contract-he went directly to schools to ask them to take a waiver and do the longer school day with no additional compensation, trying to bribe principals with $150,000 per school and teachers with free iPads. We had to go to the Education Labor Relations Board to enjoin them from doing that. Emanuel got 13 waivers before we clamped that down. That's what happens when you have people running the school system who come from the business world. They think they can do whatever they want and do not understand how to deal with labor.
While parents liked the longer day, they also thought we should be compensated for it. They didn't like the idea of forcing people to work longer without being paid for it. Parents are very clear about if you work, you get paid.
And the entire time, we were having conversations with our parents about what would make school better; we always had a different vision of what school should look like. We said, "You have the right to a longer day, but let's make it a better day, because if you're only elongating the day we have, everyone's just going to get tired. There's no evidence that a longer day in itself is better." Parents wanted art, music, PE, world languages. They wanted classes that were not just reading and math all day long.
The parents understood that the mayor was bullying us. Parents also understood that we were being blamed and attacked for stuff that had nothing to do with how we managed our schools. They were clear about that. We have overwhelming support from parents whose children actually go to Chicago public schools. Sometimes when they do polls and ask parents, those parents don't have kids in the schools.
Emanuel also took away the 4 percent raise that was already in our contract. What he really wanted was for us to open up the contract and go on strike last year so he could have imposed the longer school day. But we were adamant: We have a contract, we expect you to follow that contract.
JS: Because you wanted the extra time to organize?
KL: Absolutely. Had to have it. We were not mobilized, we were not organized, we were not ready. We needed the extra time to organize, but also to plan for the better day.
In the past, union leadership always said, "Save your money, we might go on strike." But that's not how you get people ready to strike.
We did not want to strike. I assumed that Emanuel would do everything he could to settle it before we had a strike. I was very wrong about that. We had a lot of pressure not to strike from politicians and advocacy organizations. But all along, we were very open about what we were going to do and how we were going to achieve it....(Click title for more)
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Fred Redmond, United Steel workers
By Gar Alperovitz
Backtofullemployment.org
Jan 23, 2013 - The great British economist the late Joan Robinson once observed that the only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not being exploited by capitalism.
This truth is felt acutely by anyone who is unemployed and looking for work. As the pain of the economic crisis continues and millions struggle to find employment there is an obvious imperative to create jobs-any jobs. But we shouldn't stop there. In Back to Full Employment, Robert Pollin makes the essential point that "a workable definition of full employment should refer to an abundance of decent jobs." Poor jobs that keep workers minimally employed but leave them in precarious circumstances and unable to participate fully in civic and political life are better than no jobs at all. But in terms of public policy we can and should aim higher-especially as decent jobs not only benefit the workers that hold them but also the communities in which they live. Absent a stable economic base, community itself is compromised.
Three elements of the instability challenge lend critical perspective to the issue. The first can be seen in the long-term results of the decline of manufacturing industry in the rust belt. We have in fact been quite literally "throwing away" entire cities-cities like Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis. Since 1950, Cleveland and St. Louis have each lost half a million people, drops of more than 50 and 60 percent respectively; in Detroit, the fall in numbers has topped a million, more than 60 percent. The uncontrolled corporate decision-making that results in the elimination of jobs in one community-leaving behind empty houses, half-empty schools, roads, hospitals, public buildings, and so forth-implicitly requires that they be rebuilt in a different location. Quite apart from the human costs involved, the process is extremely costly in terms of capital and also of carbon content-and at a time when EPA studies show that greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity in the United States are still moving in the wrong direction (having jumped by over 3 percent between 2009 and 2010 alone).
A second aspect relates to democracy. Substantial local economic stability is clearly necessary if democratic decision-making is a priority. A local population tossed hither and yon by uncontrolled economic forces is unable to exercise any serious interest in the long-term health of the community. To the extent local budgets are put under severe stress by instability, local community decision-making (as political scientist Paul E. Peterson has shown) is so financially constrained as to make a mockery of democratic process. This becomes still more problematic if we recognize-as theorists from Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill to Benjamin Barber, Jane Mansbridge, and Stephen Elkin have argued-that an authentic experience of local democratic practice is also absolutely essential for there to be genuine national democratic practice.
Thirdly, and straightforwardly, it will be impossible to do serious local "sustainability planning"-mass transit, high-density housing, and so forth-that reduces a community's carbon footprint if such planning is disrupted and destabilized by economic turmoil.
So yes, we need jobs. And yes, we need good jobs. But we also need an approach to good jobs that will allow us to grapple with the challenges indicated above while at the same time begin tackling the grotesque maldistribution of wealth in this country-a distribution that has reached literally medieval proportions. The top 400 individuals now control as much wealth as the bottom 180 million Americans taken together.
How to go about all this? As we-hopefully-begin to adopt smarter public policies aimed at reaching full employment, we should maximize the impact of these policies by choosing strategies likely to economically stabilize our cities and regions. A decent job should be understood as one which not only pays well, but which is anchored in a community, and which in turn anchors a worker and participant in the civic life of that community. If the culprit behind economic destabilization, and its catastrophic effects in terms of employment, is capital mobility, the solution will require increasing the proportion of capital held by actors with a long-term commitment to a given locality or region....(Click title for more)
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 The Bridge and the Dowry
Author: Avi Raz
Yale University Press
By Rod Such
The Electronic Intifada
Jan 16, 2013 - Avi Raz's The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War is a meticulous examination of the two-year period that followed Israel's occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Syrian Golan Heights.
It is notable for a number of reasons: its documentation of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that occurred during and after the war and its exposure of a policy of deliberate lying to conceal Israel's real aims in the newly occupied territories. And perhaps most importantly, its virtually unassailable argument that Israeli policymakers never intended to relinquish the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which it promptly annexed, and contemplated annexing Gaza.
Also notable are the disclosure that Israeli officials acknowledged that the annexation of East Jerusalem and the construction of settlements in the West Bank violated international law, and Raz's depiction of the US government's steady supply of arms and political support to Israel during this period.
Raz is a former Israeli journalist turned historian who is now a member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University in England. The title of the book derives from an infamous quote by Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Israel's prime minister during that time, who referred to the West Bank and Gaza as the "dowry" Israel won in the 1967 War: "The trouble is that the dowry is followed by a bride [the Palestinians] whom we don't want," Eshkol said.
As Raz shows, Israel wasted little time in attempting to get rid of as many "brides" as it could without provoking an international furor. As early as the third day of the war, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan told Lt. Gen. Yitzhak Rabin "that the aim was to empty the West Bank of its inhabitants."
More than 200,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to flee their homes and villages in the West Bank, even though none participated in the 1967 War. Some twenty West Bank villages were destroyed, either partially or completely. The main purpose of the village destruction, Raz notes, "was to obliterate the Green Line," the unofficial border created by the 1949 armistice agreements.
The Israeli military "encouraged" Palestinians to flee eastward toward the East Bank of the Jordan River. Raz documents that thousands of Palestinians who attempted to return to their homes after the fighting ended were labeled "infiltrators." Hundreds were killed when they tried to return, including women and children, some of whom were buried in mass graves....(Click title for more)
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By Christine N. Ziemba
Paste Magazine
The battle over water rights has long been a source for cinematic storylines, from John Wayne westerns like Angel and the Badman to Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Like Polanski's classic, writer/director Damian Lee's latest thriller, A Dark Truth, is also inspired by actual conflicts-with Lee moving beyond California's Owens Valley to a more global scale, spotlighting underhanded corporate dealings in South America and Africa. Unfortunately, any similarities end there.
In his research, Lee learned of South American water wars that pitted big business and governments against local communities. Purportedly, farmers couldn't even collect rainwater because all water belonged to conglomerates. Soldiers were sent in to protect the government interests (aka profits) with sometimes violent outcomes. It's a fascinating issue, but A Dark Truth's preachiness ultimately prevents it from being a successful indictment of politics or corporations.
Andy Garcia plays Jack Begosian, a former CIA operative with a less-than-admirable past in Central and South America. He's been trying to purge his past sins by hosting a political talk radio show in Toronto. Snippets from Begosian's talk shows serve as voiceovers throughout the film, as if the onscreen moralizing wasn't enough. (The show's radio callers are also distracting because most of them are too calm, reasonable and articulate for any political talk show.)
Begosian gets an offer at redemption when socialite Morgan Swinton (Deborah Kara Unger)-a major shareholder in her family's water company-gets an ugly taste of the truth that jars her out of a substance-addled existence. She asks Begosian to investigate Clearbec, run by her brother, Bruce (Sons of Anarchy's Kim Coates), finding what role the company played in an Ecuadorian village's typhus outbreak and the killing of villagers who tried to escape.
She pays Begosian a hefty fee to find and extricate Francisco Francis (Forest Whitaker), an American anthropologist and ecologist turned eco-warrior. He has the evidence against Clearbec, and can help scuttle a pending billion-dollar deal for South African water rights. Though he's hesitant to leave his family behind, Jack takes the job because he's crossed paths with Francis before and feels the need to undo old wrongs.
A Dark Truth has moments of taut suspense, but some of the shoot-'em-up scenes are hardly believable. Its biggest downfall is the over-earnestness of the leading characters. Begosian and Francis are both somber, bleeding-heart liberals who resort to violence to further their cause(s), leading to nearly one-dimensional performances by Garcia and Whitaker.
The film's supporting female characters, including Mia Francis (Eva Longoria) and Karen Begosian (Lara Daans), fare no better in Lee's script, having little to do but support their husbands and look worried as the menfolk head into danger.
In the end, A Dark Truth's sermonizing affects many of the film's antagonists as well, with even a hitman having a change of heart and Bruce turning from a cutthroat capitalist to a capitalist with a conscience as he struggles between money, power and the right thing to do. Coates' portrayal is one of the more compelling performances in the film.
While not a terrible film, A Dark Truth squanders its political potential by boiling down the complex global issue of water rights to good guys vs. bad guys, the type of oversimplified dichotomy much better suited for a John Wayne western.
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time is long past for 'Lone Rangers'. Being a socialist by your self is
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